Well. Today I learned I received a cervical check and that’s began the cascade of interventions to my eventual C-section. So. Unnecessary. So. Mad.
I thought they were checking the head placement—also dumb because they could feel the baby’s position that late in my pregnancy. I didn’t even think to opt out of this.
I want to share this with the maidens in my life that may have babies one day. I was traumatized by my first pelvic exam and then distrusted the medical system so I chose to birth my daughter at home which was healing for me. I struggle sharing these things because I know so many people are not ready to hear it but I will trust that their path is their own ❤️
It’s understandable to attribute the overmedicalization of birth to male doctors. But I gave birth for the first time in 2000, most recently in 2024. The field is dominated by women. It has been for a long time by now.
What this piece leaves out is my roommate one time who was grateful that the doctor gave her a C section and took care of it. She came with her extended family to have her first child but her body was nowhere ready to give birth. With that timeline and pressure, there weren’t a lot of ways for it to go.
Many women are very happy to be induced for no medical reason.
Women nurses run fiefdoms where their decisions go unquestioned. They make new mothers feel unqualified to take care of their own baby.
Women today by the time they approach birth have spent years trying to prevent their body from conceiving or birthing a baby. Many, many women view the right to not give birth as their most fundamental human right.
You can’t structure your life from puberty on towards avoiding birth and not develop an antagonism and fear of birthing a baby.
You can’t trust your body and trust the process when the entire society spends outlandish amounts of time, money and concentration on preventing conception.
It’s all tied together.
Attitudes towards birth, a woman’s body, motherhood don’t get turned on and off like a button.
Women control much of this now. And have for a long time.
The narrative of “forced birth” strongly implies that birth is the most awful thing ever and that a woman should not be barred from any act that would spare her from it. That doesn’t go away when a woman goes to birth her own baby.
A society cannot in actuality simultaneously believe in empowering birth and opposition to abortion cast as wanting women to die.
They contradict each other.
Not the legality of abortion, but the lionization of it.
“In the hospital, the tradition is procedure. And as a hospital Labor and Delivery nurse I witnessed the countless ways a hospital takes a divine ritual, desecrates it and makes birth obscene.”
Some women, many women, prefer it that way. That’s my point.
Well. Today I learned I received a cervical check and that’s began the cascade of interventions to my eventual C-section. So. Unnecessary. So. Mad.
I thought they were checking the head placement—also dumb because they could feel the baby’s position that late in my pregnancy. I didn’t even think to opt out of this.
I want to share this with the maidens in my life that may have babies one day. I was traumatized by my first pelvic exam and then distrusted the medical system so I chose to birth my daughter at home which was healing for me. I struggle sharing these things because I know so many people are not ready to hear it but I will trust that their path is their own ❤️
It’s understandable to attribute the overmedicalization of birth to male doctors. But I gave birth for the first time in 2000, most recently in 2024. The field is dominated by women. It has been for a long time by now.
What this piece leaves out is my roommate one time who was grateful that the doctor gave her a C section and took care of it. She came with her extended family to have her first child but her body was nowhere ready to give birth. With that timeline and pressure, there weren’t a lot of ways for it to go.
Many women are very happy to be induced for no medical reason.
Women nurses run fiefdoms where their decisions go unquestioned. They make new mothers feel unqualified to take care of their own baby.
Women today by the time they approach birth have spent years trying to prevent their body from conceiving or birthing a baby. Many, many women view the right to not give birth as their most fundamental human right.
You can’t structure your life from puberty on towards avoiding birth and not develop an antagonism and fear of birthing a baby.
You can’t trust your body and trust the process when the entire society spends outlandish amounts of time, money and concentration on preventing conception.
It’s all tied together.
Attitudes towards birth, a woman’s body, motherhood don’t get turned on and off like a button.
Women control much of this now. And have for a long time.
The narrative of “forced birth” strongly implies that birth is the most awful thing ever and that a woman should not be barred from any act that would spare her from it. That doesn’t go away when a woman goes to birth her own baby.
A society cannot in actuality simultaneously believe in empowering birth and opposition to abortion cast as wanting women to die.
They contradict each other.
Not the legality of abortion, but the lionization of it.
I get the suspicion that you did not read this piece.
“In the hospital, the tradition is procedure. And as a hospital Labor and Delivery nurse I witnessed the countless ways a hospital takes a divine ritual, desecrates it and makes birth obscene.”
Some women, many women, prefer it that way. That’s my point.
I think I actually read it twice.