AIBU to feel annoyed when it appears that a vaginal delivery is an "achievement"

[walkie]

Sorry for the rant, family member has just had second child, and other family members are repeating "amazing" "she did really well" "she only needed gas and air" "it only took X hours". I can't help wanting to say, well, I didn't exactly choose c-section & various other complications - I hate that this feels like somehow her natural delivery is more "worthy" than any other routes? There are no A*'s in childbirth (or have I missed something?)! (This is really just about me & how I feel - I know the most important thing is that mum & baby are safe & well.)

I think it depends how you define "proud". Dictionary synonyms include bigheaded, arrogant, self-important, conceited, vain and swollen-headed!

If proud means thinking you've done better than someone whose experiences were different, because you supposedly tried harder or had more willpower (which you don't actually know) then that's not good.

But if it means being pleased and happy with how it went, then fine. Just don't rub people's nose in it if they weren't as lucky. Pleased yes, proud no.

I think you're letting your own hang ups affect something which really is a non issue here.

Giving birth is fucking scary and hard work. Why does saying something about someone giving birth vaginally implicitly say that you didn't do it "properly" or that you didn't achieve anything? Unless all your family members are passive aggressive bitches, I really doubt they even gave a second thought to how you delivered your baby when talking about someone else.

FWIW, I think getting cut open is terrifying. Completely terrifying. Good on anyone who copes without freaking out. But giving birth and pushing a baby out is hard too. You can talk about one without it meaning something about the other.

So I think YAB a bit U.

Baking - just delurking to say that you have not done anything badly. You have a healthy baby and you're doing ok and that's the most important thing.

FWIW I've had both - regular vaginal birth and then an EMCS 2 months back. As my friend pointed out, she'd rather have stitches in her stomach than her nethers...

The achievement for all women is having grown a baby for nine months. How it comes into the world is no one else's business.

And forgot to add - DC2 was born in the US (DC1 in the UK). My OB here and the team who delivered DC2 all thought I was insane to have just used gas and air in the UK. Seriously, you'd have thought I'd said I'd given birth in a pigpen, unassisted and in the middle of nowhere, given their reactions... This proud notion is a very British thing.

I had 2 c sections for both my girls and my now ex sil was slagging me off on facebook saying i was lazy and too fat to give birth naturally and how i failed at childbirth.

People are twats.

If I had 'overcome my fears and trusted my body' me and my child would be dead.

What patronising trite bullshit. It's 99% luck.

It shouldn't matter how any

Sorry!! Start again.

It shouldn't matter what anyone else did. I had 2 vaginal births. Trust me that felt like a huge achievement. I dont judge anyone else on how they gave birth. Ultimately though I have 2 wonderful children (possibly biased!) - that feels like a far better achievement than how they got out of me.

Well it is an achievement. A personal one.

As is both mother and baby surviving birth.

People who refer to c-section births as not doing it properly get on my nerves and I don't yet have children. That is a stupid, insensitive thing to say.

Saying having a vaginal birth is an achievement isn't the same, I don't think.

I was a one-woman life support machine for 40 weeks. I gave birth to a live healthy baby despite a condition which, left unchecked, could have killed us both. I had an EMCS to save my life. DD had straight 10s on her APGARs because my body kept her safe. It then fed her for 15 months.

Nobody gets to say I failed at anything. No-fucking-body, IRL (yes, has happened) or online gets to say I didn't give birth or at least she won't be doing it again, silly cow

In all honesty, 10 and a half years on, I don't in fact feel that the way I either gestated or gave birth were 'achievements'. They were just, you know, physical stuff that happened - once the sperm meets the egg it gets on with it, you're just the host incubator - and then it has to emerge somehow.

There are things I've done that I'm a damn sight prouder of.

*If I had 'overcome my fears and trusted my body' me and my child would be dead.

What patronising trite bullshit. It's 99% luck.*

Yes but that wasn't the situation for me, it was the situation for you, I can be proud of overcoming my fears, I can be proud of trusting my body, it doesn't meant that I think that anyone else should give birth the same way I did. I certainly don't think that women or babies should be put at risk. Having major surgery was not the safest choice for me and my baby, it was my anxiety and lack of faith in my own body that was encouraging me to have a c-section.

I think that it is strange that women seem to think that a compliment or positive comment on another women's birth is seen as an automatic negative comment on their own experience.

If someone said to my sister "your hair is so lovely and curly, you really do have fantastic hair!" I wouldn't think that is was rude as I have poker straight hair.

All the birth stories that I heared whilst pregnant were negative, I think that positive stories really should be talked about.

I can really see both sides here. Of course we shouldn't make this into a competition, but I think it's unfair to deny that there is a negativity about CSs (still) and a subtle-but-there sort of language around some things like pain relief and vaginal deliveries. Women who have had a CS aren't making this up - there's a reason they can get tied up in knots about it. Several of us on this thread have said that.

So whilst I don't begrudge anyone their pride, and can see why that language, when made public on FB, or in magazines, does add to that feeling of failure.

motherinferior

I agree too. 13 and 10 years on, this stuff is insignificant. I do feel for women like ilikebaking who are right at the beginning though.

