Losing sight of the bigger picture

Mia Freedman seems to be writing a lot of articles that really resonate with me lately. This one - a column published in the Sunday Herald Sun today - spoke volumes about how much your priorities change once you've had a baby die and been forced to take stock of the fact that so many facets of pregnancy and childbirth can go so awry - and usually the ones you were least expecting.

The article talks about the rise of what Mia calls (controversially, no doubt) 'birthzillas' - women who are obsessed with controlling every facet of their experience of childbirth, and who define themselves, and others, by the choices they do or do not make in regard to how to get a baby from the womb to the cradle.

Mia defines birthzillas as women who 'appear more interested in having a birth experience than a baby'.  As I found out when watching many friends become pregnant and give birth over the last couple of years, there are a few main 'tribes' that women seem to fall, or be coerced into. Just personally I've known three home birth advocates very well, an elective C-section mum terrified of labour, numerous women who've suffered through a birth in the absence of pain relief due to overwhelming fears of being permanently paralysed by an epidural gone wrong, and a few who have, refreshingly, given little thought to their birth plans and just turned up on the day to do whatever it was that needed to be done. Women bring so many different beliefs and such different histories to childbirth, and often it is confusing to get access to reliable information about the real risks and benefits of various alternatives. It's little wonder that women, in the most vulnerable time of their lives, cling to the birth plan in order to retain some kind of semblance of control. 

I didn't get time to make a birth plan. And even if I had, how would it have helped? I'm sure as hell that no one tells women they need to make a section for what they want to happen in the event that their baby dies. And therein lies my new problem with birth plans. They encourage women to think they have control and choice. Except that sometimes you get no choice, either in how you give birth to your baby, or more importantly, to whether your baby lives or dies. No one prepares you for that, either in a birth plan or otherwise. A dead baby certainly puts the birth wars in perspective, doesn't it? Don't expect a mother of a dead baby to pfaff around discussing with you what drugs you're going to say 'yes' or 'no' to, or whether you want to give birth in a bath or on an organic cotton rug made by a remote Ugandan tribe. The only thing she's ever going to say again is 'get my baby out alive'. She'll never understand why that's not your greatest concern, too.

When I thought about birth before I had Max my only birth plan was to get a rather large laminated sign that said 'EPIDURAL, ASAP'. I'd long been terrified of the pain of childbirth, I'd been told one-too-many horror stories, which are impossible to forget once you've heard them. When I was younger I always thought the only way I'd get a baby out of me was through an elective C-section, but I got braver and more sure of myself as the years passed, helped in part by very many years of therapy that helped me learn not to catastrophise things so easily, which anxious people often do.

Having my baby at 23 weeks, when I'd only just started feeling him move and kick, and without ever having attended an antenatal class, was obviously not part of the plan. When I arrived at the hospital to find out that my cervix was already 4cm dilated and I'd likely been in labour for the last 12 hours, I could hardly believe it. Yes, I'd been in pain, but it was not the kind of pain I'd expected labour to feel like. Why hadn't anyone ever told me what to really expect? No one was more shocked than me to find out that I was already in the throes of the experience I'd feared and dreaded my whole life. 

Did it matter that I wasn't at all prepared for labour or birth? That I had no calming music or essential oils? That I didn't have a change of clothes let alone a pocket full of affirmation cards to get me through? Not in the least. The only thing on my mind was what was happening at that exact moment. I had no ability to think even five minutes into the future. I took no notice of who was around, or what the room was like. I remember none of the details. And no, I didn't get an epidural. And not because a nazi midwife refused to give me one as I'd always feared, but simply because I didn't even think to ask. I instead availed myself of the pethidine injections they so kindly offered and later on, a self-administering Fentanyl drip, whose button I broke by trying to make it give me a bigger dose.

While I was not as obsessive as some women in planning the minute details of my birth 'experience', I did naively think that I would have it all under control in the early days. I couldn't have been more wrong, could I? Birth, for me, very quickly became a matter of life and death, and something I feared for reasons very different to the ones I'd initially feared. On that day I feared that if my labour progressed at 23 weeks my baby would die. And he did.  My greatest fear came, tragically, true. But Max's birth was what it was. Despite the horror and shock of the event, he experienced a predominantly calm and peaceful entrance into the world and I have only warm memories of those hours. No screaming, no crying, from either he or his mother. I did what I had to do for my baby in the most excruciating of circumstances. It's that fact which I'm most proud of. I couldn't have cared less how he got into my arms, so long as he could have got there safely.

I think, like Mia says, that women need to take a step back from their often polemicised views of birth, as I had no choice but to do, and see it for what it is really about: the safe delivery of a healthy child to a living mother, whatever the best way is for that to happen. Let us never forget that a living, healthy baby is not a guarantee.