If you have a good relationship with your biological mother and she is still alive, you probably have already thought to talk to her about what your own birth was like; after all, you might reasonably expect your experiences to have a lot in common. Then again, the world was a very different place when you were born, whether it was 15 or 50 years ago, and your mother may well have given birth to you in a different city, region or country than you currently live in. When you tell people that you are expecting a baby, you could ask them what their own experiences were, expecting their baby or babies. Most people, whether close friends, coworkers, your hairstylist or other acquaintance, love to tell the story of their baby’s anticipated arrival. Often it is a story, a narrative that has a buildup, a climax, a denouement and a moral at the end. These stories are intensely personal, despite their common elements. People feel very strongly about what decisions they made, what happened to them, and what it all meant. Listen sympathetically. If you like, ask questions to encourage them to tell you the longer form of the story. Expect emotions to come to the fore, your own and theirs. It won’t always be possible – or even desirable – to suppress or conceal these emotions. To the extent you can, try to be sympathetic to their perspective, even if you are thinking you would never, ever let something like that happen to you. You can learn a lot about the other person by carefully listening, and you can learn a lot about yourself by attending to your own strong reactions.
You can also learn a lot about what kinds of decisions lead to what kinds of outcomes. Many women will draw attention to the connections for you. This is probably how you will first hear about "the cascade". You may learn that a friend’s baby you always thought of as healthy and normal spent time in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) for days after being born. You may hear that their baby was born almost dead, or nearly died shortly after being born. It can be both terrifying to hear that these things can still happen today, and heartening to hear the heroic measures that bring these babies back to life. You may hear that their mother, who you always thought of as healthy and normal, was determined to be having a high-risk pregnancy, screened for a lot of things you would never have thought to worry about, and encouraged to plan a C-section as a result of some of these tests. Then again, you may hear that despite everything you’ve heard about how scary childbirth can be, that some of the people you talk to had their baby at home, possibly in a tub of water, without any drugs.
You may notice some trends to the stories. A lot of the stories are about how surprisingly different the birth was from what they had planned or expected, and how ineffective many attempts to control the outcome turned out to be. A strong emphasis will likely be placed on how changed your life will be after the baby is born, and how you can’t possibly understand now just what you are getting into. And a lot of the stories come with very specific advice on what to do, or what not to do, at many steps along the way.
I strongly encourage you to collect as many of these stories as you can. You can find them in books, but get them from people you know, too. In part, this will help you understand how birth is interpreted and managed in your own slice of your own community. In part, this will help you bond with other mothers who you know and care about already as people. But mostly, the more of these stories you hear for yourself, the more balanced understanding you can bring to the books you read, and the advice you are given by professional caregivers.
Copyright 2005 by Rebecca Allen
Created May 20, 2005 Updated May 23, 2005