Helping women optimize fertility + natural birth(keeper) | Wife, mom of 2 | homesteader & aspiring midwife 🪷 former tech mgr
Kentucky, USA
- Tweets 13,841
- Following 457
- Followers 674
- Likes 44,360
Pinned Tweet
This account started as a professional account, but it has evolved into so much more than that. I felt I have outgrown my username and it was time for a change. It's really hard to choose something that encompasses even a modicum of who you are, but this felt appropriate 🪷
1
20
524
19mo did not nurse at all today. We did naps snd now bedtime without it. This is what I wanted, so why am I crying?
10
51
Arielle🪷 retweeted
Epidurals in isolation as a concept are neither wonderful nor evil. They are tools. They can be efficient tools for complicated or extended births, but come with their own set of risks and are too often used as tools of convenience and/or part of a greater protocol of medical birth management that increases the statistical probability of side effects, complications that lead to emergency cesareans, or poor APGAR scores. There are studies on this you can look up.
The question of benefit is not so much about the tools, I’ve learned, it’s about when and why they’re being used.
There’s an undeniable risk not just to the mother but her unborn child with medical interventions like inductions and epidurals, so that’s why I push back on enthusiastic promotion of these drugs without the context needed to determine if they would be beneficial or not. I’ve learned from my own natural births at home that pain exists in labor for a very specific hormonal purpose that helps the birth process itself to unfold, the more this delicate process is tampered with unnecessarily the more risks increase, which so often leads to the need for more interventions like the epidural. Maybe if more women knew that there are ways to train to significantly increase their tolerance and lessen the perception of suffering during childbirth, they might more readily accept the idea that they’re more than capable of doing it naturally.
In June, I wrote about my excellent experience giving birth with an epidural in @WorksInProgMag and argued that more women should get one. But this month I gave birth to my son without any pain relief, except gas and air. This was unintentional: my labour was so fast that there just wasn’t time.
Now that I’ve given birth both with and without an epidural (as many women do), here are some further thoughts:
• Labour without pain relief is indeed very painful, as everyone says. Immediately after the birth (and in between some contractions), I told my husband we would need to make sure I have an epidural for any future children. But the more time passes, the more I think I’d be ok without one again, if the labour were as quick as this one was.
• Tolerating a much longer labour without proper pain relief feels like a different proposition. I can now better see how important epidurals are for women in prolonged labour just so that they get a chance to rest and sleep.
• Some say that pushing without an epidural is easier. I did not find pushing without an epidural significantly easier, but it is true that I could better tell when a contraction was happening. With the epidural, a midwife simply told me when I was having one and that worked well.
• Because I hadn’t had an epidural, we were discharged from hospital quickly. This was very nice as we have an older child who we were keen to see. Other than for that reason, I don’t mind hospitals and would have been fine waiting longer.
All in all, I’m pleased to have had my son without an epidural. It was a very intense experience, but I was curious about what such a labour would be like (even if I’m not sure I would ever have chosen it for myself) and now I know! For more about epidurals, including my experience using one, how they work, and why so few women get one in countries like the UK and Japan see my article in WiP.
worksinprogress.co/issue/the…
7
4
40
3,018
I'm such a monumental dumbass. I've been having SUCH a hard time in the morning with clingy toddler it's hard to get anything done. Well, this morning I had the genius idea to talk to her about being put down so I could make her food, and, *gasp* waited until she was ready.
1
11
424
When she was done she wanted to be picked up again, so I picked her up & asked her if she was ready to be a big girl so I could clean up, set her down, & waited with her until she was ready. I'm blessed to be able to have slow and intentional mornings right now SO WHY WASN'T I?!
1
4
110
Sometimes being pregnant is so annoying I just laid down and got cozy and my stomach started growling this is toxic patriarchy
27
473
Ugh this is so true I miss my mom so much. Not just because of her excellent grandmothering, but she's the best mom, too 💜 I'm praying she and my dad can get their lives worked out quickly because their grand babies are growing up fast.
4
31
1,362
This is Ghost. I think he's part Russian blue. He's a badass and nobody messes with him. I like him a lot.
4
30
395
Daddy just told 2yo he has to go back outside to finish chopping his last logs for the day and 2yo was like "noooo don't go you're my frieeeend" 😭😭😭
1
14
414
