in not fully understanding 'natural' birth

[edd021208]

A lot of mums I know talk about how they had 'all natural' births but then talk about how fantastic they found using gas and air .....I've no big issue one way or another (had epidurals) but wonder if using gas and air constitutes an 'all natural' birth?

I've had a natural wisdom tooth extraction! Do I win a cookie?

Oh but I had TENS, birthing pool and G&A for birth, up to the bit where the pushing started. Here's the cookie back. I only had a bit.

Unless by natural, you just mean taken out via the mouth, rather than pulled through an incision in your cheek...

I sometimes use 'natural' and 'normal' interchangeably. In my view a completely 'natural' or 'normal' birth is one where labour starts spontaneously and the baby and placenta are born without recourse to instruments or syntocinon/syntometrine. One out of three of my births would count as 'natural' by that criteria.

I'm glad this topic gets discussed so often on mumsnet. I just wish there was more focus on the system we all give birth in which results in only a fraction of us having 'normal' births, rather than us all getting personal about competitive birthing.....

clam I felt just as proud after my non natural birth as my natural I had nourished and brought two little people into the world I would have felt proud even of a section it really didn't matter either way as if I had a birth as painful as the first I would have pain relief again I did just as well both times and on ds the only reason I didn't have more was because I was not allowed as I was not 5 cms and went from 3 to delivered in 30 mins.

I only felt like a failure when someone told me I had not had a natural birth and that pethadine may have hurt my baby. Perhaps I didn't make that clear if anything I feel more proud of non natural birth as I endured so much more pain.

Surely everyone regardless deserves to feel proud you don't get through the pg and birth scot free it is hard for everyone. I personally have alot of respect for women who have a section and have to get up and take care of a newborn baby and a house and a stream of visitors I am not sure I could.

Qally, what's a duck broken?? I'm dying to know!

I've often wondered exactly what is meant by this term. I had a sweep - does that count as natural as not spontaneous, although I was having contractions at the time?

Why is tooth extraction the commonly perpetuated analogy to childbirth? It's not a fair comparison since childbirth is something your body is designed to do naturally, you cannot naturally expel a tooth from your body. Or if you can then you're a better person than I am.

Chilbirth is a unique experience and each person experiences it in different ways. There are myriad factors affecting the way the birth will occur and I think in attaching labels to it, we have to be careful not to attach meaning at the same time.

I think the term natural is a misnomer and largely because it sets up a dichotomy between natural and unnatural where unnatural is only ever going to be the perjorative term. Of course we don't say a birth was 'unnatural' but it is there behind the labels of 'cs' and 'ventouse' because it sits in direct opposition to the 'natural' label applied to other births.

Taking offence is subjective but I do think we would do better to use more descriptive and accurate terms about childbirth because as is demonstrated by this thread, the term 'natural' is unclear. 'Vaginal', 'lscs' etc far more efficient and less open to interpretation.

'Natural' is not a gold star on yourr birth notes, it's a description.

"I had a sweep - does that count as natural as not spontaneous"

good question SHRIIIEEEK.

I used to think that a sweep wasn't really intervention, but feel differently now. I had a sweep with my third. Two sweeps actually. Looking back, I sometimes wonder if that played a part in the labour being longer and more unpleasant than it might have been, that if I'd just waited until I went into labour spontaneously I might have had an easier birth........

We've got so used to intefering in labour with things like sweeps, amniotomies, supine positions, moving women from pillar to post during established labour, that we've stopped seeing these things as interventions - we just see them as part of the natural process, but they're not really.

Shriiieeeek - I assume that by 'breaking her duck' Qally means scoring, getting off zero - like in cricket where a batsman who doesn't score any runs is out for a duck, and someone who does something they haven't done before (like having their first child, or selling their first painting) has 'broken their duck'.

I hope this helps. Of course it could be some obscure birthing term that I've never heard of, and probably has something to do with a native ritual involving waterbirds that welcomes the child into the world and blesses them so they won't go quackers when they grow up - maybe.....

slushy, lol, round here the folk i know also seem to compete more on how hideous / long / painful / instrumental / torn & stitched the whole thing was rather than how "natural" or how 'brave' they were denying themselves pain relief. I guess some folk just like to compete! IMO its just luck how your body deals with it all.

elmo, I cannot speak for the women you know at all but I do think the label 'competitive' in a lot of these instances is unfair. To listen to me talk about the birth of my dd- I do, a lot, on here and off- you'd notice I fixate on the bits you describe ie the pain, length, the instruments, the damage, the eventual cs. I suppose this could be misconstrued as competitive, especially when in discussion with others who have had similar experiences. However, what isn't recognised is that it's borne of a need to talk about it, a desperation to make sense of it and in some small part yes, to justify the 'unnatural' turn that events took. Particularly when others are describing similar traumas it's a relief to share and hope that they can understand, to identify with somebody and hope to make sense of your own experience.

