I am planning a natural birth… by which I mean I intend to wait until my body goes into labor, not be given pitocin to augment contractions, and not have any kind of pain medications including analgesics (stadol, demorol – given through IV) or an epidural. Naturally when I mention this to people I get some strange looks and comments. I am also planning this natural birth in a hospital. This too gets some comments, coming from the other side of the aisle – many (but not all) of the community of natural birth advocates are very pro-homebirth. (Though I’ll mention that my midwives and hospital are very supportive, encouraging eating and drinking in labor, providing a birth ball and squat bar, and other very helpful measures.)<\/p>\n
I started planning for a natural birth when I was pregnant with Devin. I read a lot, I took a Bradley class, I practiced relaxation techniques. But then he died. I was induced (with cytotec, not pitocin) – my choice, as they gave me the option of waiting for labor (a thought I could not handle, knowing my baby was already dead). I ended up getting half a natural birth: I was induced with the cytotec, I asked for a pain medication in early labor (because of my emotional state, not because it hurt too much). The medication wore off within an hour and I had nothing else in my system through hard labor, transition, pushing and delivery. You can read the full birth story here<\/a>, if you are interested. But what matters now is that I know I can do it – and it wasn’t that bad. The pain of labor was nothing like the pain of an injury. It was just so different.<\/p>\n There are many reasons I have decided to go this route again, some of which are kind of silly\/personal, some of which medical. But what it really boils down to is that I see labor and birth as a natural, normal, wonderful thing. Women have given birth for as long as there have been humans, and it really is such a miracle that our bodies are built this way. I believe that my body can do this, because that’s the way it’s designed to work. And I believe that our bodies work best with minimal interference – once you start adding medications and synthetic hormones to the mix it can start to mess with the carefully calibrated efforts of your body. So why not just let it be, to let it do what it knows how to do.<\/p>\n Of course I realize that it doesn’t always go as planned. We are, needless to say, slightly more skittish about this whole pregnancy\/birth\/baby thing than we were the first time around, having already had one baby die on us – this is the reason we both feel safer in the hospital, just in case. Even in homebirths, the midwife is there to guide, help, and be on the lookout for serious problems – there is always a chance of a transfer to a hospital for interventions. There are<\/i> serious problems that can occur during labor, though they are thankfully very rare. Thankfully there is medical and surgical means to deal with those emergencies. If<\/i> a problem occurs, then there is something to fall back on. But to me that’s a safety net, a just-in-case.<\/p>\n Not everyone sees labor the way I do, and that is fine. Many people are aiming straight for the epidural, and labor is just something that must be done in order to bring home the baby. Many people don’t really enjoy pregnancy, either. But to me, pregnancy is absolutely wonderful, and labor is a gift. I want<\/i> to experience it. I am not afraid of the pain – respectful of it, absolutely… but not afraid. It is going to be very hard work, but work I am willing and eager to take on.<\/p>\n I see it as a marathon, or a big football game. It will be extremely physically taxing – it will be a challenge. Of course you know that you may not win, you know that no matter how much you prepare it’s never going to go exactly how you planned it. But you don’t sit around saying, “Well, it probably won’t work out anyways. I can always quit halfway through.” Those aren’t the people who succeed. You have to dedicate yourself to it, prepare yourself for it as best you can. You tell yourself you can<\/i> do it. You arm yourself with skills and knowledge, knowing that anything could happen in the middle of the game. And then you go in and give it your all. Then, win or lose, you can walk away knowing you gave it your best.<\/p>\n For birth of course the true “win” is bringing home a live, healthy baby. That is, above and beyond everything else, the most important thing. I know too well. If my midwives – whom I trust – tell me that something is wrong, that the baby is in danger, then I will drop everything to do whatever it takes to get her out safely. But if everything looks good and she is healthy, then I plan to enjoy my labor, to cherish it, to experience it. If I have learned anything from our loss it is that anything can happen at any time – but you can’t live your life always preparing for the worst. You miss out on too much along the way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I am planning a natural birth… by which I mean I intend to wait until my body goes into labor, not be given pitocin to augment contractions, and not have any kind of pain medications including analgesics (stadol, demorol – given through IV) or an epidural. Naturally when I mention this to people I get […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[463,450],"class_list":["post-2894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-labor","tag-natural-birth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/71"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2894"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2894\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2895,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2894\/revisions\/2895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}