We can refer to things like “misinformation” and “misrepresentation” and “misguided intentions.”

We can even call out some of ‘em for what they really are: “lies.”

Yes, when some women discuss vaginal birth after cesarean (or VBAC) with their health care providers, the information they receive can be mangled by everything from poor communication to outright falsehoods.

You can take a look at my own VBAC Scare Tactics series, where each post has been “inspired” by actual misguided scare tactics that women have encountered in their quest to find a health care provider to attend their child’s birth.

You can scour My OB Said WHAT?!? to find some (outrageous) instances of this misinformation.

You can search any number of VBAC-relevant message or support boards to find women reporting the false or exaggerated or misguided claims that their OB/GYNs or midwives have made about VBAC.

You can also ask nearly any woman who has ever attempted to find a VBAC-supportive care provider, and most of them will probably have some VBAC-related whoppers to share.

Want some examples?

There are loads of women (and their friends, relatives, and other loved ones) who think that or who have been told that “VBAC only has a 70% success rate, so why would you want to risk your baby’s health like that?”

The truth is that the “70% success rate” means that (approximately) 70% of VBAC attempts will end in vaginal birth and 30% will end in a cesarean section.  This does not mean that 30% will end in uterine rupture–only .7% of women attempting VBAC experience uterine rupture, and the majority of those ruptures are not catastrophic.  Making an informed decision regarding VBAC and repeat cesarean involves receiving accurate, non-misleading information about the difference between VBAC success rates and uterine rupture rates.

There are women who have been told (or who have engaged in conversations that have implied) that VBAC carries an exhorbitantly large risk and that repeat cesarean carries little to no risk.  VBAC consent forms are generally good at “mis-communicating” this information.

The truth is that neither VBAC nor repeat cesarean is without risk.  The main risk associated with VBAC is uterine rupture, which occurs in approximately .7% of VBACs.  Repeat cesarean, however, is associated with a number of risks, including incision-site infection, hemorrhage, bowel obstruction, and an increased risk of placenta previa, accreta, and percreta in future pregnancies for the mother; and iatrogenic prematurity, respiratory problems, and lacerations for the baby.  Preserving patient autonomy regarding VBAC and repeat cesarean involves ensuring that women know the risks associated with both VBAC and repeat cesarean before they enter the hospital, regardless of their birthing choice.

Women have been told that VBAC is very unsafe for babies and that VBAC is downright silly since it is only about a woman seeking out a certain “experience” at the expense of her baby’s health and safety.

The truth is that current research concludes that babies born after a VBAC have lower NICU admission rates and fewer respiratory problems than babies born via elective repeat cesarean. And the truth is that VBAC is never just about a woman seeking a certain “birthing experience” at the expense of her baby’s health and safety–there are many other reasons that women choose VBAC over repeat cesarean.  VBAC is a safe and healthy option for many women, and actively discouraging VBAC might very well compromise maternal and neonatal health and safety when one takes into consideration the benefits of vaginal birth for moms and babies and the risks that repeat cesarean(s) pose to a woman’s future reproductive health.

My thoughts in a nutshell?

I think that care provider-initiated misinformation about VBAC eats away at informed consent and patient autonomy and maternal and neonatal health.

And I think that in many cases, health care providers need to be counseled on their counseling when it comes to VBAC.

This why I’d like to take these thoughts to the NIH Consensus Development Conference on VBAC in March.  And I’d like YOUR stories to help me do so!

Have you been lied to about vaginal birth after cesarean?

Did you face “VBAC scare tactics” during your pregnancy (or pregnancies)?

Were you misinformed about the relative risks (and benefits) of VBAC and repeat cesarean?

PLEASE SHARE YOUR STORY HERE SO THAT YOUR VOICE CAN BE HEARD AT THE NIH CONFERENCE!!!

Because advocating for women’s birthing choices isn’t just about making sure that health care providers are doing the right things–it’s also about making sure that health care providers learn and say the right things.

Once upon a time, I totally rocked.

I haven’t plugged in my guitar in years.  Mommy needs to get her rawk on, folks.

Oh shit, there goes the “wordless” part of my first Wordless Wednesday…

The viewing was held in honor of my Great-Aunt Gin (Virginia), who died last Monday at the enviable age of eighty-seven.  And I think that the experience was a tremendously valuable one for the boys.

