Labor of Laughter

There is a question I am asked quite often. It's also a question that I see online almost every day. It usually goes something like this, "Hi! I'm overdue and I need to get this baby out. How do I get this baby out of me?" A lot of women want to avoid medical induction since Pitocin can be nasty stuff when it's given out like candy (common in many hospitals) and carries a heavy set of risk, such as stress to the baby and eventual C-Section. So, you end up with a ton of advice on how to get that baby out without using the hospitals P-Juice. Some examples:

• Walk. Walk. Walk. Now walk it out, walk it out, walk it out (obscure rap reference).
• Sex. Lots of sex. Lots of sex that involves semen. Sperm it out.
• Cohosh: Black and Blue to bring your baby to you. 
• Red Raspberry Leaf Tea to help the uterus feel sassy and toned so it's in shape for it's most important marathon ever. 
• Nipple Stimulation - twist those little boob nubs to stimulate contraction that you'll hopefully be shouting your way through soon. 
• Acupuncture - if the other kind of poking I mentioned up there doesn't work, then these pokes might.
• Chiropractic - a well-adjusted mom will have a well-adjusted timely labor.
• Castor oil - because after you take the biggest and most foul poo of your life, that baby is not going to want to be anywhere near those intestines. 

 Those are just a few options that women have for helping labor start. There are plenty more. I have never tried to make labor happen. Now, I did drink Red Raspberry Leaf tea and I alternated homeopathic black and blue cohosh for a few weeks prior to my due date in order to get my uterus and her cervix in fantastic shape. Other than that, I am perfectly happy to allow labor to start on it's own prior to forty two weeks. Now, I have never gone more than 4 days over my due date. I may sing a different tune if I were to ever get close to 42. As it stands, I didn't want to rush things, mainly because I procrastinate, but also because I kinda hate pushing. It Hurts. 

 With my son, I went into labor on my own. I knew it was coming overnight, but getting up at 5:30am to clean up diarrhea from my differently-abled kitty (thanks for feeding her cheese, Dad!) kicked everything into gear. My miscarriage started on it's own. My third birth may have been helped along. I may have done things to get the ball rolling, so I want to share it with you. This may give you an alternative to other induction methods. I may start a worldwide trend.

 It was Thursday, August 11. I was due August 8th, but I was in no rush to evict my little girl. I had a pretty normal day, but got hit with the nesting bug later in the afternoon. I had insanely bad SPD (symphasis pubis dysfunction) and was kinda limited when it came to moving around. I couldn't clean as much as I wanted, but I could vacuum. I love vacuuming. It's easy and it produces instant results and makes you feel good. On that day, my nesting took it further. I went all He-Man and picked up my Queen mattress. I vacuumed the box spring. I vacuumed both sides of the mattress. I even put a fitted sheet around the box spring to make it look prettier. Nesting done, I played mini-golf with my husband and son. I almost cried on the golf course, somewhere around the big fake mountain with the big fake unnaturally blue waterfall, because I was an utter mini-golf failure. I couldn't get my balls in the holes. So, I cried. Then I got mad at my husband. This has something to do with pregnancy hormones. After mini-golf, I yelled at my husband in the CVS parking lot and cried some more. I mention all of this because it may be part of the labor induction puzzle. It may be something you want to try.

 When we got home, I sat my giant self in my computer chair and read the posts on my August Due Date Club message board. There were plenty of announcements about new baby as well as lamentations that babies were never coming and  that pregnancy would continue forever. One post stood out. A friend posted a link to a website that included different ways to check the progression of labor without an internal cervical exam. Sweet.  One of the things mentioned was called "The Bottom Line." It's a line that runs from your crackus buttus upward toward your lower back. It's length corresponds with cervical dilation. Here is an excerpt from the site:

"There is something called the ‘bottom line’, which is shadow that extends from the anus up towards the back along the crease of the buttocks. It begins as 1cm and lengthens to 10cm, and it’s length correlates with cervical dilation. Why not look down there before inviting a stranger to put their fingers up inside you? It makes sense to me. Here is current research verifying the existence of the bottom line, and in their trial it was measurable and had acceptable accuracy for 76% of women checked."

