I’m waiting for a baby to be born. To be exact, my third daughter is due to be born around 8th February.
I know many people find it hard to get excited about other peoples’ children, no matter how cute and angelic. If you’re one of those people then you probably haven’t even got this far into the article which is a shame because it’s not really about babies and kids and stuff.
On one hand it seems like I’m in a baby limbo where everything is ready and we’re just filling time waiting. We’re ready, the apartment is ready, family is ready, birth support is ready. Even the dogs are ready.
Just no baby yet!
On the other hand, and apologies for the well worn cliché, everything happens for a reason – even if we don’t know what it is.
One thing it has allowed me is a little space to reflect.
1. Nature Is Perfectly Designed Just As It Is
If a group of people had sat down and said, ‘Hey! Let’s create a way to make babies,‘ I doubt they could have come up with anything even close to the perfect way nature designed it.
The female body is beautifully constructed to grow, give birth to and then nurture a child. Everything is taken care of – even the feeding arrangements.
Isn’t this perfect design true of everything in nature?
We have great power to change the face of the earth and do so in the interests of making things better. We dig huge holes in mountains, mold the landscape, reclaim land, change the course of rivers, cut down forests and add to the gases in the air.
Does anything we do to the planet improve on nature?
2. Life Is Full Of Hazard
Child birth is a major physical, emotional and spiritual experience in which new life is brought into the world. Pregnancy is not an illness and birth is a perfectly natural event.
It happens all the time.
Yet every visit to the doctor, every time we open a book on the subject, we’re bombarded with lists of all the things that could go wrong. Most people we talk to are amazed Mona wants a natural birth without any chemical pain relief.
Faced with all these birth horror stories and the fear of pain, it’s no wonder so many women elect for a planned C-section – the standard way to give birth in Romania. Can anyone really tell me that in a perfectly healthy woman who has had a problem free pregnancy that it’s better to cut open her belly and pull the baby out?
Of course things can go wrong – but that doesn’t mean I should expect them to!
Bad things can happen walking down the street but I’d never go out if I took precautions for every single thing that could befall me. It’s good to be on the look out for danger and have an idea what to do – but not to assume that the sky is going to fall on my head when I step out the door.
Have we become so fear driven we’ve numbed ourselves to the experience of living?
3. We Could Move Things On
Mona, especially, is getting very impatient as she gets more and more uncomfortable and wanting her body back. As time goes on, the impatience and discomfort starts to outweigh any fear she might have of giving birth (though it’s my third, it’s her first). Inside, our baby is snug and warm and as she gets bigger the ’snug’ gets to a point where she’s squeezed as she runs out of room.
Allowing nature to run its course brings both mother and child to a point – a ‘tipping point’ – where it’s time for the birth.
It’s tempting to allow the impatience to rule and forget that everything happens at exactly the right time. We could take control and move things on. We could use chemicals. We could use surgery.
Many people do.
But do we really understand the consequences when we interfere with that perfect design of nature? Do we really know the long term effects on our baby? On the mother? And without wanting to sound overly dramatic … on the entire future of the human race?
In our desire for control, do we create long term problems by interfering?
4. Everyone wants to be involved
Everyone has an opinion on everything – from what Mona should be eating and doing, how we should give birth and even what name we should give our daughter. I suspect this is just the start and all these well meaning people will have plenty of advice for us for the next 20 years or so. I’m not talking about family and close friends – people close enough to us to know when their support is welcome and when not. I mean people who hardly know us or, in some cases, complete strangers.
It’s got to the point where we no longer answer the phone!
I take it as a sign of care and consideration but I’d love it if they could find different ways to express that.
I guess it’s no surprise when the papers are full of ‘news’ about the private lives of the rich and famous and our TV’s are a constant source of ‘reality’ shows (though not like any reality I’ve ever experienced).
Have we lost our capacity to judge when we’re welcome or not?
5. The State Doesn’t Trust Us
We are responsible people.
Both Mona and I are well and widely educated, we don’t take parenting lightly and are quite capable to make our decisions.
We’ve researched, spoken to many people and, though this is Mona’s first, it is my third birth. Everything has gone smoothly during pregnancy. We’ve checked with doctors and midwives and there are absolutely no signs of anything other than a perfectly normal birth.
We both believe, for many reasons, that a natural home birth is the best way to bring our daughter into the world. Recognising that things are unpredictible we’d like this to be supported by a trained midwife and a hospital ready to provide back-up if needed.
The state thinks we are stupid and irresponsible. Not just us .. but everyone.
They believe that hospital birth is best and have effectively made home birth illegal. If we do what we believe is best for Mona and for our baby then we risk not getting treated if things go wrong, prosecution and (I’m guessing here) being blacklisted by the social services.
People who don’t know us are making decisions about our lives.
In what areas do we allow others to make fundamental decisions about our lives?
