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]

InGodWeTrust Wed 27-Oct-10 19:48:47

"Do as you all wish-but remember it isn't really the natural birth "givers" that are soooo hett up on the topic of natural birth, it's always those who take the pain relief-perhaps they're the ones guilt ridden."

I think I have wasted a fair few posts on this thread.

I did give birth without having chemicals pumped into me, as you put it. And I still do not see why this should give anybody else the right to tell me how I ought to feel about it.

What I do feel about it was:

It was considerably less painful than some other things I have been through.

It was considerably less hard work than some other things I have been through.

It was less against-all-odds than some other things I have achieved in life.

It felt no more (or less) of an achievement than the caesarian I had three years later.

And even at the time it did not seem a greater achievement than some of the births that my friends had with more chemicals.

So why do I have to feel it was my life's achievements just because some internet sprites think everybody has to be the same?

Women who go on and on and on about their births and how wonderful they did/where have very little else in their lives to feel proud about. Makes me feel sorry for them.

Not sure how else you can interpret "come on ladies we can do what nature intended" other than meaning all other women should/can give birth the way I just did

Unless she meant it as a total separate to the birth statement. If this is the case then it opens up a whole load of other possibilities.

Be as smug as you like. But the real reason this has run and run is the implication from FB girl that pure effort can result in a great AND natural AND drug free delivery. (as if that was everyone's ideal anyway.)

Good for her I say.

I think you're making a lot of assumptions there about what other people think LeQueen.

I can only speak for myself, obviously, but I really enjoyed my DS's birth (unlike DD's birth) and felt immensely high and elated afterwards in an almost narcotic kind of a way!
I am well aware that not everyone aspires to that experience or is jealous of it or any such nonsense. A few of my friends have said that they wished they could have had a birth like that, but not all of them. One of my best friends has had two electives and feels great about that. Good for her, I say. She would not have enjoyed a natural birth in the way that I did.

Like another poster, I do hope that women who do aspire to a natural birth might feel heartened by hearing my birth story but I am no evangelist- I don't go around bragging about it but will talk about it if people want to hear it. That doesn't make me smug.

Olifin that sounds fine to me. (how nice of me to give you permission!! :o) If I knew you in RL and knew you'd gone drug free I would want to talk to you about your labour, to see if I could pick up any tips. But if you started telling me that 'we can all do it ladies', I know that isn't true. Then I would start considering you to be smug.

I think I've expressed myself really badly there!

No, you've expressed yourself well, I think.

I think the 'we can all do it ladies' remark was silly (and yes, totally untrue) but I think she was on a high on not thinking about what she was saying. I would have forgiven her for it, if she were my friend.

In the same way that I turned a bit of a deaf ear to a comment made by another friend after her C-section: 'In this day and age, I think all babies should be born that way!'- neither true, nor desirable.

I ignored it because I knew my friend was just relieved that she and her baby were ok. I also strongly suspect that she was mourning the 'Hypnobirth' she had wanted but not got so I felt rather sorry for her and understood why she'd said it.

Lower ya pitch-forks ladies!!..

people feel what they feel and things happen how they happen for each individual...when you start to belittle someones feelings even if its a reaction its more a reflection of you than the other person

a birth is an unpredictable thing and the feelings before, during and after are equally so...

I have not read the whole thread..just the last page so don't get rubbed the wrong way if your behaviour and opinions don't fit...

"But, you have to accept Fibilou that an awful lot of women genuinely aren't that bothered as long as they and their baby are safe, and don't actually aspire to a drug-free natural labour."

And you have to accept that most people don't want to end up with tears, C secs, ventouse etc. I heard loads of horrific birth stories when I was pregnant and all they did was terrify me so if someone can hear a good story off me and think "maybe it won't be so bad" then I can't think why you have a problem with that.

And actually I don't really mention the drug free element. I just say that it was not half as bad as expected and was pretty quick for a first birth.

You complain that we "natural birthers" are smug. Well I have to say that I find the competitive tales of agony and torture equally irritating.

