Birthing on the Brain

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This weekend, Sweet Cheeks and I went on the hospital tour of the facility where I expect to deliver Patter. It’s a fairly new hospital, and the birthing ward is beautiful. There are 17 labor rooms, and 7 of them have gorgeous in-room birthing tubs, in addition to private bathrooms with showers. Oh how I want to try a tub this time, but there’s a high chance we won’t get one since those rooms are taken on a first-come-first serve basis.

Sweet Cheeks and I have decided that women who take those rooms should have to promise they are trying for a natural birth, and that if they don’t make it, they should be fined. Kidding! Sort of.Well, not so much if none are available when we check in. Yeah, yeah. And then ask me about this swell little fining plan when I find myself in different straits with Patter and go for an analgesic or an epi.

The childbirth educator who gave the tour was nice enough to answer some of my specific questions about natural childbirth support once everyone else had scattered. I also wanted to know about the initial check-in/patient prep they do. (Shaving? Enemas? Shudder. I have read such procedures are still done. Thankfully, not at this hosptial.)

I’ll finish up “Pitter’s Birth: Part III” soon, but let me say this: Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston is quite progressive, and the midwives and nurses who assisted me in Pitter’s birth seemed nearly giddy when I actually made it through without any pain intervention. They were thrilled to see me through my request to attempt a natural delivery, but I don’t think they believed I would do it, because most women don’t. And for good reason, believe me this.  

I am not giving myself Supastah status here at all…but I’m a bit anxious that if in one of the east coast’s most progressive hosptials there was a bit of surprise on the part of MIDWIVES that a woman could go all the way without medication, a sleek hosptial in the midwest that proudly advertises its Starbucks, bedside wireless, and immediate epidurals, anyone will believe me when I say I want to go natural, or that anyone will know how to assist me in that attempt. I won’t have any midwives, so I’ll have to rely on the nurses. The one who stood by me from 6 cm through delivery in Boston was a Superstar.

Here, I’m worried that they may back off the suggestions that I hit the needle, but will they know enough to suggest I get into the shower while I transition? Will they be comfortable with me kneeling on all fours while I push? Or will they try to strap me down with a fetal monitor and expect me to lay in bed? I’m not suggesting that I think the medical staff in the midwest hasn’t been trained in this stuff, that they’re incompetent, or insensitive. I’m just anxious as we all are when we’re getting mentally prepared to turn our bodies over to people we don’t know during an excruciating physical process.

Plus, yes: I am a bit of an east coast snob. But mostly, pre-performance anxiety is the gig that’s got me going.

The educator who gave the tour was fully supportive of a natural attempt, although this hospital has a 90% epidural rate!!!!  Echoing my OB, she told me that when we check in we should request nurses who are supportive of a natural attempt and make sure everything is written down in my charts so there are no miscommunications. Sweet Cheeks and I left the hospital optimistic that the staff will listen to us.

But I hope to God that my aunt, who served as our doula with Pitter, is with us during Patter’s birth, because I’ve got to say that while you’re in the middle of labor, serving as your own medical advocate is something like asking a person on heroin to do calculus. Even with a PhD in Math, getting past quadratic equations wouldn’t be easy in that physical/mental state.

And this (kindasorta) leads into my next rantdiscussion: The Indiana-based Golden Rule insurance company and it’s oh-so-friendly policy regarding women who have had C-sections (roughly 30% of all births these days).

On June 1, the New York Times published the article “After Caesareans, Some See Higher Insurance Cost”. The story opens with the personal story of a woman whose family does not have group insurance. Turns out, companies that provide individual polices are refusing women with “pre-existing conditions”/aka being part of the 30% of women who give birth in The United States:  

She was turned down because she had given birth by Caesarean section. Having the operation once increases the odds that it will be performed again, and if she became pregnant and needed another Caesarean, Golden Rule did not want to pay for it. A letter from the company explained that if she had been sterilized after the Caesarean, or if she were over 40 and had given birth two or more years before applying, she might have qualified.

I am outraged by this discrimination, and you should be too.

Yes, I think that C-sections are overdone, and yes, there is a growing problem with the number of OBs who are no longer trained in medical school to deliver breech babies or VBACs. Malpractice suits and the relative “ease” of surgery, and the growing demand on the part of patients and doctors to schedule everything are also to blame. I think that society and the medical community do women a great disservice when women are taught that C-sections are as good an option as vaginal births. From what I’ve read, the medical community agrees. But the numbers say differently.

Every year, the C-section rate goes up, as does the epidural rate. I think that unless there are true medical complications, women should consider testing what their bodies can do, and give natural childbirth a chance. Just a chance. We’re disconnecting ourselves from our physical power and handing our bodies over to medicine when we don’t.

As a feminist, I struggle to walk the fine line here between demanding that women ask more of themselves than society now expects of them, and knowing that freedom is the ability for women to choose what kind of birth they want. Ultimately, it’s each woman’s choice. But I worry that medical mindgames and societal pressure are slowly but surely overriding our belief in what what our bodies are, for most women, naturally capable of doing.  

Despite my strong feelings about this, insurance companies like Golden Rule (and how ironic is that name?) have no moral right to punish women who have C-sections. This is a terrible metaphor, but it’s almost akin to discriminating against women who have had eating disorders: to an extent, many women who have had C-sections (especially multiple C-sections) are victims of the medical community and its forces, just as women with eating disorders are victims of our f’d up body-image obsessed age. To punish them for something they have often only have marginal control over is nonsense.

Okay. I’ve probably pushed enough buttons for the morning. What say you?

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