The name of the book is Labour Day Shared Experiences from the Delivery Room and is edited by by Ann-Marie Giglio. My mom gave me this little book which I am enjoying. It consists of 35 personally written birthing accounts. Some are home births, hospital deliveries, waterbirths, midwives, twins, a father's perspective and more. Most of these are written by moms birthing in their late twenties to late thirties. They are honest and insightful and like the value of all storytelling there is much that can be gleaned by listening to the accounts of the women who have already gone where I am about to go.
One of my favorite accounts, a single mom said this," There is no real way of saying what it feels like to give birth, because there is truly nothing that compares. I cannot think of another experience with an outcome so astonishingly and overpoweringly beautiful that it makes such torturous work worth doing."
Another mom quoted these words directly out of her pregnancy journal. "I had a strong sense that my body was doing something that had happened billions of times before, and it knew what to do. All I needed to do was stay out of the way and keep calm. It was in many ways an intensely spiritual experience."
As the back of the book concludes,"Give birth to a child and you give birth to a story." My general impression is that your birthing story like you will be as unique as your thumbprint. In todays modern world we certainly have alot more options than the generations of women before us both in terms of how we want to give birth and what we want or hope to obtain from our experience. For me it has become vital to clarify my own expectations to myself while at the same time leaving an option for the unknown to emerge and that my caregiver share similar compatible birthing ideas.
No comments:
Post a Comment