As I described Molly’s birth to her, I felt this warm wave of good feeling and my heart stood up and twirled around as I re-lived those moments last September. When I got up off the hospital bed, after pushing an 8 pound 15 ounce baby into the world, snuggling her at my breast, downing two celebratory and hard-earned percocets, and walked, all by myself, to my recovery room one floor down.

I haven’t felt that victorious, relieved, goddess-like, I-can-do-anything, show me a mountain . . . ever. Before or since.

Which tells me two things: 1) I need a new goal, some big, hard, rewarding thing, and 2) I need to do something in support of natural birth in the world. (even if that starts with something as small as this blog post).

My cousin is getting really close, and I was trying to think how to express my best encouragement. When I was fretting over my inconsistent mental preparations, it helped when Andrea told me her epiphany that there wasn’t any one thing she had to do and do right, but rather, she just needed to experience, to allow, to surrender. It helped to know that when I thought I couldn’t do it anymore, I didn’t have to because it was almost over, and I was already doing it anyway. It helped to know that by the time the pain was something I’d sell my soul to avoid, it’s too late to find a black market buyer. (and it was almost over.)

It helps me now, to remember that night and think: If I can do that, I can do anything. If I can do that, anyone can do that. And the thing about not doing it, but allowing it? That also helps for if things go wrong. If something goes wrong and intervention is needed and you have to allow something else to happen, something that wasn’t in your birth plan, that’s okay, because it turns out that was the thing you had to allow, to experience, to submit to. It wasn’t something you failed to do right, it was the thing that was supposed to happen. You can do this. Or that, or whatever you have to.

Giving birth to my baby, naked, lying on my side and indignant that I had to hold my own knee up and out of the way, feeling every stretch and burn and push and fire and thrust and swell and release, that was ecstatic. That was living deliberately, that was building my cabin in the forest by a pond, that was a luxury of wild nights! wild nights!, and squeezing the marrow out.

That was (every expletive you can think of) amazing.

—

Molly’s birth story

What to read when you’re expecting

Thinking about natural birth after thinking I had miscarried

An old one that shows how far I’ve come

I think this is the part where I get to say, demurely and modestly, of course, that thank you, thank you, yes, no applause please, I birthed that baby without any pain medication. But all I can really say is that that is some PAINFUL stuff, and if I hadn’t been blessed with a pretty quick labor, who knows what I would’ve been asking for. Epidural? Demerol? More like a morphine cluster-bomb, please.

On Wednesday morning I had a bad feeling. I wanted to sit and wrestle with it, to make sure it wasn’t just my own impatience coloring how I felt. I was fine, I could go longer, but the baby wasn’t moving as much as usual, which is okay and normal for the end of pregnancy, but still. I felt bad. I was comforted by the blessing Tom had given me ten days before, and by the re-reading of several chapters in Rixa‘s books, and by the quote Mrs. Potts left on my last post, but as I drove to my non-stress test and midwife check at 41 weeks and 5 days, I couldn’t stop crying. (Until I did, because who wants to be the pregnant lady crying all over the reception desk?)

Baby Molly “passed” the NST, but she did have several decelerations that weren’t explained by contractions. I met with one of my midwives, who wasn’t pushy but seemed uncomfortable with the idea of waiting longer. I was 4+ dilated and 90% effaced. I agreed to a biophysical profile (ultrasound) to just check on things because by then I was wavering back towards wanting to wait, wanting so much to have the totally natural experience as long as the baby was fine. And knowing that inducing with Pitocin (which is known to cause heart decelerations due to stronger and more frequent contractions, especially in concert with broken water no longer cushioning the baby and cord) is a little illogical when the original indicator was heart decelerations. Like when they broke my water with Avery because my amniotic fluid was too low. Somehow ten years ago that made sense.

While I waited, the midwife who was on call that day came into the office and we talked at length about my hopes and her recommendations, what I was comfortable with and what she was comfortable with. I guess in the end it was about me trusting her, that when she promised to turn off the Pitocin as soon as possible, to unhook me from all the machines and let me do whatever I wanted, I believed her. I had packed all my stuff in the car, because of that bad feeling, but she told me to go home, arrange everything with my kids and come back to the hospital with my husband in a couple hours. I called my mom on my way home, realizing I’d have to wait for her to go home first to get her things for staying at our house, but she, too, had had a feeling that morning, and she’d packed a bag before going to school.

I called Crysanthemum and told her it wasn’t urgent, but if she wanted to come to the hospital after her husband came home from work, we’d probably be getting things going by then. I called my sister Marcy and told her she was welcome. Karin ended up coming too, with my dad, who stayed for awhile then left to see my mom and kids.

Before we left home, Tom gave me a blessing, with the girls and my mom looking on. Things felt right. When we got to the hospital, I was excited and a little bit apprehensive, mostly excited; however things went, I’d have a baby today! Or tomorrow! At the latest!

The nurse got me a room and offered me a gown. I told her I’d brought my own clothes and she said “great.” She got me hooked up to the fetal monitors and asked me questions; when she asked me to rate my pain I said that it was a one, but that I was planning to not have any pain medication, including no epidural. Then without prompting she said, “So would you like me to not ask you that again then?” and I said yes. She made a note of that and when I expressed my concern, my caveat that with the Pitocin I didn’t know how I’d do with the pain, she was very encouraging that I could do it.

I told Marcy on the phone to bring her card games. Roberta, my midwife, showed up and never left. We were all sitting around and talking, Marcy, Karin, Dad, Tom, Roberta, Chrysanthemum, the nurse and me. We had the Pitocin on at 4 and I started feeling contractions. I was hooked up to the monitors and the IV, but I was sitting on a birth ball next to the bed. The monitors kept slipping but we didn’t worry too much about them. I bounced and talked; I was feeling much too good, but we didn’t play games. We talked a little about Roberta’s experience as a labor & delivery nurse in Alaska before she became a CNM, and about some culture issues that she’s encountered living in Utah the past ten years — she said that watching movies like the Singles Ward and Pride and Prejudice helped her understand Mormons better.

After awhile the baby’s head had descended a bit, so Roberta broke my waters and then I was back on the birth ball, making a mess of the floor even with the pads under me. I started feeling the contractions, checking out of the conversation then coming back in. An hour after starting the Pitocin, I felt really in labor and Roberta ran a bath for me. We unhooked the monitors and the IVs and I hobbled to the bathroom. Mostly I just wanted to be on the toilet. I was still 4+ dilated. I got in the tub, but it wasn’t so great, just a regular-size tub. I was most comfortable on my hands and knees, draping my arms and head over the side. I clutched at Tom’s pants and moaned. I had Tom shut the bathroom door all the way. I could hear my sisters and Crysanthemum and the nurse and Roberta, all laughing and talking. Didn’t they know I was dying in here?

Roberta knocked on the door and came in to ask if I was pushing. I said no. She said, are you sure? Because it sounds like you are. I said no, but I was definitely rethinking all this stupid natural stuff, wishing I’d never read a single book, never heard of Rixa’s blog, that I’d remained in happy ignorance. A while later (fifteen minutes?) she brought a large bath sheet in and said she wanted to get me on the bed to check me. I was happy to get out of the tub, it just wasn’t that comfortable, too small for a whale anyway.

I got back on the bed and heard the best news ever. I was dilated to 9, and it’s true that if pain is productive, if you can say, look, this is really doing something, we’re getting somewhere, then it is much easier to bear. I had shed the towel somewhere between the bathroom and the bed, and now I climbed off to stand facing the bed, bracing myself on it, and doing awkward deep plie-type movements, sticking my butt high in the air. Crysanthemum closed the blinds at the big window, saying something about my privacy, but I could have paraded naked down Fifth Avenue at that point. I had spent a great deal of time and energy worrying about what I’d wear in labor, how I’d feel naked or wearing this camisole or that nightgown, and as soon as I really was in labor, the thought of putting clothes back on was not even a thought my brain could entertain. I don’t think the door to my room was even closed — the curtain was pulled so no one could see in, but the actual door was open, I think, the entire time. I didn’t care, in fact, I think I liked the idea that even with my loud vocalizations, the hospital wasn’t trying to shut me up in any way.

Roberta threw some sheets and towels on the floor and said I could have the baby there if I wanted, but maybe I’d like to try kneeling on the bed. She raised the back all the way up, almost 90 degrees, and I knelt facing it, so I could rest against the top of it between contractions. That was a pretty comfortable position, and reduced the strain on my legs, was soft on my knees. It felt good to sag against the pillows between times. I think it was at that point that Tom asked when I would start pushing. Roberta laughed and told him I already was. I stayed that way for awhile but started to tire. Roberta encouraged me to lie down on my left side. It felt so good to lie down.

Then she told me to hold my right leg up, bent at the knee. I was almost furious, incredulous, flabbergasted. Things were starting to really hurt, I was doing all this work, and I HAD TO HOLD MY LEG UP. Couldn’t someone else do that for me? What did they think I was, Superwoman? But I did it. I was really too occupied surviving and breathing to demand that Tom hold my @#$% leg up.

Other nurses came in, with their yellow paper smocks on. One of them brushed my hair away from my face and I grabbed her fingers and slobbered all over them, pressing them to my mouth. I never saw her face, she was just there for me to hold on to. Tom was at my back then, I think, putting pressure down low. He was fabulous the whole time, except once when he delicately scrunched his fingers towards my spine. More pressure! Firm! Don’t Stop! Roberta showed him where to press on my spine, but I actually liked it better with dual points on my pelvis.