Being the sane and rational person I am, I grabbed my floor length mirror and took it into my bathroom. I dropped my pants and bent over in front of the mirror and strained my neck and every possible muscle in my body in an attempt to view my own ass crack. That is damn near impossible when you are gigantically with child. I couldn't see my crack. I spent a half hour contorting myself into different positions and finally trying to squat over a hand mirror to see if I could see a line. Obviously, the baby belly was in the way and it was a no go. I may have blocked it out of my memory, but I can't remember how I finally saw the purple line. I was twisted into the most unnatural position for a human, let alone an enormous pregnant human, and all I could do was see this damn line. Oh no! Seeing it isn't enough. I needed to measure it to see how dilated I was. I opened the bathroom door and called out for my husband. It was just past midnight at this point and my husband was dozing off. I yelled for him to come help me in the bathroom and he came running, white as ghost because he probably figured I had dropped the baby in the toilet like they do in TV shows. I asked him to grab my tape measure from my sewing kit and meet me in the kitchen because we'd need better lighting. Not questioning me, he grabbed the tape measure and found me in the kitchen, butt to world. "See that purple line in my crack? Can you measure that? I need to see if I'm dilated." It's a testament to our marriage that he measure my butt crack line without even questioning me. He said it was 5 to 7 centimeters - "but closer to 7."  He couldn't get a great measurement because I was laughing so hard .Wow! 7 cms. That means I was almost fully dilated and I didn't even feel a thing! OMG! My baby is going to drop out of me after a 10 minute labor...when I finally go into labor. I then did the next most sane and rational thing - I got back online and reported my findings to my August due date club AND everyone on my personal Facebook. My best friend, who also happens to be my midwife, even commented on my status. She thought it was cool.

 I went about Facebooking, smug with the knowledge that my baby was practically crowning and I wasn't even in labor. I figured that I would post in a few days about how my baby just glided out while I giggled. I continued conversations on Facebook and posted a Journey video to a friend's wall. This is important. My friend and I had some weird inside joke involving Journey. Before I left for maternity leave, we would watch the video for "Separate Ways" (otherwise known as "Someday love will find you, break this chains that bind you) in the pharmacy at work and we would laugh our asses off. No offense to Journey fans, but I find the video hilarious. The way Steve Perry over emotes every single word. The sleeveless t-shirts. The super drama. The 80's super model. Bulging denim. The mustaches! And the guy playing his keyboard up against the wall with such bravado - as if playing his keyboard that way was going to save the world from annihilation by some alien race (it's the 80's - think A.L.F.). It's just full of early 80's music video awesome. Totally rad. So, there I was, watching the video I posted to her Wall and just cracking up. I felt a pop in my pelvis and I figured it was just my SPD causing more chaos. I got up to get my husband so he, too, could enjoy the laughter at this Journey video (the lead singer, Steve Perry, makes faces that remind me of my hubby - that was part of the funny).

I opened the door to the bedroom and whoosh! amniotic fluid was splashing onto the carpet. There it was. I was officially beginning labor. That was at 1am. I gave birth at 7:27 pm the next day. Obviously, not the 20 minute breezy labor I had anticipated and I definitely didn't giggle her out. Oh, my midwife checked me later that afternoon. Honestly, the only reason she checked me was to see if I was right about the bottom line. My labor had not been painful up until that moment and I had this fear that I was never going to have strong contractions and that my baby would fall out of my vagina while I was outside walking around. I was...wait for it....3 cms. WHAT!?! Obviously, the bottom line may not be that accurate OR my hubby didn't get a good measurement. I now know that the bottom line is really only accurate further into active labor, not when you are randomly checking your crack at midnight.

I present this all to you to share my experience. I believe that nature should be allowed to take her course in most cases. There are definitely times when inductions are warranted. I also understand the desire to get things moving because you are so uncomfortable or because inching close to 42 weeks means your midwife won't attend your birth center or home birth. So, I wanted to add these two natural methods to the repertoire.  If you find yourself wanting to naturally give the labor ball a little nudge give these two things a try:

• Bend over in front of a mirror to check your butt crack for the magic bottom line. Bonus points for breaking into giggle fits while you post about it on Facebook.
• Watch a Journey video. For added enjoyment, watch it with the sound off. Trust me. 

I hope you have found this helpful. I realize I will most likely start a trend. This will be known as the EarthChild method of labor induction. Books will probably be written. I promise, I will not let the fame get to my head.

Congratulations! You Are America's Next Top Birther!

If you or someone you know has ever given birth, then you have likely either heard, or even said, the following: "All that matters is a healthy baby. You don't win any awards for giving birth."

 I cannot even begin to express how much I hate hearing that. There is so much judgment in that little phrase. Sure, it may be well-intentioned. It's just an incredibly dumb thing to say. It supposes that women only care about their own personal birth experience and couldn't give two shits about whether the little baby makes it.


