It's a trigger word for me.
I never put much thought or intention into 'trigger words.' Mostly because I don't have very many triggers. I am blessed enough to know that I'm not a victim of much except my own psyche. I've never been hit by a partner, I've never suffered sexual abuse of any kind, and I've never experienced true poverty. (Student poverty is not poverty, my friends, not when you still have money to drink and buy Taco Bell.)
I have a trigger word and I found it today. It is "natural" and it happens when people talk about childbirth.
There's this debate/drama/ongoing brouhaha in America about childbirth. (Didn't know this, did you? If you didn't, just wait until your pee stick gives you a plus sign and you race to The Internet to Google your way to prepared parenthood. Partners: you're not exempt either.)
There are two generally accepted methods of expelling a fetus from a female body: vaginal delivery via bodily travail and surgical extraction (c-section). There are umpteen operating procedures on how to actually get to the point of expulsion. There are books. There are schools of thought. There are histories, and stories told by foremothers. There are doctors who will tell you one thing and midwives who will tell you another. There are hospitals. Birthing centers. Homebirths. Water births. Silent births. Painful births. Surgical births. Drug-free births. Knock-me-out-til-the-kid-is-a-week-old births.
Births that result in life.
Births that result in death.
Births that result in life that never was meant to be.
In the end, no matter which route is taken, birth happens. Parenthood happens. If all goes well, a new life within a new person emerges. (Cue the Lion King soundtrack.)
However - within the buzz of the birth community (and yes, this is a thing, if you don't find them, they will find you), there is a spectrum of what birth "should" be - managed v. spontaneous, lengthy v. limited, and my all time favorite: "natural."
Birth should be "natural."
We say things like "I had him naturally," or "I want a natural birth."
I think we say this because we are descendants of the Victorians who wouldn't dare use the word "vaginal." Semantically speaking, I cry foul.
I say ALL birth is "natural."
We, instead, set up a dichotomy where a vaginal birth is not called as such. We attempt to put a finer point on it by saying it is "natural" because it's how we were built to birth, it's how women have birthed since Eve and Lilith and Sarah and Hagar, the physical and emotional strength and ability to push a baby from one's own womb is innate and can only be described as maternal or emerging from within. It's "natural."
The catch is this: calling vaginal birth "natural" birth deems any other sort of birth...un-natural. I feel diminished when someone posits that my two children were born in an un-natural way. I hear "she had to have a c-section" and it's usually followed with a sigh, or a look of pity, or disappointment."Too bad," people say. "I wonder what happened?"
I fight an uphill battle with myself because somehow, I am made to feel less of a mother when I hear the term "natural birth" because the gods and our genetics conspired against me and I was incapable of birthing our daughters vaginally. The truth of the matter is this: I'd be dead, my firstborn dead with me, and my secondborn not even a thought in anyone's head, had it not been for my ability to access proper care and have the birth I needed.
For my first child, I had visions of homebirth. Of a gentle midwife and a warm pool of water and a supportive tribe of women. I got a normal course of prenatal care from an OB (because midwives practically did not exist in my area at that time), and I got ten pound babies and a narrow pubic bone opening.
I got a recipe for disaster, barring medical help.
I got an OB who let me go two weeks late, gave me tips and tricks, and gave me three extra days to put myself in labor before confronting me with the real truth: I needed help to get my daughter out. I got an OB who was gentle and compassionate enough to come in on Christmas Eve morning, talk me through my tears, give my husband a pep talk, and , as gently as possible, help me give birth to our daughter, via c-section.
Make no mistake: I gave birth.
Six years later, I found myself attempting a VBAC, and again, faced the same obstacles. And again, a doctor helped me birth our second daughter, via the same method.
No, my travails didn't last hours or days or weeks. I don't have a funny story about a labor so fast, the baby was practically born in the car, or of prodromal labor that was helped only by walking the aisles of Walmart for hours on end (both true stories from friends of mine). I didn't endure bone-crushing contractions, I didn't have a choice as to whether or not to have anesthesia (talk about barbaric), and I didn't give birth in a tent with drums and sage and singing all around me. I did it in a hospital, in an operating room, and for no other reason than it was what I needed.
Only recently have I been able to reconcile this to myself, and still - I trigger. It's so very personal an experience - this mother-making. (Hi, Internet.)
It was no less natural than any other mother's experience because it made me a mother, twice over. I labored to breathe when the doctors warned me that I'd feel pressure in my chest as they made the incisions and pushed my ample belly (and soon-to-be-born children) back over my lungs to gain access to my womb. I worked hard to stay present and to keep my calm as I knew my babies would need me. I held my husband's hand and cried, because I was joyous that they were there, and yet, I felt a loss for what I would never have. I started off in a hole of negativity because someone dared to say what I went through wasn't as good as a vaginal delivery, or because somewhere I read that the best mothers avoided medical intervention at all costs. I felt less than the mother I was, less than the mother I needed to be for my girls, all before I even left the delivery room. Because someone somewhere decided that my births weren't "natural." Because someone somewhere told me that, and I believed it.
When my firstborn was two, she went to a daycare for the first time in her life. I met other moms. I watched the kids play. We spoke as mothers do, and the observation I made was this: there were fifteen toddlers in the room. I couldn't tell how they were born. I couldn't tell, and for the first time, it didn't matter. There were no scarlet C's emblazoned on foreheads, there were no angel wings aspread. We were all just moms, one way or another, and it didn't matter how we got there. Nobody looked like a golden goddess...everyone had stains on their jeans and diapers in their purses.
Mothers put so much pressure on each other and on ourselves - we cling to the cry of "what's best!" for the child, to the point of not knowing what is best for ourselves, to the point of inundation. What's best isn't what's in a book, or what your mother or sister or best friend did, or even what your doctor or midwife thinks. What's best is an individual choice. What's best is what gets you over the rainbow and to the other side, safe and in one piece, with your baby in your arms, warm and healthy.
What's best is what's natural. For you.
turnnoffyourmind
titsay
discoholicmusic
dailybridgerton
jbbartram-illu
