There’s some weird gaslighting and fantasising in pregnancy narratives. Reading about hypnobirthing and home birthing, you’d easily get the impression that it’s a trippy, blissful, ecstasy kind of experience, and the pain is proportional to the level of medicalisation you allow. You’re also advised not to listen to “horror stories” and to protect yourself from “negativity” so it’s both an echo chamber, but also undermines other stories and experiences.
There’s a mishmash of protocols and statistics from different countries but when you dig in you realise that some of the interventions you’re warned about haven’t been practiced for decades or aren’t used in this part of the world. But the effect is to create a distrust of health care professionals.
We like to think we’re creatures of logic, and reason but most human decision making is based on consensus not logic. If everyone around us agrees, we probably will too. The internet can be dangerous because it puts us in echo chambers and creates the illusion of a majority consensus.
I was very drawn to the idea. I tend to want to withdraw and be alone when I’m in pain. I’m introverted. I get overwhelmed. I found the hospital birth experience very difficult to process after my first pregnancy,
Now I understand this from a perspective of neurodivergence, and sensory processing issues. I didn’t have any language to explain my needs and there really wasn’t a paradigm where I would have been taken seriously anyway.
I had a home birth, from the community midwives unit of the leading maternity hospital - so all the safety protocols were assessed and observed. I wasn’t willing to take risks with baby but if I’d only had to consider myself I’d have preferred to be entirely alone. And if I hadn’t been the type of person to over research every option and ask a million questions I might have believed some of the dangerous emotive nonsense.
However, I also think that the medical community have a long way to go in the care of neurodivergent people. But hopefully increased awareness is making a difference. But health care trauma is real and those harms need to be addressed and minimised.