This is simply not true.

I recently ran across a posting on The Feminist Breeder Facebook Fan Page. TFB posted a link to what is perhaps one of the most poorly-written articles I have ever seen. I'm not just saying that because I disagree with the author's points. It's just badly written. The article in question was an odd discombobulated stringing together of various ranty thoughts about birth. The author made the following statement:

"That’s worth trumpeting, at a time when the birth experience itself is more fetishized then ever, owing as much to demographics as to celebrity examples. Women are putting off childrearing for longer and having fewer kids, Cassidy points out. Some are treating the long-anticipated day of birth like prom-plus-wedding-squared.

It’s great to have control over the birth experience - that hasn’t always been the case - but there’s also a danger in over-thinking it all. For some women, a healthy child isn’t an adequate goal; the birth has to be “empowering,’’ too. And if it falls short of expectations, for reasons beyond anyone’s control, that can lead to unnecessary guilt or regret." - Joanna Weiss 


I'm sorry, what? The birth experience is a fetish? No dear, wanting to lick some stranger's leather-clad feet is a fetish. Wanting to give birth with RESPECT and with as little medical and psychological bullshit to ensure that my baby is born safely and comfortably is not. It should be a basic human right. And "prom-plus-wedding-squared?" So we're equating the 9 month nourishment of a human life and the following birth of said human life - one of the biggest events in any person's life - to days when we play dress up with formal wear, make-up and flowers? And why the need for the quotation marks around the word empowerment? Is she seriously mocking the fact that many of us would like an empowered birth? Someone needs to clue her in to the fact that women are all about empowered birth because it leads to a better outcome for the baby. DUH.

Why are we so quick to brush off the experience of the mother as if it's something that is so unimportant? God forbid you actual have any sort of emotion that's not all sunshine and unicorn farts when a baby is born.

A commenter on TFB's post said the following:

"As a l&d nurse, I believe birth should be empowering, but so should everything else in life. Birth is an important thing, but a healthy baby/mom should honestly be more important than mode of delivery. If you don't enjoy your birth, enjoy your child. Women having babies for the experience is like women getting married for the wedding. Look at the long-term outcome. Just sayin."

Grrrrr. It's attitudes like those of the author and the commenter above that actually cause new mothers to have emotional issues after the birth. After all, if the L&D nurse who is entrusted to your care can't see past the fact that birth is a very emotional experience then who will? Here you are, in the throes of one of the most important moments of your life and you are being told by someone who should advocate FOR you that you need to suck it up like a big girl and not complain about a single goddamn thing. Really, you're just as annoying as those women who scream during the birth.  


We've become so accepting of the attitude that we should be so detached from our bodies and our experiences. You are not a woman who is giving birth. You are merely the vessel for the uterus that's holding the baby - a baby who, despite being made up of your own cells, fed from your own blood and protected by your own body - has no emotional attachment or awareness of you whatsoever. Everyone knows babies are kinda dumb and don't know much of anything. They certainly aren't emotional creatures until they are much, much older. Birth does not matter. These attitudes hurt. 


The fact is, women are affected by their births, whether it's in a positive manner or negative. Of course mothers are ultimately the most concerned about the well-being of their babies, but that doesn't negate the experiences and feelings that led up to that moment. You can't expect a woman who had planned for nine months to have something go a certain way, but was then laughed at, pressured, ignored and cut open to just brush it off. Yes, not everything goes as planned. To use the example of a wedding, let's say a bride planned her big day for nine months. All the dresses were picked out and ordered. The flowers were arranged. The cake was baked. The songs and verses were carefully selected. Then, she arrives at the church only to find out the groom has left her at the altar. The congregation wouldn't tell her to just shush now and don't speak of it. Would anyone say, "At least you still had fun trying on dresses. At least you still get to eat the cake?" No! Everyone would rally around the poor bride. They'd expect her to be sad and they would comfort her. Or what about prom. I'll tell you something - I was stood up for a prom. I was supposed to go to my boyfriend's prom in high school. The dress, shoes and accessories were bought. I had meticulously cut out pictures of hairstyles to bring to my stylist for the big day. The night before, I called him and he said he wasn't going. No explanation. I was so sad. Two days later, a friend called and said he had taken another girl to the prom. I was devastated. Looking back, it's small beans compared to kinks in pregnancy and birth. Yet, someone had the audacity to compare proms and weddings to childbirth. Bull. 


