In which an epidural is contemplated

I said in the past that I didn't really want to be cognitively engaged in the whole labor and delivery thing - thinking it is best that I just let my body take over and do what it is deigned to do.

Well, when I was out in Maine I stayed with a cousin who has cable. I found myself watching the Discovery Health Channel on a Tuesday night, which is baby night. I was completely transfixed, unable to turn away from the television. Tears poured down my cheeks as woman after woman delivered pointed-headed babies. I watched as doctors inserted the several-inch needles into women's spines to administer epidurals. I chewed my fingernails nervously through commercials that were prefaced with statements like, "In Alice's birthing room, a routine labor becomes an expectant mother's nightmare. When "Birth Day" returns." In one episode, the narrator tells us the story of one woman who arrived at the hospital so late in labor it was too late to receive the epidural and, thus, "had to experience the full agony of childbirth."

And that's when I decided I needed to get cracking on locating a doula and I started reading every book on natural childbirth that I could get my hands on.

My mother always told me that they exaggerated the pain of childbirth on television. She went through it 5 1/2 times (last pregnancy was twins - only one stage 1 of labor but 2 bouts of pushing and two placenta). She never had any complications and she generally did not even use narcotics to deal with the pain. She is no longer around for me to ask her so I asked my dad how it went. Of course, they went through it so many times that they really had a routine. As my dad recalls, he would wake up one morning and mom would be downstairs having her cup of coffee. She would tell him that he needed to call in to work because she was going to have the baby. They both would get dressed, make breakfast for current children, and call Cherry Gorham, the neighbor who came to stay with us while Mom and Dad were at the hospital. A little later, my mom would peruse the boat schedule and decide what ferry they would take to the mainland (where the hospital is located). They would ride the ferry in, walk to the car, and drive up to the hospital. She and my dad would usually head straight to the delivery room, where, an hour or two later, a new member of the family would enter the world.

So, anyway, I don't really want to have pain medication or other optional medical interventions for at least these reasons:
1. I want to be like my mom.
2. Not having experienced either, I think I would prefer labor to having a needle inserted into my spine. Birth is a natural process while drugs being dripped into the area around your spinal column is not.
2. I probably sound like a fruitcake here, but there is something compelling about the idea of experiencing something so universal (for females from many species) as giving birth. I know, I know, most horses don't deliver their foals in the birthing center of their local hospital attended by doctors and nurses and husbands and doulas, but still, work with me - I want to feel my body going through the process and, just so long as my OB doesn't intervene, the process will be very similar to the one horses do go through. It's kind of like eating. Some people might opt for a pill that could effortlessly fulfill their nutritional needs or, once they discovered one meal that they could repeat ad infinitum they might refuse to try anything else in case it disagreed with them. I would opt for the food - new food, foods that I might find I don't even care for, foods that might give me gas - every time.

I get frustrated when folks (mostly my husband's family) dismiss me as some "smart-alecky college kid who has to do everything differently" when, in fact, I feel like I am doing what my mother and her mother (etc. etc.) did - giving birth to my children with minimum medical intervention. My mother was no hippie or health nut but she also refused to jump on every medical trend that came down the pike.

That's where I am at.