“It is YOUR body and only you know what you can handle.” Hmmmmmm…. ???
That quote is a status update I placed on the Your Birth Right facebook fan page Monday evening. It was initially written by a fan/reader who mentioned that while she supports women who want a natural birth she had a very satisfying birthing experience with an epidural. She said, (and I agree with her) that every woman has to choose the experience that is best for them based on the information they have. She ended her post by saying “It is YOUR body and only you know what you can handle.”
Initially I was like…. “YES,” however when I woke up the next morning I re-evaluated that phrase and realized in actuality, we often DON”T know what we can handle until we are faced with the situation, or the challenge.
Monday night, after using that statement for a status update, I watched some coverage of the Haiti tragedy. While watching, I saw a story about a women, who had been trapped SEVEN days beneath rubble, without food or water. SEVEN days!!! On day seven she was rescued and as she was pulled from the rubble to safety she smiled, she cried, and she sang LOUDLY songs of praise!! After a brief examination she was sitting upright in a truck with rescue workers and her husband riding along to a safer place. She was smiling the entire time and unless you had seen the rescue yourself, you would not have believed she was a woman who was trapped for seven days!!! It was remarkable to say the least.
Who among us, if asked, would say: “Yes, ABSOLUTELY I could survive SEVEN days after an earthquake trapped beneath unmovable rubble, without food or water and with rescue nowhere in sight” Yea… right. How much strength, faith, fortitude, and power did this woman have? LIMITLESS…. Did she know she had this amount of strength and power prior to her personal experience? Probably not.
So when I woke up Tuesday morning, I reexamined that quote… “It is YOUR body and only you know what you can handle.” Hmmmmmm??? Yes… It is YOUR body….. but I am reminded through the struggle and power of that Haitian Woman, and in fact all of the Haitian people struggling for survival…. NO we often DON’T know what we can handle. We have no idea how strong we are. We are so much stronger than we know and much stronger than we may ever realize.
In birth as in life, when we are faced with a challenge, with an opportunity, with a situation that on another day, we may have thought we were too weak to handle… when we are actually put into the extraordinary situation, by Devine Design we have the power to face the music and create a melody never heard before. We make it happen because we are so much stronger than many of us have ever imagined and we can handle much more than we know.
Through the years, I have heard about and read countless stories of unbelievable strength and courage. Through my involvement in birth I have personally witnessed the shift to empowerment many times in many women, who doubted their ability to handle labor. So on second thought, I would have to say… NO, we don’t really know what we can handle.
When I was a little girl, my mother had a great tote bag that said “Never underestimate the power of a woman!” I loved it and the older I got the more I “got it” and so today I say… “
Never underestimate the power of a woman AND never underestimate the power of YOU!!”
In Birth and Love
Nicole
Wanna help the women and infants of Haiti…. send a text message with HAITI to 501 501 to donate $10 or a message of Yele to 501 501 for a $5 donation. For more information about Yele Haiti you can visit their website at http://yele.org
Oh no it’s ok. Having that epidural, well once it took full effect, was what I wanted. I did my research and my grandmother is a labor and delivery nurse and I talked to her about my choices.
As for my contradiction I just miss typed I guess. I meant that I don’t think just because you go natural makes you any stronger than someone who doesn’t. But I do sometimes wish that my pain threshold was much higher just so I can say that I did go natural.
When I wrote that I had in mind that I do know what I can handle. I got a tattoo and it lasted 45 minutes from start to finish. That’s nothing when it comes to labor and delivery. I cried like a baby the whole entire time. Worst pain I had ever felt. And in that moment I knew that the pain during child birth was not something I knew I could handle. Yeah sure I could do it if I HAD to, but I didn’t WANT to experience the pain of labor and delivery. The painful back labor (contractions every minute or so) on the 25 minute ride to the hospital was enough to me. Even after the epidural, I still felt ever contraction in my hip joints and thought that I just wanted to die. I experienced enough pain for one day. I decided that I didn’t want to bring my daughter in the world under pain and negative thoughts. While I agree with you that not everyone may be aware of what they can and can’t handle, and you may not know until faced with the situation, but I am confident that I made the right decision for me. I wish I was a stronger person to be able to say that I could go all natural, but I don’t think that there is anything less strong about me, or any other woman, having an epidural.
Hi Lindsey,
Thanks for sharing your comments. First I don’t want you to think that I was speaking about you or attacking you in this post. It just struck me when I woke up that morning… the image of that Haitian woman was on my mind and the statement came back to me vividly and so I decided to write the post.
You say… “Yea sure I could do it if I HAD to…” and basically that is my point. So many women get epidurals because they THINK they CAN’T do it when in fact they CAN. They just don’t realize their own strength and power. AND … they don’t have the proper preparation, support, environment, provider etc etc etc…. all of those things ABSOLUTELY make a difference. Having a natural birth is not something you decide to do with the first contraction. Preparation before labor is important.
You made a choice, like the majority of women, to get an epidural because you did not “WANT” to experience the pain of labor and that is OKAY if you are well informed and make that choice knowing the risks. My goal is to help women have Empowering Birth Experiences. That being said… if getting an Epidural helped you have a great experience. FANTASTIC!! I am NOT anti-epidural. I am anti MIS-informed consent.
Let me be VERY clear…. I think EVERY woman is strong and powerful. The problem is THEY don’t know it. As an example…You provide an interesting contradiction when you say “I don’t think that there is anything less strong about me,…” Just after saying… “I wish I was a stronger person to be able to say that I could go all natural…” You ARE Lindsey…
And THAT my birthing sister is the rub.