Sending this message to women hurts more than it helps. Here she is, feeling down because her birth didn't go as she hoped. Perhaps it was a true emergency c-section and she feels her body failed her. Perhaps it was one too many interventions and she feels her birth team didn't advocate enough for her. Perhaps it was a home birth transfer and she feels like she failed herself. There are many reasons that women are dissatisfied with their birth experiences. Some have the very real trauma of fighting the birth team for the simple human right to make choices about her own body. Some have had medical personnel laugh directly in their faces when they discussed the birth plan. They have physical battle wounds to go along with the emotions. Yet, they get a message from society that is loud and clear - do not talk about your feelings lest you be seen as selfish. After all, at least you have a healthy baby. These mamas are 100% thankful for their healthy babies and they begin to feel guilty. The question themselves. How could I ever be so selfish as to worry about the birth. At least baby is healthy. Oh, I'm so stupid to get angry with my doctor for not listening to me. At least my baby is healthy. And so they push down their feelings out of guilt and embarrassment. They go about their new lives despite that small nagging voice in the back of their head. We all know what happens with repressed emotions. Eventually, that nagging voice gets louder and meaner. You wonder where the depression came from. You thought the baby blues would be quick and easy to get over, but it's staying. You can't think of anything wrong. Yeah, you still think back to the birth and how you were unhappy with certain events, but it's over now and you've got your baby. Besides, you'd be a terrible mother if you even worried about silly things right now. It's a viscous cycle. 


People need to understand that we are not competing for an award in birth. Our decisions are based on research, experience and the hope that we can have the best outcome. I know that when I gave birth, I was not thinking, "Oh wow. This is totally going to earn me some crunchy hippie granola earth mama natural birth cred. I'm going to be a birth superstar for sure! I feel intellectually and morally superior to any other woman who has ever given birth." Nope, not at all. I was actually thinking, "holy fuck this is painful and I just might die." I chose a natural unmedicated birth because I didn't want any drugs getting into my babies' systems. Yes, there are times when those drugs are used safely and are needed. However, all medications have risks and I wanted to avoid risks as much as possible. I had healthy pregnancies and was low risk. There was no need for interventions, so natural birth was the best for me and my babies. There was nothing in my mind pointing to feeling superior to anyone else or wanting some sort of gold medal.

Please, please, please do not discount the feelings of postpartum women. They are not ashamed of their babies. The are not ungrateful for those babies. They are human. They have human emotions. They need other humans to understand them and show them compassion. 

Let me share what I wrote on The Feminist Breeder's page:

 "I am so sick and tired of that crap argument that the only thing that matters is a healthy baby. It implies that women who go against the grain are selfish and would sacrifice even their own babies to get the experience of their dreams. People need to look within themselves and try to understand why they would even entertain such a thought and fix it, because it's certainly not true.

Women DIE as a result of interventions and unnecessary c-sections. Yeah, you have a healthy baby, but that baby is now left without a mama. That kinda matters. Women end up with PPD and PTSD as a direct result of pretty bad birth experiences. The baby may be healthy, but he or she may have a mama who is unable to care for baby, who is detached, who doesn't want to hold or touch or nurse the baby. That's not ideal. Birth IS powerful. Humans are highly emotional creatures and something like bringing a life into the world via your own body is kinda important - and way more important than a prom or a wedding (seriously, WTF?). But, if you want to talk weddings, let's say you spent nine months planning for your wedding. You had your list of guests, you knew what you would where, you knew where it would be held - you had an ideal event planned our in your mind and you were expecting a great day. Then, your fiancé leaves you. Who wouldn't expect a bride to be upset? For Pete's sake, there is a whole reality industry fashioned around brides who don't get what they want. Hello, Bridezillas. And you expect a woman who nurtured a life, had a birth plan, had hopes for the birth and planned for the best outcome to just wave a white flag when things go wrong? Anyone thinking so must be off their rocker.

