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

[Reallytired]

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.

to the OP, i am really interested to see your experience of this bullying and smuggery and what you consider a medicalised birth?

I had a had relatively easy birth, I remember one lady from my NCT class who showed off horrendous ly that she had not pain relief. Or my MIL was smug that she had had no pain relief.

I think that a lot of people have shown examples of smug bitches mothers on this thread.

It is silly as you can not compare one childbirth with another.

maybe the smugness or bitchiness you perceive is actually your own thoughts and feelings overwhelming what is actually being said

at the end of the day, there is no need for rudeness or bitchiness whatever shape or form it takes

i personally will not stop discussing pros and cons of medicalised births, here and in RL , as it is important for the reasons i outlined earlier

as i said bullying is sometimes actually people being cross at being told something they dont; wish to hear

sometimes a c.s is the best and right decision, sometimes, it absolutely is not. but you can;t go back and do it all again the week after if it goes wrong, so you have to try to get all the ifnoramtion and education you need before you are in that delivery room

lulumama, where have I been rude to you? If you think I have been rude then report me.

I am lucky in that I had fairly good birth experience. I am fairly objective. However I have seen smugness towards other mums. The risk of complications can be miminised through good ante natal education, but not completely eliminated.

There are times that you need to completely ditch the birth plan. The nct classes that I attended seemed to suggest that nhs midwives and obstrictians were the enemy and somehow less educated.

To answer the question you ask in the title;

Am I being unreasonable? : To think that having a drug free natural child birth does not mean you are a better/ stronger person or have more guts?

No, YANBU.

But, whilst medical intervention does save some lives, it also causes a whole heap of complications when it is used when it isn't needed. This is a pet topic of mine, I have had a highly medicalised over assisted birth in hospital and a totally "natural" homebirth,so I can make comparisons, andI know, from the research I did when planning my HB that the majority of interventions routinely used in the average hospital birth are totally unneccessary and can actually put mothers and babies at risk.

One of the problems with the maternity services in many developing countries is that they are adopting semi-westernised birthing practices, like supine delivery, coached pushing etc, and can't respond to the complications that arise wth c-sections etc like we can in the UK etc. I know this isn't the only issue, but it is one of them. If these countries would adapt thier traditional birthing practices (calm, upright, active birthing close to or in the mothers home so that labouring women do not have to travel long distances to hospital) whilst improving other things like hygiene and availability of antibiotics (these are just examples, this issue is far to complex to really itemise) then the maternity mortality rate be significantly reduced.

I've felt quite snooted at, actually. About the whole childbirth and pain relief thing. I was quite scared, in fact, that my touchyfeely (lovely) community midwives first time round wouldn't let me have the epidural I was absolutely set on having.

And I speak as someone who did actually have a home birth second time round.

no, i didn;t mean you had been rude to me, i have not explained myself very well !!

what i meant was, there is no excuse for rudeness or bitchiness in any context, about any situation, in RL or on MN, especially about something as intimate and emotional as childbirth. IFYSWIM ?

I did both. A home birth and an induction with epidural. Didn't really enjoy the pain relief free one, loved the epidural! Maybe if you were offered £5000.00 of M and S vouchers for saving the NHS money spent on anaesthetist etc might be incentive!! (no...make that £10,000). Either way, as long as the baby comes out and everyone is in one piece who cares?! Does anyone suffer any stigma as a result of the way they were born at this point in their lives?!! For the natural birthers...enjoy...carry on.., for the epidural takers...hey...why not? Medicine is God given too.

problem is ,sallyally, that a lot of mothers do care how the baby arrived, and that can cause a lot of emotional pain and suffering post brth, when women feel they are not allowed to voice their trauma or negative feelings, becasue they ought to be grateful their baby is safe and sound

Greenmonkies I completely agree with your post. I had an emcs with dd1 and wanted a vbac with dd2. The hospital checked me at 6cm when I arrived and dd2 was not op (big baby) They insisted on me lying on my back to be strapped to a monitor when all signs had been good and I was just on a tens machine. By 3hrs later baby had turned back to back- IMHO it was due to being unable to use OFP positions and I ended up with another emcs. I had insisted I didn't want continual monitoring but was made to feel like a leper and like I would put dd2 at severe risk, when in reality the monitor was serving no real purpose because it kept coming detached and was winding me up so I couldn't relax properly.

