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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To think that having a drug free natural child birth does not mean you are a better/ stronger person or have more guts

501 replies

Reallytired · 17/10/2008 18:25

Every childbirth experience is different. I am glad that there are options of intervention like caeseran section, drugs for pain relief. It would be horrendous to live somewhere like Chad where maternal death in childbirth is extremely common.

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/4459880.stm

People forget that modern intervention means living mothers and babies.

I hate it when women who have had an easy birth experience belittle those who had complications. There are no prizes for putting up with pain.

I think its sad when women are bullied against a medicalised birth by NCT types. Sometimes its the best decision.

OP posts:
georgimama · 19/10/2008 16:04

Well lulu, that's pretty much MN summed up, if you find labour/BFing/pregnancy anything really, a positive experience, if your opinions on anything (private schools, parenting techniques, religion you name it really) don't go with the herd you are a smug bitch/idiot/crypto fascist, and should either shut up about it or lie to spare the sensitive types you may offend with your views.

Your feelings don't get spared in return however.

findtheriver · 19/10/2008 16:04

no I'm fine thanks

lulumama · 19/10/2008 16:04

tonightsthenight, this is really not the thread for flippancy of this nature

true, georgiemama, true..

findtheriver · 19/10/2008 16:05

georgie you have summed it up!

kittywise · 19/10/2008 16:35

tonightsthenight. I feel proud that I could do what my body was ultimately designed for. So you think it a small thing. I find that rather sad.

It has little to do with my pelvic floor muscles.

So you think that birth trauma/ pride in one's ability to birth naturally is a suitable subject for silly humour?

tonightsthenight · 19/10/2008 16:36

PMSL PMSL PMSL!!!!

kittywise · 19/10/2008 16:44

Tonightsthenight: Does your mum know you're using her computer? She should check that you're only using age appropriate sites. Run along now and play and play with your dolls.

findtheriver · 19/10/2008 17:08

tonight needs to tighten up! She's leaking

Twelvelegs · 19/10/2008 17:18

Gosh, all getting a little bitchy now.....what a surpirse??

Just a reminder to everyone here, we are British, in the main, not American and that does mean we don't congratulate or clap ourselves, we allow others to do it for us. All this emotional strength crap really should be left to our friends accross the pond and leave the self deprecating stuff to us here on Blighty!!

findtheriver · 19/10/2008 17:23

God I might start pissing myself with laughter now... 'we are British'?? - how the hell do you know the nationality of everyone posting on here?!!

lulumama · 19/10/2008 17:26

i blame my russian and eastern european ancestry for my emotional nature

goodness me... this thread has taken a bit of a bizarre turn !

PuzzleRocks · 19/10/2008 17:29

Well i'm from Krypton which is how I managed to get by with just a bit of G&A.
And proud too. (ducks and runs for cover)

MrsTittleMouse · 19/10/2008 17:32

Actually, I've been on a thread where one brave poster (can't remember who - sorry) admitted that she used to have the "but you could have had a natural birth if only you'd....." attitude. Until a good friend of hers tried all the active natural birth techniques, but ended up with the baby stuck and needing medical intervention.

So it does happen, and it's not just my imagination. I have to say though that while it takes a lot of luck, it also takes a lot of effort to push a baby out and I can understand the joy of not needing intervention.

Anyway... conversely to the smug natural birthers, I had a Mum tell me all about her friend who's baby had suffered oxygen deprivation during (a vaginal) birth. This was when I was in the third trimester and had decided to give VB another try and not have an elective CS. She told me how glad she was to have had two CSs. I found that a bit as well.

Twelvelegs · 19/10/2008 17:47

Findtheriver......no sense of humour.

kittywise · 19/10/2008 18:12

No sense of humour? This isn't a funny subject

Twelvelegs · 19/10/2008 18:19

Irony, sarcasm.....oh dear dear.

The traits are experiencing on this thread are by their very nature 'home grown' and are cultural. Although I was being tongue and cheek I do think there is an element of truth that it simply isn't 'British' and comes accross as boastful when we speak of our triumphs... same reason as 'gifted and talented' gets a bashing.

Elasticwoman · 19/10/2008 18:25

Reallytired: I think there are prizes for putting up with pain if it is the pain of a normal labour: lower risk of being unwell or in pain afterwards. That's prize enough for me.

Original poster
Reallytired · 19/10/2008 18:57

If people are not having a normal labour then they are going to be in pain or unwell afterwards whether they take pain relief or not.