I was breathing too fast at one point, trying instinctively to stay ahead of the pain or something and Roberta reminded me to slow down, make deeper noises, I was going to hyperventilate if I couldn’t relax just a little. That was the hardest thing, trying to not tense and tighten against the pain. Pushing was a relief because it was something to do, not something to allow or endure. I started wailing that I just couldn’t do it. Roberta told me, “you can do it because you already are doing it.” Which didn’t make any sense, but I was too far gone to think what alternative there might possibly be to just getting this thing done, getting this baby out of my body, just doing it.

Molly was born at 10:15 pm, four hours and fifteen minutes after we checked in. Roberta put her on my tummy, what a relief to roll to my back and flop there. I’ve never felt such relief, such . . . blessed, relieving . . . relief. She was posterior, which I didn’t think about until the next day when I felt like someone had used my tailbone for kickboxing practice. She rested on my tummy for several minutes with the cord attached, what a weird feeling — I tried to pull her up to my breast and felt the tug of the cord between my legs. Tom had been too squeamish to cut the cord with our other girls, but this time he did it. I got her up and offered her my breast, hoping nursing would help with the placenta, but she wasn’t interested yet.

Roberta asked for a push for the placenta, promising that there are no bones in it, but I still felt it; I’d never felt the placenta delivery with my other kids, that’s another weird (not bad) feeling. They re-hooked up the IV and gave me some more Pitocin to help my uterus clamp down. I don’t know if that helped a lot, but after having after-birth pains that got stronger with each kid, I never felt any with Molly, even while breastfeeding. I had one stitch and then lay there for about an hour and a half with Molly on my chest. My dad came back just as I got her to suck, and then everyone but Tom left. The nurse gave her the vitamin K shot and the antibiotic ointment while she fed. I had been interested to see if she was more alert than my other kids, but it didn’t really seem that different. I breastfed all four of them within the first hour of birth, but she was the first one that I had continually on my body until I agreed to hand her over for weighing and washing and getting checked out. By then I wanted a shower and food enough that I didn’t mind sending Tom off to the nursery with her.

One of the best parts was getting up off that bed all by myself and walking, first to the bathroom, and then down the hall, past the nurses’ station where they all congratulated me (and I thanked the nurse whose hand I’d commandeered), and to the elevators where we rode down to the room we’d sleep in. Tom and Molly were back by the time I’d showered. Oh, and right before I left the delivery room, I accepted some Percocet, feeling I dang-well deserved it! We slept pretty well that night, with Molly swaddled and in the bed with me, and with me throwing things at Tom over in the father’s bed, trying to get him to stop snoring. We left early the next afternoon, after a 19-hour stay. I was anxious to get home to my own stuff, but it sure was nice being able to ring at any time for fresh ice packs and Lorna Doone cookies.

In the weeks following, I sometimes regretted that I got induced. Molly weighed 8 pounds 15 ounces; she was my second-largest baby, but she had a small-ish head, so we could have gone another week and probably delivered without trouble. The placenta was all intact and healthy, the cord was strong and not wrapped around anything. It was definitely a subjective judgment call, and I’m sad I never had the experience of going into spontaneous labor, feeling those contractions slowly build, being at home and being in labor, but looking back now, I wonder, even knowing how healthy she came out, if I would have done anything differently. As one of the midwives said, about my bad feeling earlier that day, that you have to start trusting those maternal instincts sometime.

The most important thing for me is that I feel like I did something here. I accomplished what I set out to do. I studied, I made a plan, I was flexible, it hurt really bad but then it was over, and in the end, I had a healthy baby AND the satisfaction of knowing that I did what was best for both of us, with our individual set of circumstances. I’m really, really glad that it went quickly because that is a blessing that cannot be overstated in terms of foregoing an epidural. I honestly have no idea if I could have gone natural with my first baby (though for sure I would have at least postponed both that induction and that epidural). My sister-in-law read several of the same books I did and practiced Hypnobirthing with her first baby who was born a few days after Molly. She had a much longer, harder labor than I did and got a shot of fentanyl towards the end. I think that is a really great compromise, and I’m in awe that that was all she needed to help her get through it.

Two things helped me succeed in both having an uncomplicated vaginal delivery with induction and with not requiring pain medication. The first was being really prepared and working really hard, mostly mentally, but some physically — though I should’ve practiced more — for the birth. It might seem silly to spend so much time getting ready for something that’s only going to last anywhere from four hours to twenty-four (or more, but usually not much longer of real hard labor), but I feel like I’m still using what I learned — I should remember what I learned more often. Like, patience, and trusting God and nature, listening to my body and what it needs e.g. more sleep, water, good food, exercise, etc. And also, patience.

The other thing was a wonderful midwife who completely justified my trust in her and a very supportive hospital and nursing staff. If you want a natural hospital birth, I cannot recommend American Fork Hospital highly enough. They were fantastic from start to finish. To some natural birth purists, it probably sounds from this birth story that I had a somewhat directed labor, what with Roberta suggesting I do this or that, and with the intermittent monitoring — at one point when I was kneeling on the bed and pushing the nurse was reaching up between my legs to hold the monitor to my pubic bone and I just wanted to kick her out of the way. But I didn’t, and it really didn’t interfere with me feeling the next contraction anyway.

Every time Roberta suggested I try something new, it turned out to be a great idea, and I never felt like she was insisting I do it her way. I always felt like she was offering me different options, and especially towards the end, I was grateful there was someone there who was making sure everything was going okay, because I was too busy just doing it. In abdicating some of that mental and physical responsibility at the end, it helped that this was a woman who I’d come to know and trust, who always listened to (and heard) me, who asked before she did an exam, who wanted me to have the birth I wanted, almost as much as I did.

And finally, I was surprised and very happy about how effectively supportive Tom turned out to be. I always knew he would support me in doing what I wanted, but it was great how actively supportive he was. I ended up almost feeling bad that Crysanthemum, who acted as my doula through my pregnancy and labor, didn’t have much to do, because Tom was there, and he really stepped up. In talking it through later, he was impressed also that it had been a much different, more immediate and urgent and big experience than before. I’m not sure, but it seems like his involvement in her birth is probably why he has been even more engaged with Molly, in the small but significant parts of her care like comforting her. He has always changed diapers and such; with Avery he stayed home with her for eighteen months while I worked and he went to grad school, but with all of them, at the first sign of distress he would pass them off to me for feeding and comfort. With Molly I am still the only one who can feed her, but he is much more likely to attempt to comfort her if food isn’t what she needs. And that is what I need.

Tom’s version.

I guess I am writing about it, a little. It was intense, and the whole process of learning about childbirth in general this past year was immensely satisfying and worthwhile. I always have big plans to do courses of study in different subjects (gardening, ancient carpets, the history of Scandinavia, cheese making (which turns out to look like way too much trouble)), and then life gets in the way. But with this there was a physical and chronological imperative, plus a compelling interest. Chrysanthemum, who had three c-sections and went above-and-beyond as a sounding board and pregnancy-and-birth companion, now wants to train as a midwife once her children are a bit older. That’s how convincing and inspiring our discoveries and shift in perspectives have been. ‘

Anyway, these are the books and movies and blogs that I studied. I have to thank Rixa, once again, for getting me interested in the first place, and for sending me a box with several of these resources (and apologies again for keeping them so long!).

Baby Catcher by Peggy Vincent

I’d recommend this book to anyone who enjoys reading, whether interested in childbirth or not. It’s a hilarious, gripping memoir of a nurse-turned-midwife (CNM) in Berkley in the 70s and 80s. It’s totally story-driven and entertaining, candid, and moving. It’s also full of the sights and sounds and movements of natural, normal birth, which gave me a frame of reference for imagining what my birth might be like. Vincent doesn’t shrink from addressing difficult topics like birth injuries and getting sued; it’s not a rosy fantasy about home birth, but a real record of an astonishing array of births.

Birthing from Within by Pam England

I preferred this how-to-prepare book to Hypnobirthing. It makes no promises about being able to avoid pain completely in birth; instead it teaches several coping techniques and gives good advice about how to practice them enough to be helpful. ( I should have trusted the book and practiced more.) England also encourages the creation of birth art. I was skeptical about this; I’m not an artist, and I hate doing things poorly. Then I turned a page and read that sometimes the people who are most resistant to the idea of creating birth art (drawings, paintings, etc) are often those who would most benefit — because if you think of childbirth as art — as something that you only want to do if you can do it perfectly, well . . . that’s not a helpful way of viewing childbirth. You don’t give birth a certain way (or prepare to give birth a certain way) in order to impress people or to do it “perfectly,” and neither should those concerns stop you from doing art — your best art even if it doesn’t turn out “perfectly.”

Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth by Ina May Gaskin

I bought this book on Rixa’s recommendation during the pregnancy that I miscarried last August. I remember putting it down after a few chapters, thinking it was just too hippie and crazy for me. When I picked it up again just six months later I read it straight through, nodding over and over, thinking how obvious it was, how much sense it made. If some of the birth stories in the first half of the book seem far out, skip to the second half which is full of good common sense information. I went back again and again in the weeks right before the birth, reading a couple stories at a time. After a lifetime of being afraid of the pain or hearing so many horror birth stories, it’s good to crowd those out with positive accounts of successful natural births (unmedicated and un-interventioned). Much of the natural birth information is more reactive or “what not to do”  in nature. Balance that with beautiful stories of how it can happen, how it actually does work. And again, this is no fantasy where nothing ever goes wrong, but stories where most of the time everything goes as it should, and when it doesn’t (because this is real life), appropriate medical help is something to be grateful for.

