Newsworthy?
A woman wrote to me just today. She said she is staying home to birth. As far as I’m concerned, she has the best possible chance of avoiding a c-section that way. She’s already had four – I’d say that was enough for anyone, wouldn’t you? If the incision holds up to term, it has almost always proven its integrity. (You want it to hold up? Nutrition, nutrition, nutrition, for starters.)
I’ve worked with many women who’ve had multiple cesareans and who then birthed naturally. They don’t want to be cut open again! They don’t want to have to recover from major surgery. They don’t want to leave their other children behind while they go to a hospital and submit to yet another round of anesthesia after which someone will take a knife and begin to cut. They want the opportunity to link themselves to their ancestresses, all of whom delivered vaginally (“from below” is still one of the obstetrical terms that ought to be shot at dawn – as if delivering by section is the superior way to go: from above?).
These women are conscious. These women want the full expression of their feminine selves. They have not anesthetized their woman place – they’ve not stuffed the birthing part of themselves into a cranny deep inside. A woman who is frightened about labor and delivery so much so that she wants to numb herself from the entire process lives separated from her whole being – as if she has to tiptoe around in her Self instead of accepting her strength and power.
Whenever you go through something you think is terrifying and come out the other side, you grow and you have more self-respect in terms of your own strength. I wanted that more than I wanted whatever sort of numbing that the hospital would have offered. – Ani deFranco
An erection is (so I’ve been told) pleasurable and part of a man’s sexual identity. When a man is able to get an erection but is not being able to ejaculate, this is a source of tension, concern, and upset. Conscious women who are able to become pregnant and carry a baby to term are delighted – but when they are unable to birth their babies, many of them feel partially impotent themselves. They want the entire experience, the whole enchilada. What difference does it make if a woman births vaginally or by cesarean?
A WHOLE LOT.
If only babies could talk.
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