I live in Los Angeles, that wonderful city wherein everyone touts Botox, chemical peels and breast augmentation. It is a city wherein the natural is to be disdained—for what is natural is fleeting. Furthermore, LA is a city that often sets the standard of the pervasive mainstream mentality. And recently, I have come to recognize this rejection of the natural has seeped into the sacred realm of birthing. This issue became tinsel town table talk when one young starlit, at the end of her pregnancy, was quoted by the press as saying she was afraid of the pain of childbirth. Thus, feeling she could not handle such, she was opting for caesarian surgery. Many women alike voiced their sympathies for they too embraced pain bypassing epidurals and shortcut surgeries. One woman stated on national television, “Yes, I took the epidural,” throwing her hands up, “there’s no need to be a hero.”
I must disagree.
Though I do not want to make any woman feel under attack for the decisions she makes concerning her own body, we are very much in need of heroes, especially when it comes to reclaiming birth. Therefore, I must salute all the cowgirls out there, about whom we rarely hear, that had faith in their bodies. They, upon entering into that sacred pact with their child, saw it through to the bitter end and who found the courage in their hearts to embrace the full ramification of motherhood however intense and beautifully painful that may be. This is a Ye-Haw to my sisters, us lone rangers who not only did it naturally, but our way.
Upon discovering my husband and I had, in the act of loving, sparked the life of another, I immediately began to think about birth. Then, I began to pray about birth. For, as every pregnant woman innately does, I knew that this was going to be the greatest challenge of my life thus far.
To be frank, it scared the piss out me.
In my fear, I meditated, I spoke long and hard to the benevolent Spirit above and I fell back on faith. Spirit answered in the form of a gift from a lifelong friend who sent me Naomi Wolf’s Misconceptions. I tore through it, hungry for information, insight and direction. When the book lay devoured, I knew in my gut that I did not want to birth in a hospital. I knew in my core that childbirth was something very different from what it has been deformed into by our current birthing industry and our fear driven mass media.
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