Rant #57

I’m going to start a secret society of pregnant women who are getting epidurals. The ridiculous part of this idea is that the membership in this society would be like 90% of all pregnant women. Why is it so secret? Because women who decide to go through labor without medication LOVE TO TALK ABOUT IT and make the rest of us feel like we’re doing something wrong. To me it sounds evangelical when I hear talk about birth circles, being “natural,” and doing it the way women throughout history have done it. One of the things I hear that makes me want to scream is “your body knows exactly what to do.” Really. Then let’s just go ahead and look up the protocol for your body when the umbilical cord is wrapped around the baby’s neck. That’s funny, I think I see the word, “die.” I mean how bizarre is it that women who live in this country and have access to all of the advantages in modern medicine somehow want to deprive themselves of it and instead opt for the painful and nerve-racking experience that women had to go through five hundred years ago? What is that about? If I were a sociologist I would study the connection between the American puritanical tradition and the “natural” child birth movement. But I’m not so I’ll just enjoy the company of my secret society sisters who will join me in saying, “all the more for us.”