When I set this book down after my first full read-through, I immediately got on the computer to check airline tickets to Tennessee. I would’ve given anything (okay, except going into debt) to give birth at The Farm. One of the most significant testament’s to Ina May’s credibility is her excellent relationship with the hospital and doctors who treat The Farm’s infrequent transfer patients.

The Thinking Woman’s Guide to a Better Birth by Henci Goer

This is a very straightforward and well-substantiated collection of best practices, including advice on how to have the best epidural or best c-section possible if they’re required or desired. It’s a great comprehensive introduction to what and why and how for a first-time mother or an experienced mother who wants to know more about her options and the risks and benefits of each.

Pushed by Jennifer Block

This is an expose-type book about maternity care in the U.S. It’s a quick read and includes fascinating anecdotes, including a section on the disservice done to women in states where home midwifery is illegal. One of the first stories was about a Florida hospital during hurricane Charlie (that was the first summer we lived in Florida). With only minimal power and resources at the hospital, all elective inductions and c-sections were cancelled, and women in early labor were sent home to progress on their own (as used to be standard). When women in real labor were admitted, things occurred in a natural way by necessity and after that experience, several of the labor and delivery nurses changed their employment or career trajectories based on what they had learned.

I skimmed a lot of the middle because by the time I read this, I was already convinced that our maternity system in the U.S. is whacked, it was kind of preaching to the choir. But for anyone who’s skeptical or on the fence, I think this book would be pretty convincing and eye-opening.

Birth Reborn by Michel Odent

I asked Tom to read this book because it wasn’t by a crazy hippy woodwoman — so this is a good book for someone who needs a traditionally authoritative (male, medically trained, hospital-affiliated) take on the safety and desirability of natural childbirth. I liked the historical slant, describing how Dr. Odent and his staff in France stumbled upon several of their methods for improving childbirth and postpartum care in the hospital setting. Recently Dr. Odent has become less and less supportive of having the father in the birthing room, suggesting instead that the mother be supported by women (which is good, of course), but there is no way I would’ve wanted to give birth without Tom.

Birth as an American Rite of Passage by Robbie E. Davis-Floyd

I probably wouldn’t have pushed through the heavy academic chapters of this book if not for our electricity fast, but it was fascinating, and reminded me of being in college. The exploration of birth as ritual and rite-of-passage and as a way for society to initiate women (and their husbands) into a technocratic worldview (where we trust and revere technology over nature) was well-thought out and effectively cautionary. I did feel severe cognitive dissonance by the end — because much as I want to say and believe that I “trust” nature over technology, I chose to give birth in a hospital — obviously core beliefs are more deep-seated and changing a whole philosophy requires more than a summers’ reading.

Birthing the Easy Way by Sheila Stubbs

Back when I was first interested in birth, I titled (and never finished) a post: “Breastfeeding is my gateway drug” about how my enjoyment of and success in breastfeeding was what made me think maybe I could do birth more naturally too. It’s also just about the only facet of attachment parenting or natural family living that fits me (well, that and composting). So I was delighted to see a chapter in this book called “Everything I needed to know about birth I learned from breastfeeding.” Now I could almost make the argument that “Everything I needed to know about parenting I learned from birth”: be patient, you’re not in control (of natural processes), you can take control/be autonomous (of “the system”), surrender, be patient, be flexible, be patient, after great pain comes the reward, be patient.

This book is also great for those interested in VBAC and/or HBAC. Stubbs describes a progression from c-section for CPD (baby “too big” for vaginal birth) to homebirth attended by a doctor (this is in Canada several years ago) to unattended (accidental bec. it happened so fast) homebirth.

Oh, and one of the things I liked best about this book in particular was that Stubbs doesn’t intend “the easy way” to imply “easy” as in “without pain” (more like “simple” or “straightforward”). She emphasizes several times that her births were painful and that if she could handle it, so can anyone, because she’s a self-described wimp.

Rediscovering Birth by Sheila Kitzinger

This book explores birth art, beliefs, and practices around the world and historically. Sometimes the author’s disdain for the West and modern birth practices frustrated me, especially when she was unwilling to criticize “native” beliefs that are pretty clearly dumb. Like the culture (now I can’t remember where — Africa?) where babies are wet-nursed for the first week of life because colostrum is thought to be poisonous. If we can ridicule Americans for our crazy ideas, surely we don’t need to excuse “natural” superstitions that are just as unsupported. But I would still recommend the book, especially for people curious about other cultures. The illustrations alone are well worth a look.

Hypnobirthing by Marie F. Mongan

I know several people who swear by this method. I think I should practice the relaxation techniques for everyday living, because a quick temper is one of my problems, but as for avoiding pain in childbirth? Not buying it.

Birth Without Violence by Frederik Leboyer

This is a weird, stream-of-conscious description of labor and birth from the baby’s perspective (culminating in the soothing Leboyer bath). I checked it out from the library and thought — if this is what people envision when thinking about home or natural birth, no wonder it seems too New Age-y. On the other hand, it was a quick read, and it is interesting to think about birth as the baby experiences it, especially in light of the new in utero studies.

Mothering the Mother by Marshall H. Klaus

I got this for Chrysanthemum and me to read; it’s all about the benefits of having a doula, a female birth attendant who is with the mother the whole time, provides non-medicinal pain relief (massage, etc), and helps her understand and make decisions about interventions suggested/required by hospital personnel. It makes a strong case that if you’re attempting a natural childbirth in a hospital, a doula could make the difference between success and succumbing to medical pressure or pain in the moment. There’s an appendix that describes a doula’s role and responsibilities that was instructive. I chose not to hire a licensed doula because Chrysanthemum was such a help to me throughout the entire process, and also because I trusted my midwives and had heard such great things about my hospital’s support of natural birth (which all turned out to be justified), but I would definitely recommend a doula for any first-time mother who had less idea of what to expect or what the challenges might be in a hospital setting.

Rixa compiled a similar list of suggested books for a natural hospital birth; see the comments for other recommendations.

Here’s a list of Rixa’s favorite breastfeeding books. I should’ve read some books on this before my first kid, but luckily after a rocky couple weeks, it’s almost always been pure pleasure.

Obviously, I cannot recommend Rixa’s blog enough. I can’t think of any other aspect of my personal philosophy that has changed as drastically as my views on childbirth have since first starting to read her. Here are three posts I wrote ridiculing unassisted/home/natural birth before I knew any better (just to give you an idea of how much my thinking has changed — if I were sure of having that much influence over my kids’ thinking about the world, I’d be a happy lady).

Heather’s blog is also a delight of crunchy wonders. I may not be (anywhere near) as committed to living naturally as Heather is, but I love reading about her latest crazy experiment, and she may be the only person on earth with wider feet than mine. I love how she questions the rationale behind just about every everyday behavior. Like, she doesn’t like wearing shoes so recently she just stopped wearing them. Awesome!

Tom was very impressed with Ricki Lake’s documentary The Business of Being Born (it’s on Netflix instant play, too). Again, they don’t shy away from showing what happens when a baby truly needs medical intervention (there’s a c-section for a growth-restricted baby). The point is, you learn as much as you can, you hope and plan for and expect the best, and you’re ready for anything, just in case.

Orgasmic Birth was a little stranger. Tom said as long as I promised not to roll my eyes up into my forehead like the one lady in the tub who is clearly experiencing what the title suggests. Then, since he was immersed enough in the possible sounds and sights of birth and ready to support natural (messy, loud, strange) processes, he said, “or whatever you want to do is great.” Orgasmic Birth has a lot of valuable stuff in it, even if I still can’t imagine really getting that much happy from it.

The one thing I really wanted to do before giving birth this time was attend a natural birth, and my cousin-in-law Karin was gracious enough to invite me to hers. I got the call from my cousin Jared that her water had broken and contractions were starting on a nice Saturday evening in July that just happened to follow a perfectly horrible day and a half of a perfectly awful stomach bug. So I missed the birth, and that’s my biggest preparation regret, that I didn’t get to be present for an actual live (home) birth. I think that would be an invaluable experience, though maybe even more so for a first-time mom.

I’ve had more monitoring (a couple non-stress tests and an ultrasound to measure amniotic fluid) than hardcore natural birthers would request; my midwives are supportive in waiting till 42 weeks, if things stay as good as they are now. The baby moves, a lot; more than they’d expect of a baby that we estimate to weigh over nine pounds. So there’s no reason, no medical or scientific or objective reason to induce. (Not even to mention whether 42 weeks is really overdue or not).

Why am I doing this, again? Is it because I trust God, my body, the baby? This is a lot harder when it’s me making the decisions. When I’m responsible, when everyone from my husband to my medical providers is happy to do what I want to do. (How do I know what I want to do?)

Also, it felt pretty good when I suggested or agreed or whatever, to be induced with Lucy at 39 weeks last time. It was what I wanted, it was fine. She was out in five hours and two pushes. That epidural worked better than the previous ones because we knew how to get it working on both sides.

Reading all those books and practicing pain management and relaxation — that all felt so empowering a month ago. Now, overdue and second-guessing, waiting, waiting, waiting, this surrender to a timetable I can’t begin to guess at — this doesn’t seem empowering at all.

It makes me wonder what other areas of my life I allow, encourage, accept others to make decisions for me, and do I do that out of fear, or ignorance, or laziness, or apathy?

If she’s born on Wednesday she’ll go to school a year later than if she’s born tomorrow or Tuesday. Does God care what day we’re born? Does He care (do I care?) if my daughters are old or young for school? If she’s born tomorrow, I can decide in five years whether to send her early or late. But wait until Wednesday and it’s not a choice. Do I trade this choice for that choice?