Admittedly, I had some initial reservations about taking them to the viewing (and to the funeral, which we ended up missing anyway after the boys came down with colds).  I was worried that some of their age-appropriate behavior (and liveliness) would be inappropriate for a place of mourning.  I was worried that that they would be bored and/or overwhelmed and/or scared.  I was worried that one of M’s great questions about death and dying would unintentionally offend someone nearby.  (Case in point: In the middle of the viewing, he very audibly asked me “why we were saying ‘goodbye’ to Aunt Gin when she was dead and couldn’t hear us anyway.”  Ah, the endearingly blunt questions of a preschooler.)

But all of my worries were minor and fleeting compared with my desire to allow M and A to live in their world and to be a part of that world and its life and death rituals.

I don’t want to obscure birth, life, death, and tragedy for them.

And that’s why Tim and I do our best to answer their questions honestly and age-appropriately, and we’re careful to let on when we just don’t know the answers to some of their questions.  We think they’ll be better for it, even if (or because) they’ll spend their childhood knowing that people, pets, and flowers die, that earthquakes and floods and wars happen, that mommies and daddies and their babies won’t be together forever on this planet.

One of the questions that M recently (and heart-piercingly) asked me was what would happen if he died and he got lost and couldn’t find me.

If he died.  If he got lost.  If he couldn’t find me.

Thoughts I try not to think about, thoughts I try every day with every fiber of my being never to allow to be a reality.

I answered him with hesitation and with uncertainty and with a response that was more a hope than a firm and unwavering belief.

I told him that we’d all be able to find each other if one of us died.

I didn’t elaborate, didn’t explain whether I thought we’d be souls or spirits or angels or organic material melding back into the earth where our loved ones roamed and lived and, some day, died.

He didn’t need or want those explanations.  He just wanted to feel secure, to know that death didn’t mean “getting lost” from his family and the ones he loves.  And me?  As his mother, I couldn’t and cannot bear to think otherwise.

And I thought of M’s question at Aunt Gin’s wake.

As I toted him and his brother around the funeral home, weaving in and out of the cousins and aunts and uncles and distant relatives, through generations borne of the woman lying in the casket in front of us, I also thought a lot about Aunt Gin’s mother–my great-grandmother.

I thought about this woman whom I had never met yet, who had died years before I was born.

I thought about all of the people in the room who would not even have existed if it weren’t for her and the children she birthed.

I thought about how she had given birth to all eight of her children (Aunt Gin and my own grandfather included) at home.

I thought about how she said goodbye to four of those children before she died: Betty Lou, who died of a mysterious ailment when she was a toddler; Rita Mae, who died after eating poison berries when she was four; Bobby, who was killed in the Korean War when he was nineteen; and Jimmy, who died in a boating accident in his forties.

I wondered how her heart could possibly bear so much loss.

I wondered what she wondered about the babies she lost (and they were all her babies, whether they were four or forty when they died).  Where they were.  If they were.  If they could find her.  If she could find them again.

And I thought that if I could fashion my own version of the afterlife, I’d want to make certain that death for my great-grandmother meant finding all those lost babies again.  That my Aunt Gin’s death, and that her sister Joanne’s death before her, reunited them with their mother, and with those others lost before them.

That they’d find each other, wherever they were.

That we’d all find each other again, and that none of us would ever get lost.

I don’t think that these misunderstandings necessarily come from a place of callousness.  A lot of the time, I think the misunderstanding comes down to a matter of (incorrectly) universalizing what another woman says about her own experience–or even of forgetting that one’s own intimate, personal, and wholly unique experience of birth can be radically different from another’s intimate, personal, and wholly unique experience of birth.

When I say that people “incorrectly universalize” statements or sentiments about birth, I mean that they often say things like this:

Misunderstandings about birth trauma

• “All women who talk about their ‘birth traumas’ need to get over the fact that they ended up with a cesarean and not a vaginal birth.  Wallowing in the guilt over a birth experience is totally counterproductive, and it seems like a wasted effort to focus on feeling ‘robbed’ of an experience when you still get a baby at the end of the day!”

• “My own c-section wasn’t traumatic, and I find it highly offensive that anyone would suggest that all c-sections are inherently traumatic experiences.”

