Ima 2 Eight

An inquiry from a dear cousin prompted me to finally write down some of my thoughts on pregnancy, labor and birth.  I get asked about the topic a lot. I will probably have even more to say in the future….

The most important thing I can tell you is that while all of my non-twin labors were the same, but every single one of my births was very, very different.

I never had a c-section with any of them. I have never had pitocin. I have never had an episiotomy of any kind. I had an epidural with Noam and with Shira, but not with the twins, believe it or not! (There really wasn’t time!) I had the drugs nubane and demerol with the twins. I also had them two hours apart (which isn’t done!)

I went 9-10 days late with just about all of them, which meant frequent monitoring at the end, but I didn’t allow them to induce me until 42 weeks, and I never got that far. My body has a different schedule than most, I guess.

I had a labor coach and midwife at home with Shira. I had an OB and no labor coach in the hospital with the twins. I had a friend as a coach for Noam. I had no coach at all with Shira, and I had a great doula /coach for Yechiel, but she had very little to do b/c I was at the hospital for 7 minutes.

Not only did I make different choices, but it had as much to do with who I was at each birth moment than anything else. For example, with #1, I was 27, feeling great, in shape, and excercising and resting every day. With #4 on the other hand, I had three babies at home 3 1/2 and 2 years old at the time, and I was sooo tired.

I think there are three really important principles:

1. The biggest impediment to a good birth experience is FEAR. Fear shuts your body down and makes you fight yourself and clouds your judgement and taps your energy. So, you have to figure out what scares you the most and address those issues. For some, not having a great NICU unit for the baby scares them. For some, it is needles. For me, it was losing control over what was going to happen to me… that is exactly what happens, but in an ideal situation, you give that control over to the baby (and G-d), not a team of doctors or strangers.

2. Every intervention and “non-natural” option out there serves a purpose and has very real benefit, when used properly. They save lives, and make for great births for some. There are people who have a c-section who would have died if they didn’t. There are people who have a c-section so that they can schedule the day the baby is born for convenience….there are doctors who induce because there isn’t any fluid around the baby and the baby will die. There are doctors who induce because the baby doesn’t need more than 40 weeks according to them, and this way they know the baby won’t be born on their golf day. I am not kidding. I think interventions are good and can be empowering not a “failure” or scary, if you approach them with a certain mentality.

3. A birth plan is only a plan. We don’t know what will happen, and how our baby and our body will respond to birth/labor. So don’t feel committed to it going that way. None of my births were exactly as I had planned/hoped. And they were all beautiful in their own way. (The twin birth was in an operating room just in case they had to cut me at any minute. That wasn’t really so much fun….)

If and when I write a book on birth and pregnancy this is the one thing I would have to say:

The changes of pregnancy and the process of birth are practice for motherhood. They are G-d’s way of changing us and preparing us ahead of time. Through pregnancy, we no longer can always satisfy the needs and wants of our own bodies. We sometimes have to wait to take care of what we want, because of the demands created by this being inside of us. And we lose some of our control over what we can do, where we can go, how long we can sleep(!), what we can (and want to) eat, etc…. But as mothers, we spend a lot of time doing for our child and tending to their needs at the expense of satisfying our own. We eat what they want us to prepare, rather than what we actually want. We live where it will be good for them. We wait to go to the bathroom for what feels like hours! We listen to music in the car that will nourish their brains, instead of the sexy tunes that will get us happy and going… the list goes on and on. The point is that the sacrifices we make as a pregnant and birthing woman are all a beautiful and gorgeous crafting by our creator to make similar challenges as a new mother a little easier. And if we learn from the process, than we will have more insight into how G-d wants us to parent… if you think it takes a lot of reading to get the pregnancy and birth right, just wait until you are tackling parenting!!!!!

You are going to be a GREAT mom, and I hope you are enjoying the journey that is getting you there.

……. Can’t wait for comments.