Did I ever rant about my first delivery? No? Well, the story is long and gross, but sufficient to say that I hated every last minute of it and vowed, as soon as I came out of surgery, that I would NEVER. DO. THAT. AGAIN.
At first I thought that that sentence meant that I was finished having children. I mean, my birth story was not really all that unusual. I was induced, and then induced some more, and then the pain got to be too much, and then I had an epidural, and a consequent allergic reaction to the epidural, and everything spiralled out of control and the baby got stuck on my pelvis and was coming out sunny side up and ear first...and eventually the whole gruesome mess ended in a c-section. But, horrible as my story is (and I left out some of the worst bits in that synopsis) it isn't uncommon. Women in hospitals all over North America have exactly the same story. Medical intervention, although a wonderful thing in an emergency, is invading aspects of our lives that it really doesn't need to be in, such as regular, normal, healthy childbirth.
So after debating for, oh, 18 months or so, about whether to have another child or not, we conceived our second baby. As soon as I discovered I was pregnant a million and one fears flashed through my head. I wondered about money, about space and how to work with two children and more about money, and a little bit about sanity, too. I also thought about birth. I had a goal, and the goal was pretty simple: Do not have a birth like the first one. I didn't have anything more specific than that but I knew that a birth like I had with Samuel would be, in my mind, a complete disaster.
I made an appointment with my family doctor, who had me come back the following week for blood work, peeing in a cup, and other indignities that they like to do to pregnant women right off the bat. And he said, immediately, "I've set you up with an OB. Dr. S. She's very nice, I think you'll like her."
To which I replied "Can't you deliver the baby?" "What if I don't like Dr. S.?" "What if I don't want to travel an hour away for OB care?"
But what if I don't want to do it the way everyone is telling me I have to do it?
And I was stonewalled. Which I expected, having been through this before, but I was still a little bit thrown for a loop. Because my big plan had not really been any more specific than "don't have a delivery like the first one." and I had no further ideas than that!
So I started to look at my options. My small town has no obstetrical care at all. For anything beyond a pap smear you have to drive into one of the three major cities, each one to two hours away. And as anyone who has ever gone to an obstetrician knows, the appointments are ridiculous wastes of time. You pee in a cup, get your blood pressure taken, they ask you how you're feeling (which is horrible. who doesn't feel horrible?) and then they make you lie on your back while they push on your pelvic bone and measure to the top of your uterus, and then you pull your pants up and go home. Done. And they do this every month, until the 8th month, when they see you twice, and the ninth month, when they want to see you every week. There is nothing that they do that, frankly, I couldn't do. I could buy pee sticks and measure my own urine glucose level. I could go to the pharmacy and get my blood pressure taken. I could keep track of the baby's movements, and probably even measure my own belly. It isn't, um, rocket science.
Today was my second appointment with my family doctor, and when I asked him, point blank, why I had to go to an OB. Why? What are they going to do? Is a hospital going to refuse to deliver the baby if I don't have an OB? And the short answer is the same one they gave me all through my first pregnancy: that doing it their way is the best for the baby. That if I do it my way, and balk at the restrictions and demands of modern obstetrical care, then I am putting myself and my child in harm's way. That if I chose to believe that my body was designed for this task and that it neither needs nor is significantly helped by the constant pressure of the ideal pregnant woman's care, that somehow I am failing society. A phrase that kept coming up was 'standard of care'. And it reminded me, again and again, that this is a business and I am a commodity.
No comments:
Post a Comment