Baby Due Dates, like Black Magic Spells!

    Specific baby due dates are like black magic spells cast upon you. There. I said it. Whoever thought that assigning one specific date for a woman's pregnancy to end was a good idea was not a very smart or good person. Could they not have considered assigning a whole week instead of one pivotal day that see-saws your birth plan into its polar opposite realm of decline? Into entering the hair-raising stages of possible "induction."
    I would like to take a brief moment right now to say: "Fuck you induction!"
    Think about all the families who sit around their babies' "due date" wondering, "why isn't my baby coming?" Worrying, "is everything going to be o.k.?"
    It will take me many blog entries to unravel my experiences being transported through the baby factory, sometimes feeling like a herded animal, often times finding myself alone at my kitchen table amongst doctor handouts marketed with fear clawing at me between the lines and me, typically strong me, sitting there almost defeated, crying to myself, thinking, "one would need to go to medical school to begin to understand all of these tests and decisions I have to make." I was not 25 years old having my first baby . . . I was 35 . . . and this age in the baby factory is the first year of "old" and potentially "high risk". Eventually after feeling a bit helpless and surprised to discover that I grew up as a female with little to zero information about childbirth, I started to realize that my judgements, fears, and visions about birth had been formulated by American television and movies. My hand raised to my gaping mouth. "No! It couldn't be! Not me. I don't even drink soda. I'm not one of those!"
    "You are sweetheart," I said. "So what are you going to do about it?"
    "Well I'm going to make it my priority to re-educate myself, that's what I'm going to do about it sister."
    So I read books (Ina May Gaskin's are my favorites) and I asked around.  When I first became pregnant I thought your water broke and you rushed to the hospital. I thought you just took the epidural and lay on your back and let the doctors do their thing. Who knows, this may end up being me, but my birth plan is to have a natural birth. Like I said in my last blog post, I believe birth, like dying is one of the most natural things about life - the majority of time it will happen without complication when the baby is ready to enter the other side of its life. Why and how have we reached this condition where we are so interventive and fearful of possibly the most natural process of life?

(Note to reader and especially to women who choose or have chosen not to have a natural childbirth . . . I have no judgement about what other women choose, as I myself have not even had my birth experience yet. . . my only wish is for women in our society to be better informed about what their options are: natural vs. drugs -- and the implications and responsibilities of each. In my experience I didn't feel like this important information was present enough at my doctor's office, or that my questions were welcomed, which is why I chose to hire a mid-wife as well.)