You are absolutely right and I am sorry for making this absolute statement earlier. I was bitching about other people saying ‘this is always the case’ and then I went and did it too!
Forget everything except educate yourself and make decisions that feel right for you and your baby. Don’t worry if things don’t go as planned and don’t beat yourself up if you end up doing something you promised you wouldn’t do. Go with what your body is telling you.
Afterwards my husband was in awe of me and what I did and I was pretty proud of myself too. I did it! Milk this for all it’s worth :).
I thought it was horrendous and would recommend an epidural to anyone who wants one. You’ll have plenty of other chances in motherhood to be a martyr, if that’s what you’re into.
People aren’t expected to grit their teeth and bear it through other painful procedures, so why should labor be any different? It’s barbaric to expect women to lay there in agony for 18 hours or more.
This may be an odd question, but do other mammals tear their flesh when giving birth like humans sometimes do?
From what I understand, human babies are much larger than our bodies have evolved to carry/deliver. (Correct me if I’m wrong, of course.) If we’re carrying unnaturally large babies, then is it reasonable to say that natural childbirth isn’t really as “natural” as it use to be (pre-epidural/drugs etc.)?
I have no children (yet), for the record.
<side note>My expectant sister wouldn’t buy any of the tunic-looking shirts that have the laced-up collar. She called them “episiotomy shirts”. I’m still laughing about that.<sn>
Women don’t routinely tear their flesh in childbirth. Episiotomies are no longer standard in any up-to-industry standard hospital setting. They are available if needed, but they are not routine.
Given good labor care, a woman has many options before resorting to cutting or tearing - warm compresses on the perineum, firm gentle pressure to keep the head from coming out too quickly and good positioning mean that tearing is a relatively rare occurance in the hands of a good midwife or OB - at least as rare as tearing in a horse or cow.
No. This doesn’t even make sense. There is nothing supernatural about the size of our babies. We evolved within nature, as did our babies. There’s no breeder breeding us with teeny hips and huge shoulders like bulldogs.
Our babies do have large heads for the size of our birth canals, sure. But, most of the time, not too big. And certainly they haven’t evolved to be too big. If that were the case, they wouldn’t be born alive and couldn’t pass on a “too-big” headed gene to their offspring.
All animals sometimes have trouble giving birth. From my observations, for example, horses have two kinds of deliveries: “uneventful/very quick” and “fatal without professional assistance.” Rarely does a horse have a “slightly” complicated delivery that resolves itself on its own. Cows and horses have a problem with “uterine prolapse” which means that the uterus is expelled. For all the problems we humans have, I don’t think that one comes up too much!
The problem with human delivery is with the size of our heads. Our heads that hold all those brains have a tough time coming through the pelvis and birth opening. Our skulls have been this size and shape for about 10,000 years, and as far as I know, giving birth has always been a relatively dangerous activity for women. Babies may be bigger nowadays, but so are women. There is probably less danger to the life of the mother now than at any time in history.
Of course anyone who wants and epidural should have one, if there are no medical contraindications. The point is, however, if you learn NOT to grit your teeth you may be able to not need one. Anything that causes you to tense up will make labor longer and more painful. The last thing you want to do is grit your teeth.
Scaring new mothers-to-be with horror stories of 18 hours of agony is not helpful.
Not everyone giving birth lies in agony for 18+ hours. First of all, sometimes if you are NOT lying there but allowed to get up and move about, you are more comfortable. Second, some entire labors, including the preliminary pangs, don’t even take 8 hours. Both of mine took less than 12, counting from the first “Hmmm, could this be a labor contraction?” moment. In both cases I delivered within about 4 hours of arrival a the hospital. In the second there were a few minutes of “Wow, this hurts,” but nothing I’d describe as agony.
I am not into martyrdom. I was also not into taking any chances with my baby’s health by submitting to sedation. It had taken much effort to get that far, and I did not want any sedatives interfering with her respiration. In my day an epidural was not an option. They did have a “spinal block” which made you completely numb from the waist down, but it had the disadvantages, so they tell me, that you were not able to participate in the labor by pushing, thus potentially making the labor longer, and also you could not get out of bed for quite a while afterwards. The other option was to be put out. Which you meant you missed the whole thing, and the baby was “out” too.
