Support
What does that word mean to you? I suppose it can have many different meanings depending on the person. Every person needs to be supported differently. So let’s talk about that for a second.
Throughout our lives we are taught to uplift one another and to encourage each other and for some reason, the minute we find out we are pregnant, those lessons get tossed out the window like it’s a stray bird that happened to fly in our home.
So, why? Why is it that we feel like we should judge and tear each other down the minute someone is doing something different than us? There is no denying that there are so many options to choose from starting when we conceive our children. Maybe even before that… there are many ways to conceive now too. But WHY are we so bent on trying to get each other to do things the way we do it when there is truly no “wrong” way? After all, we are humans, not robots. We shouldn’t all be the same.
So let’s talk about that…
There’s differences in each pregnancy and we are told one person we aren’t supposed to do certain things and then we turn our heads slightly to the right and have a new person telling us to do those things all the time. And then god-forbid we talk about how we want to give birth.
Holy s***…. It becomes a hell storm. Whether you are having a home birth, hospital birth, birth-center birth, cesarean birth, un-medicated, medicated, birthing somewhere in the middle of the woods, (I can go on, but I will choose not to), you are going to get judged for SOMETHING because of it. But why?! Every single birth is different no matter how you go about it and sometimes you just can’t prevent how it happens, so WHY do we keep judging each other?!
I see so often on support group pages, “I told my family I was having a home birth and now they keep fear mongering me and telling me my baby is going to die!” or “I want an epidural, but I feel like I might already be a bad mom just by choosing that because of the lack of support I am receiving.”
It is sad… why the f*** can we not just support one another?! If someone tells you they are going to be giving birth (no matter how they are planning) you say, “You are awesome! You are such a bad-ass for holding that baby in your uterus for 9 months and then giving birth!” NO MATTER HOW THEY PLAN TO GIVE BIRTH, THEY ARE A BAD-ASS.
If a mom holds that child in her uterus for 9 months and then the baby is all of a sudden not in her uterus, but in her arms instead do you know what that means? It means she gave birth.
Birth is not easy. It does not matter how you do it, there is no easy way out. And then the recovery from giving birth is not easy.
So before you tell your friend or the random lady you were talking to on the bus that she should give birth a different way than she is planning, remember these words… IT DOESN’T MATTER HOW A WOMAN GIVES BIRTH, SHE WILL NEED SUPPORT. And then smile at her and tell her that she is amazing, because she is.