When Birth Doesn't Go According to Plan {Defining Ideal Birth}

“I guess I’m not as strong as you.”

Hearing the embarrassment in her voice broke my heart as I received the call announcing her baby’s arrival. What was supposed to be a moment of joy and excitement, turned into a moment of negative self-assessment and shame.

She’d just become a mother, a title she’d longed for since she was a little girl. But somewhere through the years, it became a type of competition with other women, a competition of who could be the strongest, who could be the toughest, who could birth a baby best.

Where have we come as women, when the most natural part of our identities–and dare I say, the most sacred part of who we are–has become a competition: a standard we must meet, or we’re not deemed worthy enough to be “part of the club”? And this woman, who longed to be part of that club, now felt she would never achieve membership.

Her words hit hard, and I immediately wondered if I’d been one of those people who had contributed to her thinking that there was only one ideal way of giving birth.

Have natural birth advocacy groups gone to extremes of avoiding interventions, that instead of empowering women, they’ve unintentionally become just as guilty as the surgeon who tells them interventions are an absolute necessity to give birth?

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