It brought to mind a panel discussion I sat in on recently. The panel included a labour and delivery nurse, a doula, a midwife and an obstetrician. They all agreed that there is a huge amount of fear about giving birth in pregnant women. They felt that this fear is at an all-time high. Many ideas were thrown out from the panel members and from people in the audience about why this might be the case.
One idea was that there are an abundance of horror stories told about birth both by the media and by women who have gone through it. We seem to hear far more of these stories than of positive ones. One woman speculated that this might be because it is harder to share a positive story. The reasons for this might be that it is less dramatic, it doesn't make for such a good story and, furthermore, who wants to be that mom? It's like being the one who says "MY baby slept through the night at 2 weeks." It smacks of bragging and looking down on others (weather that is the intent or not). She talked about the judgement that people feel when they hear a positive birth story if their own experience was not quite what they had hoped for, or if they had simply made different choices about how to give birth.
I have considered this before because I have been apologized to for all sorts of things by people who have made different choices than I have.
I've also been on the apologetic end. I have gone so far as to hide my daughter's soother around certain people that I felt would think negatively of me for giving her one rather than meeting all her sucking needs at the breast.
I've been thinking a lot about guilt. About why we feel it and about weather we can really be made to feel it by someone else.
I'm starting to think that if we feel guilt after watching someone else live out her values, or hearing her share about what she believes in, etc. then we are probably not 100% comfortable with the choices we have made/are making.
This was certainly the case with my daughter's soother. It has been the case for me on many occasions when I felt like I had failed to live up to someone else's standards.
Does this mean that if someone feels a soother can be damaging and sucking needs should be met at the breast, she should refrain from talking about it around me?
Does it mean, for instance, that someone who eats a vegan diet should never talk about the ways in which it has benefited her health around non-vegans for fear of making them feel guilty?
Or that women should not be educated about the benefits of breastmilk in case they feel badly for formula-feeding?
I don't believe so.
If I'm feeling guilty based on what someone else says or does, maybe I need to re-examine my choices and see if there's something I should change. If I'm comfortable with my choices and feel convinced of their rightness for me, I won't feel guilty, no matter how strongly someone else presents an opposing view. If I feel guilty for not meeting someone else's standards, upon closer introspection, I usually find that those standards are actually my own and I have not yet been able to meet them for myself. I can then get bogged down by guilt, I can work to accept where I am at, or I can let my feelings of guilt motivate me to make changes.
I think the key here is to be certain about our choices - in all areas of life. We should know why we are making the choices we are. We should research our choices. Inform ourselves! If we do, no one can make us feel guilty about the paths we take. We will be convinced of them being right for us and of why this is so. And maybe at some point, we'll come across new information or a really inspiring person and might decide to do things differently in the future, but the choice will be ours and it will not involve guilt. Because then we would be doing it for someone else, and not for ourselves and, chances are, we wouldn't feel completely comfortable with it.
When it comes to birth, I know it's a touchy subject. And I know that it's not something we can go back and change if we've already done it. And so... I don't think anyone should feel guilt about their past birth experiences. If your birth did not go as planned, if you are unhappy with it, I hope you can experience healing and move beyond guilt to a place of acceptance. And if you are happy with your choice to have an epidural or whatever the case may be, and feel 100% comfortable with that decision and would do it again in a heart beat - you won't feel guilty about that no matter how much someone like me might try to change your mind about doing it differently in the future.
If anything I have posted here has made you feel hurt or guilty about something that happened in the past, that you cannot go back and change and quite possibly had no control over in the first place, I am sorry. And it is my prayer that you find healing and can offer forgiveness to yourself, to anyone else involved, to God, to the universe, to fate, to whomever you need to forgive... and that you can accept what has been, embrace the present moment, and look forward to what is to come.
(and if my posts about birth offend you, PLEASE, just skip them!)
Oh, and my daughter's soother? It was a life saver! I felt guilty about it long after she'd given it up. But then I came across more information and learned about why, in our case, meeting all sucking needs at the breast could not have worked. And now I am thankful for that little piece of silicone and I don't regret giving it to her at all. If I regret anything, it's all the time I wasted feeling guilty and apologizing to people I thought would condemn me (no one ever really did).
0 comments:
Post a Comment