The Business of Birth

For the From Left to Write Book Club we read Tiny Sunbirds, Far Away by Christie Watson. This post is inspired by the book.

Birthing. It's big business here in the States. Expectant mothers plan for the big moment for the better part of those 40 weeks. It's normal for people to inquire about what week you're in, the name of your doctor, where you'll deliver, whether you're having a boy or girl, the name of the baby, if the nursery is ready to go... And then afterward you can count on perfect strangers asking how your delivery went, if you opted to have an epidural, if you're breast feeding, how long you pushed, if you needed a c-section... You don't just have a baby, it becomes the focal point of life. So, as you near the end of pregnancy, you start to obsess a little about the big delivery. OK, maybe YOU don't. But, I do.

My first delivery did not go well. It was long and scary and nasty and has details that make friends of mine reconsider having children. But, it wasn't bad enough to keep me from getting myself back into the same situation. So, here I am... Four days away from my due date and willing labor to start, yet totally freaked out about actually having to go through it.

W's birth could have gone so very wrong. His head was turned up and to the right (I've since heard this described as "sunny side up") and after three hours of pushing his heart rate was rapidly dropping and I was struggling. Things were not looking good. Enter forceps. And I'll stop the story here, but if you're interested you can read a little more here.

For me, there was something both sobering and totally frightening about reading a book in which the twelve-year-old narrator is training to be a birth attendant (aka midwife) in Nigeria. When you're thinking about child birth every day, hoping for a better outcome, feeling resentful about your first bad experience... Well, it's scary to read about labor, especially when they go wrong.

But, at the same time, it's sobering to read about women in huts, laying on the dirt floor, panting. Midwives being called in the middle of the night, washing their hands in polluted water, with a rag and knives as tools. Struggling through the pain in the dark heat with a tween delivering your baby. It makes my impending labor at a top-rated women's hospital sound like a weekend stay at a hotel.

I think of all this and my complaining and whining is suddenly much less warranted.

This post was inspired by Tiny Sunbirds, Far Away by Christie Watson, which I received complimentary as part of the From Left to Write Book Club. To see how this book inspired other bloggers visit From Left to Write.