I had 3 relatively uncomplicated labours. Pethidine with the first, but nothing with the other 2. Am I smug? If you mean pleased that it went well and happy to have done without intervention, then, yes I'm f*ing smug. If you mean do I feel that mothers who don't do that are lesser people, or failures, then no I am not! Not at all. I consider I was lucky, not brave or strong or anything like that.

I had 2 very good experiences and 1 OKish one. And 3 healthy babes. So why would I not be pleased?

Yes, but quite often women feel worse because they feel they've failed the Big Test in opting for drugs, and/or for having intervention.

That story is so common, unfortunately@mytether

That is why I feel so passionately about 'how other women give birth'. Why should you be bullied and scare mongered into intervention you're not sure about? Why not give women the information and allow them to make their own choices?
FGS, we are not children.

Good God mytether are we agreeing on something??? [faints]

Being supine will have slowed your labour down, and also reduced the blood supply to your womb/placenta whichwas probably the reason your DD2 went into distress (I'm guessing that was why they did the emc?) and you ended up with another emc. [rolls eyes] I get really pissed off with the way maternity services are so badly in need of an overhaul and why we are so ready to think that science knows better than mother nature, despite the fact that nature/evolution has designed a perfectly functional system for birthing babies. Nine times out of ten all we have to do is relax and let our bodies do what they are designed to do andit works just fine.

Before I went into labour with DS1, I thought perhaps a bit of whale music and positive thinking as suggested by hippy-type midwife .

When the pain started, I thought "f*uck this" and asked for an epidural.

I have to say I totally and utterly admire women who give birth without any pain relief.

One thing I find strange is that both my mother and MIL who both claim to have had natural births actually had pethidine in the early stages. I've had pethidine, it was pain relief for me!

actually i think if you birth without drugs you are a superstar and deserve to be a bit smug.

"However if you have had a good birth experience, it can make you stronger in a funny sort of way. There is a lot of life-changing confidence to be had from having birthed with minimum fuss and almost without help. Sorry but that's how it is."

That's interesting Pruners, because that's how I feel about medicalised birth. It was horrible, but we came through it unscathed and I'm proud of that. I don't think natural birthers have the monopoloy on feeling like that.

I didn't run into smugness for either of mine... 1st one epidural and induction, 2nd spat out before the gas and air had been set up.

But I couldn't make ante natal classes due to my wanky work people.

The medical staff were equally supportive and it was no one elses business.

I prefered the 2nd labour because it was quicker, not because it was more natural. With the first I read the whole paper and did the crossword before anything happened. I was so bored.

Woah! It's not a competition. "I am considerably stronger than youuuuuuuu'

Ahh GM childbirth is a different matter- I'm all for the natural route DD2 didn't go into distress, just didn't progress beyond 9cm and didn't descend. They did let me stand after an hour lied flat, which is why I think she went OP tbh.

she was lateral when I was first examined,so could have gone either way. I am convinced that if I could have been on all 4s I could have turned her.

I had a 9lb first baby with no pain relief. Am I smug? No, because I can no longer cough or laugh without risking peeing myself

But, on the plus side my son had no drugs in him when he was born! Glad I got that one in perspective.

God knows why I got so caught up in the natural birth thing that I was so stubborn that I wouldn't got to the main hospital even when he was stuck and the ambulance was waiting outside.

I count myself as lucky that he was ok despite me being stubborn.

I think I might not be so set on a natural birth next time.

Message withdrawn

I had one of those medicalised births and one of those drug free ones (in my case because it was so easy I didn't need the drugs, not because I was brave - in fact I was braver and tolerated far more pain the first time round, when I ended up with an epidural).

The thing that shocked me was the reaction of the midwives after my second one - just how blatantly, explicitly, pleased with me they were. The first time round I felt like they thought I was bit of a nuisance asking for an epidural but thought I must be imagining it. Their reaction the second time, after my quick drug-free birth, left me in no doubt I had not been imagining anything. They thought I was great (lots of 'well done!' 'good girl!') for having a baby without drugs. Given that that was actually the easier birth I think that was pretty damn inappropriate