Spring Break
Giving birth as painful, terrifying as media makes it out to be
Rachel Spitler
Issue date: 5/15/09 Section: Forum
Last Monday, this paper reprinted a Daily Nebraskan piece by Sarah Melecki bearing the headline "Marriage, children don't validate women."
Let me start by saying that, as I hope most would, I heartily agree with this premise. Melecki wrote as a single woman insisting on having an identity of her own, regardless of family, fertility or the state of her left hand. As a married woman, I share these concerns; I am keenly interested in being seen as more than just my husband's wife.
What fills me with dismay, though, is the following paragraph, in which Melecki explains why she personally doesn't plan on having children:
"The idea of nine months of throwing up and cramps followed by a marathon round of pain in a sterile room while strangers look up my hospital gown and watch me poop on a table is not at all appealing to me."
Good heavens.
That does sound pretty hideous, but I profoundly hope Melecki doesn't really think that that's how childbirth has to be. I hope that she was just giving a worst-case scenario to make her argument nice and punchy.
Unfortunately, though, this vision of how we all must come into the world is an extremely common one. Pregnant women in the media are a common plot device, and their birthing experiences are always exaggeratedly dramatic - because that's what happens when you put something on TV.
Labor is almost universally reported as horrifying, traumatic and dehumanizing. Nightmarish doctors leering on every side. Bodily fluids everywhere. Agonized pleas for death going unheeded.
Don't believe it.
Thirty or 40 years ago, this was true - women had very few choices about where and how to give birth. If you went through the process in a hospital, it would have been very much as Melecki describes, with a few other nasty details: women in labor were not allowed any friends or family members nearby. They were strapped down, shaved, cut, forced to swallow pills and etherized if they complained too much.
Let me start by saying that, as I hope most would, I heartily agree with this premise. Melecki wrote as a single woman insisting on having an identity of her own, regardless of family, fertility or the state of her left hand. As a married woman, I share these concerns; I am keenly interested in being seen as more than just my husband's wife.
What fills me with dismay, though, is the following paragraph, in which Melecki explains why she personally doesn't plan on having children:
"The idea of nine months of throwing up and cramps followed by a marathon round of pain in a sterile room while strangers look up my hospital gown and watch me poop on a table is not at all appealing to me."
Good heavens.
That does sound pretty hideous, but I profoundly hope Melecki doesn't really think that that's how childbirth has to be. I hope that she was just giving a worst-case scenario to make her argument nice and punchy.
Unfortunately, though, this vision of how we all must come into the world is an extremely common one. Pregnant women in the media are a common plot device, and their birthing experiences are always exaggeratedly dramatic - because that's what happens when you put something on TV.
Labor is almost universally reported as horrifying, traumatic and dehumanizing. Nightmarish doctors leering on every side. Bodily fluids everywhere. Agonized pleas for death going unheeded.
Don't believe it.
Thirty or 40 years ago, this was true - women had very few choices about where and how to give birth. If you went through the process in a hospital, it would have been very much as Melecki describes, with a few other nasty details: women in labor were not allowed any friends or family members nearby. They were strapped down, shaved, cut, forced to swallow pills and etherized if they complained too much.
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