by Andrya Lewis

Created on: July 15, 2008

As a doula, I have supported women in natural childbirth, planned epidural births, unplanned epidural births and cesarean section. I believe strongly that a woman has the right to choose which kind of birth she would like to have. Ideally, that choice will be a well-informed choice where she understands the risks and benefits of what she is planning to do and what she is planning not to do.

Unfortunately, in the United States today we are in the second generation of high epidural use. That means that many, if not most, of today's mothers had mothers who used an epidural. The women in this country who understand childbirth and have experienced it fully are in the minority. Our culture doesn't really have any birth knowledge to pass on to the next generation because most women are anesthetized to the process. Women today get much of their cultural knowledge about birth from dramatized television shows that pack an entire labor and delivery into less than an hour and to make it "good TV" there is usually some deadly problem that is miraculously avoided by modern medicine. Frankly, no one wants to watch hours upon hours of a woman quietly laboring. That wouldn't get any ratings.

When women are getting an epidural, they have to sign an informed consent form. In my experience though, by the time they really want an epidural, no one is really reading the form. The doctor or nurse isn't emphasizing the very real risks of an epidural. The form just gets signed amid comments like, "You'll feel better once you have a numb bum" or "You don't have to be a martyr." Frankly, its easier on hospital staff for a woman to have an epidural.

But assuming that anyone who is interested in really deciding whether to have an epidural or not will have done some serious reading and already know the medical issues and risks involved, I'd like to focus on a topic that receives little attention: the social and emotional aspects of natural childbirth.

One of the arguments I hear is that it doesn't matter whether you have an epidural or not. The thing that matters is having a healthy baby. And on the surface, that's a nice little sound byte. But there are so many other things that happen during a birth. Let's use an analogy of a marathon. If the goal of the marathon is to get from point A to point B, 26 miles away, then it doesn't really matter if you actually run in the marathon or if you take a taxi to the finish line. However, if you were the runner, you can't help but have a sense of accomplishment,

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