There are times when I’m thankful my baby birthing years are over. I’m glad I don’t have to think about birth plans and whether I will choose to have an epidural.
I have no regrets with the decisions made around the births of my three daughters. I’m thankful for the way I gave birth and grateful that I don’t have any horrific birth stories to share. My c-sections were no walk in the park, but at least they didn’t scar me from child birth for life.
But not a lot of women can admit the same.
Some women are scarred so much by their labour and birth experience, they’re reluctant to try for another baby.
One such mum, Kate Symons, has shared her personal experience of going through labour in the Courier Mail.
She questions ‘why wasn’t I warned?’
My baby girl was just two-days-old and, while I was utterly in love with our little bundle, I was still in shock and pain. I lay in the hospital bed as still as could be, too petrified to move, and I wondered: how could they not have warned me?
I wasn’t expecting labour to be easy. Far from it. I was expecting the greatest challenge of my life. I was expecting pain like I had never felt before.
That’s certainly what I got, but still, I felt utterly and incomprehensibly blindsided.
I was angry. Why wasn’t I told? How could so many mothers before me — not to mention the numerous professionals I was exposed to during my pregnancy — not help me develop more accurate expectations?
There are many seasons in life where we wish we had been warned about what was ahead.
I wish I didn’t want to grow up so quick, because being an adult requires responsibility – and money.
I wish I knew what it was like to have kids, as I would have reconsidered when I had them.
I wish I knew more about childbirth so I knew what to expect.
Is it another mum’s duty to shed truth on labour and birth? Would other mums-to-be listen to another mum share her horrific labour and birth experience? It’s not something that’s talked about unless you attend a mother’s group.
Symons had an epiphany as she was trying to write her article about labour and birth. She wanted to tell pregnant women what to really expect. That labour would hurt; it would hurt more than they’d expect.
As a writer, I spent many hours over the coming months toying with the potential story angles in my head. The shock and disappointment was slowly subsiding but I didn’t want another woman to feel the same way I had.
I would warn them appropriately, that’s what I’d do!
But the angle didn’t come to me as it normally would. Every time I thought I had it, my research would leave me stranded, slightly short of the helpful message I wanted to spread.
Then I realised. It wasn’t an epiphany. It was slow and contemplative. The story I wanted to write was impossible. Which is exactly why it has never been written before.
A tell-all article about labour is only one mum’s experience and shouldn’t be the expectation for pregnant mums who are about to give birth.
Articles that share horrific birth stories are usually the most clicked posts.
No matter how helpful a writer is in sharing her personal birth story, it may or may not resonate with other mums. And those experiences certainly shouldn’t be left as the benchmark for other mums to know what to expect because everybody’s birth story is different.
Time is a great healer. Most women who are unexpectedly shocked by the pain caused by labour will go through it again to add a sibling to the family.
In the meantime, what can pregnant mums do to prepare themselves for the birth of their child?
Talk to your medical team. Make a birth plan but expect that it may need to be flexible in case of complications. Prepare yourself by listening to other birth stories and remind yourself many women have given birth before you and have lived to tell the tale.
It’s definitely an incredible thing to go through. Even if the pain takes you by surprise.
How did you prepare yourself for the birth of your child? Were you taken back by the pain of labour? Do you wish someone had told you how painful labour could be?
