Computers have raised writing to a new low.
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I went to the grandparents' education class at the maternity hospital last night. The 4 hours did cover a lot more than just "put the kid on its back". They went over the labor and delivery procedures and policies and a whole bunch of stuff, and ended with a tour of the labor/delivery rooms (very homey, and you deliver in the same room as labor) and the nursery and so on. They do have rooming-in if the mommy wants it. It all sounded pretty good.
I did have two spots of annoying concern.
- Five people had signed up: me, two women who were apparently the future maternal and paternal grandmas of the same baby, and a grandma/grandpa couple. The couple didn't show up, so it was just three of us. And yet, the nurse conducting the class, fully expecting five people, had brought only two informational packets. Um, disorganized much?
- The nurse said she teaches the Lamaze classes, and she repeatedly referred to "pain". Pain, pain, pain. It was always, over and over, pain.
It's my opinion that it's NOT pain. It is extremely intense, yes, but it's like when someone else removes a splinter from your finger, it hurts, but when you remove the splinter yourself, even though you are doing the exact same thing, it's not pain. If everything goes as it's designed to, if you fully understand what is going on during birth, if you understand that your uterus knows exactly what it's doing and is doing it right, if you are able to relax the rest of your body so that all the energy goes to the uterus, and if you are allowed to feel that you retain control of what's happening to you, knowing that you are delivering the baby, not the doctor, then it's not painful**. It's hard hard work, and very intense, but not painful.
If, however, someone in a position of authority tells you over and over that it will be painful, then I guarantee it will be. It sets you up with the expectation, which causes tension, which CAUSES PAIN! and even when there's no tension, if you expect pain, then you will interpret the expected intense contractions not as the natural wonder of the uterus doing its job in spectacular fashion (wow! look how strong it is!), but you will interpret it as pain, because that's what you'd been told it is.
Bullshit!
I've had two babies completely absolutely totally naturally, no meds whatsoever, one baby's head was out before I got to the hospital, and it was very hard work and very tiring, but THERE WAS NO PAIN! Because I knew what was going on, and I knew about relaxing the lower muscles and pushing only with the upper muscles, exactly the opposite of the "like a bowel movement" crap they tell you, which is completely counter-productive and will cause the vagina and vulva to resist, which causes the muscles there to separate rather than to stretch, which causes PAIN! and tearing. Or that "little snip", which should be totally unnecessary. Plus if those muscles separate rather than stretch, they don't go back and you end up loose.
I do know whereof I speak.
Anyone who wants to argue that they have more experience in these matters and they know I'm wrong, simply has the wrong experience, dealing with frightened tense women who have been taught to push wrong and to expect pain and who feel no control.
So there!
**Note that women who deliver "by surprise" in their kitchens, or in a taxi, with no meds, nobody taking over, never say anything about pain.
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Daughter took an interesting anatomy class last year. The class got (relatively) fresh cadavers, and, in groups of three, over the course of the class, they took their cadavers completely apart.
Daughter was fascinated by all of it, of course, but one thing was surprising to her. In anatomy books and everywhere else, when there's a diagram of what's inside, they all show the liver "here", the spleen "here", the kidneys "there", the pancreas "over there", the intestines "just so", and so on. The diagrams always look pretty much the same.
'Tain't so. When the students visited each other's cadavers, they discovered that the organs were all over the place. Some higher than expected, some lower, some more toward the center, some flat-out reversed or backward, some much larger or smaller than expected. It seems it isn't really all that easy to predict where you'll find something. Or even that it will actually be there.
Cool. Makes laparoscopic surgery a treasure hunt.
(I'm remembering the surprise when we discovered that Jay had only one HUGE kidney. Now I'm wondering why the doctors freaked out over that.)
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6 comments:
As you witnessed everyone is different. I believe the same thing relates for pain and how it is experienced: Not everyone has the same experience with it and not everyone experiences it the same. To say that you didn't have pain does not diminish someone else's experience where there is pain. Perhaps you are just a freak of nature in that respect.
As a nurse of many years I have learned never to judge another's experience with pain. If they say it hurts I take them at their word because until I have walked their walk with their particular anatomical makeup I cannot know what they feel.
Not ever having had babies but having had a number of surgeries and years of horrendous pain with my huge week long bleed-a-thons that is about all I can say.
Z
I never had babies, but Wilma did have a baby that came out unexpectedly and she claims her eyes crossed for three days from the pain. I've never questioned this description. Can your eyes really cross from pain?
Please, please, please see the movie "The Business of Being Born" and if you can, try to convince Daughter to watch it as well. It goes into great detail about how the medical industry treats childbirth as a disease needing to be treated, and that the excessive interference by the medical practitioners cause more unnecessary c-sections than you can imagine. It will change your entire outlook on the medical profession and how they deal with childbirth. Surgeons are NOT necessary at childbirth. They just cause problems that would not exist if they were not there.
When I had my son, the nurses treated me like a prisoner. I wanted to get up and punch them in the face, but I was in too much pain. I really dislike the medical profession and all that it encompasses.
I've heard of other women who claim they felt nothing when they were in labor. That it was not painful at all. I have another friend who had "titanic" contractions, punctuated by periods of even harder, stronger contractions on top of the one long one that lasted the whole of her labor. That, she explained, was painful.
Sigh. I never said there is no pain. My point was that pain is not a normal part of a normal childbirth. That there often IS pain, but that the pain is not caused by the birth, but by fear, tension, a lack of knowledge, and a feeling of lack of control, and that telling the prospective mother that there *WILL* be pain almost quarantees the fear and tension, and that the sensations will be interpreted as pain.
And don't tell me I'm different and don't feel pain. I've had several back injuries, including a badly healed ruptured disk, that cause almost constant nerve pain in my upper and lower back and down my left leg, AND I have fibromyalgia (ten of the points), AND in the early '70s I dislocated my Atlas vertebra and had Tic Douloureux (trigeminal neuralgia) on BOTH sides, five or more incidents a day for a year - it felt like my entire head had been thrust into fire. So I know about pain, and feel it like anyone else - WHEN IT *IS* PAIN.
Snarl....
I believe and agree with you that people's expectations cause their perceived reality. TV and movies have done nothing to dispel the myth that childbirth is painful. All you see in movies in screaming women who look like they're being tortured. It's not just the nurses who tell women they'll experience pain. It's the mass media that puts this idea into women's heads from when they are children.
If a nurse tells a women she'll be in pain, they're almost guaranteeing the woman will want an epidural. More $$$ for the hospital, and a great way to cause an unnecessary cesarean, which means more money for the Dr.
After appendicitis with peritonitis, broken bones, ectopic pregnancy with laproscopy, huge back tattoo, stage 4 breast cancer with unanesthetitized PAC insertion lumpectomy radiotherapy and almost 2 years of chemo; I can say it was a very tolerable but tiring pleasurable kind of pain to deliver my daughter naturally. I wanted to experience what it felt like to give birth without interference from drugs or scalpels. I would deliver naturally again without hesitation. I always have a better experience with pain if I know what to expect. With my delivery the healthcare team respected all of my wishes and that went a long way for having a great experience. Queen- My eyes have crossed a few times over the years... I am a nurse who has an unusually high tolerance for pain and know God makes us all different. I hate to see suffering and have always done everything I can to help those under my care be as comfortable as possible. Sometimes the smallest of papercuts or hangnails can be really painful!
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