 I gave birth to my first child in a hospital. It was a natural birth, attended by a midwife and I rocked it. What I rarely talk about is how much I hated it. I was walking out the door to go to the birth center when the midwife called and told me the birth center would be closed for a few days because the other midwife who owned it was not available. As per the law in their area/their policy, two RNs/CNMs had to be present for a birth in the birth center. There was nothing the other midwife could do. Maybe someone stronger would have said, "fuck you, get your ass over here and let's do a homebirth," but that wasn't me at the time. I was an hour from home (had gone to my parents during labor because they lived really close to the birth center) and I had not prepared for or entertained the thought of a homebirth. You know why I had to go to the hospital? Because the midwife I trusted and who knew how much a peaceful birth center birth meant to me (she had been my midwife for well women care for 8 years!) decided she wanted to go to a fancy fucking horse show the next day and didn't want her sleep disturbed. She figured I'd be up all night in labor since I was a first time mom and she just wanted to go watch fucking horsies (no disrespect to the fucking horsies). My other midwife, who is now one of my best friends and attended my homebirth this past summer, did EVERYTHING she could to keep the hospital staff away from me and make it as much like a birth center birth as possible. Still, I was distressed. I had to call my two friends, who I desperately wanted to be at my birth, and tell them they weren't allowed to call because of the hospital's two person rule. My midwife bent the rules a little so my dad could be there by claiming my mom as a doula (we were allowed two regular people and one labor support person). My mom had made a ton of food to bring to the birth center that now we couldn't take. We smuggled cheese-its, recharge and raisins. I stalled my labor. I broke down. I was so angry about my experience and so distressed I was there with lights on my vagina and a hospital nurse screaming, "pushpushpushpushpushpush" (I ended up "accidentally" kicking her) that I pushed too hard and ripped myself and ended up with a third degree. My midwife, who had been up for at least 36 hours (for office hours and delivering another baby before me) and was pregnant herself was bleary-eyed and exhausted and had a hard time stitching up my bitch of a tear. I was in so, so much pain from the tear because my vulva and perineum would not numb no matter how much lidocaine they used (and they used the maximum dosage). I felt every single fucking stitch. They called in an OB to come stitch me and she was a nasty bitch. She didn't even acknowledge my presence. She roughly rubbed at my vulva with DRY guaze pads. She put the needle to me and I screamed in pain and accidentally kicked her arm. She said, "She's out of control. I'm not touching her unless you take her to the OR and knock her out." She said that, with her hand on my vulva - talking about me in third person. A hospital staff midwife came in an was able to get me stitched quickly and as gently as possible. I tried to get up to pee and the pushpushpushpushpushpush labor nurse kept saying, in a panic, "are you going to faint? You look like you're going to faint. You are REALLY pale. Do you think you will faint?" So, guess what? I fainted on the toilet. Then I couldn't pee. So they pulled me to the bed and the nurse ripped off my beautiful bathrobe from home and put me in a hospital gown. The put in an IV and a urinary catheter. And the entire time I had to fight tooth and nail to get them to allow my husband to go down to the nursery with my son while they did his exam. The pushpushpushpushpushpush nurse tried to use all these scare tactics on me to get me to relinquish my son alone no matter how much I yelled NO. Finally, my dad spoke up and got nasty with her, telling her that he is a respiratory therapist who works in a level III NICU and he knows all the hospital bullshit and that she was lying out of her ass to me. My midwife HAD to leave eventually and I was wheeled to the maternity recovery ward where the hospital staff FORGOT I was there. No food for hours. No lactation consultant (which was fine, because my mom IS a lactation consultant and I'd been very educated on the subject my whole life). The food I did get was cold and was thrown at me because I had bitched about being forgotten and starving. They tried to take my son away from me again...saying his temp (which they took while he was naked and in air conditioning) was 97.5 and they'd have to take him to the nursery and feed him formula to warm him up. Yeah right. They wouldn't treat me for my PUPPS rash which had spread like wildfire after the birth (I asked for a mere benedryl). They lost my bloodwork and had to re-sitck me. It was a pretty crappy experience. I did end up with PPD, half due to the experience and half due to the prospect of going back to work (where one of my co-workers made it a point to laugh and make "Told you so" comments because I was such an ardent natural birth advocate). I kept quiet about my birth experience for years. I felt like I didn't have a right to complain because I DID end up with a midwife-attended natural birth and my boy was perfect. I felt like I had no room to complain in comparison to women who had highly managed births that ended in surgery. So I kept it in like a good girl as it ATE at me. It took me years to finally open up about it, with some trepidation. Obviously, it bothered me because what was supposed to be a single paragraph response has turned into a novel.

