Her post about childbirth and the experiences of women she knows is incredibly powerful:
I'm not sure her comparison with cows is valid; my understanding was that walking on two legs meant that our pelvises were a lot smaller than other mamals, and made child-birth more dangerous. But the issues she raises are really important
My mother is in her fifties. From her I've learned that stitches *hurt*. That being shaved feels horrible as it's growing back. That enemas are standard procedure (my child mind said 'ugh!'). That she was put under intense pressure to be surgically sterilised after every birth until the third "I think they gave up on me at that stage".
I visited Katie with her newborn and she told me how she 'behaved like a bitch' because she didn't want the nurses to touch her, but they told her it had to be done anyway (putting a monitor on her stomach).
That was her third birth. She 'slept through her second', terrified of repeating the trauamatic long labour of her first. For months approaching the third she was unable to relax, expecting once again the nightmare of her first delivery.
She also has a amazing post for Blog Against Sexual Violence Day.
Go check her out out
5 comments:
Yes our pelvis's have changed shape but women are still made to birth. The human birth is more tricky than many animals BUT it is so so so important that we don't undermine each other by saying "we are just not made for it" or whatever. Some of the problem is that the medics have "stolen" this belief from women and made them feel useless in that they can't even given birth without help - which is a one of the 'purposes' of being a woman. I am biased, I am involved in birth and have seen so many wonderful triumphant births and say what you like but our midwifery system is better than the USA medical one (and with better birth stats) because it is (or should be) woman-centric. Personally I had a c/s, then a normal birth in hospital and recently a homebirth.
Thanks for spotlighting this blog Maia, very interesting!
On the issue of childbirth I am going to write eventually about my own experience, but I wanted to quickly say that I think we should be supporting women to make informed choices about their deliveries. Many women sadly are disempowered by a system that is often quite baffling. Most times natural childbirth will be best, but sometimes caesarean will trump it for good reasons. I don't understand why the method of delivery seems to be yet another stick to beat women with - and so often we do it to ourselves.
Julie - totally agree there is a time and a place for sections - just don't think they should be the default. I hate seeing women being put down but others (and as you say themselves) for how they birth. We don't need it
Really it's a pretty amazing thing that we can do with our bodies - childbirth. I think there are very very few women out there who actively seek caesareans (particularly after they've been to antenatal classes). They aren't the "easy option" at all. I would much rather have had a few days of potentially painful labour (and in reality it would probably have been much much less if I could have done things that way) than a year long recovery from being sliced open. At the three month mark I am finally starting to feel like I could do a sit-up without popping my belly open again.
That said, I had a very positive experience with the actual operation, and it was necessary. If I had to have a caesarean again that would be fine. But I'd like to try it the other way if possible :-)
Thanks for highlighting this Maia :-)
Katie's mother was a midwife. I asked her once about the human birthing thing (not being a mother myself), as it had always struck me as *wrong* that a woman should have to birth a round solid object when other mammals had their babies dive out feet first in a nice gradual wedge shape.
She told me that the skull of a baby actually does elongate during birth - that it's designed to do that.
I've been reading around a bit since writing that post and it is fascinating to read women's experiences and see where they do differ from calving.
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