5/10/10
Being first-time parents, Herr X and I took a childbirth class a few months prior to Baby Y's arrival. There is one woman here in Munich who has cornered the market on English-speaking classes — let's call her "Betty" — and almost every English-speaking couple I know recommended her.
The class took place over (1) eight hours on (2) a Saturday at (3) the Center for Natural Childbirth. Each of these factors should have been a warning to me.
First of all, in a city where everything is closed on Sunday, spending your entire free weekend day not running errands is a huge sacrifice. And most importantly, the emphasis on the word natural in the venue's name seemed to me to push aside decades of societal advancements, from medicine to autonomy to interior decorating.
Betty is a nice, well-meaning American woman in her late 50s, who has taught these classes for more than 20 years. Betty also breastfed each of her children for two years, and the entire family slept together on several mattresses on the floor of their living room until the kids started school. (Her husband, however, kept his study for a retreat. For some reason Betty did not seem to need a room of her own.)
The class began with simple introductions and general questions about childbirth and child rearing. One couple had a baby in breech position and were scheduled for a C-section. "Some women feel that they will be less of a woman if they do not deliver vaginally," Betty noted, "but don't you worry about that. You should still be able to bond with your child."
What. Is. That. Supposed to mean?
I've never had any positive or negative opinion about C-sections, in that they are a medical procedure, refined since Ceasar's time, to prevent infant or mother death. A woman is a woman regardless of how she delivers a child or even if she has a child, and to imply otherwise is irresponsible. What if some poor woman decides against a C-section, now that the seed of doubt has been planted, for fear that she is not living up to the standards of Perfect Motherhood, and is forced to undergo a painful delivery or worse?
Not helpful, Betty.
Even I, a proponent of knock-me-out-and-wake-me-when-it's-over, started to wonder if I, too, would be "less" of a woman if I needed a C-section or an epidural or anything aside from squatting in a field and ripping the umbilical cord with my teeth while the ladies of the village baked my placenta into a pie.
All childbirth is natural. All women are women. The only seed to be planted is the one in your belly, not in your brain.