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Masters of body and birth
Before I had babies, I believed the medical mantra that a healthy outcome for mother and child was paramount. By hook or by crook (often literally), both shall survive. But through experience and anecdotes of friends and family, I realised that a healthy
It was April 2006, and Ellen was recounting to me her birth. We both had 6 week old babies. I was shell-shocked and dazed, but steady and happy; much how I thought we all must be feeling. But she was a mess. On the corner of a street, she crumbled, shaking, crying. A strong, positive, open woman, traumatised by her birth experience.
I looked down at her beautiful, healthy daughter asleep in her pram, and
It wasn’t until I started swimming that I began to realise how accomplishing something intensely physical is mentally empowering, because it helped me chase away my demons. By that rationale, I began to understand how it is disempowering to lose mastery of your own physicality. I’ve blogged before
It’s all about control. Not control in the control-freak sense of the word, and perhaps this is where there’s confusion in the maternal-control debate, but control in the sense that you have command of your body, that you do rather than having things done to you.
Giving birth is such a base physical experience. It’s almost animal, in the way that reason can leave you as you tune in to
When it goes wrong, though, the medical team takes the reins, the pain becomes unbearable, even dangerous, and the woman loses all sense of control. She is left at best with bonding difficulties, and at worst with post-traumatic stress, which was Ellen’s eventual diagnosis.
Making
And there are choices during the birth itself. For example, during my medically-induced birth, I chose to have a portable heart-rate monitor so that I could choose my position rather than being stuck on my back. I knew to ask; it wasn’t
But words like choice and control are flimsy and ubiquitous. Women who use them as part of their maternity care dialogue are too often dismissed as demanding or unrealistic. It’s also assumed that you’d choose to have the coveted natural birth experience, when of course drugs and c-sections can be equally valid
An insanely stupid and irresponsible recent bit of journalism claimed that middle-class mothers were behind a rise in c-sections: “Some women do opt for a caesarean section because they can’t cope with the uncertainty,” Louise Silverton, Director for Midwifery at the Royal College of Midwives was reported to say. “They control the rest of their lives, but they can’t control labour.”
Quite apart from the fact that neonates are bigger than ever, mothers older, and many are, like, emergencies, some women choose to have a
For Ellen, it was the planned c-section birth of her second baby, the one she thought she’d never be able to face having, that helped undo the trauma of the first. Granted by a sympathetic consultant, it was, in her words, calm, peaceful and beautiful.
Anecdotally, it seems that one of the best therapies for women who’ve undergone traumatic physical experiences is to have a positive one. To use
I was interested to hear that one of Jimmy Saville’s victims has taken up open water swimming because she feels it has allowed her to take back mastery of her own body. I think that too has helped me understand how it takes a positive physical experience to help get over a negative one
All is not lost. Organisations like the Birth Trauma
Nobody wants mothers and babies to die during childbirth. But it’s fast becoming clear that a positive experience of birth is just as important as a healthy outcome.
