Birthing Babies

I guess you are wondering why I use the phrase birthing a baby instead of delivery a baby. I learned this back in the day when my own Mother was 7 months pregnant with my little brother. She did at that time tell me about it, only because her stomach was bulging and she couldn't hide it anymore. I have to assume that she told my Dad.
The question is this-why all the secrecy? Expectant mothers of the 50's and 60's just didn't feel the need to share the news. I think this may be why their months of pregnancy seemed so short, like 2 months. Maybe they didn't want a baby shower.
Pregnant women of today, run immediately to a Rite Aide and get the kit the day after ovulation and the night after you know what. By telling everyone early, they are in line for 2 or more baby showers and are in a race to see whose pregnancy lasts the longest.
We have to assume that even though God blessed marriages with a green light for sex, couples back then didn't want anyone to know that they did it. How strange was that? Didn't everyone know even back then how a pregnancy happened? Times have changed but not that.
What should have been a beautiful, sanctioned bedroom encounter, became something else- a secret ! Why? Was it dirty?
I never got the "talk" before getting married, but I am guessing in thinking back to the menstuation story, it may have gone like this:
"On your wedding night, your husband expects you to give him something." End of discussion. You have no idea what to give him and spend alot of time shopping to find the right thing.
Or maybe, the "talk" would go like this:
"Marriage is for getting pregnant. That's why God made men, so women could have babies. Everytime you have sex, you risk the chance of getting pregnant. You could end up with 20 children, so you may have to use the headache story to keep that number down!"
I would innocently ask," What headache?"
The answer, "You will know when the time is right for a headache to come. Yes, you will know!"
End of discussion.
Pregnancy is a beautiful gift from God. You can never imagine what having a life inside of you is like. It wouldn't matter what your mother told you, it is something you could never prepare for.
When I was pregnant with my first child, I had the good fortune of working in a Catholic hospital, where a pregnant woman is held in high esteem. Even though I wasn't Catholic, the nuns were ecstatic and didn't even care if I was Baptist. All that mattered was that I was going to have a baby. They knew how the baby got there and it didn't bother them a bit. Maybe they considered it a necessary evil!
A friend of mine (a good Catholic girl) was pregnant about the same time as me. She loved being pregnant and told tales of how her husband loved to see her belly. She loved to show anyone her belly. Her navel was totally gone with brown stretch marks all over her abdomen which looked alot like an oversized beach ball.
So what in the name of Sam Hill was wrong with me? I was not a happy pregnant woman. I didn't want my navel to disappear. I never showed my belly to the father of my beach ball.
I think I got traumatized way back in my early nursing days. A co-worker became pregnant with triplets. Our hospital had a family Christmas party and she wore a huge, brown, maternity dress that looked like a tent. How in the name of Heaven were those babies going to get out of that "special place?" If a tampon could get stuck, then so could a baby or three babies. I made a decision back then to never get pregnant. Of course you know I didn't stick to that thought.
During my pregnancy I heard all kinds of horror stories about labor and delivery. I was scared too death. I had the misfortune of going into early labor and was put on the maternity ward. Boy was that a bad idea. I heard all kinds of screams, so bad that I had the nurse shut my door. I turned on the TV and watched 12 hours of sitcoms to drown out the noise. But I still heard it, yes I did.
Then at last, my time to deliver came and I was pretty sure that I was going to die. So I lay in my misery for 6 hrs with my eyes shut while everyone in this universe kept staring at my "special place!" I heard them say things like this:
"I see the head." Yeah, that's nice!
"You are in transition now." Yeah, that's nice!
"You can do it," came the encouraging words from the father of my beach ball. It was then that I snapped," Shut-up!" And I am sure the whole hospital heard me.
So I didnt' die after all. I was the proud mother of a son with a lop-sided head, since he got stuck in that "special place" for what seemed like days. The nurse plopped a hat on his head so I wouldn't notice, but I did.
Wouldn't you think that the "special place" would be more resilient, so women could go down by the river, like the Indian women did? They gave birth, alone, cleaned the baby, and went back to work. The Indian women must have had some kind of secret drug that they smoked in a peace pipe.
I was given tylenol for my sore "special place". Was that supposed to help? It didn't.
Now mothers get IV pain pumps with morphine or dilaudid which is probably the same stuff that was in those peace pipes. What's with that?