I absolutely abhor the phrase "natural childbirth". All too frequently it's used as a benchmark of superiority and it isn't even an accurate phrase. If you want to accurately describe your childbirth experience use phrases such as: intervention-free, non-medicated, medicated-to-the-gills, doctor-assisted, cut open like a holiday bird, etc.
The choices for delivery are not, contrary to popular blogging belief, natural or unnatural. The choice isn't even natural or medicated. Your ONLY delivery options are vaginal or cesarean section (c-section) and either way involves humans. As far as I know, we can't send a pregnant robot in our stead.
The other reason that the phrase "natural childbirth" rankles my already-fraught nerves is that many of the pain-relieving drugs used to alleviate the pain of childbirth are a form of narcotics, which are found in NATURE, which makes them NATURAL. By this reasoning, if you have an epidural, which uses a combination of narcotics and other drugs culled from nature, you had a "natural childbirth".
Either way you slice it (or push it), childbirth hurts. Throughout the ages, women were kept from pain relief during childbirth. The turn to more medical interventions and pain relief became a matter of women's rights. Much like the right to own property, vote or have access to birth control. Instead of seeing medical interventions and pain relief as a way for doctors to make more money and have more control, we need to see it as an option for women who want it based on the long history of women not having many choices.
In the end it doesn't matter to me what you choose. But it does matter that you have a choice. Just remember, you won't start fucking up your kid in the delivery room. You will begin when you decide whether to give you child formula or breastmilk.
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