to detest those who think they are superior beings because they were lucky enough to have a natural birth

[Reallytired]

My son was born naturally, but my second is currently stuck in a transverse position. I am trying everything to get bump to turn, but if it is not sucessful its looks like I will have to have a c-section. In many ways I feel disappointed if I have to have a c-section, but I will still feel proud of myself.

If you go into labour with a transverse lie then there is very little to you can do to deliver naturally. It does not matter how much whale music or however many doulas or independent midwives you employ. My waters broke at 36 weeks last time so this is why am a little concerned. The local hospital is not prepared to try and turn the baby before 38/39 weeks.

I know that it is possible to a have a vaginal breech birth, but with a transverse presentation, its just not going to happen.

I am still hoping bump will turn, but the experience is making realise that a lot in childbirth is complete and utter luck. You can try everything suggested on the internet, but there are times when the baby is stubborn.

think detest is a bit strong.
We planned a hippy,hypnobirthing, home videoed, watery home birth and got a consultant led induction then labour then c section
I was a bit fed up in the first few weeks about not having a so called " normal birth" but really those feelings wore off a little bit more every time I looked at my DS to the point where I couple of months later I wasn't bothered any more.

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I was just glad to have a healthy baby if it wasn't for c-section my son would have died, it really doesn't matter how they get out as long as they do alive. Look forward to having a healthy baby not how it's born.

What I meant was not that parenthood wasn't important (it is) and the most important thing most men and women do but it's just part of our lives. We also have responsibilities to wider family, the community and our contributinos in most cases to work as well. Being a mother has been elevated by some into a job where they have to pass stages. I certainly didn't mean someone with an autistic child would be collecting the badges. Mothers collecting the badges are the vacuuous showing off ones who are usually a bit thick who have nothing in theri lives except to show off about the fact the child can crawl before other chilren can crawl and goes to b aby gym/mandarin and wears designer clothes as if that type of box ticking will prove she is some kind of uber woman.

"Xenia! shock

"And some people make children a kind of career thing for which they need badges when it isn't that at all."

My son is mildly autistic and has dyspraxia. My 'badge' will be seeing him rejoin mainstream education and do as well as he possibly can in life.

What other 'badge' or salary could be more important? Don't get me wrong, I'd like a salary and a job, but ft motherhood isn't some misguided, pointless, foolish sacrafice imo. It's an essential sacrafice, one worth making."

Being the Mum of a sn child though beau is a bit different; that's why we get CA after all. It is a career- because there are people who raise ASAD kids as their career.

DS2 (the only non-baby non- asd one atm) could easily be worked around; he doesn't need someone to pick him up from the bus / take him to appointments / not go to childcare.... ds1 and ds3 do though.

Which is why I insist on putting carer down on forms when it asks for my job. becuase that really is it. ATM, anyway.

Oh right, I get you.

I don't tell people why I don't work. But I'm sure they wonder and judge me sometimes. Most people wouldn't understand anyway. Whenever I tell people they feel they can sort out my life. 'why don't you do x, y, z?!'

BECAUSE obviously life would be so much better if I moved heaven and earth to work in an ordianry job and had childcare costs on top of juggling the stress of working with a child with sx (as wll as other child)!

Have plans but they'll have to wait. I'm not looking for medals. This is just my life. Gotta make the best of it.

Well the pain/fear thing is one of the basics of hypnobirthing. It was true for me, I had no fear and tried to "get out of the way" of my body to let it do its thing. No fear/no pain.

BUT it has to be said, I have great big hips, had an easy pregnancy, a robust baby and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of practice with the self hypnosis. You have to BELIEVE with every fibre of your being that it is going to work.

I think women should do whatever suits them when it comes to labour. I am a hippy freak who does it my way, my closest friend booked in for an elective c-section and I have friends all the way across the spectrum of those two options. Why this has to be a competition is beyond me. But as I said in my previous post I do get a bit annoyed that I cannot share my experience without having shreds ripped off me for making others feel bad about theirs.

pruners and tree [love that juxtaposition of names!) - the only people it was mildly suggested I didn't discuss my birth experience with were the ones who had already had DC and had a horrible time during their births. For some reason, more of my friends and acquaintance had a bad time than good, so it might have seemed to them a bit like rubbing their noses in it, hence why I was happy not to.