And you know what? I hate pain. I think birth is painful. I wanted to be the type who would smile and laugh her baby out, but that isn't me and never will be. I'm a wimp with pain. I HATE pushing. I say that after a mere 15 minutes of pushing with my homebirth. I hate it. It would be REALLY easy for me to just get some drugs to make myself comfortable. Really easy. However, I refrain because I feel it's not the best for MY children. I don't want to pump their bodies full of chemicals if I can help it. For me, giving birth naturally has nothing to do with getting myself a fucking gold star and EVERYTHING to do with providing the best experience possible for the little lives entrusted to my body and my care. If anyone wants to take issue with me and tell me that women need to get over it, or just enjoy their healthy baby and be glad I wasn't planning a wedding because that'd be so much more important, I would be happy to "accidentally" kick them, too.

And that's all I have to say about that."

As you can see, I was one of those women. I held my feelings down. I felt so ashamed for mourning my birth experience, especially since I did have a natural birth. Thankfully, the midwife who delivered my son talked to me about it years later and I finally felt validated. I no longer felt selfish and ashamed. My heart breaks for mothers who feel they must suffer in silence.

Mamas, don't feel ashamed. Don't feel guilty. There is nothing wrong with you for hurting over your birth experience. Those feelings don't make you a bad mother. Please, accept those emotions as natural and find a way to acknowledge them and share them with others so that you can heal yourself.  


P.S. Now that you've read this, you may feel free to laugh hysterically at the graphic. I won't even tell you how long it took me to "craft" that in Paint.

It Hurt. I Screamed. I'm Still Legit.

Walking while in labor. Pre-screaming.

Ok, I might piss some people off with this. There is something in the natural birth community that annoys the heck out of me sometimes. I need to vent a little.

It's pain and the attitude towards it.

You see, in the natural birth world, there are many who believe that a natural birth should not be painful. It shouldn't hurt. You should only feel an intensity that is almost a relief. Something you work with. Furthermore, everything should be gentle. You should birth your baby in near silence with a serene smile on your face. Bonus points for popping an orgasm while you're at it. Pain and/or screaming is a sign that the woman is not prepared for her birth and that she is afraid. It's a sign that she has let fear take over the labor. Screaming will make the pain worse. Screaming will scare your baby and scare that precious child for life.

I call bullshit.

Now, I am not knocking how anyone else gives birth. Please know that this is not an attack on anyone who was smiling serenely or having an orgasm. I completely support a woman's right to educate herself and empower herself to have the birth of her dreams. I'm totally behind those who want to use hypnosis, orgasmic births or other techniques to help them through the process of labor and birth. What I'm knocking is the holier-than-thou attitude that can be seen in many discussions of pain in labor and birth. This idea that if you're feeling pain then you're doing it wrong.

I'm serious - those words have been typed out by some of my fellow hippie, loving, gentle natural birth comrades. You are doing it wrong if it hurts. You are too afraid. You don't know how to give into the intense sensations of labor and let your body take over. It's only painful because you are calling it, "pain." It's only painful if you don't know how to cope and if you let it "get to you." It's painful because you are not educated enough and you don't know what to expect. If you don't imagine that your vagina is a beautiful lotus flower slowly unfolding, petal by petal, then it's going to hurt. The worst I've seen is some women telling other women that normal births are not painful.

It makes me want to bang my head on my desk when I read these things - but, that would hurt. It's true that your emotional state plays a part in your labor. It is most certainly true that fear can hinder labor. And I definitely advocate for women to be educated about the birth process, partly to eliminate that fear. But having pain and even experiencing fear do not equal failure. It's not an all or nothing scenario. Birth is not black and white.

I gave birth three times. Twice to live, full term babies and once during my miscarriage @ 12 weeks (baby died at 8 weeks and, yes, that was "real" full-blown labor). Guess what? It hurt. No, it really fucking hurt. I screamed. All three times. I screamed.

My first birth was in a hospital. It was a last minute transfer. I did not have a single medical issue that needed a hospital. I was supposed to give birth in a birth center, but the head midwife closed it down that weekend because she had a horsie show to attend and didn't want her sleep interrupted. The other midwife was not able, per birth center policy (and the law, I believe) to attend my birth at the birth center on her own. So, I had to have my birth at the hospital with her. In all, it was 27 hour labor with a posterior little boy. I spent 8 hours of that labor in the hospital. My labor was fine and manageable at home. I got to the hospital and let her check me - 4 cms. Things began picking up and my contractions became more intense. They were - gasp - painful. They remained painful for the rest of my labor, until that little guy slid out (more like rocketed out) into the world. I was able to deal with the pain through position changes, a little dip in the birth pool, walking and saying "fuck" as many times as possible. I dealt with the pain. the pain had a purpose. I don't remember the actual sensations of pain, but there was pain. Pain was part of it. I screamed while pushing. Like I was being murdered. I pushed for about 45 minutes. Looking back on it, I wondered if my pain was caused by the fact that I was in the hospital. I was upset that I wasn't having the birth center birth that I had planned for nearly half my life. That could have been part of a lot of things. That may have made the pain worse. Would I still have had pain at the birth center? Would I scream at a birth center?

