To be annoyed at the smuggy smugness? why is childbirth such a competion?

[AddictedIsFeelingHappy]

i'm 38+3 weeks pregnant and am getting irrationally annoyed by every thing.

a friend of mine had her baby yesterday and on facebook (i know its the spawn of satan) her status is along the lines of

'baby x arrived weeighing 8lb 4oz in a birthing pool, i had no pain relief drugs, even with a very long labour. come on ladies we can do what nature intended'

now i'm already alittle annoyed because she was due the day before me and has already had her baby, and mine is still not here. (irrational i know!)
but why put that about the drugs? you dont get a medal for doing it all naturally and it doesnt make you a failure if you do need drugs.

gah now i'm all annoyed and wound up and cant sleep [hangry]

I still feel slightly put out at not being so blindingly unique that you couldn't possibly mistake me for another olifin...

have only done timesonline alphamummy and babygreenhouse before reaching these fair shores of Mumsnet.

LEQ i was thinking about whether you might have been on there - though it was an age ago.

I think i know who you were - you had a gathering a while back (like 2007/8) and i linked to this cartoon? or was that not you??

you are who i thought!

my best mate from junior school is on there, and her mum has posted on your current thread.

my name started 'n' but i left after sharing more than i would like and getting paranoid. there are lots of really sweet people on there though, and it is a much more cuddly forum.

"Being a mum is why we all do it, not for our few hours of stoic glory".

Has anyone here implied that going through labour is their main aim in having a baby?

"Yes some love the whole birthing experience but an awful lot don't and don't put it at the top of their life's achievement list either".

Milamae - have you gone through labour? Because you speak very confidently of your feelings about it.

I had three fricking diabolical labours. And until I climb K2 in a pair of ill fitting stilletos, while suffering from a bad case of the runs, and get given a cheque for 100 million quid at the top, I can put my hand on my heart and say 'I have never done anything so hard or so rewarding as giving birth to my children' and not feel like I'm over-egging the cake.

Sorry evil, it was just the name...almost identical to my friend's (temporary, Halloween-themed) name on another forum :)

I agree with an earlier poster that it's just as unfair to say: 'Have all the drugs they can throw at you' as it is to tell women to have drug-free births. Just don't tell other women what to do, obviously.

Still, absolutely nothing wrong with saying: 'I had a drug-free birth, woo hoo!' in my opinion.

I did feel very proud after my son's birth. I didn't brag about it but I did find other people were interested, and pleased for me. Friends and family knew I had planned a HB and the first thing many of them said (after 'Congratulations!') was: 'did you manage to stay at home?'
And they were really chuffed for me that I had and that I hadn't had any drugs. I didn't go around telling everyone but people asked because they were interested. They were really pleased for me, even those who had been unfortunate/unsatisfied with their own birth experiences.

LeQueen You say that you don't think you'd have felt differently about your DDs' births if they had been natural births. Maybe; but you can't know that, obviously. Without wishing to sound patronising, there can be (and was for me) a real high after a drug-free VB. It felt amazing to me, better than any experiences I had with narcotics as a youngster :) I recognise that it's not the same for all women, of course.

For me, it did feel like a massive achievement because I just didn't know if I could do it and I did marvel at what my body had been able to do.

If a woman wants to have a drug-free birth and manages to achieve it then let's just be pleased for her. Just as we can be pleased for a woman who wants an elective C-section and gets one.

What if I have a drug-free C Section? Can I have a bigger medal? :o :o

Hell yes Panzee, you can have a cabinet full of trophies :)

Many people feel like you, titty. But how on earth do you know it's most people? Have you done a survey?

In all your posts you strongly suggest that the way you felt at this particular stage of your life is the normal, natural way, and that there is something slightly odd about people who didn't happen to feel that way. Well, that's just tough.

I had an unmedicated birth (if you don't count a few whiffs of gas, until I decided it made me nauseous) and I did not feel the sense of achievement you mention. Didn't feel a sense of failure either, just don't remember the sense of achievement you describe. Doesn't mean your experience is more real than mine, or that mine is more real than yours. Just that people are different from each other. They don't all feel the same. And sometimes they get euphoric in totally different situations. I had more of a sense of achievement after my caesarian- never bothered to analyse it intellectually, but suppose it was about having kept the baby safe inside me during a very hairy pregnancy.

But do totally remember the enormous rush of euphoria and I-did-it on my wedding day

Kewcumber, love that story! And can totally relate to it: my Mum had her youngest delivered by Scandinavian Airlines- and as far as I am aware it was still pretty euphoric.

Olifin, unlike LeQueen, I have actually done both the natural and the caesarian- and no, I didn't think it made much difference to me. If I had gone on to have a third I would have assumed it would be vaginal and would have been happy with that, but tbh wouldn't really have cared if they had told me the baby would be delivered by ParcelForce. My reaction when they told me after a few hours of my second labour that they thought I should have a section was "oh, ok". But am very aware that it might make a massive difference to another woman.

My labour was horrendous. I was induced, pushing stage lasted 3 and a half hours, shoulder dystocia, over 90 stitches and a post partum haemorrhage. The epidural only worked down one side so in effect was useless. And I had found out two days prior to this that my daughter had died in utero.
My second child was delivered by section at 37 weeks.
As far as I am concerned Labour is not something you do but something that is done to you.
The bottom line in pregnancy is a healthy baby, however it is delivered.