• “Here’s an example of a truly traumatic birth where the baby (and/or mom) was actually not healthy after the birth.  Any other woman who feel traumatized by her birth experience just need to focus on the fact that she has a healthy baby.”

• “‘I don’t care how traumatic a birth was, it wasn’t rape.  I had a c-section/I had a horrible vaginal birth/etc. and it certainly wasn’t rape, or even anything like rape.  All women should stop comparing their birth experiences to rape.”

Rectifying these misunderstandings takes an effort not only to point out that they are misguided but also why they are misguided (and why universalizing anyone’s experiences with or claims about birth is problematic):

Creating a better understanding about birth trauma

• Not all mothers are disappointed by their birth experience (whether vaginal or cesarean section), but this does not negate the possibility (and the reality) that some are.

• Not all mothers who are disappointed by their birth experiences would describe those experiences as traumatic, but this does not negate the possibility (and the reality) that some do.

• Not all c-sections are traumatic experiences for the mothers who have had them, but this does not negate the possibility (and the reality) that some are.

• All mothers who are disappointed by–and especially those who feel traumatized–by their birth experiences should be received with non-judgmental support. Validating a person’s feelings does not mean that one is allowing another to “wallow” in their “negativity.”

• Not all traumas involve life-or-death situations. And not all “traumatic” c-sections (or vaginal births, for that matter) are the result of life-or-death situations.

• Not all those who have experienced traumatic births would describe their experience as akin to rape. But some do.

• Not all those who describe their birth experiences as “birth rape” have had cesareans.  Some are describing vaginal births instead.

With the above points in mind, it would obviously be ludicrous (and even insulting) for someone to describe all c-sections as traumatic or as “birth rape” or even as disappointing.  This would be to engage in the same sort of “problematic universalizing” that I described above.

But it seems equally ludicrous and insulting to belittle or dismiss any mother who describes her birth(s) in this way.  And this might have something to do with the many ways in which “trauma” can manifest itself during a birth.

Sometimes, the trauma really does come down to a matter of life-or-death.  Sometimes, life (and medicine and all of the best efforts and intentions in the world) does not prevail over death.  And that is certainly not something that a person should be encouraged to “just get over.”

But other times, the trauma manifests itself when a person is “duped” into an early and unnecessary induction that leads to a c-section–a c-section that may have been prevented if (a healthy) labor had been allowed to start on its own, a c-section that may lead a woman to think that her body has failed her and her baby.

Even other times, this trauma manifests itself when (trigger warning) a woman is literally forced down onto the hospital bed so that her OB/GYN can insert an amniohook into her vagina, or when she is given a pudendal block against her will (neither of which are emergency obstetrical procedures).

And as far as I can tell, forcibly inserting instruments into a woman’s reproductive organs against her will is battery at the very least and, upon further interpretation, rape.

What’s more, the inherently sexual (which shouldn’t be confused with erotic) nature of childbirth can bring back past experiences with sexual abuse, and this in and of itself can lead to a traumatic birth experience.  (Trigger warning)  Repeated and/or rough vaginal exams, insensitive comments, having one’s arms “tethered” down during a cesarean, not being able to see the surgeons manipulating one’s reproductive organs–these can all be “triggering” and even re-traumatizing experiences for a woman.

So sometimes (if not many times) the traumas extend well beyond–far beyond, eons beyond–feeling “robbed” of an experience.

On that note, while I would agree that a healthy, living baby and a healthy, living mother are exceedingly important and should be the primary goal of any birth, these goals in no way cancel out the importance of a woman’s birth experience.  These goals in no way suggest that women cannot or should not have their own hopes and dreams for their birth experiences.  They in no way suggest that women cannot or should not regret their birth experiences, or even that they might never have the birth experience for which they hope and dream.

As I have pointed out elsewhere, we humans are complex creatures, and we can simultaneously feel overjoyed by our healthy babies and still feel devastated by the way those babies came into the world (or even by the effects their births have had on our sexual enjoyment).  Allowing this devastation to consume one’s life certainly is problematic and is probably a signal that one might want to seek out therapy and/or anti-depressants and/or a support group (such as Solace for Mothers or ICAN).  But simply feeling this devastation deeply does not seem to be indicative of a problem with one’s emotional life.

