the ‘natural birth’ debate at A Little Pregnant

[originally posted at my old blog on 16 August 2008]

This admittedly lengthy post requires some back-story in its first few paragraphs because I’m writing in response to a conversation at a particular blog I read. But my point (once I manage to get to it …) is about a brand of nastiness that happens all over the place: the snarky, holier-than-thou, better-informed-than-thou attitudes that so many mothers direct toward mothers whose birthing choices diverge from their own. You know: the stereotypical unmedicated homebirther passing cruel little judgments upon women who loved their epidurals or had cesarean sections; the stereotypical epidural-loving woman passing cruel little judgments on women she views as ‘playing the martyr’ by declining pain medication; the list goes on and on. Perhaps we ought to remember that pregnancies, labors, and births are all deeply personal and individual? Just maybe?

Julie, of A Little Pregnant, is a funny, smart, thoughtful, and utterly engaging writer. I regularly read her blog because it’s so well-written and also because her experiences in reproduction have been so completely different from mine. As I work toward supporting diverse labors and laboring women, I think it’s important to listen to the stories of women who have had long-term struggles with (in)fertility, who have all-too-well-founded fears about the safety of the babies they are trying so hard to bring alive into the world, who have experienced so many interventions just trying to get pregnant that their relationships with doctors, medical science, modesty, pregnancy, etc., etc. are necessarily different from mine. I am exceedingly grateful to Julie for the very personal experiences and insight which she shares so publicly.

I usually don’t comment on her blog, whose comments serve primarily as a community for people dealing with infertility (and, occasionally, for embittered arguments involving people who unfortunately make breastfeeding advocates and ‘natural birth’ folks look like dreadful people). I’m not relevant to that conversation. I don’t have any right to suggest anything to anyone there; I don’t know Julie or the commenters personally; I haven’t experienced the challenges they’ve experienced.

Recent discussion there has left me with something to say, though, so I’ve decided to post my musings here.

In this post, Julie responds to this earlier comment–

I’ve had three wonderful all natural vaginal births with midwives and the experiences were transcendant. It is not something I would have given up because of a remote statistical risk that something even more remote would happen. And I certainly would not have given it up because I was being pressured by authoritarian doctors who are clearly practicing CYA [cover your ass] medicine.

You’re a smart cookie, Julie, so stop drinking the Koolaid.

–with a lot of anger over the patronizing tone of that last line and the implication that the commenter knows more about Julie’s situation than she herself does (being probably deluded by the medical establishment, being unable to choose appropriate care providers). Literally hundreds of commenters responded with something along the lines of “Fuck her!” Now, I suspect that the commenter meant extremely well, but also that she totally doesn’t grasp the blogger’s fundamentally different–and, as with any pregnancy and birth, individual–situation. I feel badly for this well-meaning commenter who got such ire cast at her, even though I totally agree that the comment is patronizing and wrong-headed. (Also, I’m sorry, but I still can’t figure out what “a remote statistical risk that something even more remote would happen” could possibly mean. “More remote” than what? Oh well.)

But some of the follow-up commenters say things that really bother me, largely because they are at least as judgmental and generalizing and patronizing as what the original problematic comment says. For example, one comment here reads:

You know, I have 2 children. I gave not one hoot about how the experience of bringing them into the world would be for ME – I just wanted the BABY to be HEALTHY.
“Magical”, “Transcendent” “Beautiful”? How fucking self-indulgent can other women get?
I mean seriously.

This comment, and many like it (far beyond the context of A Little Pregnant or even the internet), assumes that viewing birth as a potentially good experience is inherently selfish. It reinforces the extraordinarily cruel habit people have of saying, to a woman struggling to accept a disappointing or traumatic birth experience (or coping with postpartum depression and/or postraumatic stress disorder), “Why be upset? You have a healthy baby, and that’s all that really matters, right?” It seems to dismiss the (human, sentient, feeling, spiritual) birthing woman as an important part of childbirth.

The comment also imagines that an interest in “how the experience of bringing [a baby] into the world would be for [the birthing woman]” is necessarily opposed to or mutually exclusive from a primary interest in “the BABY [being] HEALTHY.” The vast, vast, VAST majority of women who hope to experience a personally meaningful and beautiful unmedicated birth are far more committed to the health and safety of their babies and themselves than to any particular birth plan. As far as I can tell, most of these women have actually researched their options (just as Julie has been doing) and decided that, in their particular circumstances, this birth plan is the safest for themselves and their babies. Having chosen the safest-seeming option, many women do then think about how to make their c-sections or vaginal births (medicated or unmedicated) as meaningful and beautiful as possible–how best to enjoy meeting their precious babies. That’s not “self-indulgent”; that’s a way of cherishing one’s family and respecting oneself.

Many such comments also seem to imagine that, while women who prefer unmedicated vaginal births are merely “out for the experience,” women choosing epidural pain relief in hopes of a more pleasant birth are somehow exempt from this criticism (that it is selfish and “fucking self-indulgent” to want an enjoyable birth experience). But, in general, these choices spring from a single impulse: to make the birth experience as pleasant as possible, according to an individual woman’s definition of “pleasant,” whether that primarily means “pain-free,” “empowering,” “intense,” “calm,” or whatever (all ranking AFTER, of course, “safe for mother and baby”). And it is wise and good to seek the birth that will be safest given your own medical situation and most satisfying given your own personality and history.

It is, correspondingly, inane and unkind to judge each other’s experiences from afar, thinking to ourselves, “Tut tut; I would have made such better decisions in her place …” Birth choices are incredibly complex and important; let’s not pretend childbirth is one-size-fits-all.