How my Obstetrician actually helped...
Putting it in here as it seemed the best place. Feel free to move it if necessary.
I've had troubles for years with feeling I didn't birth Liebling. I was just there as he was slucked out of me. Anyway, I was reading something Kelly wrote in the activism area:
:
1. Delivered/deliver (as in birth)
Firstly, the MOTHER does all the work. I have a rant in my head when I hear the doctor take credit for 'delivering' the baby or the person who says, 'the doctor delivered my baby.' Um HELLO! YOU BIRTHED your own baby. You did it. Just you and no-one else. Pizzas or parcels are delivered. But babies are born, and you birthed your own baby, no matter who else had part in it. In the matter of the midwife or doctor who was present - then they caught the baby. Thats why you may hear 'baby catcher' titles or descriptions of midwives. This gives the power back to the woman. The medical person present only caught the baby and was a guardian of your safety.
I thought: No, I didn't birth my baby. The Obs did it. I was just there. He didn't catch the baby, he whacked his whole hand up my vagina (and it was a very large hand too, by the feel of it) and fiddled around, left me very bruised and pulled the lad out. So yet again, I didn't give birth. And I didn't get mad just for me, but for the women who never even got to push, those who had sections that they didn't want. Those who didn't push a baby out, but whose baby was pulled out by people previously unknown. For me, the pulling part of it did make it me not giving birth; I didn't do all the work. Don't know if others feel like this, but that's just me. (BTW, you've done nine months or so of work on this baby. A bit of pushing or pulling doesn't negate work already done. It's not as if you're not there at the time and recovery from an operation with a newborn around is a heck of a lot more work than just a couple of hours of pushing, IMHO. I can see that for other people, but not me for some reason.)
Then I thought back. And I remembered something that rather annoyed me at the time, and has done so afterwards too.
"Well done, it's all you, I'm not doing anything." That was my Obs. Now, I hated him for that. I really did. If it was all me, why am drugged up to the armpits, unable to feel, midwives directing my pushing on the whims of the machine, legs in stirrups, prepped for a C-section to occur next second if that's what they decide, have had to deal with the hand of pain prior to the drugs in the theatre... AND YOU'RE DOING BLINKING NOTHING? How is that supposed to help?
Well, obviously not at the time.
But now... he did a lot. But nothing relating to me pushing my baby out. He did a lot of telling me what I was and wasn't allowed to do. He did some fiddling and hurting. But he didn't birth my baby. He even told me at the time I did that.
So thanks Kelly for letting me have a little vent in my head that ended up being beneficial (to me). And thanks Dr Stelios for saying something I found so annoyingly stupid for you to say at the time but actually turned out to be the best thing you ever said. Do laugh at me for previous rants; I did and I know it's fairly amusing.
So, my journey on this obviously isn't over yet, though I thought it was. But I do feel a lot better now. Tears streaming and having hysterics when I thought more on this, but that was a good thing. I think I needed it.
Thanks also to EVERYONE who's been with me on Liebling's birth: I wouldn't have got here without you!