With this in mind, it is important to recognize because a woman’s birth experience is so profound and personal, and because trauma can manifest itself in so many ways during a birth, jokes about various birth experiences can be (unintentionally) insensitive.

For example, as a doula, I’ve attended two precipitous (or very fast) labors, and each woman experienced the birth radically differently: one was elated that her labor went by so quickly and without any complications, while the other was utterly traumatized by the speed of her labor, even though there were no complications for either her or her baby.  One would have laughed at a joke about “the ease of a fast labor,” and the other would have been deeply hurt by it (and actually expressed to me that she had been hurt by those jokes and didn’t know how to express herself to those presumably well-meaning people).

I’ve also had conversations with moms who have felt violated by their cesarean sections and those who were quite pleased with their c-section experience(s).  Many might bristle at and even be deeply hurt by a joke about their “tighter vaginas” or their “easy birth” while others might laugh right along with one of those jokes.

This is not to say that there is no place for humor in the healing process.  But it is to say that there are real times and places where jokes can end up hurting instead of humoring (and real times and places where even well-intentioned jokes warrant an apology).

In the end, I think it is always worth recognizing that birth is intimate and personal and can be the most empowering or the most traumatic experience of a woman’s life–but it is her experience to judge and process and celebrate and mourn.

And I hope that all birth advocates–and all people, for that matter–can ultimately push for these goals: for healthy moms and healthy babies, for care providers who give transparent and caring and sensitive advice to the women they encounter, for care providers who treat birthing women with dignity, for care providers who practice evidence-based medicine, and for women who can find a safe space to process their births, whether these births were exhilarating or disappointing, empowering or traumatic.

*Much of what was written here was inspired by two thoughtful and provocative blog posts (and my replies to those posts), one from Her Bad Mother, the other from Adjunct Mom.  I might not agree with all of their claims, but I appreciate their thought-provoking discussions nonetheless.

If you or someone you love has experienced birth trauma (or if they are experiencing signs of post-traumatic stress disorder following a birth), a tremendous source of online support for many women is Solace for Mothers. Birth Cut also has an online space where women can safely express their “cesarean rage“.

Yep.  I’ve heard that a lot.  And even though statements like these really irk me, I can sympathize with the sentiment behind it.

I mean, I don’t think I’m over-generalizing when I say that most reasonable people turn to trusted sources or experts on topic x when they are making decisions regarding x.  So when most pregnant women want to know more about pregnancy and labor, they read a book or a website or talk to a midwife or an OB/GYN or a doula or even a friend or family member who has given birth before.  They don’t always get good advice, mind you, but at least they’re generally going to the right sorts of sources.

But I also think it’s pretty foolish to dismiss the effects that popular culture has on a woman’s beliefs and decisions about pregnancy and childbirth.

In fact, I would venture to say that these effects are pretty widespread.

Of course, I’m not saying many of us literally turn to pop culture when we’re deciding whether or not to consent to an episiotomy or to request pain medication in labor or to choose one care provider over another.  That would be stupid, right?  It would be ridiculous for someone to say, “Well, my OB/GYN reminds me of that chick on Private Practice, so I think she’s the best one for me and my baby!”

But that doesn’t mean that what we see on television or read in a (non-birth-related) book or watch in a movie has no effect at all on our thoughts about pregnancy and childbirth.

Quite the contrary, in fact.

Because every a woman reads that she “won’t be able to make it without an epidural”…

…every time she sees natural childbirth portrayed as something only for hippies and freaks…

…every time she sees a movie in which birth is a crisis or a catastrophe or a comedy of errors in which the mom is a crazed, expletive-hurling woman who is seriously out of control…

…those images and words start to affect the way she thinks about birth in general, and they may even have an effect on her specific beliefs about birth.

Instead of rambling on about the general effect that pop culture can have on a woman’s beliefs about birth, however, perhaps it’s better that I give a real-life example: my own real-life example.

And it’s even a positive example!

You see, long before the thought of even trying to get pregnant was ever on my radar, I was a big Sex and the City fan.  A huge fan.  I owned the entire series on DVD, I cried into my Cosmo during the series finale, and I even went to see the first movie in the theaters a mere four days after giving birth to A.  (Judge me all you want for my messed up new-mom priorities, I know.)

I love Carrie, Miranda, Samantha, and Charlotte forever with a big, sparkly pink heart.

