Crossposted (mostly) from my Tumblr

[phamos818]

Once again, the comments over on Jezebel drive me crazy. Sure, I understand the sentiment about not wanting to hear your neighbors scream for 40 hours during a home birth. But it makes me really sad that so many women my age are under the impression that birth is like that - screaming and pain for days and days. Births can go on a long time, and

Comments

[dominamia]

Good luck on Natural Birth. I was a birth partner about 4 years ago, and the experience was beautiful and enlightening. I could never imagine anything so beautiful as that experience. My friend had her baby vaginally, and I saw the baby come out. It was just (scarry!, but) mind blowing.

I think the entire birth experience is beautiful. My friend had her baby last April and was in labor for 16 hours, the last four without medicine. However, she said once her daughter was in her arms everything was heaven.

[clafount]

Good god, there is so much wrong with that post and the comments.

People have no idea what child birth is really like though, unless they've gone through it or seen someone else go through it. TV and movies always portray women in labor as foul mouth screaming harpies.

Not that it excuses the ignorance and birth-phobic crap in that post.

Edit:
Er...most people I should say. I mean, you never really know what it is like until you go through it but you can educate yourself a bit so that you know the basics. I mean that comment about being in labor for 40 hours must be like trying to push out a turd for 40 hours? That is fucking ignorant right there. If you are pushing for 40 hours...ok that's just retarded because there isn't a woman on this planet who could do that.

[phamos818]

I'm trying to be educated. It's just frustrating to think that women are being misled, for whatever reason. Like, over on the pregnancy group, I was reading back through the natural birth tag, and I saw this one woman who was like, "Oh, my doctor is going to induce me, he doesn't want the baby to be too big since I'm going natural." And everyone was like, "uhhhhhh...if he induces you, that's NOT NATURAL," and she said, "Oh, no, by natural I mean vaginal." How sad is it that the bar is now that low for "natural" childbirth? And of course, I'm thinking to myself, "This woman is about to get totally run around during labor." So I went to her journal, and sure enough, she got induced for basically no real reason, talked into getting an epidural because the pitocin contractions were so awful, and "ended up needing a midline episiotomy, but that's OK!" No real reason given for why she NEEDED said episiotomy. I dunno. She sounds fine with her birth experience, and really that's what matters. It just makes me sad that doctors do