Agreed. I don’t think there’s any one model to follow with regards to childbirth. My motto always was, don’t rule out anything out of hand, educate yourself and make an informed decision based on what’s best for you once you’ve done your homework.
After doing my homework, I decided drug-free childbirth was for me.
Silverjunior1: 24 hour labor, no medications, Lamaze.
Silverjunior2: 10 hour labor, no medications, Bradley this time. Easiest one by far.
Silverjunior3: 14 hour labor, no medications, Bradley again and it was good. Had a birthing ball this time around, too. Things seemed to stall out at the beginning but once I got myself moving around, warm shower, things got moving along.
That’s what worked for me. I did find the Lamaze method more distracting than anything else and found myself making up my own ways to relax and get through the labor with Silverjunior1. Bradley was a much better method for me. I labored at home until the last possible minute each time and then trotted off to the birthing center.
I almost waited too long with #2; she came along half an hour after arriving at the center. Don’t get me wrong; I’d have loved nothing more than to just give birth at home, but it took lots of smelling salts to rouse Mr. Silver1 the first time I suggested it, plus my insurance didn’t cover midwife-assisted home birth. I didn’t have a couple extra grand laying around to pay out of pocket for a midwife, so I opted for the center.
On the plus side, they set the mirrors up for me so I could comfortably watch the deliveries. Watching your baby deliver from your own body is incredibly cool to see!
All my Silverjuniors were happy and healthy, and that’s what is important to me. Do what is right for you, there’s no one-size-fits-all model to having a baby.
AFAIK, most other primates have much easier deliveries than humans. Human babies are not any larger proportionally now than they were tens of thousands of years ago, but we have pretty much reached the limit of head size vs. pelvis size.
However, there’s an interesting compensation. Compared to most mammal babies, human babies are premature. They can’t even hold up their own heads. Their brains, while large, are still not done growing and will continue to develop for years. In contrast, a chimp brain is already most of the way there at birth. The human brain’s final shaping and development takes place out in the world, with the stimulating influences of real life all around it. It’s a fascinating feedback loop. In order to have big brains, we have to be born at an earlier stage of development, which increases the overall final quality of the brain.
Comparing human pelves and primate pelves, it’s not just head size, it’s also the fact that we walk upright.
In other primates the baby’s head more or less just shoots out, in a human the baby’s head must do a lots of turning and bending and flexing in order to be born, because our pelvis has evolved for upright walking, and is a more complicated shape that that of other apes.
Even with a vertex presentation, which gives the minimum diameter and is thus the easiest, you’re talking about a MINIMUM head diameter of 9.5cm, once you realise that the cervix diameter is 10cm and the MAXIMAL pelvic diameter is 12.5cm you get the idea of just how tight a fit we’re talking about.
So yes, humans have it tougher.
Especially nowadays…20 years ago the average birthweight in the West was about 6lbs, now it’s 8lbs. The size of the average female pelvis hasn’t quite kept pace with the size of the average newborn.
Think about it this way: you’re probably only a few inches taller than your mother, but you’ll be giving birth to babies who are 25% bigger than hers…
All of this means…if you are able to do ilabour drug-free, good for you, but you don’t HAVE to, and if you can’t, take advanage of the technology our big brains and upright stance have helped us to develop!
The term most commonly used for labor in horses is “explosive” - They have such powerful muscles that one way or another it’s over in 30 minutes. One problem they have which people never have to contend with is having the foal push its hoof through the vaginal wall on delivery. The moms who get off the best in terms of delivery are probably marsupials - their babies are the size of peas when they’re delivered.
Um…uterine prolapse occurs in humans too.
Usually either after labour if the placenta hasn’t properly detached and too much traction is applied to the cord, or post menopausally in women who have had many children.
When the entire uterus prolapses through the vagina it is known as procidentia…it’s not pleasant.
It’s funny talking about horses and cows versus humans. My equine vet, at the barn to check my mare when she was in foal said “cows, women - they’re built to giev birth. Horses need extra attention. We’ve selctively bred them so they can have problems.” He had a portable ultrasound machine he’d bring to do pregnancy checks. They can see the embryo 24 days after breeding. They go in rectally with the machine. He said when his wife was pregnant he’d bring the machine home at night and they’d keep track of the baby.