My second labor was to birth my angel baby, River. River died at 8 weeks, but the physical miscarriage didn't happen until 12 weeks. I had chosen to allow it to happen naturally as opposed to getting a D and E. My midwife told me to expect "real labor." It was her experience that miscarriages after 8 weeks were more likely to feel exactly like any other labor. I was prepared for that. I tried so hard to manage that labor - all 6 hours of regular contractions and actual transition - as gently as possible. Once I knew it was really happening, I got into the tub and prayed (the "Hail Mary" is my go-to labor mantra, until transition when Mary is replaced with "fuck"). It hurt like a mother fucker. Of course, I was birthing death. In a few hours, the last of my physical connection to this little baby that I had bonded with in 8 weeks would be gone. There was emotional torment like you wouldn't believe. Of course that contributed to physical pain. I later wondered, would it have been painful if I was giving birth to a live baby at home?

My third labor was just two months ago. This time, I had a homebirth attended by two midwives, one of whom is a best friend and the midwife who delivered my son. I had been telling myself for my whole pregnancy that I was going to have a pain-free, 5 hour labor with one painless push. Positive thinking, you know? I had no fears about labor. I even studied some hypnosis techniques. My labor was about 17 hours from the time my water broke until the time my daughter was born. I slept during the early part of that labor. My midwife/friend came over late in the morning and we hung out while I contracted. My contractions were definitely manageable with movement, especially belly dance. I walked, I prayed, I cursed, I ate, I took showers, I pooped. I moaned beautifully like a humpback whale in heat. All the fun stuff. There was pain and I worked through it. Then transition hit and OMG it hurt like a mo-fo. Transition is the point where I'm almost certain I will die unless I get an epidural. So I ask for an epidural. I have done this through all three labors. It feels good to me to ask for that epidural. Before the birth of my first son, I was told that the moment where I feel like I can't do it anymore and that I need an epi is when it's almost over. So, feeling like I needed that told me that I was close to the end and I embraced it. But, it still hurt like a mother and I began my usual screaming. From transition to pushing was barely an hour. I began to whine. My other midwife arrived at that point. I whined to both midwives that I was "supposed" to be that woman you see in all the natural birth videos who just smiles through labor and doesn't feel pain. I said that over and over until both midwives said, "Jenn, that's bullshit. You're doing great and this is almost over." I pushed for about 15 minutes. And screamed. I screamed that I was going to die. That I gave up. I screamed that I just knew she was going to get stuck. I screamed because pushing that baby - all 6lbs 8 ounces of her - hurt so freakin' bad. The dialogue inside my head was slightly crazy. I'm going to die. I'm not going to die. This hurts like hell. She'll be here any minute and it'll be over and you'll forget the pain. She's stuck. Oh my God, the ambulance will have to come and take me to the hospital. They'll take me out of the house on a gurney with her head halfway out and all my neighbors will see my vagina and that I missed a spot shaving and...oh God, she's going to be stuck. I'm going to die. Oh my...and she's here. That was the actual dialogue inside my head while I was screaming. And then my daughter was here and all that pain was worth it. My placenta - the part I dreaded because I remember it hurting when I gave birth to my son - slipped out 5 minutes later without so much as a single second of discomfort. Well, there was the painless birth, I guess.

My question had been answered. I gave birth at home. No hospital. My baby was full term and alive. No sadness. I was educated and empowered. It still hurt. It may just be me. That might be what I need to get motivated to push a baby out of my vagina. It's part of my physiological make-up. I experience pain in labor. It doesn't stop me from birthing naturally. Yet, I had a little nag inside my head. One one hand, I was proud of myself for having the homebirth I had desired for so long and for rocking it. I was proud of the sweet little girl nestled up to my breast. I was an awesome birthin' mama. On the other hand, I wondered why I screamed. I went into this with the specific intention of not screaming like I did with my other labor. Why did I scream? Then I felt like I failed. I felt a sense of failure for allowing myself to feel pain, for not being able to get into some peaceful, serene or hypnotic state. I felt like I failed myself and my baby for screaming. Then I worried that I scarred her because the last things she heard while in my womb were, "fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuccccckkkkk!" and my pain-induced bellowing. Within days after her birth, I actually googled to see if other natural-birthin' mamas were screamers. I came across a blog entitled "Judging Birth." I'll let you read that, and the following comments, without expanding on it too much. In essence, she says we need to stop judging how we labor and that not all of us are quiet birthers. It made me feel better to read that blog and then the comments. And then it made me mad. Why was I seeking "acceptance" for my birth behavior? Why did I feel the need to justify why I felt pain and why I screamed? I was mad that I allowed myself to feel like some sort of failure. Yet, to read many of these blog posts, comments, discussions on facebook, you will feel like a failure if you admit to feeling pain or having the slightest fraction of fear during your birth. We need to stop this.

