“Give me the drugs when I come in the doors!” That was my usual comment as a teenager when the subject of childbirth came up. I had always considered myself a wimp when it came to handling pain. I have always had a history of pretty severe period cramps and always needed to call in sick to work, pop a few pain pills and basically become part of the pattern on the couch upholstery for at least one whole day, otherwise I would end up in the floor, doubled over, moaning like a…well I don’t know what I was moaning like but it wasn’t pretty. So to even think about going through childbirth without the assistance of pain killing drugs…forget it!
I wouldn’t be able to tell you the exact moment that I began to re-evaluate the way I thought about childbirth because it didn’t happen that suddenly. My family has always been sort of “alternative” as far our approach to the way we deal with our bodies. Unless we had a broken bone or needed surgery of some kind we just didn’t go to the doctor. We would seek out & use more natural modalities to assist our bodies to do what they needed to do. My grandmother on my mother’s side is a certified nutritionist. One of my aunts was a midwife herself & had all four of her boys at home, one of them delivered by her husband I believe (who is not a midwife). Another aunt had all four of her children at home and my sister who has Down’s Syndrome and should have been in & out of the hospital all her life with serious health issues has not been in and out of said hospitals thanks to a natural approach to the maintenance of her health. So, as far as dealing with the flu, lowering cholesterol or having babies, my family usually takes the less traveled road of natural treatments. As long as I can remember I have always been surrounded with people who trusted in the body’s ability to do what it was created to do as long as you gave it the proper nutrition from the proper sources & the proper stimulus & support from its environment. So, maybe that is where my re-evaluation of birthing approaches truly began, from my weird family.
As I got older, I realized more and more that my body was extremely sensitive to all kinds of things; dust and animal dander in the environment, dairy and a long list of other foods that I won’t bore you with, as well as things I received in the hospital as a child during my childhood struggles with asthma. As I began to learn more about how my body reacted to these things and why, I suppose at some point I began to question what the effects of the pain killing drugs they administer during childbirth would be, not only in my body but also in the bodies of my unborn babies. The more I learned, the less I wanted to have a “pain free” birth in a hospital. I no longer joked about wanting the drugs but I also didn’t think that I could handle it without them, sort of a catch 22. I felt stuck and honestly a little more than slightly afraid.
And then came my answer! At some point before I got married I heard about water birthing. Again I can’t remember when or where exactly I was introduced to this idea, but I was intrigued at once and it made total sense to me. Taking from my experience of my monthly struggle with Aunt Flow I just followed the logic of water birth from there. When I didn’t feel good in body I wanted only two things. Number one, I wanted to be at home and number two, getting in the bathtub & soaking in warm water helped immensely more than anything else I ever tried. So, when I was introduced to the option of water birthing the logic just made sense to me and was very appealing. In childbirth all the same organs are involved as when you are menstruating so if water helped with the one it must help with the other. So, I decided that I wanted to have a home water birth when I got pregnant which was still down the road a bit because I wasn’t even married yet.
When I married my husband, at some point before or after the wedding (again I can’t remember) as we discussed having children I told him that I wanted to have our children at home and I wanted to have them in the water. He was not very familiar with either childbearing mode but said, “You’re the one that has to have them so you can do it wherever and however you want to.” I thought he was very accommodating.
I
actually hadn’t read much about water birth till after I got married. I knew how it worked fundamentally but had never heard any stories of water births. My head was just following the logic of using water for childbirth and then I read my first book about water birth. It was, Choosing Water Birth: Reclaiming the Sacred Power of Birth by Lakshmi Bertram. The only way it was available to me at the time was in electronic form through our library’s web site and it was a fabulous book! She shared in detail about the four water births of her children and she wrote with such clarity and tenderness about her experiences that my heart was also now fully engaged in the water birth experience. As I sat at the computer reading her stories and looking at the beautiful pictures I knew for certain this is how I wanted to birth my babies.
I have gone on since that time and followed my head as well as my heart regarding how I wanted to birth our children. In 2006 our daughter was born at home, in the water and in 2009 our son was also born at home, in the water. Both times my husband was right there in the water with me and got to help bring our babies to the surface and into the world. So from the time our daughter was born, until now and here after, I’ll pass on the drugs, thank you, and please, have the birthing tub ready. I can’t imagine doing it any other way!
Stephanie Neher, Kasson, MN
(507) 634-7498
This article originated from
http://bradleybabybloggings.blogspot.com/
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