Diverse-City Birthing pains BY SHAY STEWART-BOULEY

Recently, someone on a discussion board referenced one of my Diverse-City columns and described me as a white male. Sorry to say he’s 0-for-2. But I’m going through something that reminds me every moment that I’m a woman, and that is the final weeks of pregnancy.

This pregnancy has been an interesting journey and — although I didn’t realize it until I now — it is very much in keeping with my interest in diversity issues.

You see, I’m not doing this pregnancy the "normal" way. Unless something goes wrong, I will go to a birthing center, not a hospital, and I will be attended by midwives in a very home-like setting. Maybe next time I’ll actually do it at home, but my husband’s a bit too skittish for that right now.

That means, among other things, that I won’t have access to what so many women think is absolutely necessary nowadays: an epidural. I won’t have to lie in a bed strapped to an IV, made to push my baby out in what is the second-worst position for birthing. I can move around to relieve my discomfort, I can make whatever noises I need to without fear of upsetting nurses or patients or hospital visitors, and I can give birth in a position where gravity can help my baby come out.

I’m glad I have this option in Maine, a state where the laws are favorable to midwifery. I’m glad I live near Portland, where there is a free-standing birthing center. I wonder, though, how many pregnant women even know that the hospital and doctors aren’t the only way.

It was only a few generations back that home births were more common than hospital births, and women gave birth to plenty of healthy babies. I know that many women and men aren’t comfortable with that nowadays, and I understand. Still, I find it sad that the medical community, meaning to do well and ease suffering, has instead changed birth from a life event into a medical condition. They offer epidurals like candy to women, making them feel that the pain is wrong, when it actually helps guide the process of birth. The bright lights, medical equipment, and constant intrusions during labor cause women stress, often necessitating the use of pitocin to help them dilate. And then women are made to give birth on their backs and push harder than they need to, because physicians are only trained to deliver in that position.

It is so common for people to assume that what doctors and nurses tell them is the only way. Most of us feel like we couldn’t possibly know better. But medical personnel are only human, and they know mostly what they were taught. Old habits die hard. We learn to assume that birthing outside a hospital is dangerous. But it isn’t. The key is to have a trained healthcare or birthing professional by your side —someone who can help you and know when a hospital visit is needed.

There is nothing wrong with birthing in a hospital, either. But now that 13 years have passed since my first child was born and I am a more educated healthcare consumer, I realize that so many things about my son’s birth could have been better if I had known there were choices in life. If I had known that I can ask for and demand certain things. If I had remembered that birthing isn’t an illness or a disease but something natural.

This time, I’ve made educated choices that are in synch with the needs of my body, mind, and soul. Choice is the cousin to diversity, and I urge all couples who are planning to have a child to make educated choices, whether they birth in a hospital or not.

Shay Stewart-Bouley can be reached at shaybouley@msn.com