I told the car mechanic story outlined in my last post to my new midwife, who laughed along with me, sharing my outrage, or at least I thought so. When we had finished laughing, she said, ‘if the obstetrician is the mechanic, what is the midwife?’ I was gobsmacked. Hello?! The point of this story is that I was being compared to a car! A car. An inanimate piece of machinery. That doesn’t give birth to little cars. To my face! (Can you tell that I’m still gobsmacked by this?)
A few months later, when she brought a trainee midwife with her on one of her visits, she got me to repeat the story, and the trainee’s response was the same, ‘what is the midwife in this scenario?’ At which point, I replied, half-jokingly, ‘I don’t know, perhaps the tea-lady?’ My midwife sardonically thanked me.
I know the two midwives were only picking up the ball of the metaphor and running with it to figure out what the analogue for their role was, but it still made me feel kind of like an object. I was not a chassis hovering up near the ceiling on a mechanical hoist, I was a pregnant woman. For that moment, it seemed that even the people who were most supportive - in the non-mechanical hoist sense - sometimes lost sight of that in the long-standing doctors versus midwives conflict.
I’m not sure how many stories I heard from my midwife about how great it was that the law had been changed - and no, I’m still not sure what law that was - so that midwives had more autonomy to practice how they wanted. It was like I was supposed to be vicariously thrilled that they’d won their battle. Not that I’m not, I just didn’t want to hear about it all the time. This was the first - and possibly only! - time I was pregnant, and I wanted the focus to be on me, me, me. Oh, and the baby, of course.
Let me be clear. My midwife was excellent. I have few complaints about the care that I received from her. And I was aware that, as childbirth became more medicalised in the nineteenth century, midwives, who had primarily looked after women in childbirth until then, were marginalised in the process. Women’s bodies became subject to the authority of male doctors, who presumably knew better because, well, they were men. If the original car incident with my former GP had taught me nothing else, it was that some male doctors a) still viewed women as objects (a car!) and b) still pathologised what is a natural process.
As I have mentioned before, I have some skepticism concerning the reification of the natural in childbirth and child-rearing. But pregnancy, as that feminist bastion Netball New Zealand confirmed when Adine Wilson played in the losing New Zealand side in the 2007 world championships final three months pregnant, is a state of health. (side-note: there was a storm in the teacup over this pregnancy when it was announced after New Zealand lost 42-38. Would it even have been an issue if they had won?) It is a natural process, but one that is not left solely to nature.
When I was trying to select a midwife, several asked me about my ‘birth philosophy’. ‘My what?’ I thought to myself. Am I supposed to have concluded whether or not my birth would be an affirmation of Platonic Idealism, Cartesian dualism, or even Derridean deconstruction? It turned out that a birth philosophy is more along the lines of whether you’re a ‘give me an epidural with everything’ type or ‘I want to feel every mind-blistering painful moment’ type. The midwife who I had personally gravitated to most told me that she practised natural childbirth i.e. the ‘pain and lots of it’ kind. I really wanted her to be my midwife, as I thought we had got on well when we spoke, but I was unsure if I would be able to cope with an unmedicated birth experience.
I thought about it a lot as I wondered whether to go with her or not. The number one consideration for me was to be with someone that I could trust, and I had felt this way straightaway with the midwife I liked. I also intellectually liked what she said about ‘woman being able to do it’ without help. I liked the idea that the pregnant woman should be in control of her own destiny as much as possible. It sounded like an empowered, even feminist, birth experience. On the other hand, I am a big chicken when it comes to pain - and that goes for big epidural needles too. In choosing a midwife, was it finally time to put my uterus where my mouth was?
In the end, I decided to take the leap of faith and commit to having a natural birth. I felt daunted by it, but hoped that I would be proud of what I had achieved when it was over. Before the labour started, I had even convinced myself that all the pain would be productive and, even though it would hurt, it would be better for the baby and mean a better recovery for me.
But as flies to wanton boys are we to the gods. Far from a natural childbirth, I ended up having an almost completely medicalised experience: induced labour, epidural, antibiotics, forceps, lots of surgery, general anaesthetic, blood transfusions, the works. My midwife stayed with me the whole time, encouraging and supporting me, even though the doctors took over in the end. The baby was fine. I was not, for a long time. It turns out that if we had really let nature take its course, it’s possible one or both of us wouldn’t be here.
I think I have a birth philosophy now, having gone through the experience, and having had eleven sleepless months to think about it, but it isn’t ‘give me lots of drugs’ or ‘I’ll die before I mainline anything’. It’s ....
Nope, sorry.
It's gone.
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