Unsettled

I had a dream last night that sort of freaked me out.  I was in the hospital having a baby and the nurse said something was going wrong and they had to do a c-section.  They didn't say what was going wrong, just that they wanted to get the baby out ASAP.  So I said yes.  I went through a pretty brutal surgery that probably bears no resemblance to an actual c-section.  Or god, I hope it doesn't!  I'll spare you the details, but it included kitchen scissors, twine and a shovel.  Then they told me that I didn't actually need the c-section, but it was just so much quicker.  I confronted the nurse and/or doctor (it was pretty vague, in the way dreams are vague) and I told her that I would never forgive her for what she made me do.  SHe just said over and over "I is so much quicker!"  I don't remember there being a baby anywhere in sight.  I do remember thinking "I was going to have my baby at HOME! Why did I go to the hospital?"

I woke up all weirded out.  Now, I am not pregnant (that I know of, anyway) and I don't have any bad associations with my daughter's birth.  Lucy WAS born at home, just like we planned, and I have only positive, glowy feelings about the whole affair. 

So why the dream?  I think it is because I am a member of The Unnecesarean, I Gave Birth At Home. Not Brave. Not Crazy. Just Educated., and a number of other home birth/natural birth type pages and blogs.  I have sort of been innundated with it all since Lucy was conceived, and the obsession I have had with birth in general has not really subsided since Lucy was born. 

I have started to ask myself if there is a reason for this.  Am I supposed to be having tons more homebirth babies?  Hah.  Try getting my husband to agree to ONE more, let alone tons more.  Am I supposed to be training to be a midwife?  A doula?  A childbirth educator?  I just don't know. 

I feel like I had such a good experience with my midwives and with my Hypnobabies course that I SHOULD be passing that information on.  Too many women are afraid of childbirth.  Too many women schedule their c-section to just get it overwith, not really thinking of the fact that c-section is a MAJOR abdominal surgery.  So many people have it done that I feel like the risks are sort of glossed over since it is so completely commonplace.  No big deal.  But there are risks.  Major risks.  Not to mention tht fact that you then have to deal with recovering from major surgery while taking care of a newborn.

And childbirth is a rite of passage.  It is truly nothing to be afraid of.  I feel like moms should have a birthday celebration on the day of their first baby's birth.  Not for the baby - but for themselves.  Mothers are born when babies are born and that is a major rite of passage that I have never heard of being celebrated in our culture.  In fact, when my next baby is born, I am going to have a belated Mama's Birth Day cake for me:-)

The ready access to drugs, the assumption that childbirth is going to be the worst pain imaginable, and the media portrayal of childbirth as a running-down-the-halls-screaming-clutching-your-belly emergency has made so many women forget that it is a normal, natural process that the body knows how to complete.  Ina May Gaskin said in one of her books that childbirth is a natural process no more likely to go wrong than, say, digestion.  Not that things don't ever go wrong - because obviously that is not the case - but generally speaking, they go according to plan - if allowed to unfold naturally.  I think because the stakes are so high and the end result is so life-changing people want the comfort of medical supervision.

But it is often that very supervision that causes the disfunction of the process, leading to more and greater interventions.  An induced labor is not natural.  The contractions don't ebb and flow like they do in spontaneous labor.  They shoot straight up to a peak and drop off.  Natural contractions "wind up".  They start slow, build to a peak and taper off.  It is sort of like a fist closing slowly but tightly, and then relaxing.  These are much easier to deal with.  You have some warning.  You can breath and relax in anticipation.  They are are not as strong in general, so they are easier on the baby.

Current research suggests that some labor interventions make a c-section more likely. For example, labor induction among first-time mothers when the cervix is not soft and ready to open appears to increase the likelihood of cesarean birth. Continuous electronic fetal monitoring has been associated with greater likelihood of a cesarean. Having an epidural early in labor or without a high-dose boost of synthetic oxytocin ("Pitocin") seems to increase the likelihood of a c-section 
         (Childbirth Connection)
 
As you all know, Lucy was born at home.  I chose a homebirth because I hate hospitals.  Hospitals are for sick people.  And I am blindly obediant to doctors.  I doesn't matter if I have a gut feeling one way or another about something.  I don't ask questions, I don't question orders and I KNOW this about myself. 
 