One thing I do believe — it’ll be easier to labor and birth if I’m not induced — even if it means her gaining another pound, so that’s not an issue. Another — even a “mild” induction (breaking my water but not hooking up pitocin unless things weren’t moving along after two hours, which is their limit and seems a really short time) would most likely set off a cascade of interventions that I would have no control over, and perhaps rightly so, having taken that first step of relinquishing autonomy.

Perhaps this is only cosmic justice, meant to be, the only way it could ever have turned out once I decided I wanted to do things a certain way. Oh really? You really want to do it your way? Good luck with that. Are you sure? How sure?

The longer it goes (and I know nine days isn’t the record or anything, but holy crap it seems a long time), the more surreal it seems that we will ever have a baby, a new person in the family. It felt this way before each of the other births, like we couldn’t really believe there was a whole separate person floating around in there, but this time it seems even more so. It’s easier to just accept that I’ll be pregnant forever, because all evidence points that way.

I’ve always been fascinated by why we do what we do. It was part of the motivation for the electricity fast, part of the delight in living in Japan and Cairo and New York City. Part of the simple pleasure in moving furniture, painting walls, changing things. If we change this or that, will we change? Does anything ever change? Will it make a difference in ten years, to me or to the baby, if I choose this or that? Will I feel empowered if I surrender? To what? To who? To myself?

Can you live deliberately if you stop making choices? (Why does everything have to be a choice?)

—

Does it matter how you give birth?

Birth Plans

In some ways I’m still doing things conventionally — like having the Group B test at all, but a) I’d like to know if I am positive, and b) at least this time I did a couple homeopathic things to reduce my chance of getting a positive (I took Vitamin C and acidophilus supplements every four waking hours in the two weeks leading up to the test; you can be a lot more aggressive in preventing/treating Group B, but I had both of those on hand, and they’re good to take anyway, especially for, uh, digestive tract health, if you know what I mean). I don’t think I was ever positive before my three other births, but as an example of how much I relinquished responsibility, it’s possible that I was positive but wasn’t told or didn’t give it any thought because I had epidurals with each, and so always had IVs through which the antibiotics could be given without any disruption to my plans.

My appointment was with one of the midwives I hadn’t met yet, which isn’t ideal of course; ideally I’d fly to The Farm this week and give birth in Ina May’s shadow next week, but all things considered I’m happy with this group of midwives and I don’t begrudge them the life-convenience of sharing call, especially since it is their habit to stay with the mother for the entire labor. I reviewed my plans and hopes and fears with this new midwife, and after telling her how quick Lucy’s birth was (6 hours) even with an induction and epidural at 39 weeks, she supported me in staying home as long as possible but encouraged me to be prepared for things to go quickly and to maybe go from hanging out one minute to being ready to hop in the car the next (it’s a 30-minute-plus ride). Of course, anything could happen; I could be in labor for three days two weeks after my due date, but hopefully not.

Either way, it’s probably time to start getting ready. I have a lot on my To-Do List:

1. Write my birth plan (mostly a list of stuff I don’t want done, like an IV (I’ll sign a waiver to forgo the hep-lock the hospital requires in case of emergency; given my low-risk history my midwives are comfortable with this), taking the baby out of my arms (much less to the nursery) before I’ve had an hour to bond and breastfeed, cord clamping before it’s stopped pulsing, continuous electronic fetal monitoring (I’ve agreed to the initial twenty-minute baseline by telemetry which allows movement, then 90-second checks at 30-minute intervals).

I’m still researching the eye ointment and Vitamin K shot business; since Tom and I are life-long monogamists there should be no need for the eye ointment and since I’ll be producing tons of colostrum for a full-term baby the Vitamin K should be unnecessary too. On the other hand, these are relatively minor things (I think) and I don’t know how strongly I feel about them. Things like enemas, shaves, and episiotomies aren’t routine, but maybe I’ll include them just in case. 50% of the women who see my midwives have an epidural, and I plan not to — what I need instead is praise and encouragement, offerings of physical and emotional support, NOT of drugs (I know what’s available and can ask for it if I need to; Tom knows it’s his job, if that happens, to remind me that I want to wait 15 more minutes and see how I feel then, repeatedly, if necessary). Things I do want to have happen are harder to write down. I want things to go how they go; I want to feel comfortable in vocalizing (loudly if I feel like it), moving, bathing, drinking (I probably won’t want to eat if I arrive in active labor/close to transition), squatting, etc).

2. Pack a bag (with my own nightgowns, music on the iPod, a birth ball, juices and light snacks, a note for the door and maybe some cue cards for Tom and Chrysanthemum from Birthing From Within, stuff for the kid, 3 or 4 versions of Pride and Prejudice to watch (you know, the usual); Mockingjay if it’s after August 24th).

3. Wash some onesies and blankets, buy some diapers and a nursing bra or three (any recommendations? I was never very happy with my previous ones, and I’m bigger this time around — 38DD and not looking forward to engorgement).

4. Arrange babysitting, though Avery (9 /12) has expressed a lot of interest in being present. I’d like to have her there, but a lot will depend on the timing (and how I’m coping; I’d love her to see a natural birth, but not if I would scare her).

5. Finish reading the books and watching the dvds Rixa sent me (The Business of Being Born is available for instant play on Netflix,and I think Tom was surprised how interesting it was). Right now I’m practicing the stuff in Birthing From Within; it seems more helpful and realistic than Hypnobirthing, though I’m sure they could be complementary.

6. Finish cleaning and organizing the house. I’m not overdoing things; I nap most days and my blood pressure was a nice 107/67 yesterday. I mostly want things clean and organized because I feel so much calmer when they are. If I’m lost in reading or writing, I can ignore clutter or dirt for weeks. But if I want a soothing, comfortable environment for early labor, I know I’ll want things pretty clean and minimally distracting. This will be just as important in the sleep-deprived newborn months, especially with school starting for Avery and Callie just five days after my due date. Part of my organizing is a chore-training campaign with the girls. They’ve always helped in the kitchen and in caring for their personal space and belongings (though not terribly consistently), but now they’re old enough to do more, and more independently. Mom, if I whined as much as these hooligans do sometimes, all I can say is, I’m being sufficiently punished for that.

7. Get a priesthood blessing from my husband and maybe my father too. I read this call for stories about spirituality in birth, and realized, again and anew, how inadequately I prepared for birth previously. One of the tenderest moments of my life was when I asked for a blessing from Tom in Cairo before my first miscarriage, but I did not even think about asking for a blessing before my three deliveries. I hope this doesn’t mean that I’m not a very spiritual or faithful person, but the alternative, that I viewed childbirth as something that would just happen to me, something that would be “done” by my doctor and therefore not anything I needed help in “doing” is just as incompatible with my vision of who I am.

There are two things I’m worried about as the birth gets closer. I’m worried about the pain, and I’m worried about feeling inhibited in acting instinctively/naturally and asking for/receiving comfort measures for the pain other than a socially-acceptable epidural. Despite the numerous reassurances I’ve received from almost every single woman I’ve spoken to who has some experience (as a laboring women, nurse, or midwife) with the hospital I’ll be at — that it is a natural-birth-friendly institution, I can’t forget the things I’ve heard and read about the  significance of the fundamental decision I’ve made to give birth in a hospital, despite being pretty convinced after extensive reading and research that both the baby and I would be more comfortable and just as safe at home.

Still, that’s the decision I’ve made based on Tom’s and my feelings/perspective/experience, and other circumstances such as what our health insurance covers and our distance from a hospital in case of true emergency, etc. It’s a bit disconcerting (in a cognitive dissonance sort of way) to read (and believe) a book like Birth as An American Rite of Passage and still plan to give birth in a hospital, but no other compromise presents itself to me as more reasonable given all the specific factors of my present life and understanding.

I feel lucky to not be worried about my body’s ability to give birth vaginally. Especially after reading Birthing the Easy Way and talking to my cousin who’s had two c-sections and three homebirths, it’s clear that many natural-childbirthers have more logical reason for concern; I admire their courage. I got lucky three times: despite welcoming any and all interventions, things went as well as possible. So it’s not my body I’m worried about, but my brain’s ability to turn off, surrender, relinquish control not to an institution or authority figure but to my own body’s natural wisdom and design.

Before the first session on Saturday (and leaking a little over the first speaker, because we were a bit fired up), my dad and I talked labor stuff. My dad said that doctors have always had reasons for the things they do, even if those reasons are not the best, and even if those reasons turn out to be unsupported, they do things because they think there’s some benefit to the baby and the mom. Which I’m willing to grant, though the more I learn, about both the history of childbirth and contemporary medical practice, the more I think that at least a non-malicious misogyny has pervaded much of the perspective of male-dominated (even today) obstetrics. (“You poor dears shouldn’t have to do something as hard as childbirth. You’re too delicate and dignified for all that pain and possible poop!”)

I have been talking to my sister-in-law about natural and home birth (she is planning a homebirth; I think I would if I lived 30 minutes closer to the hospital). She read about lotus birth the other day, and I had just read about some of the benefits of delayed cord cutting (that blood volume and iron levels are better in babies six months after birth if their cords were not immediately cut).

My dad said that when he was learning obstetrics thirty years ago (he delivered around 1000 babies as a family practice doctor), there was much debate over things like whether to do an episiotomy or not and whether to cut the cord immediately or to milk it towards the baby. I pointed out that both of those cord options were things that doctors do: neither of them is similar in perspective to a third option: allowing the cord to pulsate as it will. Both imply that there is something to be done, that a doctor, and his unique learning, are needed in order to fix something that is wrong.

