Pain and the Power of Birth


"If you are privileged enough to have witnessed a woman giving birth unaided in a place she has chosen, what will you have seen? You will first have been in awe of her strength.
Her thighs stand strong and mighty like those of a warrior as she stands, sways and squats to find the best positi...on to ease her baby out. Then you will hear the deep primal cries she makes as she does her work, sounds that come not from her throat but from her belly as she grunts and moans and roars with her exertion: sounds seldom heard except in the most uninhibited of love-making. Maybe you will notice the glistening river of mucus tinged with blood and waters that run down her thighs unheeded: she is beyond noticing such things, moved as she has gone into another plane of existence. And then finally perhaps you will be struck by her beauty: her face softened with the flow of oxytocin, her eyes wide and shining, her pupils dark, deep and open. And you will think - for how could you not; why, what a phenomenal creature is a woman. But you will only have seen this astonishing sight if you have understood that if you disturb her in her work, she will be thrown off course. Like a zoologist, you must first learn how to behave; how to sit quietly and patiently, almost invisible, breathing with her, not disturbing her mighty internal rhythm. And you will see that the pain of her labours seldom overwhelms her.
Nature would not have organised labour to be intolerable. It is man in his wish to control all he surveys that has oppressed labouring women by making them labour in the most tortuous and fiendish environment he could construct. Let us bring them into harsh rooms with bright lights. Let us make them lie on their backs on hard narrow beds. Let us tether them to machines so they cannot move. Let us make them stay silent and make no noise with their pains. Let us expose their most private parts and threaten them with cold steel. Let us make them push their babies upwards, against the pull of the earth. Let us monitor and measure and chart every move that they make. Let us swab them and wipe them, and prod them and poke them and irritate and confuse them and frighten them as much as we can.
In these conditions labour swiftly becomes unbearable and pain relief becomes a woman's only hope. Get me some pethidine, give me an epidural, cut it out of me, anything, make it stop, please help me ... This is not the natural cry of a woman in labour bringing a child to birth, although if you have only ever witnessed childbirth in a medicalised setting you might be forgiven for thinking so. This is the screaming plea of a tethered animal in pain.
Her only hope for salvation in her cell lies in the anaesthetist who numbs the pain and the obstetrician who, finally makes it stop".

Downe, S. (2008). Normal birth - evidence and debate (2nd ed.). Sydney: Elsevier.

κάτι τέτοια διαβάζω και στεναχωριέμαι που εγώ δεν το έζησα αυτό το συναίσθημα και μου προκαλεί δέος. Είδα και ένα ντοκιμαντέρ αναλόγου παριεχομένου πρόσφατα και είναι ακριβώς όπως τα περιγράφει. Τουλάχιστον έτσι φαίνεται.