it is truly difficult for me to articulate my distaste at the odious and demeaning article that follows. the author is a pediatrician who is flabbergasted *and* preachy in response to the surprising news that some women may want to give birth naturally--yes, without anesthesia. read the whole thing here:
the mother lode of pain from the boston globe
here's an excerpt:
STILL, THERE WILL ALWAYS be people who want their pain. When I was a teenager in New Jersey, I endured an optional religious challenge called the atthai, an Indian Jain custom of fasting for eight straight days. The idea is that the people should dissociate from the material world, even from something as elemental as food. Accomplishing the painful challenge is something of an ego rush; the hunger artists are honored as members of a holy community. (I look back on this now with agnostic disbelief.)
Like prolonged fasting, enduring labor without anesthesia attracts notice. It casts the mother as a struggling heroine who - by sheer mental force - gracefully keeps her body under control...In this setting, the pain of unmedicated labor offers up a formidable, if artificial, trial that precedes entry into a highly selective sorority. It creates drama. It captures attention.
Yet pain in the end is an utterly primitive thing, a vestige of insect and reptilian brains. It evolved primarily as a way to change behavior without need for thought - to force one's hand to pull away from fire or tend urgently to an injured limb. Thinking beings, in some sense, have evolved beyond pain. (Some pain reflexes continue even in brain-dead individuals.) If anything, reliance on pain to create meaning during childbirth indicates a constricted imagination.
now, when i read someone write about how we've evolved past pain i get edgy. cause i did read brave new world and i am not convinced that being pneumatic is all that grand of a promise. and you couple that with a man comparing the pain of labor to that of a hand in a fire or a broken bone, and i really am starting to think this guy is a pompous ass who hasn't figured out that telling women what they should or shouldn't do in birth went out with the beehive hairdo.
the startling dis-ease with which "western rationality" views the body, it's mystery and its raw primal power, especially in birth, comparing it to a pathological or crippled state, truly amazes me.
and i didn't realize they were still teaching misogyny in medical school.
both my births have been unmedicated. my first, i was a teenager in a hospital, and my last was at home, unassisted by any professionals.to me, going unmedicated (and this REALLY is the case with my UC homebirth) is about respect for the process. why do runners choose to feel the pain of a marathon? why do tribal peoples have vision quests and rituals to mark life's changes? why in the world does anyone ever climb a mountain?
ritual/process are extremely important to me. we live in a world that tells us we can't do anything without help from something external to us (usually something we need to buy): medications, diets, new clothes, devices, etc. etc. etc. all developed by EXPERTS. i believe we are being crippled as a race by these messages and our startling willingness to acquiesce to them.
birth is just one example of how we have nascent, hidden, sacred knowledge and abilities planted like seeds in our physical bodies by evolution, and if we listen carefully and respect that ancient primal knowledge we can experience the transcendence possible in birth.
there is no telling a woman who has had a natural birth that she "can't" do anything, ever again. because she knows better. that in and of itself is a mighty good reason to suppress such experiences, from a male-dominated medical mindset.
for a brisk flurry of retorts, may i recommend this discussion at amity's by the derogated group in question--mothers who have experienced and actually advocate for natural birth?
http://www.amitymama.com/vb/amity-mama-market/318874-mother-lode-pain.html
and a longer thread where women share their feelings about the value of unmedicated natural birth is there too.
2 comments:
sure! thanks for letting me know! :D
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