kate winslet and the bogus natural birth

[squirmyworm]

anyone see that kate winslet story about how she had her first baby by emergency c-section but was too upset to admit to it as she felt a failure so she told everyone it had been a 'natural' birth. Only now she's had her second child 'naturally' and presumably feels she's done it properly and become a 'powerful woman' - I think those were her actual words - she says she feels she can admit what happened the first time. Anyone else feel really cross about this? How dare she imply that one kind of birth makes you a better woman than any other kind? I had an emergency section and the only thing that mattered to me was getting a healthy baby at the end of it... I certainly didn't waste any time pondering whether I wasn't a proper woman or not! I used to think she was quite down to earth but now it seems she's just another obsessively navel gazing celeb - or am I being unfair?

Aloha, I don't feel any guilt about the pain relief side - I had nearly 2 bottles of the stuff with DS1 and thought it fab stuff and rather foolishly sent the anaetha... anaethe... epidural man away as they said I was nearly there. It's purely the fact that he had to be pulled out and I didn't push him out as nature intended my body to do. It wasn't a huge guilt and certainly not enough to make me lie about the delivery and pretend I'd simply squatted down, coughed and given birth to my 10lb monster baby but it was there, niggling away. Also, having given birth to DS2 with no assisted delivery (but loads of gas and air again!) the feeling went. It simply didn't matter any more although whether this was simply because of time passing or because I'd "done it naturally" and found that it was no picnic either, I don't know. So many things were different about DS2s labour that it would be impossible to pin point anything specifically that made me feel better about it.

I don't, however, have any sort of "I'm better than you" feelings when talking to people who have had c-sections. The "failure" feeling was always purely limited to my expectations of myself; what other people did really didn't matter to me. Which is quite right, obviously! Everyone's labour/circumstances are different and, deep down, I realise that as long as you both survive the labour it doesn't matter how the baby arrived.

Maybe I'm not explaining myself well. It's was never a rational feeling I guess and it has since faded away - 5 yrs down the line it really doesn't matter how DS1 arrived. As these feelings of "failure" were down to just a ventouse delivery, I wonder how I would have felt if I'd had a c-section? It may have been better as then it was clearly an emergency or maybe it would have been worse because it was more intervention. Personally, I'm glad I didn't find out as the thought of a c-section scares the pants off me!

I've rambled a bit there but maybe this helps you understand why I felt this way.

Can I just add that no one made me feel a failure at all. It was all down to my own expectations.

That is very interesting SD. Do you think that it is all part of the drive that society has to be 'good' at everything? Our whites have to be brilliant white, our families have to be fed on organic, home cooked food, out kids have to go to all the clubs and classes. I get the feeling that being 'good enough' is so often seen as failure, and it isn't!

We all seem to be beating ourselves up over more and more things. During pregnancy we are made to feel a failure if anything other than spring water and organic food passes our lip, heaven help us if we ate soft cheese before we found out we were pregnant. We have to give birth with no intervention. Breast feeding is a must, can't fail there. Cloth nappies, yes, and better make them unbleached. And while we are washing our nappies and making ur own food (organic only) we have to make sure that we stimulate out young, go to the right m& T groups. Support the older ones, stretch their abilities, but at the same time make sure we don't put too much pressure on them.

We should all stay at home, except that staying at home may not give them the right gender examples. Better to go out to work then, prehaps not. At ever stage we seem to be given the choice of 'damned if you do and damned if you don't'. We realy are geiing to the point where we are driven with guilt whatever we do. Nothing that we do is ever 'good enough'. Time that we all got off the treadmill (and soap box )

We do have the most amazing cover-up about the pain of childbirth, these days, don't we? I still don't understand WHY loads of first-timers, obviously including Winslet, don't wake up and listen to a few real women's stories, realise that it's going to hurt like f*ck whatever Sheila Kitzinger says about psycho-sexual experiences, and start weighing up their pain relief options (and yes, I do mean assessing the pros and cons of everything from waterbirth at home to elective C-section).

Having said that, I felt the most crashing failure about begging for an epidural at 5cm with dd1. And that's after being set on an epidural pretty well from the moment of a positive test, and several run-ins with a midwifery team who'd have been only too happy if I'd opted for a home birth. I felt a failure for that, and then for having to have a ventouse. (Then, of course, I felt a failure for still being fat and flabby when half my antenatal group was back in size 10 jeans....)

Oh, and on the 'being good at everything' theme; haven't we always been under pressure to be beautiful, domestic goddesses? Soothing male brows, raising immaculate children, making do and mending, cooking sustaining meals, blacking our doorsteps (or is it scrubbing them) every Monday, you should see her washing flapping on the line...

And still having the energy to be red hot in bed??

I just think that we all need to be kinder to ourselves. Our expectations are all so high that we are almost bound to be let down by something. And I'm putting myself in with this. I think it is something that we all do.

I'm clearly very well adjusted then, you should see the state of my house! And this is my 3rd day off work since I've been ill and ds has been ill (seems better today but nursery won't have him until tomorrow). And I've had to rearrange a job interview...

Good Grief - I didn't realise that I was less of a woman for having 2 caesareans - I was just glad that the kids both arrived safely.

I have great child-bearing hips, had a very easy pregnancies, had my TENS machine at the ready but no labour - obviously my body let me down at the final fence.......2 weeks overdue and a failed 3 day induction.

I have to say I was surprised that the Dr wanted to do a section to get ds1 out, but by that stage I just glad to get him out.

With ds2 I went overdue again, so Dr decided to go straight to c-section... and I was actuallly quite relieved

I have no regrets and it has never crossed my mind to feel a failure because I don't do labour.

Stupidgirl: The way in which people can tend to get het-up and passionate and quite evangelistic about the debate is similiar, but I think there is a big difference between appraoches to nappies and to childbirth, and that is that while you COULD attach value judgements to choice of nappies - because it is (unusual circs excepted) a CHOICE, the need to have a cesarean is just that, a need, and there should be none of this hierarchy-of-birth nonsense, with yogic-breathers-no-pain-relief at the top and people who could well have died without the sensible intervention of a CS treated like bottom-feeding apologies for women!
(I am a yogic breather who used disposables...and know I am not a real woman because I have never owned any Manolo Blahniks)

I must be weird then, because I don't feel a failure at all. I was relieved to go straight to section for ds2 and if I'd lived 100 yrs ago, ds1 and I would both have died. Hows that for your body letting you down? What a load of absolute 1st-world-resource-guzzling-spoilt bollocks. I feel sorry for those who genuinely felt a failure for anything around childbirth, but a check up from the neck up is definitely required for some of this celebrity bollocks. I'm with you Aloha, et al. The issue is interesting, but there is also something suspect and S&M going on too, also a lot of 'look at me, I can stand pain, wow, when I go to the dentist, I even ask him to use a jackhammer too, oooh, orgasmic.....' shite.

I must be a bloke the Blu, cos I don't even know what Manolo Blahniks are

I didn't feel a failure after my sections either. I was just damn happy to have had the option. But I do feel that as women we beat our selves up far too much and take responsibility for too much that goes 'wrong' in life.