My birth experience is not uncommon.
After 24 hours of back labor, I caved.
“I can’t do this anymore! I’m done! I need the epidural.”
Broken and defeated with tears streaming down my face, I looked at my midwife and my husband,
“I failed. I’m sorry.”
I sobbed as the anesthesiologist prepared his tools. In that moment, I had never felt so disappointed in myself.
45 minutes after I received the epidural, my daughter was born.
When she was placed on my chest, I felt so much happiness and joy.
Underneath, however, there was still resounding disappointment that my birth did not happen how I had hoped.
I felt like a failure, and the more days that passed by, the more it rooted into my heart.
When family and friends came to visit and I shared how things did not go as I had hoped, I was almost always met with,
“At least you’re both healthy. That’s all that matters!”
But inside, that didn’t seem true to me.
What about how I was feeling on the inside now?
What about the effect my feelings of failure have on these first few weeks of motherhood?
What about the fact that because I felt like I failed at my birth, I felt I may also fail as a mother?
What about the feelings of guilt that I have because I DO have a healthy baby, but still feel sad about my birth experience?
“All that matters is a healthy mom and baby.”
Have you heard this phrase?
While a healthy mom and baby are the top priority, it is also the bare minimum when it comes to our expectations about birth outcomes.
In a developed country with one of the worst maternal mortality rates and standard practices that are only exasperating the problem, one has to wonder what this phrase actually means to us.
There are times when a healthy mom and a healthy baby take precedence over absolutely everything- every detail of your birth plan, every coping strategy you’ve learned, all the support you may have. Sometimes, our sights shift and given the circumstances, life saving intervention IS necessary.
Even still, is that really all that matters?
In MOST cases a healthy mom and a healthy baby should be a given, shouldn’t it?
Birth is not simply something that happens to a woman.
Birth makes mothers and it is so much more than the physical outcome.
This common phrase can devalue the deep roots that birth has into a woman’s emotional and mental state, and her sense of self. How she feels about her birth experience can impact the confidence she feels as a mother and the bond that she has with her child.
What should we say instead? What can we replace this phrase with?
We need to try harder to see, hear and validate the mother because the real issue with the phrase lies within its insensitivity to the effect that birth has on the mother herself. Instead of saying, “All that matters is a healthy mom and baby”, try asking a woman how her experience was or what feelings she is still trying to process. Asking her how she perceives her birth experience will allow her to feel validated, whether the experience was positive or negative.
Validating a woman’s thoughts and emotions allows her to process her birth experience, and acknowledges that the process she went through is just as valuable as the outcome. Sometimes the best thing to say is, “I hear you.”
A renowned professor of sociology and an ambassador of compassionate and evidence based maternity care Barbara Katz Rothman says it best in her book A Bun In The Oven, “Birth is not only about making babies. Birth is about making mothers–strong, competent, capable mothers who trust themselves and know their inner strength.”
We need MORE than the bare minimum when it comes to birth expectations. Want to find out how to get there?
Reach out to schedule a consultation today!
By: Mikaela Engarde
