Response to Your Comments

You all make my life better on a daily basis. It sounds cheesy, but it's true.

Every single one of your comments gets delivered to my e-mail inbox, so they keep me company throughout the day. I respond to them in my mind, much more often than I respond to them in the comments section. I even bring them up in conversations with my friends and family.

Your comments inspire me, answer my questions, give me invaluable resources, make me think deeply, and smile.

I wanted to take a second to pull some comments out from last week and address them in this post:

People in my life who have given birth say over and over again that the more scared you are, and the more you're expecting pain, the harder it is. And the harder it is, the more likely interventions are needed (which isn't to say we cause interventions, or interventions aren't needed all the time for practical things like a baby in breech). But that is to say, we can lay the groundwork as well as we can, and that means preparing to totally let go, give up all control and ride it. This is, I think, a very literal example of our mind's shaping our realities.

I absolutely agree with you. Most of the "fear" that you heard in my post about birth was primarily related to birthing in a hospital with commonly accepted interventions. That's why I'm not going the hospital route (although I recognize that I cannot ultimately control how my birth unfolds and I may end up in the hospital if it becomes necessary). I plan to spend several months of my pregnancy preparing myself for the amazingness of birth. I'm going to sign up for a Hynobabies course, and I'm going to read books like Birthing from Within. I plan to do lots of reflection about how I'm feeling and what I'm fearing. My goal is to enter into the birth experience with overwhelming positive expectations and eagerness. I want to learn how to let my mind and body completely relax, so that my uterus can do what it needs to do. I don't want to get in its way!

At the end of the day, what I most remember about #1 is that you really have no control over labor and delivery. You kind of just have to go with the flow and remember that a successful birth ends with a healthy mom and healthy baby.

I absolutely agree with this, too. We can control the inputs (e.g., I can eat nutritious foods, drink plenty of water, get lots of rest, destress, mentally prepare myself for birth, take my vitamins, proactively seek out a health care provider that I trust, etc.), but we can't control the outputs. I very much appreciate the conception and pregnancy processes for helping me cultivate the ability to focus on the inputs and let go of control of the outputs. This skill will be invaluable when I become a parent!

It seems like a lot of women go the natural route just so they can wear that badge of honor rather than because it is the best for them and the child, and I hate that. It just seems like a new form of abuse towards women - that you need to do it naturally to be a real woman.

I think everyone needs to do what feels right for them (and then analyze the underlying reasons about why it feels right). For me, going the natural route is not about any "badge of honor" or doing it in order to feel like a "real woman." First of all, I distrust the pharmaceutical industry in the United States. Its primary motivation is money, not people's health and wellness. There have been several medicines that have been used for maternity care over the last several decades that have later been proven to have severely negative consequences. I simply try to avoid medications, whenever possible. Second, I trust my body and I trust that birth is a normal experience that women have been going through for thousands and thousands of years.

I think we need to get away from judging and labeling each other based on our individual birthing choices. We are all different and have different perspectives, priorities and experiences. At the end of the day we all do the best we can for ourselves and our children.

I wholeheartedly agree with this! I think it's important to respectfully ask each other critical questions and to consider other perspectives, but at the end of the day, we each need to do what makes sense for us. There are no absolutes with any of this stuff. Even the "experts" change their opinions every few years.

And while I appreciate that you share your perspective on your own experiences, I suggest that you might want to consider, when reflecting on how quickly you were able to get pregnant, sending a shout out to the scores of folks who have difficulty doing so. There is a privilege in getting pregnant, and in getting pregnant easily. While I certainly don't deny your own feelings related to that, I'm asking you to consider others'.

I'm so, so sorry that you don't think I talk about my experience in a way that honors everyone who has difficulty getting pregnant. For the past six years or so, I considered myself to be someone who would have difficulty getting pregnant (because of what a doctor told me a long time ago). Although I remained optimistic and prepared myself for conception as much as possible, I also acknowledged that I might need to resort to fertility interventions or that I might need to eventually adopt.

The last poster made me think of seeing this video recently.

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/4a67c70135/pregnant-women-are-smug-by-garfunkel-and-oates?rel=auto_related&rel_pos=2

Oh no. According to this song, I am becoming a smug pregnant woman! I used to want a girl, but once I became pregnant I stopped caring.

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