This is about something that really grinded my gears when I was pregnant with my oldest. I was living in a foreign country away from my family, mom and sister especially, and feeling very out of my element. Like any other first time mom, I had no idea what I was doing, so I relished in the stories and experience of friends, co-workers, etc. Ask and you shall receive! Every woman I knew (and some that I didn’t) wanted to tell me their birthing stories. I loved it, bring it on! The more I could learn the better. But, I soon noticed a trend. A sad, sad little trend. Women would tell me their WORST birthing stories. You know the ones, guaranteed you heard them too, the 40 hour labor, 4th degree tearing kind of stories. I would listen wide-eyed thinking/hoping/praying that I would be in the seemingly small percentage of women that managed to make it through this birth with her vagina still intact.
It was awful. These women wear these stories like a badge of honor. Getting their kicks from watching the faces of the unsuspecting pregnant women who were silly enough to think that older, more experienced women would want to lift them up with encouragement. Instead, they would laugh at these poor women when the reality of what was soon going to happen to their lady parts sunk in. And don’t get me wrong, I didn’t need the sugar coated version. I wanted the truth. I can handle the truth. What I didn’t need is an exaggerated version of events that happened 30 years ago in a completely different medicinal age, told to me purely for shock value.
Lets get one thing straight. Having babies is hard. It’s painful, raw and dirty. If I went through a 40 hour labor damn right I’d want to shout it from the rooftops. What a badass. But, every birth story is different. And EVERY mother is a badass. And sometimes, just sometimes, it may be nice to tell that new mom out there about the fantastic birth stories. The short, painless, ‘easy’ births. And don’t forget about the white whale of birthing stories. The ultimate urban legend. Orgasm births. That’s right new mom, fingers crossed that you get to experience the big ‘O’ while pushing a watermelon out of your va-jay-jay.…