When I look back at my impressions of “the good mother” and the “perfect woman” I visualised a made up version of Barbie, a step ford wife, breastfeeding in perfect lipstick and always kind and calm. I don’t know where I picked this idea up as that certainly was not the mother I had nor was it any mother that I had ever seen.
Women in our society are expected to look a certain way and behave a certain way, children are to be “seen and not heard” STILL, and our aim, as human givers, is simply to please the men…the human beings.
There is no mess, our blood is hidden, our postpartum period is covered up so that we can present the good woman and child to the world. An impossible standard. The kind OBGYN pleases our husbands by stitching our vulvas up a little more. Our husbands stay up near our faces while the business end is tended to by gloved and masked men.
Birth in the media is a joke. A woman’s water breaks and immediately she rushes to hospital, only to sweat a little on her back and push her baby out while being coached how to breathe by hospital staff.
The reality of birth is so vastly different and I wonder how much damage the media has done in portraying birth in this way.
Firstly, not every woman should give birth in a clinical hospital setting. If the birth mumma has a low risk pregnancy or even if she just feels more comfortable, she may choose to birth at home.
Secondly, I hardly have witnessed an intervention free birth where the birthing woman is laying on her back. Physiology tells us that this position is HARDEST to deliver a baby in, the sacrum is in the way and we are then working against gravity.
Third, women are powerful and when we understand and are connected to our experience, women’s intuition will guide her to breathe her baby out. We do not need to be told how to breathe UNLESS we have an epidural and cant actually feel where to push as our baby is descending (she will also likely be on her back in this scenario).
The year is 2020, and over the past few years we have witnessed countless families go out for a family meal only to shove a screen in each of their children’s faces, one per child to save any arguing. Babies are slept in cribs in rooms seperate to their parents, transported in prams and not held for long periods of time so that families can jump straight back into their busy lives. We shove pacifiers in their mouths so that they don’t make any noise, everything about infancy has been made disposable and plastic wrapped. Plastic nappies, bottles, wipes, dummies, sheets, cutlery, toys and crockery.
We say “good boy” when the children sit still and stay quiet, zombies out on their iPad or in a sugar coma. Parents of a child expressing themselves are given horrid looks “how dare those people bring their bad children out in public, their noisey children, without a screen!”. Breastfeeding past infancy is shunned. Co sleeping is touted as russian roulette.
Stories are passed down by generations, “you slept through the night at two weeks old!” “you were the perfect baby!” but neglect the fact that you were formula fed and cried it out from birth to your perfect sleeping habit.
Today we are a consumer society, commercialised from the beginning of life. Expecting parents need bottles and gadgets, huge hulking prams, high chairs, small chairs that can prop your baby up before they are ready, mobiles to engage their attention as if the loving parents face is not enough, so many toys in every single primary colour, and apps to track pregnancy and infancy.
When a birth experience centres around the mother and baby, everyone wins. Mum reports better mental health following the experience, baby is delivered in full health. Even if intervention is required, the birthing mother is clearly informed and makes empowered decisions.
Why then are hospital policies regarding birth created by men? Why are most obstetricians male? Why do we give our birthing power away to the hospital staff?
Our society is still largely controlled by the patriarchy. This is not to give men a hard time, but to give attention to the fact that it makes no sense to follow a system designed by men (on a masculine time frame) that really does not have anything to do with them.
However long ago, birth was women’s business. The men were very rarely involved in the birthing experience, women were revered. Or perhaps I am imagining this utopian past?
Then hospitals came about, clinical and sterile. Doctors would chloroform birthing mothers “taking away their pain” yes and essentially taking away their experience, power, autonomy. Babies were pulled from their mothers, c sections came into play, babies and mothers were separated from each other, formula was encouraged, fear and mystery surrounding birth became the norm.
Today, in Australia, birth is controlled by a hierarchy. At the top of that hierarchy is the insurance companies, who make money from every intervention and deem a “successful” birth to be the most controlled. Birth cannot be controlled. Women should not be controlled, coerced, manipulated and butchered to suit a system that makes men more money!
Hospitals have a time frame for the duration of pregnancy and the duration of birth. Throughout your pregnancy, hospitals like to see inside our growing bellies (not trusting that women know their own bodies and are already connected to their baby) to measure and “your baby is too big for your pelvis, you must be induced immediately if you want to push her out! you’re baby is too small, there must be something wrong, you must be induced immediately so that we can help!” At exactly 40 weeks according to scans and mathematics, the hospital will put pressure on expectant mothers to have a stretch and sweep, an induction, not to simply trust that baby will come when baby is ready. You want to wait until 42 weeks?! Insanity!
Every intervention and drug used during labour makes someone more well off and it is not the birth families.
I have attended many births as a doula and was obviously present for my own three children’s birthing. My first birth was in a hospital, I was young, I was educated yet from the outset felt disempowered. When I arrived at hospital I was made to feel as though only a machine could truly tell the midwives that I was in labour, that being “only 4cms” after two full days upon arrival was a negative thing. I was TOLD (and isn’t that just the sentence right there) to have my waters broken to speed things up yet that water birthing would no longer be an option AFTER that was done. I was TOLD that the “only way my baby was coming out would be via c section” after 16hours in the hospital. There was no informed consent because I was in labour. Because I was told.
I have heard “just a little jab” that many times, and no risks or benefits explained in regard to the syntocinon injection women receive to speed up the placenta’s delivery.
As birth educators, midwives, doula’s, as mothers we have the opportunity to give our pregnant sisters real information that they can then use to design their birth plan. When a woman approaches her birth with a plan and a vision she is more likely to have a good experience, IF she is surrounded by the right birth team.
When I was 23 I fell pregnant and as this was to be both mine and my partner’s first child and both sides first grandchild, there was much excitement, fear, and stories shared. There were plenty of opinions on where I should birth, how I should raise my child, and of course many comments on my body. I was working in a big chain gym and competing in Sport Aerobics, so my body was apparently available to criticism and opinion. I heard “you have certainly put on a lot of weight for how far along you are” “are you sure it’s not twins?” “you’re definitely having a girl because you are carrying it all in your butt, like I did!”. When I expressed my desire for a home birth, I was met with terrified eyes from all family members, so my partner at the time refused to “allow” me to birth at home. During conversations with older women, if I communicated that I wanted a natural, drug free birth, I was met with “you just wait honey, you’ll be screaming for an epidural once those contractions kick in!”
I did my absolute best to block these comments, I managed to overcome an eating disorder and quit smoking when I found out I was pregnant, and I prepared for my natural, drug free birth in a hospital. We did hypnobirthing, I journaled, I was on a journey. I spent a lot of time alone talking and writing to my baby. Those projections though, that negative energy, in combination with a worried partner and looking like a twelve year old (I do not look my age), meant that fear was always behind my experience.
Fear causes us to go into flight or fight response. Fear causes tension. Fear inhibits physiological birth. When other women perpetuate the “war stories” and themselves fear birth due to their unpleasant experience or trauma, they subconsciously or consciously pass this on. When partners perpetuate the “it’s like watching your favourite pub burn down” theme, and just stay “away from the business end” how can birthing families not fear massive changes to the nature of their relationship. Fear causes us to give our power away to someone who is able to “fix the problem”, it means that birthing women are then at the mercy of a system.
