Oh to be a Celebrity!

Hmm, after my horrific birth experience (which has pretty much put me off having another child as I don't want to go through THAT again), I might vote for the C-section. My best friend in the US had a C-section with her first and a VBAC with her second baby, and says if she does it again, she'll go for the C-section. She and I have both had complications from tearing during the births -- it's been almost two years since my daughter's birth and I'm still "not quite right" down below. So I can sort of see J-Lo's side of things. Maybe if I hadn't been so focused on sucking it up and somehow thinking I was being a hero by giving birth vaginally, my birth experience could have been a positive one instead of so awful that I'm terrified to do it again. Food for thought...

Sure, but how many women ACTUALLY get the three-hour labour, pop the baby out with no trouble at all, then hop into the car and go home feeling amazing? We all hope for the "perfect" labour and birth, but the vast majority of us don't get it. I think that's why women quite often feel the need to share their birth stories -- it's a form of therapy, reliving all those moments and working through their feelings about them in order to become okay with the trauma that childbirth can impart, even if it's just a comparatively "small" amount of trauma, like not getting an epidural because there wasn't time, or pooping while pushing, or being able to feel the stitches going in when you were getting your tear stitched up because the local wore off. The word "perfect" is subjective too -- for some women, a perfect birth is letting nature take its course, having no pain relief and breastfeeding immediately, while for other women a perfect birth is anything that makes the pain go away, and forget about dignity. 

I remember at antenatal class feeling ashamed because I was the only pregnant woman out of the group of 10 who wanted an epidural, while everyone else envisioned water births, home births, and pain-relief-free birthing centre births. Guess what? I was the only person who didn't have pain relief during labour, while everyone else had varying forms of pain relief including epidurals, pethidine and even one C-section. What a silly cow I was -- I should have had the epidural in the parking lot like they did. 

We want women to feel like they can talk about their choices with regards to birth, and if J-Lo was on this message board, I wonder what she would say? Would she try to defend her decision, or would she slink off in shame? I wonder if there are any other mums-to-be planning elective C-sections who are lurking in this thread, afraid to post because here they don't want to be called naive or wimpy or against nature? Those are the mums I'm trying to speak up for, because it's not just celebrities who choose C-sections for non-medical reasons.

I'm not trying to be your mother and wag my finger at you, because everyone likes a good old celebrity bash now and again, including me. But spare a thought for the other real people who are hanging around here wanting to join in -- we have to respect their opinions as well, whether we agree with their choices or not.