Interviewees:
1) "Vee"; mother of one; "senior citizen"
2) "Dee"; mother of two; "old enough"
To start off with, the women I interviewed asked for me to quickly summarize their experience of giving birth. For my first interviewee, Vee, she had a natural birth in the hospital and was put in one of those mock hot tubs they have to 'help calm us down'. The second interviewee, Dee, had one botched C-section and nine years later, a natural birth and an extended period of labor due to the baby twisting it's arm around their head. Both women focused mainly on the actual day of the birth for the interview and have extremely different stories.
Vee's story came off somewhat vague as it happened over forty years ago but she says while she couldn't verbally explain most of it, she remembers it vividly. Her daughter who was present disagreed, saying that every woman of her mother's generation was put under some sort of medicine nicknamed Twilight which in hindsight, made the birthing process seem painless. "But of course it hurt," Vee kept insisting, throwing her daughter disagreeing looks. "I just had it easy, God bless." Her water broke in the morning and she had time to shower before her husband could take her to the hospital. Indeed, details from there out were quick and blurred together. She remembers being put into what she describes as a hot tub of sorts to relax her, "...maybe the muscles as well.... It's the best thing you can do for the mother." However, she did not give birth in that tub. They led her onto the bed, much more like a table, and once she was settled, they wouldn't let her leave it even to use the bathroom. She found this upsetting since she had always taken long walks during the pregnancy, even days before 'the big day'. Perhaps her twenty block hike home had something to do with her water breaking the next day?
Dee, similiar to Vee, made sure to always excerise during the pregnancy of her first child. As her stomach started to grow, she
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Birth Unit Interviews
The was a general consensus among the people that I interviewed that there are certain things - "common courtesy," as my oldest interviewee called it and "good manners," my younger brother referred to it - that should be considered standard treatment for pregnant women. While no one came out and said that they considered pregnant women to be scared, as we discussed in class, they all agreed that at the very least, seats should be given up for them and people who are sick should be kept away. While my older friends, all girls as I couldn't get any guy to allow me to interview them, said that it was keeping the health and comfort of the mother at it's highest standard, my little brother was the only one who considered what it would do to the actual baby.
Throughout the interview, he kept repeating that people had to be careful around pregnant women, "So the baby doesn't have problems.... So the baby doesn't come out the wrong way, like sick or diseased or hurt." Things like giving up your seat he says he learned from a friend - not from all the signs on the buses asking you to do such. He also said that he wouldn't treat a woman any differently according to her age. In fact, he went on about how he would go out of his way to make sure her baby was okay. "... tell her not to work hard or at all and I would do all her work. I don't know why.... Pick it up for them, they aren't supposed to bend down." That last piece he claims to have learned from the TV show House.
I think the biggest contrasts came in my interview with my little brother and my friends in college. While he said that birth made him want to faint, that it was scary to give birth or be pregnant because it was "... like a monster popping outta the belly, like a Lord of the Rings troll." On the other hand, most of my friends did say that they would like to have kids one day and of those three, one would want to solely adopt, one would like to do both and one would only like to have their own. One friend, Liz, says she grew up in a very church based community where most of the 'common courtesy' she learned came from always being surrounded by at least one or two women who were pregnant. She said that she thought, "... pregnancy is amazing and so are babies, especially after getting to hold my best friends' firstborn child not long ago." Her only strong fear mentioned was the fear of the pain even though she has been told by mothers, "..it's worth it. I also hear that your hormones are at work so that you're attached to the baby despite being kinda miserable"
Throughout the interview, he kept repeating that people had to be careful around pregnant women, "So the baby doesn't have problems.... So the baby doesn't come out the wrong way, like sick or diseased or hurt." Things like giving up your seat he says he learned from a friend - not from all the signs on the buses asking you to do such. He also said that he wouldn't treat a woman any differently according to her age. In fact, he went on about how he would go out of his way to make sure her baby was okay. "... tell her not to work hard or at all and I would do all her work. I don't know why.... Pick it up for them, they aren't supposed to bend down." That last piece he claims to have learned from the TV show House.
I think the biggest contrasts came in my interview with my little brother and my friends in college. While he said that birth made him want to faint, that it was scary to give birth or be pregnant because it was "... like a monster popping outta the belly, like a Lord of the Rings troll." On the other hand, most of my friends did say that they would like to have kids one day and of those three, one would want to solely adopt, one would like to do both and one would only like to have their own. One friend, Liz, says she grew up in a very church based community where most of the 'common courtesy' she learned came from always being surrounded by at least one or two women who were pregnant. She said that she thought, "... pregnancy is amazing and so are babies, especially after getting to hold my best friends' firstborn child not long ago." Her only strong fear mentioned was the fear of the pain even though she has been told by mothers, "..it's worth it. I also hear that your hormones are at work so that you're attached to the baby despite being kinda miserable"
First thoughts on birth
From what I've been told, people think in terms of opposite so thinking of birth and death simultaneously should seem natural. After growing up with example of that all around me since childhood - the life cycles of animals like flies posted in science rooms, when Littlefoot's grandmother sings to him about the circle of life - I'm not sure if I find it strange or not. As far as I know, there's no actual correlation between deaths and the occurrence of births but it's certainly something I wonder about. Is there any proof to the rumors that after some sort of disaster, a baby boom occurs nine months later? If there is, is it a result of a conscious desire to make up for the lives lost? Or does seeing the death and devastation make us grateful for what we do have and urge us to expand on it? Maybe it's neither. Our society seems to be obsessed with making sure that everything has a perfect rhyme and reason to it happening and if they don't exist, whatever they don't exist for should be scrapped. Ironically, in a way, they've found a way to do just that. Pregnancies, birth itself, can be planned out so much to the point that unexpected pregnancies can seem 'counterproductive' to the lives of even couples who even plan to have children elsewhere along the line. Once again, we bring ourselves to the birth-death connection.
When pregnancies are not wanted, aborting (depending on the location of the woman) becomes an option. People have argued for years about a) if abortion is truly killing the unborn child and b) if so, then at what point does the life actually begin? Why are women who, for whatever the reason, choose or require an abortion frowned upon when women who have a miscarriage are not? What suddenly makes the unborn, miscarried, child more valued than the child who might have been aborted? People mourn both, yes, but it seems like the miscarriages are much more of a tragedy rather than abortions which still seem like a taboo topic to bring up. Why isn't your body's failure to hold and carry a baby term a taboo?
When pregnancies are not wanted, aborting (depending on the location of the woman) becomes an option. People have argued for years about a) if abortion is truly killing the unborn child and b) if so, then at what point does the life actually begin? Why are women who, for whatever the reason, choose or require an abortion frowned upon when women who have a miscarriage are not? What suddenly makes the unborn, miscarried, child more valued than the child who might have been aborted? People mourn both, yes, but it seems like the miscarriages are much more of a tragedy rather than abortions which still seem like a taboo topic to bring up. Why isn't your body's failure to hold and carry a baby term a taboo?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)