Most women in the world do not have pain relief in labour. They don't have the option. There are plenty of people who give birth naturally who suffer badly afterwards.

OP posts:
Elasticwoman · 19/10/2008 20:25

I certainly would welcome pain relief if things were going wrong and intervention were used, and would agree with you in that case, that there would be no prizes for for not having it. Nobody in their right mind would expect a woman to have a caesarean without anaesthetic for example.

But the NCT and Sheila Kitzinger would also agree, and it is unfair to say that just because they champion natural birth, that they don't also acknowledge the need for interventions such as caesarean section where necessary.

MoonlightMcKenzie · 19/10/2008 20:46

I'm stoical. My first birth was hell. I was begging for an epidural at 2cm, by 3cm I was no longer aware I was having a baby, I thought I was dying and wished I would hurry up. I never got the epi. I've never been so scared in my life and fought every contraction for survival.

I had SERIOUS ishoos with people who gave birth without drugs. Rather than feel a failure for being unable to cope it helped my sanity to believe that there is no way their pain could have been anywhere as bad as mine. Then I had ishoos figuring out what was so wrong with my body that made my birth so much more painful than everyone elses.

So, - do people have differing levels of pain, or do we experience roughly the same level of pain but deal with it differently? I think peoples perspective of THIS is what gets people so worked up!

findtheriver · 19/10/2008 21:10

You explain why there's really no definitive answer Moonlight!

I would imagine that firstly, people do experience pain differently, secondly that people's pain thresholds differ, and thirdly that a similar event may actually cause different levels of pain among different people! So a lot of variables.

Some of this I suspect just from my observations of others eg one of my children would always cry more and be more distressed when she fell over than my other two did. Given that toddlers fall over loads, it's unlikely she always had worse falls. It's more likely that she responded to the pain differently or felt it differently. Similarly among adults. We all know that some people are far more likely to take to their bed if they get a cold, where other people would carry on stoically.

All we can really say is that anyone who feels that they are dying, or would rather die during labour, as you did moonlight, is experiencing extreme pain which they certainly believe at the time is at the edge if what they can cope with. It's certainly not that unusual I don't think - having talked to other mothers, especially during a first labour. I definitely remember getting to the point where I didnt feel it was possible to feel that much pain and remain alive, and I remember consciously thinking that I would prefer someone to kill me rather than continue. I actually felt relieved to meet other mums who told me the same thing afterwards.

SharpMolarBear · 19/10/2008 21:15

MM my friend had a baby a couple of years before me. I asked her what it was like, and she said the only thing she could compare it to was dying (not that she's any experience, thankfully). She had a 'straightforward' labour and birth, nothing particularly out of the ordinary, pethidine, nothing else. It shocked and upset me a bit at the time. My labour was very painful but at no point would I have thought that, and at no point did I feel scarily out of control. I do genuinely think that her labour was just worse than mine, for whatever reason. As I've mentioned before I am large and have childbearnig hips, thighs and well everything else. She is tiny and slim - although I know it's not that simple I wouldn't be surprised if that was at least related.
Sorry if that offends/upsets/isn't the right thing to say.

SharpMolarBear · 19/10/2008 21:17

wow x post, I didn't realise it was common. No wonder women lie to people who haven't given birth yet. Just in case anyone is reading this, my friend is currently pg with no2 and very happy.
I had some sort of appendix pain when DS was 16 weeks. If the pain of labour is a 10, it gets a 4 or 5 but it was overall much more scary and upsetting because I didn't know what was going on.

MoonlightMcKenzie · 19/10/2008 21:33

BTW I gave birth again 5 weeks ago with nothing and it didn't even hurt that much.

Both births were vbs in mlus and considered textbook, cept the first was a bit longer!

findtheriver · 19/10/2008 21:40

Wow - that's a big difference from first birth moonlight!

I remember my midwife at my first telling me that generally first births are the worst, which seems logical in that every thing else being equal, this will be the first time your body has been through childbirth. Of course, some people will have complications with subsequent pregnancies or whatever, but she said that as a general rule of thumb it shouldn't be quite so bad after the first time.

My two natural births weren't hugely different in terms of pain level, though the second was shorter, so I suppose better that the pain was over quicker! And I know crowning felt marginally less painful -still felt like my fanjo was on fire, but I remember thinking that it didn;t hurt quite so much, I guess because it had been stretched that far before!!