And one of my most-loved SATC episodes is the one where Miranda gives birth.

Before Miranda actually goes into labor, there’s this scene where she and Carrie are walking down the street, and Miranda is telling Carrie what she does and doesn’t want in the delivery room.

She wants Carrie there.

And when it’s time to push, she doesn’t want everybody getting all “cheerleader-y” on her and shouting “PUSH!  PUSH! and shit like that.”

Call me silly, but when I first saw that scene, it signaled a major change in the way I thought about how I was going to give birth some day.

I literally turned to Tim and said, “YES!  Yes!  When we have a kid some day, I do NOT want people getting cheerleader-y on ME!  Just let me do my thing.  I’ve NEVER liked that cheerleader stuff when I’m trying to concentrate on something!  [OMG, I'm so much like Miranda!  Teehee!  Pink, sparkly hearts for everyone!]”

Seriously, though, the moment was very exciting for me because all I had ever seen at that point in my life were women flat on their backs in hospital beds, pushing out a baby while everyone around them shouted “PUSH! PUSH!” and shit like that.

It was my entire paradigm for birth.

And to know that this paradigm could shift (and eventually shatter, as it did during A’s birth)?  To know that I could request otherwise?

Who knows, maybe the good ladies of Sex and the City helped to send me on the path that I’m taking this very day.

Pink, sparkly hearts and all.

*Although there are certainly silly components of Miranda’s labor–correct me if I’m wrong, but can you actually break your bag of waters by pushing it out in active labor?–I love how the writers had her walking around in labor and stating that her doctor said that natural membrane ruptures were “better” than amniotomies.  And what a tender moment when she meets Brady–not ooey-gooey sentimental, but weird, and strange, and lovely.

I actually think the cards themselves are quite lovely (and quite inexpensive, thanks to Vista Print).

If you’re in the Columbus area, you should be able to find them at various Panera Community Boards (a seemingly fantastic promotion space for doulas) and soon at the North Market and any other store, restaurant, or community board that will let me promote myself to my heart’s content.

I also created a doula profile on DoulaMatch.net.  It’s yet another great space for (online) self-promotion, and it even allows former clients to write testimonials.  (If you’re in need of a doula, you can also check out the site to search for birth or postpartum doulas based on your zip code, state or province, or even a doula’s name and/or availability.)

And finally, I added a “doula services” page to this here ‘ol blog.  It’s not as fancy as a website, but it will do for now.  I mean, I get all sorts of hits to my blog from people searching for a “Columbus Ohio doula.”  Why not allow those Googlers to get what they’re looking for when they come here?

So a round of huzzahs for self-promotion, and another round of huzzahs for me taking initiative in this last year of my twenties.

And with the hope that this won’t make me sound like an all-too-eager-birth-vampire (waiting for the bizarre search terms to start coming my way with that imagery), here’s hoping that I have lots of amazing births to anticipate this year!

I mean sledge-hammers over the head, sucker-punches to the gut, I-will-melt your-brain-into-Gruyere-and-neuron-fondue ass-kicking.

All you parents out there have those days, right?

Right.

Today’s ass-kicking was a byproduct of teething (the work of the devil, I tell you) and potty-training (the work of a choir of SAINTS).

Mixing those two is kind of like mixing bleach and ammonia.  EXCEPT THEY’RE MORE TOXIC!!!

Seriously dudes and dudettes, I think I actually ended up sporting a Jack-Nicholson-from-The-Shining-esque grin on my face today after trying for two fa-reakin’ hours to get my two overtired kids down for two too-much needed naps.

Whining reached all-time highs, meltdowns reached all-time emotional lows, and ways of expressing frustration or sadness or exhaustion reached exasperating levels of weirdness.

(Yeah, if I haven’t mentioned it before, A likes to LICK things–like carpet, walls, toys, etc.–when he is upset.  It’s bizarre.)

And I was all like, “WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO OPEN UP MY SKULL SO THAT YOU CAN DIP SOURDOUGH IN MY BRAIN-MELT, MY LOVELIES?”

So by 5:45 p.m., when the proverbial fondue was bubbling out of my eyeballs, I started crying.  I just sat down on the couch and sobbed, and when M (four-years-old) asked me what was wrong, I just said that “sometimes it’s really, really hard to be a mommy.”

