Joffrey, you said The calm ones who took it all in their stride, were workmanlike in attitude and came in determined to just get on with it - they tended to have the faster and easier births. After a while we played a game where we'd bet how long their labours would be. One particularly nervous woman I reckoned she'd be all day in labour. Sure enough
I think you have to be very, very careful about how you say things like that or what they might imply. There's perhaps an implication in there that if a woman had a difficult or long labour, it's somehow her 'fault'. That her mindset somehow meant she caused what happened to her.
Now, I say this as a woman who planned a home water birth and had the 'right' mindset. I was going to let my monkey do it. I did hypnobirthing, I trusted my body, I knew women had done this for years. I was in control. I was tackling that bastard head on and I was going to breathe that baby out. When I had to transfer in and ended up with an emcs ultimately, I felt a failure. Posters like ollieplimsoles are talking about fear of failure and definitely knowing that they will refuse certain things because they're definitely negative. This dichotomy that we're setting up where natural is good and intervention is bad means that we're telling a woman that only one experience is right or positive or good and the very simple fact remains that we do NOT have control of labour and delivery in general terms. What is the alternative? That my babies being unbirthable and stuck was somehow my fault? I cannot and will not ever accept that.
I love hearing tales of natural and straightforward deliveries. It's empowering and joyful and lovely to hear women talk about these experiences and to hear the sheer pride and celebration in those stories. However, I also love to hear people talk with joy about their inductions and caesareans because they are not negative by default. I've had a few people tell me that a caesarean is a failure and I didn't give birth (mercifully very few), I've been told that the births were a 'horror story'. Well, no, the babies got stuck and I had a caesarean, that's just fact. There's no value attached to that at all. My second birth in particular was so joyful. I smile and laughed and cried with happiness. I felt supported and proud. It was a wonderful day and my story is the story of me meeting my son for the first time in a room full of love and positivity.
I do know why people, when pregnant, don't want to hear stories that fall outside a perceived ideal. I was the same when pregnant with my first and ultimately, it was that which caused my traumatic reaction to her birth. I was convinced that because I wanted a natural delivery, because I believed in my body, it would happen for me. What actually happened is that I physically couldn't give birth naturally, due solely to physiology. Because I'd decided caesareans and hospitals and intervention were just 'horror stories', I thought I'd failed. It took me a while to understand that you can't reduce it down that simplistically.
Most women do have normal deliveries and I think we should celebrate that and support women to have the sort of delivery that is right for them and if a woman wants a normal, drug free delivery there's lots that can be done to encourage that and support her through it. I do just gently suggest that we don't dismiss anything outside of normal and without intervention as 'a horror story' or caused by a woman's mindset.
I do think it seems to be part of the parenting rhetoric. It's not just applicable to birth. The vein of it runs through the parenting years. I'm a breastfeeding peer supporter and so often women who are struggling with feeding feel that they've personally failed. They think, but it's ruddy natural, why am I in pain, why am I struggling, why am I getting it so wrong. And just like with giving birth, there are two things which make all the difference to a woman's feeding relationship with her baby. Support, including knowledge, empowerment and honesty about what is happening and what might happen (just blind belief and telling a woman 'breast is best' achieves nothing) and acceptance; knowing that there are so many variations on what might happen, that there's no such thing as 'failure', that in this you sometimes don't have any control over some of the variables. I think we can do so much more to show that a woman giving formula because she needs to or because she chooses to can be as positive and as empowered as a woman needing intervention in labour because she needs it or chooses it.