Dear Authors!
Dear Authors,
I am a birthy woman and I love reading books that have babies and birth in them. However, it's SO EASY to tell which authors have actually had children (or you know, DONE RESEARCH) because the births in the other books always go exactly the same. It's getting a little ludicrous, people. I'm bored of reading unrealistic, stereotypical births in my favorite books!
Here are the major fictional childbirth myths that do not ring true:
1) Labor starts when the water breaks. Ummm . . . no? 80% of the time, the water doesn't break until the woman enters second stage. That means only 20%, or one in every five women, has her water break during the longest part of her labor (first stage). It's also perfectly normal for the water to break and it to take a few hours for labor to begin. It's incredibly rare (probably less than 1%) that a woman would not be in labor, then suddenly go into labor when her water breaks out of the blue.
2) Contractions start and BAM! The mother is immediately "in labor" and unable to function normally. I know this is so obvious when you think about it, but there are hundreds of otherwise well-informed authors who have unfortunately bought into the media's portrayal of labor and they actually think this is true. Contractions begin usually about a month before delivery, possibly later. They do not occur in any sort of pattern and they are rarely painful, they just feel like cramps. These are called Braxton-Hicks contractions, and during this time the uterus is essentially just warming up. Muscles that have never been used need a little bit of time to figure out what they're doing, and the uterus is very clever about this. Once contractions start to develop a regularity to them, then you're officially in first stage labor. (Again, you've probably got 10-20 hours of labor to go before your water breaks, unless you're one of the statistical minority!) First stage labor ramps up very slowly, and most mothers do not experience pain until they've been in labor for several hours. Now it's possible that they just don't notice, but I've never met a pregnant woman who is able to pay attention to something else so thoroughly that she misses the hours of contractions at the beginning of first stage.
3) When labor begins, she needs to get to the hospital immediately! Call an ambulance! This one cracks me up. Hospitals can't do anything for you when you're in early labor, people! If you get an epidural earlier than about 5cm (yes, HALFWAY DONE), then your labor is likely to be slowed down and stalled, so any good doctor will try to delay the use of an epidural until after she's firmly in the 5cm dilation range. There is no need to call an ambulance in a normal birth unless the mom is crowning. (That means she reached 10cm, her cervix thinned out, and the baby descended to +2 station before she got to the hospital. Unlikely.) The best thing a mom can do when she goes into labor is eat a big meal and go to bed to get some rest. If it's the morning, then she should eat a big meal and go take a walk or do something active, because the body is not designed to labor in bed. If the mom in the story is uneducated about birth, as many women are, then she might call for an ambulance and be told, gently, that she should rest and labor at home before driving in a leisurely manner to the hospital when her contractions are closer together.
Those are the big ones that I see. If you are an author and you have characters who are pregnant *cough*Melyanna*cough*, PLEASE read this before you write another bogus labor scene. Or call me and run it by me. I'm happy to set aside my baby-friendly natural-birth agenda for long enough to give your characters realistic births!
I am a birthy woman and I love reading books that have babies and birth in them. However, it's SO EASY to tell which authors have actually had children (or you know, DONE RESEARCH) because the births in the other books always go exactly the same. It's getting a little ludicrous, people. I'm bored of reading unrealistic, stereotypical births in my favorite books!
Here are the major fictional childbirth myths that do not ring true:
1) Labor starts when the water breaks. Ummm . . . no? 80% of the time, the water doesn't break until the woman enters second stage. That means only 20%, or one in every five women, has her water break during the longest part of her labor (first stage). It's also perfectly normal for the water to break and it to take a few hours for labor to begin. It's incredibly rare (probably less than 1%) that a woman would not be in labor, then suddenly go into labor when her water breaks out of the blue.
2) Contractions start and BAM! The mother is immediately "in labor" and unable to function normally. I know this is so obvious when you think about it, but there are hundreds of otherwise well-informed authors who have unfortunately bought into the media's portrayal of labor and they actually think this is true. Contractions begin usually about a month before delivery, possibly later. They do not occur in any sort of pattern and they are rarely painful, they just feel like cramps. These are called Braxton-Hicks contractions, and during this time the uterus is essentially just warming up. Muscles that have never been used need a little bit of time to figure out what they're doing, and the uterus is very clever about this. Once contractions start to develop a regularity to them, then you're officially in first stage labor. (Again, you've probably got 10-20 hours of labor to go before your water breaks, unless you're one of the statistical minority!) First stage labor ramps up very slowly, and most mothers do not experience pain until they've been in labor for several hours. Now it's possible that they just don't notice, but I've never met a pregnant woman who is able to pay attention to something else so thoroughly that she misses the hours of contractions at the beginning of first stage.
3) When labor begins, she needs to get to the hospital immediately! Call an ambulance! This one cracks me up. Hospitals can't do anything for you when you're in early labor, people! If you get an epidural earlier than about 5cm (yes, HALFWAY DONE), then your labor is likely to be slowed down and stalled, so any good doctor will try to delay the use of an epidural until after she's firmly in the 5cm dilation range. There is no need to call an ambulance in a normal birth unless the mom is crowning. (That means she reached 10cm, her cervix thinned out, and the baby descended to +2 station before she got to the hospital. Unlikely.) The best thing a mom can do when she goes into labor is eat a big meal and go to bed to get some rest. If it's the morning, then she should eat a big meal and go take a walk or do something active, because the body is not designed to labor in bed. If the mom in the story is uneducated about birth, as many women are, then she might call for an ambulance and be told, gently, that she should rest and labor at home before driving in a leisurely manner to the hospital when her contractions are closer together.
Those are the big ones that I see. If you are an author and you have characters who are pregnant *cough*Melyanna*cough*, PLEASE read this before you write another bogus labor scene. Or call me and run it by me. I'm happy to set aside my baby-friendly natural-birth agenda for long enough to give your characters realistic births!