Totally agree with motherinferior - there is so much rot talked about childbirth ........... it happens. Once you get through the child bearing years no one gives a toss how you gave birth, it is a peculiarly odd middle class NCT ish thing to talk about it.

I rarely discussed how I gave birth (by EMCS to my absolute delight ) - no one is really interested other than polite comments.

Sorry but I think the "trust in your body" line that gets trotted out on these threads is bullshit. If you did trust in your body, you'd do it completely unassisted.

Oh I do very much feel that those of us who've had assisted births are considered second-class child-bearers; what I mean is that ultimately, I don't think that child-bearing is the Most Important Thing I've Ever Done. I don't even think, if I'm honest, that parenting is The Most Important Thing I've Ever Done (partly because I'm not very good at it, whereas there are things I'm really quite good at). Just because I'm female doesn't mean I want to be defined by my uterus, and/or whether or not my vagina is really, really stretchy.

when I am giving birth, give me a hospital room, qualified staff with the latest technology and i will have any drug going. Ok i have had 2 VB which I had gas and air ( which made me go to sleep) but if i ever had another baby I wouldn't hesitate to use more if needed.

mother

Are you Caitlin Moran ?

I think it would be daft to consider to give birth unassisted, no matter how much trust in your body you have.

For me I had lost a huge amout of faith in my body as I had fertility issues, it took years just to get pregnant and I very nearly had to have IVF to conceive. I felt very worried about having a miscarriage my entire pregnancy and I felt like if my body couldn't even get pregnant "naturally" then I probably wouldn't be able to grow a baby or birth a baby or breastfeed a baby "naturally" so I probably should just not try to have a vaginal birth and take the offer of a c-section for the sake of my baby.

It was a huge step for me to trust my body, when I say trust my body I don't mean birth in a pool all alone just listening to the signals that my body gives, I had (at my request) a clip on my baby's scalp the entire labour, I had as many internal checks as the midwives were able to do, I trusted my body enough to attempt a vaginal birth. At the first sign of any problems I would have opted for a c-section.

Newt, I am not. But I share her weakness for DMs, big pants and proper pubic hair

Oh blimey here we go again . Why can't people express now they feel about their own experience without other people jumping in and making it about them.

I had natural births with both dc. And yes, they hurt like a bastard, especially dc1 which is hardly surprising when your body hasn't done it before. And I'm really glad that I managed without pain relief. If for some medical reason I had needed a csection then no doubt that would have been great too.

People should be allowed to express their genuine feelings about their own experience. That's very different from boasting or passing judgement. I don't think I've ever told anyone in RL about my birth stories unless they've asked, but hell, yeah I do feel good about it and why not

So women who have nice births should just shut the fuck up?

No, not necessarily. But if they do say something they should speak with sensitivity and thought about how what they say might upset others.

Who needs misogyny when women are so willing to be nasty to each other all by themselves.

Well, quite - but part of the issue is whether someone is being bitchy or insensitive. The culture in the UK is to judge women based on their performance in childbirth. We'd ALL be better off, if everyone two seconds to understand that and think before they opened their mouths.

You can express the same sentiment in a million and one ways. Saying "I'm so lucky to have the birth I wanted" or "I'm so proud of myself for coping during birth" rather than saying "Proud of my drug free birth".

The minute you express ANYTHING that relates to the method you give birth I think you are on shaky ground to be honest, because of the cultural judgements there are. Its a bit like commenting on a woman's weight or appearance. Is it really necessary or really that relevant?

The problem is really the idea that achievement is inextricably linked with a VB whilst a CS is linked with failure within our society. Its not surprising that women are extremely sensitive (perhaps overly but understandably) when even the medical terms repeat this value system. We have much to remove this.

And actually thats your misogynistic problem...

No amount of "trusting your body" is going to make a difference to some of the possible birth complications, and no matter how much faith in your body you have, these can happen to anyone.

A lottery winner might have "trusted" their ticket and when they won, be proud of trusting the ticket, even though actually it was just by chance that they won. Someone else up the road might equally have trusted their ticket, but with a different outcome.

If human bodies could always be "trusted" and it was just a question of willpower and "mind over matter", no-one would ever get ill or have anything medically wrong, and no woman would ever have died in childbirth.

I had DS by pre planned CS. My body. I wanted it that way. To me the idea of pain and grunting and howling for hours, compared to a quick incision, no pain from start to finish, all done in under 30 minutes? It was a no brainer.

I get no end of snidey comments, still, about "too precious to give birth properly"... "too lazy"... "too much of a princess to have a normal birth like the rest of us"

Those people can fuck off. In my head, the way they gave birth, to me, is the worst thing I can imagine. I'm just not enough of a self important arsehole to say it as if I'm superior to them...which is what they do to me. As if they were better mothers for going through a longer, more painful delivery. Well done. To me, that doesn't make them heroes (try telling them that lol) it was what they wanted, and good for them. Mine was what I wanted, so good for me. I'm alive and healthy, DS is alive and healthy, job done. Frankly, I couldn't give a toss whether someone sneezed their child out of their ear. If mother and baby are as well as can be, then you have every reason to be proud, and no one has the right to suggest they did any better than you.

Grrrr. Gives me the rage, can you tell