The midwifery model of prenatal care and passive management in labor is a different perspective entirely, that childbirth is something that is going to happen, and that it will most likely happen without negative incidence, and that there is little need to be doing things to the process, that in fact the process will be hindered and harmed by a lot of doing.

Incidentally, (one of) the reason(s) for cutting the cord immediately was a fear of polycythemia, a condition of high blood volume, which occurs in .4-12% of infants, and in which delayed cord cutting has been thought by some to contribute, though trials show this is not the case.

(I still don’t know what I want to do about cord cutting. I’ll probably read some more, talk to my midwife, ask about the hospital policy — about this and other things like silver nitrate or erythromycin in the eyes (seeing as I do not have gonorrhea OR chlamydia) — and make a decision from there. I’ll probably end up somewhere in the middle, with cord cutting (no milking) in 1-3 minutes or so after birth, though from a natural/homebirth/historical perspective this is still really early, so maybe I will wait until after the placenta is born, especially since I experienced troublesome placental delivery with Susan.)

Today I read an article about palliative care and a young doctor who had to face her own death from cancer as she counseled others about their options for end-of-life care. It’s a sad story about how hard it is to face and accept one’s own death even when death is something one understands and respects, intellectually. But the part about palliative care struck me:

Over the last decade, palliative care has become standard practice in hospitals across the country. Born out of a backlash against the highly medicalized death that had become prevalent in American hospitals, it stresses the relief of pain; thinking realistically about goals; and recognizing that, after a certain point, aggressive treatment may prevent patients from enjoying what life they had left . . .

I’m not sure what all the parallels here are, or where the comparison would break down, but it’s intriguing that our end-of-life is recognized as needing a de-medicalization, just as most of our beginnings-of-life do. Palliative care emphasizes presenting a patient with all of the options, finding out their priorities, and then helping them die in the way that is least distressing (most appealing?) to them. It is not a way to prolong life at all costs with ever-more aggressive medical treatments, but a way of coming to terms with an inevitable process, though this seems more poignant (tragic) when the death is coming to someone who has not yet “lived a long, full life.”

Even the meaning of the word palliate would seem to apply to a midwifery model: to relieve or lessen without curing; mitigate; alleviate, since pregnancy and childbirth are usually the desired state/outcome, not things that need curing. And this highlights one significant parallel — how difficult it must be for doctors, who become doctors in order to actively help people (often at the sacrifice of their own time, sleep, earning power — I’m thinking especially of the non-sexy specialties like family practice), to admit/accept/embrace that at certain times, in certain instances, the best thing they can do is the least.

The trouble with epidurals is not that they take away pain — that is the good thing about epidurals. Choosing pain over pleasure is a sign of genetic defect in laboratory animals; it is not a good recommendation for humans, either. The trouble with epidurals is not that they take away from “experiencing” the whole miraculous thing, beginning to end, with no oblivious gap. (This is a drawback for many women about epidurals, but there are many painful aspects of life I would rather not subject myself to if I can avoid it, like shopping for a bathing suit.) Some women want to do nothing that would interrupt or change the natural order of things. This is an admirable motive for not wanting an epidural, but it is not one of mine. (I think.) (Actually, it is, but then I might feel differently about “nature” after experiencing “natural.”)

And the trouble with epidurals (for me) is not even the potential side affects associated with the epidural medicine or procedure itself, which can include (but are not limited to) 1) spinal headache, 2) sluggish baby, 3) prolonged or excessive inability to move one’s legs, 4)  cardiac arrest for mother and abnormal heart rate for baby, and 5) a numb patch on your right leg for months. Of these (rare to very-rare) complications, only the last has happened to me with three less-than-stellar epidural experiences. The most annoying part of my epidurals (so I thought) was that my spine didn’t cooperate so I still had pain on one side and then after subsequent doses, I had absolutely no hope of staying on the bed without help.

The trouble with epidurals is two-fold and relates to the requirements that go along with getting one. First: with an epidural you have to labor in the absolute worst position physiologically, a position (lithotomy/flat on your back) in which gravity works against you, and in which the pelvis/cervix are able to open much less (I have read, up to an inch less) than in a squatting or all-fours position. (Of course it would be even worse to be strung up by your toes, but not much.)

The second requirement is constant electronic fetal monitoring, which increases interventions like forceps and vacuum-extraction deliveries and c-sections, without improving fetal outcomes. C-sections may seem like no big deal for some women, but even when they are medically necessary (and thank God they are available when needed, right?), they are still major abdominal surgery that affect how the mother is able to conduct her life even months later, much less in the days and weeks following birth (a time that already strains a woman’s emotional, mental, and physical faculties).

If there were a magic pink pill that took away all pain sensation from the waist to the pelvis while retaining sensation of muscular positioning and contraction and all motor function of the legs and trunk muscles, with a one hundred-percent guarantee that there was no effect on or transmission to the fetus and no risk of side effect to the mother, of course I would sign up tomorrow. Of course.

The trouble with epidurals is that they are not that magic pill.

The trouble with much of modern obstetrical practice is that epidurals are too-often presented to the pregnant woman as being that magic pill. For my previous three births, I was given information regarding the very slight chance of spinal headache, etc, but no one told me, and I didn’t think to ask, that laying on one’s back was not only NOT the only way to give birth but actually the least-helpful, least-physiologically-indicated position, and that electronic fetal monitoring would not, in fact, make my baby safer.

Those are two hefty omissions.

Which is not to say that epidurals don’t have their place or that women who choose them are in any way “less” somehow than those who do not. For some, epidurals are close enough to that magic pink pill that they are only logical. For others, a very careful weighing of the benefits and drawbacks is necessary, and that weighing can only take place when ALL of the benefits and drawbacks are known and considered.

Now that I know (and am continuing to learn), I am still open to the possibility of getting an epidural; I am not so determined to “experience it all” that I would ignore the actual sequence of events that is this unique, fourth, birth. For example, if I have days of back labor that exhaust my resources without progressing, or if I realize that I’m not dilating completely because instead of being able to relax into, surrender to, or work with/through the contractions I’m instead reverting to my natural inclination — to tense against pain — and that an epidural at this late stage is the only way to get the baby out of me (this assumes I am stalled enough that there is actually time to get the anesthesiologist there), then I would choose to have one. Because in either of those scenarios the two drawbacks to an epidural would be of less concern at that point.

And in the end, epidural or no epidural (vaginal or emergency c-section) I will have succeeded in doing it my way, the way that seems best to me after learning all I can, which is all I ask of life. (Well, that and a trip around the world at some point.)

The truth is, I’m not entirely sure, although one answer is that I have gotten over my post-collegiate disinterest in learning anything new, and, having settled back in the state I call home, I have time and sensory receptors available to explore things other than the sort of forced (though exciting and welcome) exploration and coping that comes with moving regularly to different cultures.

Also, while my births were just fine, my three epidurals were not magical (though the pain relief eventually was blessed), and my only non-induced birth was better than the other two. Also, my babies didn’t get bigger and bigger each time as we assumed. Sally was 9 lb 3 oz at 41 weeks. That was some painful pushing. Susan was 7 lb 13 oz at 37 1/2 weeks, so we induced with Spot at 39 weeks. She was only 7 lb 5 oz. It probably wouldn’t have hurt anything to let her cook a little longer.

On the other hand I am not a hater or fear-er of doctors and hospitals. All three of my daughters were delivered by female obstetricians that I liked, respected, and trusted. I always felt that my wishes were being carried out, that nurses and doctors were listening to what I wanted, so in that sense, what more could you ask for? Breastfeeding was always easy to establish right after birth (besides the expected awkwardness/uncertainty with my first). I never felt that my babies were drugged or adversely affected by my epidurals or the Pitocin.

And speaking of the hospital setting in general, one of my earliest memories is going to visit my dad at the Camp Pendleton Navy hospital in Southern California. I was five. Dad was always happy to see us, happier it seemed than when we saw him at home, where he was trying to sleep off his last 72-hour shift. At the hospital, we visited the nursery, pressing our noses to the glass to see the row of wrinkly alien babies. Then we went down to the cafeteria and got chocolate milk and macaroni and cheese. (Those were some good times).

But now birth interests me. Whereas before it seemed merely a means to an end, sort of like ordering takeout (which can be a glorious, glorious thing), now it seems like something I can and should be more involved in, like shopping for (or growing) the freshest, healthiest ingredients you can find and preparing dinner yourself (which I admit is overwhelming and/or completely unappetizing at times.)

Three years ago (just a few months after Spot was born) I found the blog of some friends Tom and I knew at BYU. I think I was looking for an address to send Christmas cards, and instead I realized that they (or at least the woman, Rixa) had really gone off the deep end. I was hooked! I read in that can’t-look-away-from-a-car-wreck sort of daze that you do, and at some point, she started to make sense.

But not before I wrote several osts about how silly natural childbirth (and in particular unassisted childbirth) is. Imagine my horror when for her second birth Rixa had a midwife. As if women preparing for birth should be flexible!