And both kids lumbered up on the couch next to me, M covering my legs with a blanket, A wiping away my tears, and I was all like, “SERIOUSLY?!  All I had to do was bring out the WATERWORKS to get you kids to calm down?!”

(Don’t worry, I didn’t diminish the moment by saying those words out loud.  I kept ‘em deep inside the mushy, squishy contents of my skull.)

My tendencies toward over-analysis and verbosity seem to be part of my nature, and these tendencies have only been enhanced by my tenure as a philosophy graduate student.

But I also think it’s nice just to slow down, quiet down, and let certain things speak for themselves every once in a while.

Which is why I’m going to devote one post every week or so to “words for thought.”  Words that I find inspiring or provocative or just downright cool.  Words-without-Kristen’s-analysis-and-verbosity for y’all to ponder (and even comment on).

This week’s “words for thought” comes from Sylvia Plath’s novel, The Bell Jar (a favorite of mine).

In this passage, Esther (The Bell Jar’s narrator) sneaks into a hospital maternity unit with her boyfriend, Buddy, a medical student.  And I think what she has to say is brilliant and insightful and all-the-more haunting given the fact that The Bell Jar was published after Plath herself had given birth to her two children:

I was so struck by the sight of the table where they were lifting the woman I didn’t say a word.  It looked like some awful torture table, with these metal stirrups sticking up in mid-air at one end and all sorts of instruments with wires and tubes I couldn’t make out properly at the other…

…The woman’s stomach stuck up so high I couldn’t see her face or the upper part of her body at all.  She seemed to have nothing but an enormous spider-fat stomach and two little ugly spindly legs propped in the high stirrups, and all the time the baby was being born she never stopped  making this unhuman whooing noise.

Later Buddy told me the woman was on a drug that would make her forget she’d had any pain and that when she swore and groaned she really didn’t know what she was doing because she was in a kind of twilight sleep.

I thought it sounded just like the sort of drug a man would invent.

(Yes, I realize that the cobwebs have already begun collecting on the movie and its many reviews.  It’s just that babysitters and movies–and yes, I’ll admit, vats of popcorn loaded with liquid-that-sorta-resembles-butter–are really damn expensive.  Or at least they’re more expensive than Netflix and a bowl of Orville Redenbacher after the kids have gone to bed.  So anything that I have to say about a movie has to be dated at least a couple of months.)

Anyway.

While I thought that the film was cute–a few moving and/or hysterical moments here, a scattered script there, and all sorts of questions about how the hell two ostensibly poor and expectant parents could afford a cross-country trip to find the perfect place to raise their children–I was more than disturbed by the pot shots the film seemed to take at extended breastfeeding, baby-wearing, co-sleeping, doulas, midwives, and even SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR!

(If you didn’t already know, I’m a pro-breastfeeding, babywearing doula who’s writing her dissertation on Simone de Beauvoir’s ethics.  Talk about uncanny!)

Don’t get me wrong–I know that the screenwriters and Sam Mendes (the film’s director) were attempting to satirize a specific (and stereotyped) version of motherhood and parenting through Maggie Gyllenhaal’s character.  And it is quite likely that there are  real parents who, like MG’s character, shame others for their reasonable parenting decisions (like pushing their children in strollers), who elevate co-sleeping and baby-wearing to the point of bizarro fetishes, and who maintain an oblivious-to-privilege, holier-than-thou stance about all of their own parenting choices.  (Did I get that right, people-who-have-seen-the-movie?)

But what the film seemed to do was place all of the MG character’s practices (i.e. extended breastfeeding, baby-wearing, doula-hiring, etc.) all within the provenance of THE CRAZIES* and their CRAZY birthing, child-rearing, and philosophical ideas.  (*Yep, I realize that’s an ableist term, but I think that’s exactly the sort of term that Vendela Vida and Dave Eggers must have had in mind when they wrote MG’s character.)

What’s more, it seemed that this character’s CRAZIEST decision was that she refused to push her children in a stroller.  SHE WORE THEM IN A WRAP OR SLING INSTEAD!!!

(Okay, I’ll admit.  It was pretty silly and weird that she wouldn’t even allow a stroller into her house.)

Even though MG’s performance was even downright hilarious (as was the moment where John Krasinski’s character put one of her kids in a stroller and pushed him around the dining room, much to the kid’s enjoyment), I wish that the film had portrayed her decision to “baby-wear” (among other things) as not so…well, crazy.