I don't buy the theory that this woman is so carried away by endorpins that she had no idea of what she was typing.

Even if she is in some sort of post-baby haze, she has managed to emerge from it, log in to Facebook (hard to type while gazing devotedly at your baby), go to her homepage and type this nonsense. She will also, no doubt log-in again regularly to see all the congratulatory comments.

If she had blurted this out in a conversation, I might have given this theory more credence, but the whole concept of Facebook is to tell the world what you are doing.Her phrasing is very basic bragging, no drugs "even though" it was a long labour. GO ME! GO ME!
And the suggestion that everyone else should be able to do the same with a bit of chivying - unless she has been living in a happy little bubble throughout her pregnancy, attending no antenatal classes and never setting foot on an internet forum, she must be well aware of the wide range of interventions that may be necessary.

I can't read her comment as anything other than the smuggy smugness the OP took from it.

As regards the idea that labour is the pinnacle of achievement for every woman - I didn't have this experience. Probably because (and once again I add the disclaimer that I know that I was spectacularly lucky) it was so quick and easy. I was left feeling a bit "Oh. Was that it?" about it. I felt a greater sense of actual achievement when I did a notoriously hard physical event and finished it, despite on one notable occasion sitting down in the middle of the road, caked from head to toe in mud and throwing my woolly hat at my team-mate who had just said "only 2 miles to go".

Oh, I totally agree Cory. It would have made a massive difference to me but not to you, we're all different.

labtest I'm really sorry to read that you lost your DD.

I can't agree that 'labour is not something you do but something that is done to you'. That was not my experience at all and I would hate to feel that I was detached from the process. I understand that we don't all feel the same though.

"Her phrasing is very basic bragging, no drugs "even though" it was a long labour. GO ME! GO ME!"

Has anyone suggested she didn't know what she was doing? I don't think so. I think what some people have pointed out was that the extreme euphoria you can experience after childbirth had affected her feelings and judgement. I don't think for one minute she thought that everyone can birth the same way and it's a bit telling that so many people here have chosen to interpret her comment as clear evidence that she has this belief.

And if she wants to brag - well why not? I've had three difficult labours, two of which were absolutely EPIC. With the first long labour I had an epidural and pethidine. With the second very long labour I was determined not to - because I was fearful of another episode of the shoulder dystocia I had with ds2, and because by then I knew that pethidine made me very unwell. I felt absolutely goddess-like after that last labour - it had been so hard and I did feel that I'd been stoical and brave. Now I know these aren't very fashionable qualities here on mumsnet when it comes to childbirth, but I'm being honest - I'd toughed it out and I was proud of myself. I felt I had had a healthier, safer birth for me and my baby for going without an epidural. If the mum in the OP felt the same then I think - fair do's to her. And I reckon the hostility that her comments have been met with here is largely down to people being defensive about their own choices for childbirth.

labtest - what a terrible experience. I hope you were treated with great kindness by the midwives.

For me it was the 'come on ladies we can do what nature intended' that I found smug and offensive.

Personally I am not offended by people having labours that go to plan neither am I offended by them being proud of it. They have every right to be proud of producing a beautiful baby.

What I am offended by is the women who having had such a birth or never having given birth imply that women who have had medical help are in some way inferior as a woman or as a mother.

Can I just add that nature intended my second baby's placenta to shear from the womb the minute I went into labour (complete placenta praevia). Thank God for medical intervention I say.

I must admit, I was much more euphoric after DS's birth, complete with epidural. The relief of delivering him was instant, and I was obviously no longer in any pain. Or at least, any pain that I could feel.

Immediately after DD's birth I was in so much pain from the drug-free labour, birth and tear that I was shaking (shivering uncontrollably) from the shock that I actually said to DH - I can't enjoy this - I can't enjoy holding DD and her first moments in the world.

Obviously, as soon as the anaesthetic took hold for my stitches, I immediately felt 'normal' again and the high well and truly kicked in! But before that, no.

Well I had the epidural and by the time I was in the theatre about 15 hours later when they were umming and ahhing about c-section and my life vs the babies I was bloody glad I did.
Also as someone else mentioned meant that barely even registered I'd been cut and then stitched so all I did was talk to and cuddle my dd on cloud nine.
My little birth boast? Four hour pushing stage! Beat that suckers!

Titty I speak very confidently about my feelings re labour because I know my own body thanks to 7 years ttc and carrying hefty twins full term(luck again).

I think it's a little patronising to say posters who have a problem with the Facebook poster are being defensive about there own choices for childbirth. It's on a par with the " having ishooos" accusation that frequently gets thrown in on certain other threads,it only serves to belittle a perfectly valid opinion and it isn't pleasant.

Most of the posters on here taking exception to the quote are fully at one with their birth experiences having had very little "choice" in the matter therefor making the "we can do what nature intended" proclamation slightly silly to be frank.

I take exception to this idea and implication that if one hasn't experienced 2 days of drug free labour one somehow isn't entitled to comment on childbirth and has missed out on something they're not aware of. The last I knew my 3 dc came out of my body and I was actually there.

They may not have been the perfect births by your standards but they were by mine as they gave me 3 healthy, beautiful children. As all 3 were breech,both pregnancies were high risk,1 was at risk of rupturing a very recent c/s section scar and 1 was at risk of not even making it if his twin didn't get out quick enough so I can't even begin to tell you how amazing their births were.

As I had absolutely no choice in the matter I can't quite see how I can be accused of being defensive .