A Trip Back in Blogtime

Weird parenting priorities, cont. (In which I awkwardly introduce Rixa to my blog, and make wonderfully smart statements about elimination communication and co-sleeping. Though I still think those things are not for me, I hope I can discuss them more rationally now. Also, it’s always been fascinating to my dad and I that several of “these things” (cloth diapers, homeschooling, natural birthing, breastfeeding, composting) cluster together. Now I find there is a term/movement for this, “natural family living,” and “attachment parenting” . . . I wonder.) 4-18-2007

“If the Good Lord had wanted us to walk, He wouldn’t have Invented Roller Skates” (Or epidurals.) 4-30-2007

Top 5 ways to know that Unassisted Childbirth is right for you (This one still strikes me as funny, mostly because I put in some of my childhood, though it was my sister’s sock drawer.) 5-08-2007

People I can’t help admiring, much as I’d like not to (Another very sensitive post, in which I finally admit my sneaking admiration for non-mainstream birthers, among others.) 3-14-2008

The Truth about Babywearing, Updated (Reading this, I have the uncommon experience of being really pleased with something I wrote. In the footnote, I say the reason I continue to read Rixa is that she is honest about her fears despite her obvious desire to promote understanding and acceptance of natural- and home- births.) 11-19-2008

One More Less (How unassisted miscarriage seems much more barbaric than unassisted childbirth) 8-22-2009

An Update and Some Thoughts (I’ve now had two high-tech ultrasounds for this pregnancy, at 7 and 12 weeks, to check on the baby’s size and also the sub-chorionic hemorrhage they found at the 7th week ultrasound. Both were reassuring, and also evidence for the unhelpful yet inevitable nature of the intervention cascade.) 1-24-2010

Does it matter how you give birth? (Rixa, my birthing mentor, sent me a box of books and dvds; I’d read a few of them, and been convinced that it does matter, especially how you prepare and plan to give birth — whether you prepare and make informed choices about how to give birth. In my previous post (the Update) I was pregnancy-nauseated and wondered whether I’d be able to do this whole natural thing. Several people left supportive, encouraging comments. In this post I was more “I can do this, because it’s important” and I got several defensive, unsupportive comments (both on and off the blog). 3-02-2010

The burning fervor of the recently converted (This began as an apology and admission that perhaps I was a little fanatic in my commitment to a newly discovered truth, but by the end I’ve pretty much worked my way back around to saying, “This matters.” That doesn’t mean I think less of anyone who thinks it doesn’t matter, but I think maybe they’re missing out. Just as if I loved a fiction book or movie and raved about it for hours and someone looked at me disinterestedly. I wouldn’t think they were dumb or wrong, but I’d wish they could see and appreciate things the way I did.) 3-04-2010

My own personal brand of heroin: the Analogy (The only way I could get my friend Tara to understand why anyone would think it important to learn about natural childbirth (and want to convince others) was to compare it to having a financial budget. Something that she does, very well, and something that I haven’t (so far) been bothered to do. I told my mom it was like caring about where your food comes from (some people do, some people don’t) because she was reading Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle last week). I told my husband that it’s like the difference between hosting and tweaking your own WordPress blog and being content to use one of Blogger’s default themes with no widgets.) 3-04-2010

The sad thing about birthing choices, talking about them, sharing birth stories with the ladies at church is that it metastasizes exponentially into this “mommy wars” who’s-the-better-mommy fight. Instead of supporting each other in learning new things, in wanting to do things better as we learn, we automatically assume that one woman’s personal history or present-day interest and desire are a direct attack on the way we have chosen to do things ourselves. And defensiveness is only slight less attractive than smug certainty: both indicate a feeling of insecurity and dissatisfaction with one’s personal commitment to breastfeed or bottlefeed, sleep train or co-sleep, homeschool or public/private/charter school.

Another problem is that reading about the history of maternity care, of birth customs and practices in the West, of how technology is worshiped and science is ignored, it’s honestly a little like finding out that Guess What? Smoking Causes Cancer, and TOBACCO GROWERS KNEW IT ALL ALONG. Maybe everyone feels like that about their personal passion, that the truth about their personal passion should be glaringly obvious to all.

Tom certainly feels that way about the Blogger platform. Sue, who said that unmedicated childbirth was the “ultimate unnecessary martyrdom” feels that way about the poverty-stricken refugees who live in our state. How could we find out that little children are out in the cold without coats and NOT DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT? Easily, I say. Just give me some NCIS reruns on cable, and I’ll forget all about the Haitians and their little earthquake.

Why would I want to change my comfortable life, just because I have learned something new?

(Sorry, Sue, that really irked me, can you tell?)

Here’s another analogy for you. My grandma told me the other day that I should be blogging about political things (she is what you might call a Rabid Republican). You know, I should be blogging about things that Really Matter, making a difference, doing something that my kids would be proud of me someday for having done. And I just stared at her, blankly.

A) I’m not even sure she’s right in her concern for the State of American Democracy (I have a friend who voted for Obama), and B) I just don’t really care right now. It’s not something I’m interested in beyond enjoying my annoyance at the liberal bias in The New York Times and on NPR.

But I’m glad that there are women (mothers) who do care, passionately, on both (all) sides of the political question. I’m glad that it’s something they feel so strongly about, even when that leads them to be smug buttheads sometimes about how right they are and how wrong everyone else is. And I’m jealous, because political affiliation isn’t usually used in the mommy wars. (Or at least it’s cloaked in terms like “hippy” and “conventional” which come to think of it, aren’t much better.)

When I asked: Does it matter how you give birth, I could as easily ask: Does it matter how you vote? Does it matter how you earn a living? Does it matter how you worship? Does it matter how you feed your family/care for the environment/spend your leisure time/leave your affairs when you die/allocate your money/adopt your kids? And someone would be offended because one of those things matters so much that to compare it to something like birth is just an insult.

I still don’t have an answer as to why seeking natural childbirth is so important to me right now, why it feels like the opposite of the “ultimate unnecessary martyrdom,” why it feels like power, enlightenment, female-ism, truth.

The bigger question is: Is it possible to share something you believe in/care about without sounding like a judgemental ass?

I think that is the ultimate goal, whatever your personal passion.

I really am self-centered enough that this is really ALL ABOUT ME. (and MY BABY).

(Though I have to tell you I’ve heard the air is very thin on Neptune, so you might want to re-think that).

(oh, I kid.)

Maybe this will explain some of my inelegant, sloppy, unintentionally incoherent analogies and plans: Reading about this labor and delivery stuff? To me it has been such a revelation . . . (I didn’t even know your body continually made amniotic fluid. My doctor told me my water was “low” with my first, and I thought, HOLY CRAP, better get the kid out before it’s ALL GONE, even though my water hadn’t broken).

It’s like suddenly I know the earth is round, and I am flabbergasted that people are still running around screaming that it is flat.

Have you accepted Jesus into your life yet? Have you been saved?

The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

When I analogized that there is maybe a right way for each woman to birth at each of her births (by comparing it to finding the right person to marry), that wasn’t supposed to suggest I thought every women should birth the same way, any more than I would suggest that we should all marry the EXACT SAME PERSON. I’m uncomfortable with the idea of even one sister-wife — you think I want to think that my husband is the right person for any other woman on this freaking planet besides me? H to the no.

And while I think there might be a best (right? most satisfying? safest?) way for a birth to go, how variable that turns out to be (one woman moos in the throes of transition, another throws pies at a clown for relief)  is one of the most fascinating things about this.

My whole point (and here I will plagiarize the Dooce): There are options! and choices! God is great! Praise be to Allah!

(the Allah part I threw in myself.)

And I think being aware of those options and being involved in making those choices makes you a (happier? more empowered? more satisfied?) person.*

(There, I said it. I am judgmental. If you choose to have a c-section because otherwise you will die, I think you are a better person than someone who would refuse that choice and that option. Sue me.)

*Ack, so maybe I don’t really believe that. What if you live in a repressed society, or you’re young, or the weight of the moral/intellectual authority of the medical establishment is so convincing you feel it best to leave it up to them? I don’t know.

The kind of support I need is the kind I sort of envisioned my mom giving me when I gave birth to Sally nine years ago. But instead of encouragement and inspiration she told me she was worried about me coping with labor because my pain threshold is lower than hers and that, by the way, she and my dad were flying back to Utah (from New York) the next day, so I better have the baby pretty soon. That’s completely unfair to my mom though, because I wasn’t prepared or informed about the dangers (and cascading interventions that often follow) of induction and epidurals or the alternative pain-management techniques I could practice or ask for and the benefits to mom and baby of allowing labor to be labor. And I was even more impatient than they were to get that baby here.

But now things are different, and the more I read, the more I’m sure that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Right now I feel really dangerous. I started with Baby Catcher, which is the perfect introduction to physiological/natural/midwifery-style childbirth. I had tried Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth, but found it to New-Age-hippie for me. Baby Catcher hit all the right notes — a credentialed maternity RN who became a CNM and only gradually became suspicious of routine medical policies. And it’s told in entertaining story form, so I couldn’t put it down, even as I cried at the happy (and occasionally tragic) outcomes. It’s a history of maternity care and midwifery in the United States from the 1960s to the 1990s and it includes being sued, which surprised me, and it profiles so many helpful descriptions of what labor can look like (instead of how it should progress).

Then I started reading Pushed, and though it has a lot of helpful statistics, like, “a woman is four times more likely to die having a cesarean section than a vaginal birth” (p. xix) and that episiotomies increase the likelihood of perineal tearing by nine times rather than reducing it (p. 30) (outcomes for baby are similarly adversely affected by interventions), I got bogged down in the dense, overwhelmingly bleak detail. Though I did learn that the problem is not that we have technology and interventions available, but that these things (inductions, forceps, c-sections, electronic fetal monitoring) began as helps for high-risk, medically-indicated situations and in spreading to low-risk, normally-progressing labors, do more harm.