I think the lasting effects of birth trauma are predicated upon the way we are allowed to deal with the birth afterwards ie a freedom to talk about it and understand it without labels whether those labels be about the birth itself or the way we need to relive it.

Free What I believe we were both referring too was not women who are in pain but everytime I go to the mothers and baby group the same discussion comes up I once told my story in order to try and make friends and was told mine did not count these ladies change there stories in order to compete one women said the first time she had a 36 hr labor then the nxt week said that one doctor was inducing her and on the shift change the other was stopping her labor they apparently did this for a week as her notes were lost and the one doctor thought she was early because she was so small the women we are referring to change their story when someone beats them.

Also I like to talk about my births because to me it was the two most important days and most overwhelming days of my life and I want to share the emotions with someone but I am called smug by those who have had a bad birth.

I know slushy, I know. Like I said, I don't know the women you are referring to and am fully aware of the competitive everything in the way you share experiences at mother and toddler/baby groups. However, I do know that I am always worried that I come across as a competitive bad birther (have had the accusation levelled at me) and it wounded me terribly to think that people thought I was using something that has informed my wellbeing ever since to play a game of 'whose birth was worse'.

I do get the sense from many people suffering from birth trauma that trying to share their experiences with other mothers is often misconstrued as bragging/competition. I like to bear in mind that one of those women at the toddler group who is describing her experience might just be the one that is going home and crying into a pillow so her baby can't hear her. And if I can help by just listening then I will try to do so.

I cut my arm off without any pain relief

pussies

I wouldn't think you smug for having had a good birth, but would raise my eyebrows at you reporting that you felt proud of yourself.
Why?
Presumably, everyone in the group has produced a baby at the end of it too. Why would you be proud for not having had pain relief (if that was the reason) when others had the labour from Hell and needed it?

In a wood I hope. At the stroke of midnight without any surgical instruments while your husband intoned a gregorian chant.

It's official.

sherby wins.

You can usually tell the difference as the one who is really upset is not talking over the rest trying to make herself heard and not listening to anyone else plus those who are bragging usually say it in a uncaring way.

I personally think it is horrible to brag about a bad birth in order to compete and make a mockery of people who have genuinely suffered and need to talk and try to make sense of what happened, because with these people shouting no one hears the ones who are really in pain.

I am really sorry that you had a bad birth and while trying to deal with it were accused of competing.

I like chocolate hobnobs too...

I like chocolate hobnobs too...

I think the idea of bragging about a birth, or competitive birthing, is distasteful BUT I think it's entirely understandable for a woman to feel hugely pleased with herself if she experiences the high you can get after a drug free birth. That's not to say you can't feel elated after ANY birth, but there are physiological differences when you haven't had drugs, and for SOME women it's a different feeling. My feeling after a long hard painful natural birth with my first baby was WOW, I did THAT!
And I'm not going to deny that feeling. It was real.

Doesn't mean I'm judging any one else's experience - just describing mine.

Ok Stayingscarygirl...

....but only because you asked twice.

Violet, it must be rubbish to be accused of smuggery when sharing your birth story. What, do they only count if shifts changed eighteen times and five doctors had to pull the babe out by it's ears and then give you ten thousand litres of blood?

Incidentally, I had every intervention going culminating in an ecs. I can say absolutely that I'd have been chuffing delighted with myself if I'd managed to do it drug-free (as planned ) and would certainly have been congratulating myself for it. What's so wrong with that? I'd have completed an amazing act of physical endurance totally on my own.

This doesn't mean that my birth was any less valid or less worth celebrating.

It saddens me that some women seem to feel that because their experience was awful and traumatic, those whose weren't are either bragging or being insensitive.

I totally agree notanumber

Every experience is valid. My dd2 was a Csection, and while it was a very different experience, and I didn't feel I'd given birth, but undergone major surgery (which I had!) I felt sheer relief and amazement that modern technology had in the first instance picked up the IUGR which my baby suffered from, and secondly, ensured a safe csection delivery.

My first birth, I liken to running a marathon. I wanted to see if I could do it naturally, I reached the point of wanting to die and thinking no, I can't, and then managed to get through it, and had the biggest high imaginable.

So - equally powerful and valid feelings. Just very different.

Well put Violet.

However, I do think that you can feel proud of yourself after a C-Section too. Not just relief and amazement (though those emotions were certainly prominant for me) but proud of what you've achieved.

You either went through long and painful hours of labour which wasn't working out and thought you were going to die with the pain up until someone called ecs, and then went through surgery to bring your baby into the world. Hooray! Well done you - you are a hero! Lots to be proud about there, I'd say.

Alternatively, you had some (probably quite frightening) medical or psychological reason for having an elective cs, but you took it on the chin and prepared yourself for major surgery to bring your baby into the world. Also something to be proud of.

None are any more or less valid than the others, and I think you can justifiably be proud of all of them.