Posted on 10/27/2006 11:31:40 AM PDT by gobucks
Some of us are still in the midst of our child-bearing years and the memory is still fresh.
Some of us are about to give birth and "looking forward" to doing it again.
I'm happy for you that that part of your life is over now and you can sit in judgement on us "whiners"
I endured 18 hours of hell before I "gave in"
the only joy comes after the birthing is done
I kicked a doctor and slapped a nurse
incredible amount of agony
These are all quotes from this thread. They go a bit beyond, "Yeah, childbirth is painful", doncha think?
ROFL!! I'd love to know how old you think I am.
Wow. You're takin' a lot of heat for this post. I wonder why.
We've had 9 naturally. I was begging for the epidural with this last one. Of course, I waited too long for it. By the time the anesthesiologist came in, I was five minutes or so from delivery. And I wasn't very nice about telling him to leave. I was mostly annoyed that I was at 7 cm and the nurse told me not to push yet. As if I had another hour to go or something. I informed her to call the doctor, and she did. I hate it when nurses don't listen.
But that's not my point here. There are tvs in most LDRs. I watched the Olympics during one birth. Once, I stayed home for more than twelve hours after my water broke in order to watch the SEC championship. Bama lost, btw. :( Hubby was rather concerned that I refused to go to the hospital until after the game. But he abided by my wishes. We watched the game. And we managed to have a baby three hours after arriving at the hospital. Easiest delivery I had. Sooooo, women like to watch football, too!
Tell me, FRiend, what of your birthplan if it conflicted with the Mrs.' plan for an epidural? Whose opinion should win out in that case? :)
Many congrats on your little one!
No clue.
"Wow. You're takin' a lot of heat for this post. I wonder why. "
Well, since you are wondering, I will hazard a guess: because the main argument I made, that too many guys basically abandon the task of birth to their wife, hit a nerve.
Mrs Gb and I were taking a walk the other day, and we were talking about why so few folks would bother being even a bit serious about going 'natural'. She said the difference is simply about trust. She trusted me to be someone she could lean on throughout the pain. At first she kept a general track of the contractions for example, but later on, when the labor basically put her on her back, I started tracking every one of them on one of the used golf score cards I keep around the house.
She said to me that watching me do that, without me being told to do it, made her feel wonderful. When she started complaining of back ache, I fished out the heating pad, and sure enough, it made a big difference. She trusted me. Even when I fell asleep later on....she knew if necessary, I would wake up and help ... and I did.
My point, which I noticed very very few guys bothered to address, was that getting to the point where a husband and a wife BOND over that bridge of trust, while their child is being born, is a really, really big deal. It transforms Mom and Baby, yes, but I believe pretty strongly, that husband and wife are supposed to draw closer. That turtle-neck guy is put away, and dress-to-the-nines man, a full husband, emerges...
Epidurals are basically a message from a guy to his wife, 'here, let the doc help you through this, I don't have what it takes to endure seeing you in pain'.
My wife said there was no way she could have done it w/o meds of some kind if I had not been there, presenting the attitude that I believed she could do it. That is how gutless guys hurt their wives, and even indirectly, inhibit their kids: they project an attitude that is fundamentally weak, and everyone picks up on it. But today, to be a guy is cool, and so no one challenges his cowardice, and essays like mine draw huge heat. Maybe my expectations are too high ... but, maybe I see American Men as they tend to be on average....and Maybe I don't like how, as a group, we seem to being failing to project a sufficient deterrence to the homocidal tendencies of other 'men'.....heck maybe I'm not watching enough football!
That all said, my wife loves, LOVES football season...ahem, I exaggerate. But she has gotten a lot better at understanding the signficance of 4th down...
(9 kids? wow!!!)
"Natural Childbirth" : The mother isn't allowed any drugs. The father can have all he wants. - Bill Cosby
Oh, to be sure I wouldn't just annouce, hey, no meds for you babe!! We talked the natural road over together quite a bit, and took the Bradley class..; in retrospect, what is weird is the degree to which we both were so hugely timid, and intimidated, over this road. At first anyway.
(The fact remains that natural child birth is a very uncommon experience in the USA, despite the fact that the vast majority of all children, every day, elsewhere, are born without the use of the epi.)
By the way, type in 'epidural' on Google News any given day ... very interesting what shows up in the written news, but never on TV.
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