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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

To think how I give birth is not DH's choice?

288 replies

AliceScarlett · 10/12/2015 19:36

Slightly redundant post as we are only TTC ATM, but we ended up discussing the birth (if that happens).
Anyway, I said I would seriously look into a ELCS, DH looked like someone had stolen his last fucking rolo and said "Oh you can't do that, it would ruin things, we won't get the lovely birth experience. It's not how people imagine it". I said um, what? It's my body my choice. He agreed, but looked so sad.

2min later I said "I think rates of PND increase when people think they have not managed to have a 'proper' birth" (I have no idea if this is true, my bad). Then he said "well why don't you not have a cesarean to make sure that doesn't happen then"!!!!Shock I ripped him a new one, and asked him why I should go through a VB when it is not what I think is right for me. He apologised, but he's made it painfully clear that if I have a ELCS he will be disappointed and "robbed" of "his" birth.

I've suffered sexual abuse in the past and a sure fire way to fuck up my mental health is to experience pain in my fanjo. I know what is best for me, but I now have this ridiculous idea that I'll be weak and upset DH.

Sorry for pointless thread, we may not even concieve but this is kind of putting me off the whole thing.

OP posts:
stairbears · 10/12/2015 20:41

FFS. Why has this thread become so judgemental?

Yes, some unmedicated VBs are horrendous, others can be wonderful and enjoyable - especially if hypnobirthing etc.

Likewise, some medicalised or surgical births can be awful, or fantastic, and anything in between.

ShebaShimmyShake · 10/12/2015 20:42

SpendSpendSpend, I am horrified for you. If you want a C section for your own reasons, absolutely, your body, your choice, you're the patient, have at it. But to be pressured to undergo surgery if it isn't medically necessary or beneficial for you, just to prioritise your husband's penis? He should be ashamed.

Original poster
AliceScarlett · 10/12/2015 20:43

Spend BathtimeFunkster is right, that is worse than what I have to deal with!

OP posts:
TheCarpenter · 10/12/2015 20:43

I can only give you my experience. I had a rough time with DD. Every terrifying step when I looked at my husband, he was there, quiet as a mouse, just as I needed him (I hate being spoken to when in pain), hand there for squeezing. Everything I needed, if he could give me it he did, and if it was hcp doing it at my request he supported it. I could not have done it without him.

Whoever your birthing partner is, they NEED to have your back. Regardless of how you birth, it's the support that makes a good birth experience in my opinion.

jorahmormont · 10/12/2015 20:43

If vaginal birth was such a wonderful experience they'd sell it on Virgin Experience Days alongside zorbing and wine tasting.

Until then, it's still pushing a tiny human out of your fanny and that bloody hurts, or having surgery which isn't something anyone takes lightly, and no-one should be told they're silly for wanting whatever sort of birth they want.

There's some proper knobends on this thread!

BathtimeFunkster · 10/12/2015 20:43

People really will not be thinking what pippin is saying.

She's just trying to provoke a row.

BillBrysonsBeard · 10/12/2015 20:43

Wow, pippinsfriend Did you read the OP? She was sexually abused. She's not saying childbirth is like abuse, but having people touching her down there, possibility of instruments and the associated pain of birth will bring back awful memories that could really ruin her time as a new mum. I requested a CS for similar reasons and it was the best thing for me. I started life as a mum with a painful abdomen for a few weeks but so happy as there was no mental trauma to look back on and I could just concentrate on DS. Natural birth is a beautiful thing but we have to do what is best for us as individuals.

Cloppysow · 10/12/2015 20:44

spend your man is a fucking arse. Tell him he needs to think about an operation to make his penis big enough.

witsender · 10/12/2015 20:45

Childbirth can or should be a beautiful experience for everyone, but as always, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and will be different for everyone.

ShebaShimmyShake · 10/12/2015 20:46

I was actually discussing this last night with someone who had both a vaginal birth and a C section. She said the C section was the better experience for her. I could go into the details of why, but it's not relevant. The point is, it was her birth and her experience, and if she says the C section was the more positive birth, it's not for anyone else to tell her that it wasn't, or to imply that she somehow did the vaginal birth 'wrong'.

Birth experiences are only about the parents anyway. I've heard many people describe horrible childhood experiences that scarred them. But I have never, ever, ever, heard anyone claim to be mentally damaged because they were delivered by C section.

AskBasil · 10/12/2015 20:47

I think all those people saying he said this shite purely because he doesn't know the reality of childbirth, are missing the point.

