Yea Canada

I've been scaring myself with this collection of stories lately: http://www.childbirth.org/articles/stories/collections/index.html. I'm totally impressed by the first story by the 18-year-old who had a virtually unmedicated first birth, and was so well educated about what she would experience and what was good for her that she was able to fight back when hospital staff tried to intervene in non-helpful ways. She's awesome.

I don't understand why in so many cases, women did encounter hospital staff who were nasty or unhelpful (stripping the membranes without the mother's consent, yelling at the mother, unrequested episiotomies, cutting the cord too early, unrequested circumcisions, etc.). In every case, the mother had her and her child's best interests at heart, and it seems wrong that she would have to fight staff who are supposed to have the same priorities. Not to mention, she's in pain and tired, and fighting antagonistic doctors and nurses just saps her strength. I wish hospitals were more supportive of women's desire to have control over their births, more hands-off, more patient.

I wish insurance covered more stuff, too. A lot of the stories are by women living in Canada or the UK, where health insurance covers not only your hospital stay during labor and birth, but your doula to help you through labor, a home visit by a nurse every day for the first week, and a mother's helper who actually lives with you for the first two weeks and does housework, babysitting, cooking, whatever you need 10 hours a day, so you can just rest and bond with your newborn. I was amazed to read that. Almost makes me want to move to Canada to have my kids, if I ever have kids.

I am reading the stories as a sort of preparation - I figure it can only help to know what other women's experiences were like, and might give me some valuable information about what to watch out for - but I'm not sure I'll ever be a mother. I've never tried to get pregnant. For all I know, I'm infertile, or will be too old by the time I'm married. So I'm trying to prepare, without hoping or expecting that motherhood will ever actually happen to me. From what I've read so far, I know I'd like to be at home without medication for as long as possible, and then go minimal with the drugs - not due to some bizarre masochism, but just because epidurals slow down labor so much, and lead to C-sections. Some days I feel oddly cheerful and confident that I will be able to do this. Other days I feel panicked and think, I will never have the strength, I'll end up exhausted, sobbing, and C-sected. Errrrrrgh.