Here is an example.  A few years ago, I had an IUD inserted.  I went to a new GYN for the procedure.  She had never met me before.  She knew next to nothing about me.  I knew, from my own research, that she should have ordered a blood test to screen for any STDs or conditions that could potentially make inserting an IUD dangerous.  She didn't mention it.  I had been in an exclusive relationship for over a year, and neither of us had anything that we knew about, certainly no symptoms of anything untoward, and we were exclusive.  So I didn't say anything.  I assumed she knew what she was talking about better than me, even though I knew from everything I had read that if I had anything from a yeast infection to assymptomatic chlamydia, I could get a potentially life-threatening infection.  And that is what happened.  Two days after the IUD was inserted, it fell out.  The doctor just put a new one in.  That in and of itself could have caused an infection.  A week later, I started getting pains in my upper abdomen.  Then I got the period from hell.  I was bleeding like a stuck pig - literally.  I use a Keeper - which holds an ounce of mentrual blood.  I was emptying it every 30-45 minutes when a normal flow is about .5-1oz every 12 hours.  Then I got a fever.  Then the pains were so bad I couldn't take a breath without crying.  I couldn't eat.  I couldn't sleep.  No amount or strength of pain medication could help.  They brushed me off at the emergency room as having indigestion (?!?) and sent me home - twice, even though I said "I have and IUD, I am bleeding heavily, and I am in a lot of pain".  The ER doctors actually called my primary care physician (who I LOVE, by the way, and is a wonderful, caring, sensitive doctor) and asked if I was a complainer or hypochondriac.  I was finally admitted to the hospital on suspected appendicitis after 2 weeks of a steadily deteriorating condtion.  I was diagnosed with a raging case Pelvic Inflammatory Disease (PID) that had infected the lining of my liver (thus the upper abdominal pain) and caused my gall bladder to spasm (which, incidentally, was about 1000 times more painful than childbirth - and no one once offered me an epidural for THAT).  By that time, my period from hell was STILL going, and I had lost so much blood that they couldn't find a vein to rehydrate me.  They almost resorted to sticking the IV in my NECK.  My red blood cell count was so low that my enormously elevated white blood cell count looked normal in comparison.  I was in the hospital for 8 days.  I had a week of IV triple antibiotics, several months of residual pain, and chronic tendonitis in my hips (which is a rare side effect of the antibiotics).  My "doctor" - and I use the term loosly - never cultured the infection, so we never knew what caused it.  She never recommended that my partner be treated, too, which absolutely should have been done since many PID cases are the result of bacteria traveling into the upper reproductive track - which is what happened when she inserted not one but TWO IUDs.  Three months later I had a recurrence - requiring more antibiotics - because my partner hadn't been treated the first time and we reinfected each other with whatever bacteria had caused the initial infection.  Horrible.  Painful.  Scary - not only could the infection have gone septic, but it was entirely possible that I would be completely sterile from the scar tissue and adhesions that would probably form in my tubes and uterus from such a prolonged infection.  And all of this happened because I didn't speak up and say "I read that you should have a blood test to make sure there are no latent infections - I would feel more comfortable if we did that first".  That and an incompetent doctor.  Fortunately I had no problems conceiving my daughter and the only residual reproductive effects was more shocking pain when the adhesions around my liver started to really stretch out at around the 30th week of my pregnancy. 
 
Let me reiterate - I am not a doctor-hater.  I would be dead without my oncologist (I had thyroid cancer in 1998).  I would be dead without my primary care doctor's perserverence to get me into the hospital - even making a phony diagnosis to get someone to take me seriously.  What I hate is that I don't question them.  I hate that, though I AM an informed consumer, I don't have the confidence to DO anything about it.  I do not stand up for myself in the face of someone with years of medical training and an "I know what's best for you" demeanor.

So what I needed was to stay in control of my birth experience without having to fight for it.  I knew my midwives would tell me if things were going awry well before a problem occured and get me to a hospital if I needed it.  I trust them.  They know me, they know my husband, they know my home.  They came to me for everything.  no one ever wagged their finger at me or used scare tactics to get me to do something I wasn't comfortable with.  And I got to crawl into my own bed after my marathon labor and sleep next to my husband.  It was wonderful.  It was empowering and I would do it again in a heartbeat.  Here's the full story if you are interested.

So I am re-examining my calling in life.  I know that becoming a doula or a midwife will require me to rethink a lot of things about my life.  Like, do I ever want to be a real actor again?  Do I want to keep teaching yoga to children?  Do we have room for a new crazy career in our already chaotic house full of crazy careers?  Is this all a passing obsession that will disintegrate when Kevin and I decide we're not having anymore kids?

So many questions...lots of soul searching to do...

And that dream totally freaked me out.  Even more than the one I had where babies had to be stuffed back into their mom's belly every night to sleep.  Ugh.  Not funny at all.