Events That Weren’t on the Birth Plan

Not everyone has the kind of birth they want. Emergencies, both real and systemic occur and must be dealt with. Carefully chosen birth attendants are often unavailable and sometimes pain makes panic sets in.

Plenty of women find themselves unable to recover from childbirth because their births, instead of following the birth plan, were very, very different. One of the kindest things my mid-wife told me to do after my out-of-body experience, which was nothing compared to what some women go through, was to have a good cry. I think I got around to it about two weeks after my daughter was born. Mine was a case of cry and release following a bad moment in an otherwise perfect, if painfully intense birth.

Plenty of women, on the other hand, have had worse experiences and for them, cry and release isn’t part of their healing. They need something bigger. Many have rallied to support more and better childbirth education to prevent bad births in the first place.

Naomi Wolf is one public example. She has said, among other things, that insurance companies have more to say in what happens in delivery rooms than women do and the result is an increase in the number of c-sections, etc. Being kept on a constant monitor and in bed, doesn’t help the birth process but it does keep you safe from accidents, further insurance claims or lawsuits. It is not trivial in the slightest.

Not all women end up with a c-section because they’ve been given medical instructions that contradict how a woman’s body works when it prepares to give birth. Not all women who plan to go without an epidural can do that either. Labor pains can cause involuntary clenching which, in turn, causes labor to stop progressing. And still more women need intervention to keep them and their babies safe.

True, sometimes it is hard to tell the difference between what happened by necessity and what happened for the convenience of others. What it important is that you find out what happened during your birth by talking to the person who attended the delivery. You may cry and release, you may get active in birth education activism. Whatever your path, remember that you must deal with it so that it doesn’t become a barrier to your recovery and your relationship with your baby.

It wasn’t very long ago that a good birth was defined by just one outcome: both mother and child survived it.