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.

Somewhere Around the Rainbow

 I am a master of being fake.

 Not a fake friend. Not even a fake person. I mean, I usually tell it like it is. But, I faked so much when I was recovering - mentally, spiritually and physically - from my miscarriage. 

 I've written a bit on it and how it made me feel. I had a lot to process. I was so depressed. So angry. I was writing to let it out. And then, I stopped. Not because I was healed. Not because anyone told me to stop. I just wanted the thoughts to stop. I was turning into a different person, someone I didn't ever want to be.

You could say that I have rage issues. As a child, I was bullied and tormented in school. No, really tormented. Things happened that would shape my psyche forever. As a result of what I went through, I lost my ability to trust other people. I became insecure and unable to have confidence in anything about myself. I felt rage. I was never able to feel like I got any justice for what was done to me in school. I wanted so badly to hurt the people who hurt me, but I kept it in. I didn't want to worry my parents and I didn't want my friends to know the truth about what I was going through. My rage has always been on the back burner, just waiting. If you watch Dexter, he talks about his "dark passenger." That's rage for me ... a dark passenger, riding along in my cerebral depths, waiting for just the right time to stop the car, get out and make a grand entrance. I was able to suppress it for years. I acknowledged it, knew it was there and told myself it would always stay buried. In my heart of hearts, I'm a pacifist. I don't believe in wishing harm. I believe our thoughts eventually lead to reality and I didn't want to open that box. Until my miscarriage. Every restraint I had placed upon my rage just snapped. Broken. Unleashed. It was here and it wasn't leaving.

  Losing a child - there are no words to describe the pain. No one can understand what you are going through. Our society has made it a stigma, keeping grieving parents quietly tucked away in a corner lest our grief cause anyone to become uncomfortable. I have a wonderful family and wonderful friends who were my rock during that time. They read my woeful status updates, they talked to me, they acknowledged me. My friend Lauren heard the brunt of it. She took frantic phone calls from my husband, who was worried I was going to harm myself. She listened to me ramble psychotically. She stayed on that rocking boat with me in my sea of fear and wild emotions, dropping her anchor and steadying me when I needed it. Who knows where I'd be without my hubby, my little boy, Lauren and my other friends and family. It wouldn't be a good place.

I had never felt anger like that before. As I've written before, anything would set me off. Work was especially hard on me. Things were said that really hurt me, even if it wasn't meant to be that way. I felt so caged up, like I was going to crack at any moment. I raged on in status updates, on this blog and on online forums. That was only the tip. No one saw the real me. The once gentle mother who screamed at her little boy every hour of every day. The mother who believed so much in gentle discipline spanking her little boy. The mother who believed too much TV was bad for her child's brain letting that little boy watch TV for 4 or 5 hours straight while she lay catatonic on the couch. The mother who was gung-ho about a natural and organic diet for her family giving in to buying fast food and allowing more junk food in the home. The mother who would go outside and play and hike and run with her little boy just laying on the couch while he watched TV and destroyed the house. The wife who would listen to her husband and support him now cut him down. The wife who used to be loving and playful became verbally abusive and hateful. The wife who wanted to keep a happy and semi-neat home just letting the house go to shit. The woman who loved peace and non-violence punching and denting the car of a stranger. The employee who cared about her job and her co-workers would violently snap at them at random moments. I was nothing. I became so absorbed in my hatred of this world and all the happy things in it. Friends were announcing pregnancies and I wanted to punch them. How dare they have what was taken from me. I was more apt to spew venom at cashiers with attitude or strangers who looked at me the wrong way. My fuse was short and ablaze with all of my sorrowful anger. I wanted people to hurt. I wanted people to feel my pain. I was suffering and I needed the world to suffer, too. I didn't care who or what I hurt. I didn't care if I hurt myself. I need to feel that rage and let it burn.

  Is this the part where I tell you that the clouds parted, the sun shone through and the angels sang? Not exactly. There is a little sunlight, but it's a mostly cloudy day and the only angel singing is tone deaf - worse, he only knows one Justin Bieber song. Yes, the rage subsided somewhat, but allowing it to come out has made it harder to stuff back in. Kinda like those old gag "snakes in a can." You'll eventually get that bastard back into the can, but it takes a lot of pushing and shoving and the snake springs back out at you from time to time before you finally stuff it back in. I'm working on it. I became pregnant in November of 2010, 7 months after River died. Pregnancy kept the anxiety flowing. I never had a moment where I relaxed. Loss was always in the back of my mind. I had a few moments where I snapped. I had a health issue here and there and the fear of loss would slap me in the face and I'd flip out. And then I would get anxious about flipping out, worrying that I would hurt my little baby girl. It was a viscous cycle. I didn't relax until the moment she slipped out of my womb and into my arms.

  Why am I writing this? I've been reading comments here and there on Facebook. I won't get into specifics, but they involve judging a mother for the angry way she has been dealing with the loss of her baby. I understand  that the anger must eventually subside for the sanity and health of the mother and all involved. You don't want to use hate and anger for your baby's legacy. I get that. But, I get the pain. I get the rage. I get needing to lash out at people and make them feel as bad as you. Not everyone grieves that way, but I certainly understand those that do. My heart breaks for mothers who lose their sweet babies. It breaks when I see them judged in their grief. While their emotional outpourings may be hurtful towards others, it's still no excuse to berate them. These mamas need support so they can make through the rage and work on putting their peace puzzle back together. If we feed into their hate - and there are those who do - then we don't do the mama or her sweet baby's memory justice. I know I needed to feel that anger, but I didn't want it to become River's legacy forever.

  I'm trying to climb my way out of this fog. The sun is beginning to shine through the rain and I can make out the faint colors of my own symbolic prism. I am ashamed that I lost myself so badly in the last year and a half. I am ashamed that I disrupted my son's happy childhood because I could not adequately deal with my emotions around him. I'm trying to pick up all of those broken little pieces and put them back together again and I can only pray that the damage isn't permanent. I need myself back. I know I'm out there and I'm getting closer to finding me again. I'm waiting for myself.