Middle-of-the-Road Childbirth

Over the course of the six years during which I had my three sons, I learned a lot about childbirth. I went into motherhood knowing very little about the birth process, and having an idealistic desire for "natural birth" but not much idea of what that meant. That birth turned out to be a fairly typical first birth in America. My son was born in the hospital. I went along with whatever the doctor said, didn't ask any questions, didn't put up a fight. I ended up loopy from the drugs they gave me, and terrified, and overwhelmed. I was fortunate that the labor itself was so short of I might have ended up with an increasingly more typical birth--long nasty labor followed by emergency surgical delivery. As I started looking for different options when I became pregnant with my second son, I began swinging towards the other side of the pendulum. I found midwives, I questioned everything, and I went into labor (spontaneously) at 17 days past my due date.

I did not, however, swing to the other extreme. I wasn't up for an unassisted birth. I didn't even go for a home birth. Heck, I got risked out of the birth center when I went "post dates", so I still ended up delivering all three of my children at hospitals. While I was stubbornly opposed to induction based on statistics and fears rather than individual assessments and care, I did not mind delivering in a hospital. And as much as I my goal was a natural birth, I made concessions to the medical model (hospital delivery, hep-lock, intermittent external monitoring, OB oversight, though my midwives did the deliveries) because I didn't feel that doing so was a "betrayal" of natural birth.

For the vast majority of us, the primary objective is to have a healthy pregnancy, and an uncomplicated birth, and get a healthy baby out of the deal. We may have a secondary goal of having a "good birth experience"--whatever that may mean to us--but we are willing to let that go if we need to for the health and safety of ourselves or our baby.

Frankly, I believe most medical literature is somewhere in the middle too. Medical information sites like the Mayo Clinic website offer advice on a whole range of birth options, as well as possible risks for all of them. While there are no glowing articles advocating home birth, the Mayo Clinic is very open about the risks of medical interventions, and options available to women. These options include freestanding birth centers for delivery, and "nurse midwife" listed as normal and acceptable option for prenatal care and delivery. The site addresses the VBAC controversy in a way that is straight down the middle, taking into consideration particular situations and laying out very well the risk vs. benefit balance of the decision. Mayo even takes an amazingly "naturalist" position on post-dates pregnancy, stating "Up to two weeks after your due date, a wait-and-see approach may be preferable." The article then goes on to detail reasons why induction may be the best option, but also detailing the risks of induction, including this gem: "By definition, induction promotes delivery before your body is ready for labor - which may lead to poor labor progress and the need for a C-section."¹

The information is available to us. We have the facts to consider and choices to make. Because every woman is different, and every pregnancy is different, there are going to be a million and more ways to have a baby. Some of us may run into things we do not like, and change course for the next birth. Others may be comfortable to "go with the flow", wherever that may lead. But perhaps we do not need to spend so much time feeling defensive over our choices as the activists on either side would have us believe. It seems a good many of us have not actually taken sides, but are simply seeking the options that best fit our needs and our babies needs.

¹Inducing Labor: When to wait, when to induce, staff writers, Mayo Clinic