Friday, December 20, 2013

So, what is childbirth?

child·birth
n.
The human act or process of giving birth; parturition.

Simple right? Its the act of giving birth to the child you have been growing for 9 months. Something that women have been doing since the beginning of time. Not only human females, but females of all species. Whether it be giving birth to live-born spawn or to eggs, it is the most natural and beautiful part of life.

Image source:Wikipedia
An image of a women giving birth in the 1500 on a birth chair with women for support.


Yet it is something that terrifies women all around the world. The question is,

Why?

I put it down to 2 major factors.

Hospitals and Horror stories.

Hospitals:

If someone said to you today "i'm going to visit my aunty in the hospital" what would your first thought be?
Would you ask, "what is wrong with your aunty?" Or "Is she ok?"
Your first thought isn't going to be the fact that she just gave birth to a very healthy little baby and she is healthy herself.

We generally assume that hospitals are places for sick people, they have negative connotations and for that reason, the thought of having to go into that hospital to have a baby, bring fears to the minds of many.
Although midwives are specially trained in "wellness" which is what pregnancy and birth is all about. But we cant get past the fear of hospitals and therefor we become scared of the outcome of our birth.
I will be putting together a series of posts about getting past the fear of childbirth over the next few months, stay tuned!

Horror stories:

Any lady who has ever been pregnant, would be well aware of the birth stories that your friends enjoy sharing with you, You know the ones? where the labour lasted for 100 hours? or the baby had 4 heads? Some people call it "birth war" I think it has a lot to do with women who have never fully recovered from a fearful birth themselves.

Needless to say though, you will know what i'm talking about. And there is no way of avoiding this. The best advice I can give is that, every birth is different, every women is different and just because your best friends aunties, cousin had a horrible birth experience doesn't mean that yours will be the same.

Even if you, yourself have had a bad experience in the past ,does not mean that the births in your future will follow. You just have to believe in yourself and your body and take it from there.

Like I said, I will be posting a series of "dealing with birth fear" posts over the next few weeks, so stay tuned.

Whats the worst horror story you were told whilst pregnant?


2 comments:

  1. My best friend had a 4 day induction birth and when she found out I was pregnant she would bring up her birth every time I saw her. It ended up tearing our friendship apart. But I believe your correct, she never got over her traumatic birth

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  2. Im sorry this effected your friendship and I hope your birth is great. Also I hope that your friend can get some help for her birth trauma.
    Please dont fear your birth, embrace it :)

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