I was able to talk to anyone else about it though! Plus I even got to write about it for the journal I used to sub-edit because of my use of raspberry leaf.

habbibou.... am sitting here doing a fair imatation of this face -> at the concept of anyone saying labour pain is just caused by fear.

how utterly bizarre and with even one lunatic like that on the planet it's no wonder so many women have hang ups about birth and the 'right' or 'wrong' way to do it

for the record i've had 3 natural births with no pain relief, no g&a... my last mw called it 'diy birth'... and i was not afraid of any of them (i lie, i was nervous going into the first and terrified when things went wrong but was utterly calm and confidant when it came to my boys)

AND IT BLOODY WELL HURT! how could an organ that big contracting and pulling itself open and an small child traveling down a very small exit possibly not hurt?

it's sad that attitudes like that are at the root of women feeling like they've somehow failed even though they've given birth to a healthy child.

as far as i'm concerned if the baby survives and you survive then you did it right... one of the ladies on my post natal thread told us the other day that the traditional greeting to a new mother in her parents culture is 'you have survived'.... that says it all doesn't it?

PinkTulips I don't think labour pains are just caused by fear but I think they are exacerbated by it.

Your uterus is going to contract and push that baby down, if you can relax and let that happen it is going to hurt a LOT less, than if you freak out and tighten the muscles there. This isn't a value judgment it is simply what happens. THAT is where I think the fear=pain thing comes from. If you can let the muscles do their job then it doesn't have to hurt.

I speak only from my own experience but if someone asks me about hypnobirthing then I tell them the truth about how it went for me, which was because I was not afraid and was fully informed about EXACTLY what happens during a normal birth I was able to have a natural pain free labour.

mrs hippy.... although i agree with the logic of the 'stress slows labour' theory the exact opposite was true for me

my first and second labours i was 5 mins from hospial, at home with dp, relaxed, having tonnes of long showeres, totally calm and welcoming each contraction. both those labours were 18 hours long.

with my third we live an hour from hospital, it was an incredibly icy morning and my mother took 2.5 hours to turn up to mind the kids, i then had an hours drive in the car to cope with. i was doing everything in my power to slow the contractions, getting very stressed and anxious and panicing. that labour was 6 hours and so quick at the end the mw missed his head being born!

well i zoned out during contactions, actively embraced them in fact as each contraction was one closer to having my baby and wasn't tensing against them in any way shape or form. the earlier ones were actually enjoyable.

i have a high pain threshold, i've suffered from life long migraines that painkillers don't touch, have broken bones (including ribs which i didn't have treated), have suffered some fairly horrible injuries over the years and have multiple piercings and tattoos none of which overly bothered me.

but the contractions from a certain point onwards felt like my pelvis was being ripped apart at the seams. i know exactly how relaxed i was as with ds2 for several of them i was hooked up to the monitors for initial assesment, this was within an hour of him being born, having 4 minute long contractions in 10 mins, unable to move or sway with the pain and my bp remained barely above my normal. the mw's at my last 2 births commented on how calm i was.

it was still the worst pain i've ever felt in my entire life by a long shot. i was able to cope with the pain as i was calm and zoning out... but the intensity of the pain was not lessened by these things, merely my reaction to that pain

that's why i detest this 'pain is fear' crap.... spouting such utter shite just means that women who would have been perfectly able for a narural drug free birth panic when they feel pain as they've been told it won't hurt if they're calm and relaxed, think everyhtings going wrong and they're not able to cope and end up with medicalised, intervention ridden births.

I know that psychological states affect the perception of pain - no argument with that. But I was not afraid of giving birth - wildy excited, and happy with great MW, doctor and DH. And it still fucking hurt. BUT - why is this a problem? It went as soon as she was born, I can't remember how it felt now; don't see why pain-free birth is such a holy grail either. I didn't "freak out" - but that's the kind of language that pisses me off, I'm afraid, and what really bugged me about those particular threads.

