Suzy Q Homemaker

We didn’t nickname him “The Imp” for nothing.  In fact, the mischief began before Simon was conceived.  To avoid the unseemly side effects of hormonal medications, and among various other personal reasons, we choose Natural Family Planning.  If you aren’t familiar with it, look it up.  I was charting diligently back then but my thermometer went missing.  I ended up finding it lodged between the bed rail and the box spring mattress of our bed.  We had a great laugh about “The Imp” in our house hiding it until it turned out that Imp somehow found his way into my uterus.

Yes–I know “what causes it.”

And yes–WE LIKE IT.

The irony of this whole thing is that once I found out I was pregnant things stopped going missing in our house.  That had been a big problem, too.  I had a journal go missing that never has been found.  I looked for it for months and one day found the bookmark I used in it stuffed into the back of a kitchen drawer.  Weird things like that.

Anyway, fast forward to the birth of Simon which was a quick pitocin-induced but otherwise normal hospital birth (no epidural or any other form of pain management except my Bradley techniques).  Our nurse was new to “natural births” and freaked out when I started pushing.  In case you have no idea what it’s like to feel the urge to push, try to imagine that you have to take a really huge poop and can’t control it.  The poor nurse lady tried to tell me to stop pushing because my doctor wasn’t there yet, but she had no idea that my body had taken control at that point and there was no way my uterus or Simon was going to wait until it was convenient for anyone else.  Simon birthed himself right onto the hospital bed and my doctor sauntered in ten minutes later.

When we had his pictures taken at the hospital, we knew we were in for it:

Does that look like the picture of innocence?

It’s been a wild ride ever since.

Yesterday we had to run errands. Doctor’s appointment, pharmacy, etc. I seriously do things like this in the car. The audio is off in some places. Coincidentally, it’s off when I’m screaming at other cars. Perhaps my phone is trying to tell me something.

I’ve heard it from I don’t know how many people now that I’m a “strong woman” who gave birth without drugs so this recovery should be a piece of cake.  While it is true I can push a human out of my vagina after enduring intense labor, all without the use of nerve-blocking  agents and narcotics, ankle surgery is hardly comparable.  Labor pain goes away once the baby comes out.  My surgeon drilled holes in my bones.  There’s a pretty big difference.

I begrudgingly stepped away from a labor conversation recently.  If I hadn’t, I know I would have put my beliefs on the table and risked a friendship.  I can’t do that.  What I assumed is that everyone who knows me knows how much I cannot stand to hear about women looking forward to getting drugs during their labor like they’re looking forward to candy on Halloween.  Debating this subject is getting old for me so I usually avoid it altogether. It just happened that I was complaining about my foot and got teased for it because I was supposed to be this superwoman who doesn’t need drugs to help me bring a baby into the world.  It was teasing, I know, but it bothered me the more I thought about it.

My birthing advice is almost always unsolicited but I can’t help it when people say things like “omg gimme the drugs”.  To each their own, I suppose.

And that’s really all I have to say about that.  I’m against using pain meds during labor.  The end.