HOW GIVING BIRTH CAN BE BLISSFUL
Squeezing a baby out an orifice is not like an afternoon at a day spa, but it can still be the best day you’ll ever have
HERE’S something you may not know … apparently, giving birth does not tickle. Crazy, right?
Who would have guessed that pushing an actual human out of an orifice – or having it cut from your stomach – is not the equivalent of an afternoon at the day spa?
Good thing we have movies, TV, books and what seems like every single woman who ever gave birth to tell us just how awfully excruciatingly pull-yourbottom-lip-over-yourforehead painful it is.
Why are we so obsessed with bad birthing stories? It’s not exactly breaking news that it can be a tricky process to push a camel through the, uh, eye of the needle (if you undertook your pelvic exercises as instructed).
Actually, it turns out that not even all the kegel crunches in the world will necessarily protect you.
Just this week, fitness guru and social media queen Emily Skye was praised for ‘keeping it real’ about her postpartum experience. Keeping it really bad, that is.
“It hurts to do much with the stitches from my episiotomy and feeding is extremely painful – I had no idea it would be this bad!” she posted to her 2.2 million followers just five days after labour.
“My back is still really sore and when I walk around it literally feels like my insides are going to fall out. I also had diastasis recti that was 3 finger widths apart the day after giving birth.”
Look, she should absolutely be applauded for being honest about both her experience and her physical appearance – neither of which were that hot, according to her. This is clearly her reality and good for her for not pretending that everything is totes amazeballs.
But the truth – the seeming secret – is that child birth is not always bad. In fact, it can be and often is absolutely amazing.
The two best days of my life were my birth days.
No, I’m not one of those women who orgasm during delivery (nor during conception for that matter … jokes, hubby!), but the whole process was … climactic.
There was the build-up of excitement as the moment drew closer, the intense joy of meeting this new person I’d helped to create and the sweet release of adrenaline as my husband and I shared our first moments as a new family.
There were also drugs. Lots of drugs. All the drugs.
All power to the women who want to do it naturally.
But for me, a birth plan is just that … a plan. It’s open to interpretation. And about two contractions in, I interpreted that my body was saying: drug me.
We started with gas, progressed to pethadine and then hit the sweet spot with an epidural. From that moment on, I happily read a book while my contraction monitor hit new heights. I just smiled serenely and giddily thought about my new baby.
I’m not quite sure whether it was the drugs or my own self that caused me to crack a penis joke with the doctor, but I got a great laugh from the audience in the (birthing) theatre. And with that, a star – and a baby – were born.
That bouncing boy was more like a lead balloon, however, given his 9.7lb weight. But so easy was his birth that I didn’t even need stitches.
Hubby says I have him to thank for that. #notkegelexercises
Whenever I share the story of my two happy, painless and uncomplicated births with expectant mothers, they are so happy to not hear a horror story.
I well remember the war tales I was told just weeks away from delivering. Why? What good is to be gained?
Of far greater concern, why did my own eight-year-old daughter recently wake me at midnight to tell me she was scared of having a baby? What the? Somehow she’s been infected by this societal obsession with a brutal birthing narrative to the point that it is literally scarier than the boogie man.
This despite her own mother’s joyful experience.
Yes, bad births happen.
But most women go through this process and, in this lucky country at least, most survive. Focusing on the labour – and the bad parts at that – instead of the baby is like focussing on the wedding instead of the marriage.
If all goes well, one lasts less than 24 hours and the other a lifetime. That’s what we should be obsessed about.