So I switched to Henci Goer’s Thinking Woman’s Guide to a Better Birth and gulped it down at once. It’s a great, simple read with appendices stretching from here to infinity of study after study that show that managed/active care (rather than supportive care) is not superior, and in most cases, unhelpful or dangerous for both mother and baby. Someone on Twitter today said “the next person to equate no epidural with ‘getting a gold star’” would be in for it, and I can understand that reasoning. I don’t want to listen to anyone brag about being a “real” woman for staying strong or being above the pain, but the problem with an epidural is not that it represents “failure” (it doesn’t — I’ve had three, and my kids and I turned out just fine, an indisputable measure of “success” if any there is), but that done as a matter of course, without study and informed choice and as a last resort, it opens the door to way too many other medical interventions that I would like to avoid.

Reading these books, it seems a miracle I didn’t end up with a c-section the first time. And before anyone leaves a “My baby and I would’ve died if we hadn’t gotten an xyz,” please preface that by saying you didn’t start out getting induced three days before your due date because your doctor was going out of town. Sure a medical intervention might’ve saved your life and your baby’s life, but unless your labor until then was medical-intervention free (or super-limited, like, to intermittent fetal tone-listening or something) , it really doesn’t mean that much. (If you were high-risk the whole time or had one of those rare complications, then thank goodness for modern medicine, because that’s what it’s for, right?)

I also feel like saying I don’t want to talk about this to anyone (Ryan, I’m looking at you) who hasn’t read the same books I have, but that’s not fair either. If someone had said anything like this to me five years ago, I would’ve slashed their sustainable-bamboo tires.

And I admit, I’m scared of the pain. I’m scared I won’t be able to endure labor without begging for relief. (So a shiny gold star would be nice to look forward to). I’m scared that when I have this baby in a hospital, someone’s going to break my waters or hook me up to a machine without my consent. About the only thing I’m confident of is that I’ll have a better birth for me and the baby this time, even if I do end up with an epidural or a c-section or anything, because this time I’ll know why.

After even the little that I have read, it seems odd to even entertain the notion “but does it matter how you give birth? Isn’t the only important thing that you end up with a healthy baby?” (odd and also absurd because going as non-medically as possible is actually safer for low-risk and even moderate-risk mothers), but I want to address it because I have a thought on it.

When I was growing up, my parents always said it was important to marry the right person at the right time in the right place. The right person would be known to you through God, as would the right time, and the right place was always the temple. I remember watching Fiddler on the Roof and my dad pointing out that he thought only the oldest daughter managed to get all three rights together. And the three rights might make God happy, but more importantly they make for easier marriages and happier people (think how sad the third daughter was to have to leave everything familiar behind to marry a nonbeliever in a time of war (when her own people were persecuted by the same group her husband belonged to); sure love conquers all, etc, but it’s a lot harder, right?).

So in the birth analogy, it’s obvious that what is important is the mornings you wake up to make breakfasts cheerfully (even if you have to fake it), and the times you tenderly comfort your headstrong five-year old when she hurts herself doing something you told her seven times not to do. Surely the twelve or twenty-four hours you spend in birth are meaningless set against the lifetime of mothering you’ll give that child.

But that twelve or twenty-four hours is the time you become the mother of that child, just as the ten-minute ceremony in the temple is the time you become a wife or a husband. In the years of a marriage, forgiving quickly and forbearing to nag over the stinky compost that sits on the deck attracting mice instead of getting stirred into your lovely compost turner are what matters, not a ritual smattering of words by an officiator you’ll never see again.

But it does matter. You can go to the right place later as long as you have the right person; you can find the right person your second time, of course you can, but the point is that your goal is to eventually have it all.

I’m not saying that the right birth for me (let alone anyone else) is a completely natural birth at home whenever the baby wants to come. I’m pretty sure I’ll be at a hospital, with a midwife, and I’ll try to do it naturally, and if I change my mind because of back labor for seventy hours or I go past 42 weeks (my current cut-off) or something changes it for me like the baby in real distress, as long as I know why, it’ll be just right.

Five months before that, I had gone in at seven weeks because I was bleeding, and we saw a potato-shaped lump in there, but no heartbeat.

This time there was nothing. No pole, no body, no heartbeat. I wondered aloud if I was having one of those psychological pregnancies, or if I’d read the home test wrong, after all (I felt heartbroken, and also foolish). We did a urine test, which was positive, and figured my body could have already resorbed the embryo (the “products of conception”) or maybe it was ectopic, or something.

Thirty-two hours later I was at the hospital for a fancy ultrasound. I told the tech, as she led me back, that I wasn’t expecting good news, that we hadn’t seen anything on the machine at my doctor’s office, that this would be my third miscarriage, and that I was okay with it, really.

She turned on the machine, squirted me with the cold jelly, pressed on my belly, and said, “I don’t know what to tell you pumpkin, but there’s something in there, and it’s got a heartbeat.”

A heartbeat of 152, in fact, and confirmation that I was seven weeks and four days along.

(I have a very retroverted uterus, which I knew, but didn’t think of, and also, turns out that you cannot emphasize enough how important a full bladder is for ultrasound imaging.)

Since then I’ve been miserably, gloriously nauseated. Well, more miserably, but I’ll say gloriously for the purposes of posterity. It’s certainly better to be nauseated and pregnant than nauseated and not-pregnant. During the thirty-hours I thought I had miscarried again, I was so angry to be still nauseated. Luckily I didn’t turn to drink or start smoking crack, but I did refuse to take my prenatal vitamin that night. Sorry, baby.

I’ve also been thinking a lot about my desires for a more natural labor this time around. I’ve had three children, three epidurals, two inductions, and until a couple years ago, I thought my labors and deliveries were just about ideal. There were no major complications, no forceps or vacuums or c-sections (and my babies were all healthy, no small consideration).

But my epidurals were never wholly satisfactory. Though I usually started with a “walking” epidural, I have a small scoliosis in my spine that makes the numbness affect only the left side of my body until second and third doses are given and I lie on my right side and then end up flat on my back, afraid to so much as shift or I’ll fall off the bed, I’m so numb. This makes for awkward laboring.

I’ve been thinking, since following Rixa‘s and Heather‘s blogs (and even Dooce‘s), and researching more about the effects of medical intervention on labor, that I would love to have a a less-interventioned birth. More importantly — a more prepared, educated birth, a more aware-of-my-options and in-tune-with-my-body birth.

My two ultrasounds at seven weeks are so metaphoric (illustrative?) in this context. The second, more invasive (including a vaginal wand) ultrasound (intervention) was even more unnecessary than the first ultrasound/intervention, and yet, once I had had the first, I could not forgo the second. I was glad after the first, I told my mom, that at least I had found out early, and that we could do something about it instead of suffering severe nausea and delusional happy baby daydreaming for no reason. And I was even gladder for the second, for obvious reasons.

But I can’t say that I honestly wish I hadn’t had the first ultrasound, or that I would not have an (early) ultrasound with another pregnancy. My previous miscarriages make me unwilling to “trust nature” or “trust birth” to the extent of not needing (emotionally) — medical proof that there is a tiny heart beating away in my belly.

In thinking of my previous labors and births, I have felt ashamed that I took so little responsibility for or control over what happened. That I took as much initiative in childbirth as I did in going for an appendectomy at age fourteen. Why wasn’t I more curious to learn about the actual process, more empowered, more determined to experience, more eager to do it well? Why was I so passive? (I am not a passive person usually.)

So I had a stack of books to read and grand plans to see if I could find a midwife (preferably one who would know of a woman who would let me observe her birth — despite being delivered of three babies myself, I really have no idea what a natural birth would look/be like). Or maybe I would just watch Ricki Lake‘s documentary and listen to Hypnobabies.

But I have been so sick and snappish, so despairing and disgruntled and unhappy, I have not read a single book or written a single line in my birth plan.

Perhaps I am merely lazy. Thinking of this concentratedly enough to write about it, I remember my former passion to make this birth special, but when 3 pm (or 11 am, lately) rolls around, and with it, the turbulent esophagus, unsettle-able stomach, and general misery, I am sure of two things: that I just want this to be over, and that maybe I should be easier on my pre-enlightened self. Maybe she just wanted to lay down and rest, too. (And who could blame her?)

Apparently adoption applications give parents the opportunity to choose which disabilities they are capable of handling. Spina bifida had not been on this couple’s list. They were offered, by the adoption agency, a replacement baby. Because they felt that they would not have rejected a baby with these problems had she been born to them, they took Natalie home.

Natalie had a seizure their first day back in the States. When she was examined in the ER, the parents were told that Natalie also had an atrophic brain and would be mentally about the same as someone with Down Syndrome. The next day a neurosurgeon looking at the CT scan ordered an MRI and the parents asked him to look at her spine also.

Turns out, Natalie doesn’t have spina bifida, or an atrophied brain. She had had a tumor (and malnutrition and neglect), and would need some extra help, but she would probably be fine.

Natalie walked at 21 months, and laughs, dances and sings at age 3. I know another mother who didn’t tell her husband that her third child had Down Syndrome during her pregnancy because she knew he would encourage an abortion. (They obviously have other problems, but I can only admire her).

Today I found this blog through my blogroll. It’s written by a mother/family physician in Illinois who delivers babies. It’s super-interesting, and I am wondering why on earth my (otherwise wonderful) OB with Sally let/encouraged me to push lying down for over two hours so futilely.

I’ll just quote from one of her earliest posts:

At the moment of his birth, K reached for him and cried, and called out “Oh, I love you, I love you.” Her husband cried openly, and K’s mom who had been in the room, but hiding in the corner because she was overwhelmed, sobbed and hugged her daughter, the husband, and the baby. I can never take that much emotion at once – so I shed a few tears, too, and had to have the nurse wipe my eyes so I could see what I was doing.