And no, I don't think I know something new about birth. My "you will talk about it to anyone that will listen" refers to the compulsion most of us have for a few weeks after birth to tell anyone and everyone we know what happened

I would also like to add that I was told I was being stupid, naive and idealistic when I was pregnant by rather a lot of women at work who had all had a variety of horrendous births. I did not find it very helpful to be constantly hearing about their births although they kept going on about it. There was only one out of our office of about 20 mothers that had an OK time of it and I really held on to her experience while I was pregnant as proof that it could be OK.

There is so much negative press about birth out there that someone has to give a good account occasionally. And for the record I had nothing. didn't have a waterbirth, no tens, no nothing. I had no fucking clue what I was doing, despite spending my whole pregnancy "educating myself

Cory - you make the point about having had other painful experiences worse than giving birth. Maybe that is it for women who aren't so bothered about the experience.
For me the high was holding the baby on my chest not the birth itself, it was a bad birth but it doesn't and continues not to bother me one bit. Baby was bashed up which wasn't great for bf but only superficial cut and bf wasn't the be all and end all for me anyway.
This not being an issue for me may have something to do with the fact that two years before I nearly died on several occasions over a 2 month period before receiving appropriate medical care. Also made me not at all afraid of hospitals which I know is often the reason people want homebirths.
Probably gives you a different outlook on things?

Sorry, haven't read the whole thread but just wanted to say that I find it bizarre that having no pain relief is some kind of badge of honour. I would have loved any and all pain relief but - due to sheer bloody incompetence of the hospital - didn't get any. Why anyone would choose to endure that level of pain, when they don't have to, is completely beyond me.

Fibilou sounds like you had a load of ghouls at your workplace. I work at a school - so mainly women, vast majority mothers - and I don't know any of their birth stories! I know bits of some (one was premature, one was the first delivered by a student) but that's it.
I suppose it comes down to the old story of our experiences shaping our views. :)

panzee, they started the second I announced I was PG. One of them was convinced DD was going to be "huge" (she was 7lb 3) and one of the others told me about her 24 hour labour with every intervention going so many times I could retell it on her behalf. That son is now married with his own child but she can still tell the tale as if it was yesterday.

Mamavoo, I don't consider having a drug free birth as a badge of honour, it's just a question of lucky biology. Actually I think that people that have 4th degree tears, high forceps and other horrendous things have a far worse time of it and are the ones that should have a badge of honour.

I can absolutely understand wanting to talk about your birth experience, Filibou (though it seems the women in your office went rather ott on that one). I just don't remember the drugs v. drugs free ever being a major part of the conversations I had with other new mums in the days when I did have those conversations. At least not as something that defined your "achievement".

lequeen stop being so bitchy about it. FYI I had a dreadful phobia of dying in childbirth, to the extent that couldn't sleep in the last 2 months of my pregnancy. THe fact I got through it without pain relief, and doctors messing about with me IS AN ACHIEVEMENT as far as I'm concerned. And no, it isn't the only thing I feel smug about, there's plenty more.

It was an achievement FOR ME. I am so proud of myself of staying calm and getting through one of the most petrifying moments of my life (the idea of birth).

But I agree with whoever said they've experienced far more painful things...so have I.

Fibilou "And you have to accept that most people don't want to end up with tears, C secs, ventouse etc". I must be not "most people" because I always wanted a CS but gamely went though a 24 hour active but sloooow labour and by the end of it I was thrilled, yes thrilled, to get a CS.

I personally have a horror of bad vaginal and/or anal tearing, permanent stretching, bladder problems, the baby getting stuck in the birth canal (yes babies can get stuck in the birth canal because mine was, before anyone comes on to say it's impossible, it is certainly not); ventouse and forceps (the latter because I always thought they seemed to be such a bad idea for the baby, a thought verified by a particularly awful case in the news recently)... but I don't and never have had a horror of CSs!

I do think it's probably realistic and fair to say that a majority of women don't want to end up with complications. Note that Fibilou included 'tears and ventouse' in her list of things that women probably don't want and it seems that was certainly true for you.

I definitely didn't want any of those things, nor a C-section.

But I'm not 'most people' any more than you are.

Can someone explain what exactly we are discussing on this thread?? quick synopsis..