BECAUSE BABY-WEARING A REALLY PRACTICAL THING TO DO.

And you don’t have to make the decision to do so because of a new-agey philosophy about parenting and the bond between children and their caregivers.

You don’t have to fit any particular type (or stereotype) of parenthood to enjoy a sling or a wrap.

I would even go so far as to say that you shouldn’t make the decision to use a sling or a wrap because you like to exoticize other cultures who use slings and/or wraps.

(And I think it should be clear to everyone that the choice to “baby-wear” does not rule out the choice to also use a stroller.  HA!)

But there are some practical reasons for using slings and wraps–reasons that have nothing to do with “NOT WANTING TO PUSH YOUR CHILDREN AWAY FROM YOU” and nothing to do with embodying the utter silliness of the character in Away We Go.

BABY-WEARING IS ALSO FOR:

NEW PARENTS WHO LIKE TO EAT AT A TABLE–PERHAPS EVEN WITH THE REST OF THEIR FAMILY!

• Baby-wearing can make family dinners at the dinner-table possible during those first few trying newborn weeks.  In my experience, those squirmy, squishy bundles of joy do not like to be anywhere but someone’s arms for very long stretches of time.  Snuggle a newborn up in a sling, and you can have a semi-hands-free (and possibly no-crying-baby) dinner.

NEW PARENTS WHO LIKE TO DO THINGS SUCH AS WALKING AROUND THE HOUSE AND GETTING A SNACK WITHOUT WORRYING THAT A BABY IS ABOUT TO SCREAM BLOODY MURDER AND WITHOUT HOLDING SAID BABY IN ONE ARM WHILE THEY TRY VALIANTLY YET AWKWARDLY TO MAKE A SANDWICH

• A’s sling is what made caring for a newborn and a toddler possible for me during those first few weeks after he was born. My particular toddler (M) wanted a snack or a hug or a diaper change or a book read to him just about every thirteen seconds.  And I (a mom breastfeeding a newborn) wanted something to eat or drink just about every fourteen seconds.  And A (my newborn) liked to be snuggled every second.  Carrying him in a sling made him content (and even sleepy), and it gave me the mobility to walk around the house and perform nearly 90% of the tasks that I was used to performing.  You know.  Tasks like eating.  Getting things down off of shelves.  Handing my other kid a snack.  Even sending emails.  All without worrying about putting the baby down and risking unleashing a banshee upon the house.

A (two months old) enjoys berry-picking from the comfort of his sling.

MOMS WHO WANT TO BREASTFEED “HANDS-FREE”

• I’ll be the first to admit that I never developed the coordination or the sling-savviness to nurse my baby while walking around with him in a sling.  Maybe I had the wrong sling or wrap.  Maybe my kids just preferred other nursing positions.  Or maybe I’m just really, really uncoordinated.  But lots of other mothers have great success with nursing-while-baby-wearing.  Check out their demonstrations and their tips for breastfeeding and baby-wearing.

PARENTS WHO WOULD LIKE TO GO TO PUBLIC PLACES (ESPECIALLY TWO+ STORY BUILDINGS) WITHOUT HAVING TO WORRY ABOUT WHERE THE NEAREST ELEVATOR IS SO THAT THEY CAN HAUL THEIR STROLLER UP ONE OR TWO OR TEN MORE FLOORS

• This was a big issue for me because M (my older child) has a really intense fear of elevators.  So when we’d go to the university or to a museum or even to a mall, we generally tried to take the stairs or an escalator.  This was not possible with a stroller.  (And yes, I found it super-annoying to have to go to that creepy place in the back of JC Penney’s to ride the rickety elevator just so that I could get the stroller I was pushing up one level in the mall.  Yep, I’m a spoiled brat, and no, I was never under the impression that malls were the most accessibility-friendly places on the planet.)  In any case, wearing A in a sling or wrap or even front-pack carrier helped me to navigate public places with so much more ease than if I were pushing him in a stroller.  And that’s because baby-wearing is escalator and stairway friendly.  Hell, it’s even HIKING friendly!  In fact, when A was just 11 months old (and M was 3 1/2), we took the kids on a one-and-a-half mile hike through Glen Helen in Yellow Springs, OH.  Obviously, with an almost-toddler who wasn’t even taking his first steps yet, this would have been nearly impossible without a sling.  And besides being a practical way to hike with a small child, the toddler-toting part of the hike was quite fun.

