Nearly a year ago, I went to ante-natal classes that focussed on natural birth and how to prepare for it. While there were many positives about this class - not least the wonderful women who I met through it - there were also some moments that I found a little difficult to process. I won’t go into them all here, but one that has stayed with me occurred during the class on the stages of labour.
We were met at the start of that evening’s class by the affirmation ‘every contraction brings my baby closer to me’ written on a large piece of cardboard. ‘O ... K,’ I thought to myself, wondering what on earth we were in for. ‘I guess that’s true ...’ My husband and I took our seats, and listened to a midwife go through the various stages of labour. After this, the course facilitators then spoke about their own birth experiences. It was during these narratives that one of the course facilitators - who, incidentally, ended up having an emergency caesarean - said of her labour ‘I can honestly say it wasn’t painful.’ My first thought was, ‘really?’ and ‘is that even possible?’ We had talked somewhat during the class about productive pain - the kind that brings your baby closer to you - and I was trying to psyche myself into managing this with only some combs, a swissball and a hot water bottle for help. And yet here was one of the facilitators saying that it honestly wasn’t painful. What to believe?
I should add that this facilitator was not making a general claim. She didn’t say labour is not painful, or that she was talking about anything other than her own experience. But, given that was the case, I was left wondering why she said that to us at all. What was to be gained by telling us her labour wasn’t painful? Were we meant to feel envious? Hope that our labours would be similarly blessed? Feel that if we admitted it was pain almost beyond belief that we were letting the side down?
Perhaps there are some lucky women whose labour isn’t painful (and not just the ones with epidurals), but I strongly suspect for most women that natural childbirth is intensely painful. In fact, when I mentioned this exchange to my midwife - a proponent of natural childbirth, but not one to sugar-coat - she said firmly ‘it’s painful.’ Or, in other words, ‘don’t kid yourself, love - you’re in for quite an ordeal'. Her view was that ‘women can do it,’ especially with the assistance of a good, supportive midwife.
I’m aware that some women don’t like to use the language of pain - like ‘contractions’ - when discussing childbirth. Instead, they refer to ‘rushes’ (sidenote: this always confuses me somewhat, as it makes me think of pregnant women getting high on amyl nitrate or something ). I acknowledge that it certainly helps to be in a positive frame of mind when giving birth, and if this is a way that some women get into that frame of mind, well, more power to them. I just question the wisdom of foisting that on to unsuspecting expectant mothers.
It’s about this point that the Kate Figeses and Eleanor Blacks would probably start exhorting the facilitator to ‘tell the truth’ about childbirth. But, again, I’m not sure that truth is the issue. The facilitator may well have been as honest as she claimed about her own experience. I have no way of knowing that. And, as I have discussed before, women’s embodied experiences are not the same and can’t be reduced to one monolithic narrative. Positive experiences that go as mothers planned, home births in specially-bought yurts, and even orgasmic births can and do happen.
But I can’t help but feel that this unthinking comment, made not just by anyone, but by the facilitator of an ante-natal class, was in some ways setting us up for failure. By that I mean that it planted the seed (no pun intended) that labour might not be painful. That if we did experience pain at the limits of our capacity to endure it, we were somehow not doing it right, were not being brave enough, would send other expectant mothers careering into the arms of doctors with big needles. That’s a lot of unconscious baggage to be loading up on when you’re about to enter into one of the most transformative experiences of your life.
On the flipside, there are those who seem to think that the more pain you experience, the more noble your sacrifice. In this view, suffering is an essential part of the process, recalling God’s alleged punishment to Eve once she was expelled from the Garden of Eden that ‘in sorrow, she would bring forth children’ (I say ‘alleged’ because some feminist Bible scholars have argued that this is a mistranslation of the original texts. But I digress.) If we follow this thought to its conclusion, then it’s almost as if you can’t properly belong to the mummy club, or really know what it means to love your child, unless you’ve been ripped to shreds.
Both narratives position women as masochists, and buy into hegemonic notions that women are only defined by their bodies. There is nothing noble about pain and suffering, which will, more than likely, be a defining feature of labour and birth. It doesn’t make you a better mother to have suffered. It doesn’t make you a worse mother to admit that it was painful either.
My own experience was, in the end, comparatively pain-free. Because my labour didn’t progress, and my waters had broken several hours earlier, I was considered to have moved into an ‘abnormal’ labour. After attempting to ride through the artificially-induced contractions, and still remaining at one centimetre dilated after what felt like forever, even my midwife was suggesting I should have an epidural. I did have one, and ended up spending a pleasant day high as a kite, eating sandwiches with my husband and and listening to jazz. Like the course facilitator, I can honestly say that my labour wasn’t painful. As for what came afterwards, however, well that’s another story ...