Baby was very pink and healthy right from birth, very content, and hardly cried at all. He immediately started rooting and mouthing his hands, but this mama did not want to breastfeed because she just didn’t think she’d like it. After a few minutes of holding the baby, she passed him off to be rewrapped, and then didn’t want him back saying she wanted to rest while her husband and mom got to hold him.

When I called back tonight to check on everyone, she was just feeding him (a bottle) for the first time 9 hours post delivery because they’d had so many visitors she hadn’t had time yet.

I have a lot of mixed feelings when I attend a family like this. On the one hand, I am reminded at every birth how powerful the moment is. I feel so bonded to a woman receiving her baby into her hands for the first time, and crying from joy. The moment tends to be the same for so many women. And yet, I don’t understand how the focus then shifts to a social occasion, and a chance to receive gifts, while the star player’s most pressing needs are ignored. Having a baby is not just an opportunity to design a nursery and collect baby equipment. The baby doesn’t give one hoot over whether he has matching curtains, or that all 46 friends are called with his weight and length – his mother has previously been his entire world, and all he cares about is being with her.

It wears me out.

This made me feel ashamed because I think I kind of ignored Spot today. She is so undemanding that she makes this possible — my other kids start misbehaving to get my attention. And Sally knows how to turn off my computer monitor if I’m really in the zone. But Spot, she just keeps playing/sitting happily. So I think I only nursed her 4-5 times today, instead of 6-7. Dickorrow will be better, I promise!

(4) The sight of white coats causes you to hyperventilate like a 2-year-old who knows that a shot is coming.

(3) The sight of white coats is only mildly irritating; after all, you don’t believe in vaccines — what can the white coats do to you?

(2) You remember with extreme fondness coming home from a family vacation to find that your cat had given birth, seemingly painlessly and bloodlessly, in your sock drawer.

And the number one reason to give birth at home alone:

(1) You realize, as you take your daughter to go potty in a stinky, warm Wal-Mart restroom on a busy Saturday afternoon, that there are much, much worse places to give birth.

I don’t fear skin cancer, very much — enough to insist on sunscreen, hats and unrevealing swimsuits for myself and my family, but not enough to stop going to the beach. I don’t fear bicycle accidents for my girls, very much — enough to insist they wear helmets, but not enough to make them stop riding. I don’t fear the effects of caffeine (probably something I should fear), because I continue to drink Mountain Dew.

I do fear drug dealers who are making crystal meth more appealing to young first-time customers by cutting it with sweetening and softening agents. I fear that enough that I think again about homeschooling. On the other hand, I fear that in 50 years my greatest contribution to society will be that I cleaned up after and chauffered around four hooligans. I fear gun violence and representations of violence in the media — enough that I’ll censor what comes into my home, but not enough to tell Sally that she can’t go to college.

I don’t fear childbirth, very much — enough to get the best prenatal care available (and take the best prenatal care of myself that I can) and to plan to be within arm’s distance of the best medical science has to offer, just in case, but not enough to stop giving birth.

I think, maybe, a little fear is a good thing. What do you fear?

When I wrote about Unassisted Childbirth (UC), she wrote on her blog about it in a way that made it sound like she thought I meant “unassisted” as in “un-drug-relieved.” Which is understandable, because she might be aware that I rely on caffeine-assistance every day.

But UC refers to a movement (or, as they would say, the natural way things have been done forever) of women who give birth at home, without even the presence of a midwife. (maybe some allow a midwife; this is a club with very stringent restrictions; I’m not entirely sure what is allowed).

This is funny to me, because it shows that Adrianne shares my main paradigm regarding childbirth — it’s something best done in a hospital (or maybe a birthing center next to a hospital), and the only question is if/how much narcotic/anesthetic intervention to use (scream for?).

As Willy Wonka (Gene Wilder) would say, If the Good Lord had wanted us to suffer that much in childbirth, He wouldn’t have invented epidurals.

In my own case, I was two weeks overdue and experiencing much less fetal movement. When I was admitted to the hospital my amniotic fluid was (dangerously?) low and I was dilated to 1 cm. I was induced and 28 hours (not to mention the shadow of the valley of death) later, I held my slightly large baby.

My sister and my friend were each also overdue and had cords wrapped around necks and various other fetal and maternal distresses. Of course, some of these distresses are probably attributable to the induction techniques, and maybe I could have stayed at home waiting, waiting for that baby to come and everything would have been fine. There’s no way to know now. And in many ways, I am sad that I missed some of the ecstatic aspects of birth I might have experienced if things had been different.

I thought about emailing Rixa to ask at what point she would have gone to a hospital with her recent pregnancy. Would she have waited past two weeks overdue with a sluggish belly? But how could a hypothetical answer to a hypothetical situation shed light on anything?

I do worry, though — is our belief in the absolute necessity of medical intervention on this “natural,” “you’re-not-sick-you’re-pregnant” event appalling because we have been conditioned to just trust medical science and to believe that it saved us? That would be bad.

The worst argument, in my mind, for unassisted childbirth is that women have been giving birth at home for thousands of years. Not a good point — they were also dying for thousands of years. Of course, there are horror stories for both hospital births and unassisted births.

My friend offers a great analogy about the birth day. It’s like a wedding and reception, she says, compared to the marriage itself. The wedding lasts maybe an hour; the reception maybe even three hours. The marriage can last forever. Birth, in a hospital or at home, will only last — I don’t know, for some awfully unlucky women, maybe even a few days? But the having a kid and being a mother, that can last forever too.

Anyway, they’re super-cool and super-interesting, intelligent and incisive people (see why I hesitate to claim a friendship?–these people work in France every summer, for crying out loud). Before Christmas last year, I spent some time googling people I wanted to send a card too, and Rixa & Eric were easily found (If I might boast, we did receive a reciprocal card).

Eric is teaching and writing (did I mention Dick sold out to the technical communication world 3 years ago?) and Rixa is now a PhD candidate in American Studies (did I mention I dropped out of the MA program I was in in Cairo and have since spent way too much time reading trashy novels?).

One thing I do know is a bit about raising kids, at least to the ripe old age of 6 1/2. Now, I admit that we eat at Chick-fil-A twice a month and Sally says that she hates me sometimes, and Susan is addicted to Elmo’s Potty Time (more on that later), and Spot is (still!) not crawling or sitting yet. But we’re all here, aren’t we?

For the past couple of months I’ve been furtively (lurkatively?) reading Rixa’s blog: The True Face of Birth: Raw, Powerful, Ecstatic. Rixa’s dissertation is on UC (unassisted childbirth) and, despite Dick’s feeling that the recent unassisted birth of Zari (2 1/2 weeks after Spot) was an academically-motivated gimmick, I find her views completely compelling.

I’m even thinking of not having an epidural next time (gasp!). On the one hand I want to cheer, tears streaming down my face: Go Rixa! Suck the marrow out of life (for me). And on the other, I want to run screaming to the nearest staph-ridden maternity ward.

But I digress. I’ll add Rixa’s blog to my blogroll, and encourage all women to at least give her views some thought. It can’t hurt to think more deeply and more critically about our assumptions. Mothers of boys (you know who you are), I wish, I wish I could have expressed my reservations on circumcision to you as eloquently as Rixa does. And all her advocacy of breastfeeding is spot-on (but she is on notice; if I see any hint of nursing past age 2, I warn you…).

There are, however, two points (so far) on which I feel like banging my head against the wall (which seems to me about as productive as the practices in question). The first is EC. I had to google “EC” with “parenting” to find out what it is. It’s Elimination Communication. It’s where you “pee” or “potty” a baby (starting as early as one week basically) over a receptacle and thus… Actually, I’m not sure what the ultimate goal is–fewer diaper changes, earlier potty-training, environmental less-impacting-ness, cleanliness-in-pottyness-is-next-to-godliness, ?

I looked on a few message boards, and the most intriguing thread to me was written by parents who were disenchanted with ECing because, as one parent feared, the practice had convinced her 3 1/2-year-old son that his mother was responsible for his Es. That is, he felt no need to get to a potty when he had to go; he waited for his mother to take him to the place and make the right sound, which led to many accidents. Other parents concurred with their own experiences.

The other practice is co-sleeping. I think I’ve made my feelings on that pretty well known. These two practices intersect in Rixa’s latest post (actually, in her comment responding to my comment–in which I blame co-sleeping for…well, everything up to and including the apocalypse).

Rixa thinks her daughter’s recent relapse into waking every hour during the night is due not to the co-sleeping but to her needing to be “peed” in the early hours of the morning. That’s right, this 5 1/2-month-old baby can’t get back to sleep at night until Mom takes her over to the potty and makes the noise and lets the baby relieve herself.

Apparently, it is more important to control a baby’s elimination than to allow her to get a good night’s sleep. I find it odd that this extremely regimented form of potty-training would be desirable and yet sleep-training is anathema. I understand that co-sleeping may be filling an emotional need in both mother and child (though I don’t know how to prove it either way with regards to the child), but it seems to me that, perhaps, EC and CS may be getting in the way of a very important physical need: the need for sleep.

It’s not surprising (to me) that sleep deprivation is a torture technique and that sleep is necessary for cognitive development and physical growth. I read about a study recently (can’t find it, still looking, just trust me, ok?) that said that one extra hour’s worth of sleep a night brought as much added happiness as an extra $60,000 a year. How on earth would you compare something like that? Maybe I dreamed that study up. I certainly try to get as much dream time as possible. (except when I’m blogging, of course).