Broadcast Your Birth

When I was very pregnant I watched as many episodes of TLC's "A Baby Story" as I could. I observed two things:
1. many of the birth stories were of couples in the state of NJ (how's that for diverse represenation)
2. many of the couples expressed a desire for minimal intervention but ended up having meds or a c section

Obviously, the importance of having a healthy birth is paramount and a c section is a real blessing, but it did feel like there were very few stories that actually were low intervention. That bothered me. I needed to fill my head with as many confidence-building stories as I could find to know that a natural birth was possible. I read Peggy Vincent's "Baby Catcher" in a matter of days.

I've chroncicled (in sparse detail to preserve some privacy) my birth story on here before, so won't go into that but I have been intrigued lately by the debate about birthing videos on YouTube that illustrate a broader need for realistic (that is, not reality TV versions) birthing stories.

But first, because I am a market researcher afterall, a couple of fun facts/observations:
1. 2.5 million people have searched for "YouTube births" (Google tells me). Another 46 million have searched for "birthing video" and other iterations of the same search query. I don't know the time period in which these searches are measured, but that's a stunning number of people who seem to be seeking "real" images of the birthing experience. (I'm sure there are some lurkers out there with other intentions too but let's just put that aside.)

2. It's educational for other reasons. There is a short article on The New York Times website today about a navy engineer who delivered his own child (the couple's fourth) after having watched a few semi-instructional videos on YouTube.

I was kind of surprised then by the results of a Parenting magazine poll which asked: Posting your birth video on YouTube: great or gross?. Overwhelmingly readers chose "gross" - 92% in fact. (I don't see an n here so this could reflect the sentiment of 100 or 12,000 people. Of the 16 comments posted on parenting.com in response to the same question, I counted 10 comments saying it was "gross" and 6 for "great" so the data do seem a bit dodgy.) What I found wholly compelling was the subtext - responses seemed to fall neatly into four categories - four P's if you will:

Women said the YouTube content allowed them to feel Prepared. Of those that thought it was gross, they often claimed it was a very Personal and Private experience better preserved in personal archives. But the subtext was the heart of the story. Many said that while they weren't comfortable with sharing their own intimate experience, if other women did then more Power to them. I wish the Parenting headline would have captured that because I think it's an important message that ought to be conveyed. As women, we need to stick together on issues of how to birth our babies and how to feed our babies (as basically the same debate is taking place on breastfeeding in public). There needs to be room for debate, but we need to hold each other up when we make different decisions. We need to empower each other, not suggest that what you might be posting on YouTube is "gross."

Too much information

We made a really important decision this week. Or rather I should say we didn't make one.

For the past three weeks I've been 2 cm dilated. This was all good news until my due date came and went. Now I feel like a ticking clock. I'm also a somewhat impatient person by nature so walking around feeling like I should be doing this really HUGE life-changing thing without being able to actually DO anything about it has been beyond weird.

I have been incredibly blessed to have enjoyed a healthy, happy pregnancy. All along I've been blissfully out of control - just letting my body doing its thing naturally. On Wednesday we had our first opportunity to take things into our own hands.

During my exam the doctor told me that I am now 4 cm dilated. He gave us the option to break my water to hopefully get things going (too much information?). At first it seemed a simple decision but on reflection, talking to my doula, family and a few trusted friends, I realized there was no reason for us to do anything. I'm not miserable. It's perfectly normal to be late (my mom had her three babies 8-10 days after her due date). And most importantly, the baby is still healthy.

Medical advances have given us resplendent information (after an exam on Thursday I know the approximate weight of the Babe, the circumference of his head, how he reacts to my contractions...), but it's almost too much information. For me, being able to affect the way you bring your child into the world was overwhelming - akin to playing God. (I suspect I'm overanalyzing this a bit, but hey, I'm hormonal.) Plus we felt inducing labor would force us to forgo our desire to have a natural childbirth.

It is now officialy one week past my due date and I'm antsy. But we're happy we've decided to wait it out.

Who's your doula?

Sometime around January I started thinking about my birth plan. It was with a mix of trepidation, fear and excitement that I began to envision what it would all be like. It didn't really occur to me not to have a baby in a hospital. I sort of thought that is just what you did.

A couple of events took place in February that altered the course of my thinking. I attended a women's retreat where I met a labor support doula. Within minutes of our introduction, we were talking about the increasing rates of cesareans and pain medication during birth, and potentially what this meant for the mother and baby in the long run. I felt a little paralyzed with all this new information and all the choices I had to make. A small part of me thought I wasn't ready for motherhood at all because I didn't have strong opinions about the child birth process.

Not long after, I heard about the Ricki Lake's The Business of Being Born documentary, which profiles a few births and endeavors to reveal what's behind the changing nature of childbirth in the U.S. today. My husband and I were able to view the film shortly thereafter. It was, in a word, eye-opening, and not just for seeing Ricki Lake delivering her baby in the bathtub! (My husband, being perhaps the only guy in the audience, took this all in stride.) That feeling of paralysis gave way to empowerment and a pretty intense desire to know more. I read everything I could get my hands on - stats on the national rate of c-sections, stats on NYC hospital c-section rates, and on, until I was resolute to have a midwife. With my husband on board, I set out to find our PLA (personal labor assistant).

I called every midwifery practice in Manhattan. By this time (early April), many of the reputable midwives in the city were committed to delivering other healthy babies. I paid $100 for one midwife to tell me that my idea of a completely natural birth in a hospital setting (this was what we decided we wanted) was idealized and unrealistic. And while she was probably right, I hated her patronizing tone. We talked about having a home birth but the prospect of situating a birthing tub in our living area and not having space to move around seemed more stressful than being in a hospital bed.

I felt like I'd already failed and I hadn't even starting having Braxton Hicks. I ultimately let go and focused on being thankful that at least I could now make decisions from an informed standpoint.

Over the next few visits with my OB/GYN who I've been to for over 7 years, I realized that he was relatively accommodating to my requests (mainly no paid meds and to let me labor as long as medically feasible). In late April, we took a tour of the hospital where we are delivering and found the nurses very au natural, tremendous advocates of breastfeeding - seemingly just what we had hoped for.

Now it's practically June and as the Babe kicks harder and as the Pod is increasingly filled with pastel colored onesies, I'm realizing that in order to have my close-to-natural-as-possible child birth I'm going to need some serious help. My husband will be there every step of the way, but I really want a doula.

I found myself back in that place of paralysis where there is far too much information and far too many choices. DONA International lists some 20 different doulas in the city alone. So I did what any web 2.0 mother-to-be would do - I googled. I started googling every doula in New York City to see what reviews I could find (plenty in fact!). I also searched on Facebook and found several doulas in the city who I could connect with online.

While I haven't found our perfect PLA yet, I do feel one step closer and more sure of my opinions about child birth in general. And that, in and of itself, makes me feel slightly more ready for motherhood. At least for today.