It doesn't matter how ignorant he is about childbirth. It doesn't matter that he's been fed a Hollywood view of it. It doesn't matter that he's got Aspergers.

What matters, is that he hasn't realised that his wife's body is her own, and her own alone. No-one else has shares in it. No-one else has a vote about how she births or anything else she does with her own body.

That's the problem. Not his views on birth. It doesn't matter whether it's about birth or about death or about anything else in between - the problem here, is that he doesn't recognise his wife's bodily autonomy. Not really, not at a gut level. It would have been impossible to say what he did, if he did.

I wouldn't necessarily LTB about it at this stage, because an awful lot of otherwise decent men carry around unconscious sexist ideas which they aren't aware they have. When they are made aware of them, they are shocked and embarrassed that they've osmosed these ideas. In which case, there's a potentially good relationship there.

But men who deny that their assumption that they've got these ideas is important or significant, or who argue that they have the right to have these ideas because their biological relationship to the child their partner carries, means that she's no longer entitled to 100% bodily autonomy, they're a problem and it is reasonable to LTB.

The OP hasn't shared which type her DH is and she may not yet know. Until she has the Conversation, of course.

thelouise · 10/12/2015 20:47

Alice if I were an unconceived foetus, I'd rather be yours than pippin's. Wink

VestalVirgin · 10/12/2015 20:47

You might not have been a patient during a home birth (I expect you were) but women in hospital definitely are.

I think I would lose my patience pretty fast, going from what people here told me about births in hospitals.Wink

How anyone can be so uneducated about childbirth in a time where "death in childbirth" is still frequently used to make protagonists of fantasy novels half-orphans, I do not know. Maybe if he loathes fantasy literature and never reads it?

BolshierAryaStark · 10/12/2015 20:48

Spend you've got a prize of a man there Hmm

OP You get to choose how you give birth of course but your DH is entitled to his opinion on it like it or not. All you can do is attempt to educate him on an actual birth rather than a romanticised one.

BeanGirls · 10/12/2015 20:48

The fact that it was your first conversation about childbirth, the first he'd ever had too presumably and that ye're not even ttc-Yabu. The guy probably never really thought about the ins and outs if it before. Unless he's usually not a supportive guy I say give him a break. I bet when you sit down and properly discuss it he'll see things differently.

pippinsfriend · 10/12/2015 20:48

This reply has been deleted

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jorahmormont · 10/12/2015 20:50

oh pippin be a dear and fuck off

ShebaShimmyShake · 10/12/2015 20:50

thelouise, I'd rather be Donald Trump's.

PuppyMouse · 10/12/2015 20:50

Couldn't read and run OP as I had ELCS for exactly same reasons. It was everything I'd hoped for.

My husband disagreed with it when I first told him I wouldn't have a baby unless I could have one. But we talked openly and he came to all the consultant apps and then he understood and wanted whatever was best for me and even though his Mother kept haranguing us that it wasn't right Hmm he stuck by me 100%.

And as you said it's your body and if he's happy to emotionally blackmail you into labour then I would question his suitability as a parent.

Sorry if this sounds harsh but I had to fight so hard and was questioned by so many people why I had an ELCS and it gives me the rage! Stick to your guns.

Original poster
AliceScarlett · 10/12/2015 20:51

I'll definitely talk to him about it, he's due back soon, let's see if what I said has sunk in.

Thanks thelouise Grin

OP posts:
Cloppysow · 10/12/2015 20:51

Pippin

Stop.

TaliZorah · 10/12/2015 20:51

pippin

My cesarean wasn't painful. I have had injections more uncomfortable than that. I was walking by day 2 and out the house in day 6.

thelouise · 10/12/2015 20:52

pippin ODFOD.

ShebaShimmyShake · 10/12/2015 20:53

pippin, who cares whether or not you 'agree' with elective Caesareans? Nobody needs you to 'agree' with them for their own personal medical choices. What's your problem with a different person with a different experience taking a different route to preserving her own balance?

If you felt that secure in your choices, you wouldn't piss on someone else for making a different one. And if you really have had such a traumatic experience yourself, that makes it all the worse to cast aspersions on Alice's mental capacity to raise a child.

Bog off.

Original poster
AliceScarlett · 10/12/2015 20:54

Thanks Puppy, that's reassuring. I'm ok at fighting.

Pippin, I'm going to ignore you from now on tbh, you have absolutely no way to tell if my MH is well managed or not.

OP posts:
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