Of course I have pet peeves. There are things that get under my skin.
Like how I was driving down the highway, 5 over the speed limit, on my way from a crisis call back to my school as quickly as possible to get some work done, and a driver who was not paying attention at all rear-ended me this week. That was annoying. No damage to the car or me at all - it was more like a little bumper car bump, but really?! I mean, really. You have to be so distracted to do something like that. There weren't even any other cars around at all. I bet he was texting. But I digress.
I used to be bothered by the sound of other people eating. It would send me up the wall. Not even open-mouthed, bad-manners eating. Just normal, polite eating. I think it's because I remembered my grandpa telling me something about eating loudly when I was really little, and ever since then I thought you weren't even supposed to be able to hear yourself chew. I'm thankful I've gotten over this one because it was no fun to have my blood boil every time people ate.
But now, you know what really gets my goose? (Or is it goat? My mom and I both struggle with cliches in a tragic way.) You can guarantee that I'll whip out my soapbox or at least silently seethe when I hear about the terror that is labor and delivery. So brace yourself because here it comes.
I caught some kind of show about human development while flipping through the channels the other night. It was narrated by Courtney Cox and it was okay. They followed three expectant moms and talked about the changes in the body over the course of pregnancy - the standard stuff pretty much. But then they came to the part where the babies were going to be born and she said something like, "The most terrifying and dangerous part of this journey is up next" and... cut to commercial.
I think I actually said out loud, "You've got to be kidding me."
When I was in middle school, part of our sex ed curriculum was viewing a birth. Oh, the hype that preceded that day. Everyone was all worked up about how impossible it was. It was weird and scary and dangerous and it would absolutely ruin the woman's body in irreparable ways. We watched like people watching a car crash. The horror! And I'm pretty sure our teachers were well-intentioned but in the years of sex ed that I received (both in Catholic school and in my public middle school), I don't recall anyone ever being excited about birth. Or even a little bit positive about it. Instead, it was like this absolutely horrible thing that you just had to do in order to have a baby. I regularly heard things, "The worst pain you will ever experience," "like squeezing a watermelon out of a lemon," and the like. Ugh. Still today there are so many people who are eager to tell expectant moms their own birth horror stories. "It's going to be terrible!" they tell the mom-to-be. How is that helpful? I guess they think that it's helping by not sugar-coating things?
One result of all this fear-mongering is that many grown women are terrified of labor and delivery. And who wouldn't be, with this culture of misinformation and fear surrounding it? It breaks my heart to think that Evelyn would hear these messages and think that birth is something to fear, and then tolerate, and then forget.
Of course it's not perfect. It's hard work. Things sometimes do go wrong (though not nearly as often as the TV and others might have you think).
But it's also such a unique human experience. If you can take the time to really educate yourself about the process that the mother's body goes through during pregnancy and then the stages of labor, you will be amazed. And the baby's body is designed to do some incredible things, too. It's amazing how much of the fear can be removed simply by educating yourself. I hear other people talk about certain things regarding labor and delivery as if they were really scary or abnormal - they make people feel out of control. But really it's part of this incredible process. I'm probably not making much sense here...
Birth is normal.
Labor and delivery themselves, not just the end result of holding the baby, are incredible. Often when I tell an expectant mom this, I get a little smirk like she thinks I'm just saying that to be nice when really we all know it's going to be awful and scary and painful. But I'm not. I really believe it and I believe that it is true for all kinds of labors and deliveries. And maybe if we can all learn a little bit more about the process, beyond what a teacher told us when we were 13 (and said teacher was probably motivated at least a little bit by a desire to scare us into not having sex), and maybe if we can share encouraging and empowering birth and recovery stories of all kinds, we can start to change things. That's my hope.
Like how I was driving down the highway, 5 over the speed limit, on my way from a crisis call back to my school as quickly as possible to get some work done, and a driver who was not paying attention at all rear-ended me this week. That was annoying. No damage to the car or me at all - it was more like a little bumper car bump, but really?! I mean, really. You have to be so distracted to do something like that. There weren't even any other cars around at all. I bet he was texting. But I digress.
I used to be bothered by the sound of other people eating. It would send me up the wall. Not even open-mouthed, bad-manners eating. Just normal, polite eating. I think it's because I remembered my grandpa telling me something about eating loudly when I was really little, and ever since then I thought you weren't even supposed to be able to hear yourself chew. I'm thankful I've gotten over this one because it was no fun to have my blood boil every time people ate.
But now, you know what really gets my goose? (Or is it goat? My mom and I both struggle with cliches in a tragic way.) You can guarantee that I'll whip out my soapbox or at least silently seethe when I hear about the terror that is labor and delivery. So brace yourself because here it comes.
I caught some kind of show about human development while flipping through the channels the other night. It was narrated by Courtney Cox and it was okay. They followed three expectant moms and talked about the changes in the body over the course of pregnancy - the standard stuff pretty much. But then they came to the part where the babies were going to be born and she said something like, "The most terrifying and dangerous part of this journey is up next" and... cut to commercial.
I think I actually said out loud, "You've got to be kidding me."
When I was in middle school, part of our sex ed curriculum was viewing a birth. Oh, the hype that preceded that day. Everyone was all worked up about how impossible it was. It was weird and scary and dangerous and it would absolutely ruin the woman's body in irreparable ways. We watched like people watching a car crash. The horror! And I'm pretty sure our teachers were well-intentioned but in the years of sex ed that I received (both in Catholic school and in my public middle school), I don't recall anyone ever being excited about birth. Or even a little bit positive about it. Instead, it was like this absolutely horrible thing that you just had to do in order to have a baby. I regularly heard things, "The worst pain you will ever experience," "like squeezing a watermelon out of a lemon," and the like. Ugh. Still today there are so many people who are eager to tell expectant moms their own birth horror stories. "It's going to be terrible!" they tell the mom-to-be. How is that helpful? I guess they think that it's helping by not sugar-coating things?
One result of all this fear-mongering is that many grown women are terrified of labor and delivery. And who wouldn't be, with this culture of misinformation and fear surrounding it? It breaks my heart to think that Evelyn would hear these messages and think that birth is something to fear, and then tolerate, and then forget.
Of course it's not perfect. It's hard work. Things sometimes do go wrong (though not nearly as often as the TV and others might have you think).
But it's also such a unique human experience. If you can take the time to really educate yourself about the process that the mother's body goes through during pregnancy and then the stages of labor, you will be amazed. And the baby's body is designed to do some incredible things, too. It's amazing how much of the fear can be removed simply by educating yourself. I hear other people talk about certain things regarding labor and delivery as if they were really scary or abnormal - they make people feel out of control. But really it's part of this incredible process. I'm probably not making much sense here...
Birth is normal.
Labor and delivery themselves, not just the end result of holding the baby, are incredible. Often when I tell an expectant mom this, I get a little smirk like she thinks I'm just saying that to be nice when really we all know it's going to be awful and scary and painful. But I'm not. I really believe it and I believe that it is true for all kinds of labors and deliveries. And maybe if we can all learn a little bit more about the process, beyond what a teacher told us when we were 13 (and said teacher was probably motivated at least a little bit by a desire to scare us into not having sex), and maybe if we can share encouraging and empowering birth and recovery stories of all kinds, we can start to change things. That's my hope.
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