I went to the local clinics ante natal class today and it was awful. There were about 12 pregnant women there at various stages. Today’s session was about pain relief, the options are – TENS, pethedine or an epidural. I got a dirty look from the midwife when I said that if you went for an epidural you would be handing over your labour to the medical staff and you would lose control of the situation. I asked if you had a bigger chance of splitting or tearing with an epidural and 2 members of the group giggled embarassedly, apparently you don’t mention that kind of thing. Nothing about any alternatives at all and I thought if I mentioned that I was going to try shiatsu I would sound like a middle class hippy. This was obviously not the place to trade placenta recipes.
One of the midwives told us that if you look at your baby when you are breastfeeding your milk will come down easier because ‘you love your baby’. ‘What if you don’t love your baby?’ I ask. Shocked faces from the midwives who have never known this to happen. Now I know people who haven’t bonded with their babies straight away, and I think it’s entirely reasonable to not instantly fall in love with someone who has caused you 9 months of discomfort and stretched you out of all recognisable proportions, inside and out.
I asked the group who was going to try for a home birth and none of them were, it was straight to hospital for the lot of them and one even asked about elective c sections. When asked I told them that I wanted a home birth because the chances of intervention were much lower according to my research – blank faces – what does intervention mean? The message the session put across was that pain in any shape or form was bad and that drugs and intervention are good. This was so re-inforced that one woman kept making faces when the word labour was mentioned – the word itself is now locked to the idea of unbearable pain for her now. I am fully aware that I may not be able to have a home birth and I am very open minded about pain relief, I will do what I have to do at the time. However, I want to keep my options open and going straight for heavy duty drugs and handing over your nether regions to the ‘professionals’ is not my idea of keeping my options open.
Recent Comments