Only One Word
I was chatting with my incredibly wise pal V last night, and we were talking, as we do, about birth and babies and whatnot. The topic of pain-free birth came up.
I‘ve thought about this a lot. I completely bought in to the idea that if you didn’t have fear, you wouldn’t have pain, as espoused by Grantly Dick-Read in "Childbirth Without Fear". And then in the middle of my 30+ insane labor with Kestrel, decided that I was never going to trust the word of someone who’d never birthed for anything ever again.
Steeped as I am in birth circles, I have read a lot of birth stories. There are some that are ecstatic, euphoric, orgasmic… but they’re outnumbered hugely by those that are painful, uncomfortable, awkward, and agonizing. And so there’s a little bit of backlash thinking here, that the ecstatic crowd, those that feel OK with the Gaskin term "sensations" are either crazy, or they’re trying to create a thing into being that currently really doesn’t exist.
Once again, I’m pulled into using sports metaphor for birth. Marathons hurt. Triathlons hurt. All kinds of athletic endeavor hurt. I was telling V about a certain world-class freediver who acknowledges that not breathing hurts, and requires himself to resist 14 urges to breathe before he allows himself up. And how, I ask, is that any different from a birthing woman telling herself that she’ll just get through this contraction… and then just through the next one… and then just through the next one? The freediver is lauded for his athletic accomplishment in not breathing for six or seven minutes by virtue of his amazing ability to control a bodily instinct through willpower. But a woman, taking it one contraction at a time, is somehow lesser, pitiable, a figure to be saved from all that by intervention.
It occurs to me that in the english language, we only have one word for "pain". This is supposed to cover everything from cancer to broken bones to childbirth to heartbreak to headache. Apparently when we were pulling together this polyglot language, we decided to minimize our description of this state, so that you’re either in pain, or you’re not, but perhaps it’s gauche to really get too into the details of "in pain". So someone on chemo and someone in labor are both "in pain". If they’re both in a hospital, they both are trying to use the same dumb "scale of 1 to 10" descriptor to communicate what they’re feeling to an outside person.
No wonder so many mechanisms, processes, theories, and drugs exist to try to save women from labor. I know that were my bones broken, were I enduring dialysis or some other process, I would absolutely want those at my disposal. But what we’re lacking is the linguistic differentiation, in two syllables or less, to say "pain that is the sign of pathology and illness and needs to be obliterated by any means possible" and "pain that is your body’s way of kicking in an endorphin payoff down the road".
Got that? I’m not enduring labor pain. I’m purchasing my endorphin rush, one sensation at a time.
Exactly!
And to be frank, the orgasmic birthers make me angry. I’m not evolved on the subject at all, because it’s always made me feel and especially now after my daughter, that since I didn’t have an orgasmic birth, there’s something wrong with me from their viewpoint.
I know that this isn’t so, but that’s the emotional response.
I’d rather have known and gotten told that I was in for one hell of a marathon. I would have been in a totally better headstate for labor then. But being told to just get rid of my fear and all will be hearts and flowers?
Yeah.
Still want to get angry.
And that’s my two cents.
yes it hurts.. but it’s not a “dangerous hurt” and it won’t kill you.. and if it won’t kill you it makes you tougher ;>
Loved this post, and I linked to it in one of mine!
Ya it hurts, but what a wonderful pain. I had my first on drugs and he had complications, didn’t get him for 2 days. I am sure it was the drugs. My other 2 were natural and no problems. And the pain, I would have another if I could, so much for pain LOL
I had the “marathon” idea in my head for my 2nd and 3rd babies. Not my 1st. The experience with my 1st was OK, but nearly as satisfying as #2 and #3.
I’ve also trained for a marathon (only competed in a 5k though, as it turns out.) Having trained for it, helped me “train” for my birth.
Birthing my two girls hurt like hell. It was pain like no other, and it felt like I was being ripped in two, as most of you can probably relate to. I can see why someone who wasn’t ready for it would fight it, hate it, want it gone. And in a way, I wanted it gone too. But I knew that the best way to make it go away, was to have the baby.
There’s this thing in running (and other sports), called the “zone”. It’s where, after running for 20 minutes or so, we go into a trans-like state. People do it other contexts too, like while working on a project, or writing, or creative tasks. The physical “zone” is a bit different, because the pain, well, it goes away. It doesn’t really go away. But in our minds it does. If we get pulled out of the zone, the pain hits us like a brick.
Another thing about the zone, is that when we are in it, our bodies perform better with less wear and tear. The more often we can get in the zone, the faster we can improve.
Marathon runners train hard to learn how to stay in the zone for as they can during their long runs. During the marathon itself, the other runners are no longer there,the sounds aren’t there, it’s just the rhythm of our feet on the ground, our hearts beating, and being in sync with the universe.
When I had my girls, I had had the experience of training for a marathon behind me. I knew how to get in the zone. When the pain came, it was almost automatic to go into that. I was lightly aware of the people around me. But beyond that, it was just me, my body, my breathing, my baby and my pain. The pain wrapped around me, and I went into the zone. I didn’t “feel” the pain the same way. I felt it, but I didn’t. I was performing at a higher level, and my body was pushing itself beyond it’s normal level of function, with less wear and tear.
I hadn’t realized I had gone into the zone until I was out of it, and the baby was on my chest. That’s how it is, often, with runners. We don’t know we’re there until we’re not. And, as soon as we realize we’re there, it throws us out of it, and we have to worm our way back slowly in the zone again.
My doula told me that she could tell when I was in transition. I suddenly got very quiet, very still, and my breathing changed naturally. I was no longer “there” in the room with them.
I guess my births were orgasmic. It certainly felt similar in some respects. I think that before orgasm, we get into that “zone”. Most of us anyway. That’s how it was orgasmic for me. It was like being in that zone before release.
Not all pain is bad. In Buddhism, there’s a saying, “let it kill you.” I try to remember this when I’m in pain. It doesn’t make the pain go away, but there’s something about being one with pain that makes it less scary.
I recently wrote about this same subject on my blog. Enjoyed your post!
Molly
Having gone through one birth where the pain was all about the fear and the interventions (and things poking me in multiple places) and then through a birth where the pain was only about my body working to get a baby out, I can say that they were very different. That first kind of pain, never want to be anywhere near that again, but the second kind, I’d do that again over and over
Is it possible, that by perceiving the process of labor as a privilege (one denied me in my other children’s birth), that I did not experience it as particularly painful? There were definitely moments that were painful, but that is not my memory of the labor.
I’m not trying to be obnoxious, I truly do wonder how it is.
At any rate, as usual, an excellent, thought-provoking post. ITA about not listening to anyone who’s never experienced it though. That’s a huge pet-peeve of mine–men in Obstetrics.
Christie
I don’t believe that birth is inherently painful, or that it needs to be painful to be normal. But it does bother me immensely when people try to make out that birth pain has only to do with one’s mindset. As if, if I were only less fearful or less in my head or more evolved somehow, that it wouldn’t have been painful. They don’t know. I had as instinctive, spontaneous, undisturbed, and embraced labor as a person could possibly have, and it was *excruciatingly* painful. So pardon me while I roll my eyes when someone says, “oh, well then you just didn’t do it right.”