I find it funny that the natural birth community can actually have these discussions. Aren't we the ones telling women to empower themselves to have the birth experience that's right for them? Aren't we the ones fighting to make sure women feel supported with their births? Aren't we the ones who admonish the OB who tells a woman to "hush" if she is too loud in labor? Aren't we the ones who yammer on and on and on about how birth is a normal, biological and very primal event? So why are we judging women who are, in fact, acting very primal? Why judge someone who feels pain? It's upsetting to me. We talk all about empowerment, but then we rip each other apart if our birth wasn't the right kind of natural. It's the granola wars, man. We're not helping anyone. We have mamas who are going to have natural births and feel pain and want to scream. They'll feel good because they gave birth naturally. Then they come online and read these comments that if they felt pain then something was wrong with the way they gave birth. Or you have the mamas who are pregnant and reading all of this before labor. So they hype themselves up into thinking they must have a completely painless labor. When it doesn't go that way, they feel like they failed. Those of us who feel the pain and scream it out fail Birth 101? Bullshit. This is no different than women feeling like failures because they ended up getting induced, getting epidurals and having c-sections. Only this time, we don't have an OB or evil hospital to blame. This time it's the woman's fault for allowing her psyche to take over.

Again, I have no problem with wanting a painless birth. I don't doubt that there are women who give birth without pain. I've seen it. I've seen women birth without making a peep because it wasn't hurting them. That's awesome, but those same women should never turn around and tell another woman that she failed because she felt pain...that it wasn't normal because she felt pain...that she wasn't educated enough to be pain-free. I'm very educated when it comes to birth and have been for a very long time - way before my first child was born. I grew up with a mother who worked in maternity and told me that birth is just plain old normal and natural. I know birth isn't something to passionately fear. I know all the biological, chemical, emotional and mechanical processes that are part of birth. I know what they say about high-pitched birth noises vs. low-pitched noises and I understand why that works. But, I also know that fear is a normal response. No, you shouldn't be in absolute horrified fear, but you shouldn't feel like you're doing something wrong if a moment of anxiety happens. You can't tell me that I wasn't educated or empowered. You can't tell me that I was a fraidy-cat. It's not true. Yet.I.Still.Felt.Pain. I still had moments of fear. In fact, those moments of fear may play an important role towards the end of labor. Check out this article by Michael Odent.

"A typical fetus ejection reflex is easy to recognize. It can be preceded by a sudden and transitory fear expressed in an irrational way ( “kill me”, “let me die”, etc.). In such a situation the worst attitude would be to reassure with words(5). This short and transitory expression of fear can be interpreted as a good sign of a spectacular increase of hormonal release, including adrenaline. It should be immediately followed by a series of irresistible contractions."

If you can birth with nary a fearful thought or moment of ouch then you go girl. If you start feeling the pain and you lose your rational brain toward the end then embrace it, work with it and know that your sweet little baby is so, so close. Don't feel like a failure if you didn't hypnotize as planned. Don't put yourself down for crying and telling everyone that you can't do it because you're going to die. You didn't fail. We all experience birth and pain differently and no one is better than the other because she did or didn't feel a certain way.

On another note, there is a lot of criticism of the natural birth community. There are blogs dedicated to trashing us or trying to debunk us. There are trolls who visit our blogs and facebook pages to stir up trouble and controversy. A lot of people see us as crazed hippies. They don't see that we're striving for better outcomes for mothers, babies and families. They don't see us for the good work that we're trying to do - for wanting to change such a failed maternity system. They see us as judgmental and insane. It doesn't do us any good to judge one another on this subject. It doesn't help get our message across. It just feeds the criticism and turns people off to the message.

Judging is for crappy reality shows, not childbirth.

Peace and much love.