Don't You Wanna Have a Natural Birth?!

Enough of this narrative that the more you suffer, the better a mother you are.

There goes another friend, talking about trying her best to give birth ‘naturally.’ Succumbing to all this weird invisible pressure that it is somehow preferable to have a ‘drug-free’ birth. As if you’ve not done right by your baby if you haven’t felt the raw pain of them travelling out through your body, unaided by any numbing devices or happy gas.  

I do not intend to tell anyone what they should do. I wouldn’t have listened to anyone in my lead-up to having a child, and I have no qualifications in any of this, except having been through it. I also have nothing against people wanting to ‘feel’ their baby being born, in its entirety. What I can’t stand is this subtle pressure amongst pregnancy communities that giving birth without pain relief is somehow ‘better’ than doing it in any other way. 

I’m a strong believer, for example, that if you want to have a cesarean, you shouldn’t even have to give a reason as to why. If you don’t want to go through the act of pushing a baby out through your vagina, risking it ripping and all that jazz, then don’t. At 8 months pregnant, I desperately wanted to know why there wasn’t a way to fall asleep and then wake up with your baby there, like having a wisdom tooth removed. That’s how I would have wanted it done! But I was too scared to ask, and I assumed it must not have been safe for the baby. I assume you simply have to be awake for it. Like how sometimes you have to be awake for brain surgery.

(My knowledge about this is from TV shows. I know nothing about real-life brain surgery). 

I was also scared of a cesarean - it is not, as some judgementally label it, ‘the easy way’ to have a baby. It is a very huge operation to go through. And I had a general instinct that if there was a pathway for my baby to come out through, however small, I might as well try and get her out of there if I could. 

I tried hypnobirth. But I feel I “failed” at it, because I’m not great at meditating. I listened to a podcast in the bath with a voice telling me I was a flower and my baby a gentle butterfly and I couldn’t help but side eye my shampoo. And then burst into tears. I was so terrified, that I was clasping on to this hopeful idea that if I could meditate well enough, if I could do ‘hypnobirth,’ then my baby would sort of float into existence and it wouldn’t be the same pain as being eaten by a shark. 

I was avoiding thinking about the epidural, because it simply seemed like you shouldn’t get one if you didn’t absolutely have to. Why did it seem like this? The way they talked about it in the pregnancy group. The way it was written about in the books I read. It sort of seeped into my head like when suncream slowly turns the edges of a bright white crop top yellow without you noticing. And by the time you do notice, it's too late! Goodbye, white crop top. 

A water birth sounds lovely in theory. It’s snug and cosy and the rooms in the hospital are much nicer: you get things like fairy lights and it almost looks like a spa! What a dream! But the bastard of the water birth is you can’t have a water birth and an epidural at the same time. So basically, my choice seemed to come down to: be in the cold, hard, impersonal ward where you can have an epidural, or go in the cosy, gezellig water birth room and don’t get any of the good stuff. 

Could I give birth without an epidural?  

I know that many women can. And do. I suspect that for some, childbirth hurts less than it does for others. The lovely mum I chat to in Tescos who has six children - I suspect that giving birth was okay for her. The woman whose eyes went dark in the waxing salon when someone asked if she’d ever have a second child, and she whispered never, I suspect found it very unpleasant. She was having her eyebrows threaded at the time, without flinching, which I believe to be one of the worst pains there is in this world outside of childbirth. So it must have been pretty bad. 

The trouble is, you have no idea how much childbirth will hurt until you’re doing it for the first time. 

I won’t go into detail about my experience. But the pain was awful. As bad, or worse, than I thought it would be. It was so bad that I understood why the men who wrote religion said it had been given to Eve as a punishment. 

I understand wanting to reclaim birth as not a punishment. As something beautiful, normal, empowering and wanting to feel all of it you can feel. But I fear that by silently pressuring mothers to do that and embrace the pain, we are sort of just accidentally back to encouraging women to suffer. Telling them that they should suffer. That doesn’t feel empowering at all. 

Why did I, an arguably modern woman with modern sensibilities, still get pulled into this strange mindset where I wasn’t giving birth properly if I didn’t experience the pain? Why did I think that I had to hurt horribly in order to be in some way ‘worthy?’ And worthy of who? 

Was I being competitive? Did I want to have the feeling that I had conquered the pain of childbirth, done it ‘better’ than other women who couldn’t handle it and had to rush for epidurals? 

(To be clear, I couldn’t handle it, and I had to rush for an epidural. Although ‘rush’ is not a fair depiction. Twelve hours in and begging for an epidural, it takes a good hour to get to the ward and have it kick in, and that was the longest hour of my life). 

Epidurals are great. Sure, there are potential side effects, but there are also pretty excruciating side effects of not having pain relief. Namely, pain. 

When I got the epidural, I felt peace; a magical, peaceful cloud sweeping over me. I did not feel ANY less present when having my baby. I simply felt grateful that I could feel her being born, and not feel the pain that would have gone along with it if I was doing it ‘naturally.’ Medicine is magic. We are so lucky that we have a magic potion that means, if we don’t want to, we don’t have to go through what women have for thousands of years, and still do today, in areas of the world where they don’t have this medicine. I will never take it for granted again. 

I did not fail at my water birth. I am not a bad mother because I had an epidural. There is no ‘optimal’ birth. And there is no honour in suffering. Or in doing things ‘naturally.’ If I was living ‘naturally,’ I would have died a long time ago from accidentally walking off the top of a car park, because I wouldn’t have any contact lenses. 

If you give birth without pain relief, good for you! If you give birth with pain relief, good for you! But just know, no one gives you a badge afterwards. Not even a ‘well done for taking part’ sticker. So you don’t have to suffer if you don’t want to. Don’t let anything make you think differently. 

My show Plus One is on at Toronto Fringe and EdFringe.

Here's to not having to suffer in childbirth!