I was calm, happy and excited and it FUCKING HURT. She had a head circumference of 53cm and weighed 10lb 11oz. I think pain in that situation is fairly reasonable.

I am not arguing that pain is a bad thing in labour, the only thing I am saying is that it is not inevitable. But as I said I had practice hypnotherapy for months before becoming pregnant and then switched to specifically focusing on a pain free birth. It does take a massive amount of practice and I acknowledge that not everyone has the patience (or even the interest), or the time or the resources to pursue that.

Pain during childbirth is very very likely but it is NOT inevitable. All of the women who attended the course with me had either completely pain free or almost pain free labours. It isn't the holy grail but I personally have a crappy tolerance for pain and wanted to do everything necessary to avoid it.

I don't understand why this annoys people so much? I have said upthread that I have no argument with however women choose to have their babies, but whenever I talk about MY personal experience it always ends up in an argument. Why is the fact that I cruised through so bad?

I think because the converse implication is - you had pain? You were scared. Which is a bit irritating.

I think anyone who presumes to tell anyone else why their birth experience didn't go a certain way (unless they were the consultant obst/MW attending) has a bloody cheek personally!

because of the language people like you use morloth.

'It does take a massive amount of practice and I acknowledge that not everyone has the patience (or even the interest), or the time or the resources to pursue that'

inferring that those of us who feel pain do so simply because be don't have the patience to learn not to

like i said, i zoned out (self hypnotised, meditated, whatever terminolgy you like) and it does not switch off the pain.

it makes you mentally able to cope and means you don't tense against the pain or become anxious or hysterical. and yes i'm sure the pain would have been even worse if i hadn't been zoned out but it was by no stretch of the imagination pain free.

i think it's alot healthier for women due to give birth to hear 'it hurts like hell but it's managable and you forget afterwards' than 'pain is not inevitable, if you just remain calm and don't feel fear it won't hurt'

Ah "People Like You" - I see.

I am not inferring anything. If I hadn't had the patience/time/resources to apply to learning to self hypnotise then I would not have had a pain free labour. How is that incorrect?

I found people like you whose used the words "it hurts like hell but it's managable and you forget afterwards" to be really unhelpful and smug. As in "Just wait until you have done it silly girl".

The language used by women who have had terrible birth experiences towards first time mothers can also be upsetting and stressful, personally I think it makes more sense to try to help women avoid horrible experiences rather than set them up to believe that it is inevitable.

Also I really hate "birth" being used as a verb, so couldn't go to "hypnobirthing" classes on linguistic grounds.

at Habbibu birthing pedantry

Habbibu they could have called it anything they liked, as long as it bloody worked I didn't care.

But I didn't have a horrible birth experience - it was fab fab fab - see above. It hurt a lot, but that didn't really detract from the experience - felt so cool when the pain stopped.

I'm just miffed because I wasn't scared and I was calm and I was really really happy. And implications on other threads that I just must have been "freaking out" etc because it hurt are a bit fucking irritating.

I am, pagwatch - it would drive me mad. If the MW had said "let's birth this baby" or somesuch, I'd have kicked her.

Deal or No Deal was on TV when dd2 was born - cons and dh were watching in between contractions. Am happy to accept that seeing Noel Edmonds and the bunch of fuckwit pilgrims may have added to my pain.

I did the hypnobirthing thing, not to the extent that Morloth did, but enough for me - it didn't stop the pain but it helped me to manage it better. I am very glad I did it, I do believe it helped me because I DID have "birth fear" in a very big way.

my stage 2 labour was quite unbelievably painful (imo) but it went smoothly because (I believe) I just "let it happen" (while wailing like an air raid siren).

Just wanted to add that in because I don't want people to throw hypnobirthing out completely, regardless of grammatical pedantry

surely it's far more unhelpful to imply that as long as you work hard enough at the hypnobirthing you are likely to have a painfree birth?