"Slingin' it" on a 1.5 mile hike

So at the very least, even if you and your family decide that slings or wraps are “not for you,” please know that they aren’t just for self-righteous, pretentious parental caricatures.  They’re for practical parents “too”!

(Oh!  There are also reported psychological and health benefits to sling- and wrap-use–even MORE of a practical impetus to try out baby-wearing!)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tips on choosing and using a baby-wearing product:

The sling pictured above is an adjustable fleece pouch-sling from Kangaroo Korner.  We had borrowed friends’ ring slings in the past, and we also had tried out a Baby Bjorn, but we found the most “baby-wearing success” in our family with the pouch sling.  (Kangaroo Korner has great resource for comparing different types of baby-wearing products based on a child’s age, the parents’ sizes, the climate they live in, etc.)

Admittedly, slings and wraps can be expensive, and most families (like ours) cannot afford to buy lots of different types of slings just to “try them out” and “see if they will work.”

Borrowing slings or wraps from friends can be a great (and inexpensive) way to test out baby-wearing products and find which one(s) work best for your family.  Many people (who are way craftier than I am) also sew their own slings, which is far less expensive than purchasing one.  There are quite a few online resources (such as this one) which offer instructions for creating your own sling or wrap.

Finally, please make sure to read and follow the manufacturer’s instructions before using any baby-wearing product.

And have you read The Feminist Breeder’s (TFB) respectful, insightful, and altogether awesome response to this news (spouted forth by Kristen Chase in her recently published book, The Mominatrix’s Guide to Sex: A No-Surrender Advice Book for Naughty Moms)?

And have you read the honest and, at times, heartbreaking comments from TFB’s readers?  The ones who share their stories about painful adhesions that make sex unbearable or the numbness that has all but taken away what was once a site of sexual pleasure or the emotional scars that inhibit their sex lives or even the traumatic vaginal births that hamper sex in a way that has very little to do with vaginal “tightness”?

Read it.

Now I’ll admit, I haven’t read Chase’s book, so I can’t comment all that intelligently on the book in its entirety.  Nonetheless, I’m also not sure that putting the following Mominatrix quotations in context would help me to feel less offended by them.  For Chase writes that:

Quite frankly, women who have not had a vaginal birth will probably not experience as much of a change as those who have shot a baby or two out of their vag.  Consider yourselves lucky, you c-section bitches.

And then she goes on to claim that:

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that if you’ve birthed a few seven or eight pounders your vagina will not return to its trim and virginal state without some effort. And even then, it still might be somewhat of a lost cause.

(Can I just leave my many problems with the focus on “trim and virginal” vaginas for another day, another post?  ‘Cause otherwise, this post threatens to balloon to a book-length treatise.)

In any case, after TFB wrote her post and received (and continues to receive) over one-hundred comments (including, graciously, one from Chase herself), Chase devoted her weekly radio show to the topic of “Sex after C-section.”  And I thought that was mighty bold and magnanimous of her.  I mean, she writes about sex, her book containing the offending claims is about sex advice for moms, so why not respond to TFB’s critique by devoting her show to responding with respect and care to those mothers who want and even need some good “sex after c-section” advice?!

Except the advice wasn’t…well, what many c-section mamas are looking for.

At least not the ones commenting on TFB’s blog.

Notably, Chase invited a radio-show guest who had experienced both a vaginal birth and a cesarean section, so this guest did have some perspective on comparing sex after both types of birth experiences.

But she also didn’t share many of the same physical and emotional problems that leave many c-section mamas wanting some good sex-after-cesarean advice.  And her lack of perspective left her advice itself a bit lacking and even infuriating at times.  (In addition to focusing primarily on ameliorating the appearance of one’s cesarean scar and feeling more confident about one’s post-cesarean body with make-up and lingerie–okaaaaaaay–she also belittled the feelings of those women who were traumatized by their cesarean experiences.)

Now don’t get me wrong–I’m thrilled that Chase’s guest did not and does have to suffer through these problems.  I’m thrilled that she and her baby were healthy after her necessary and emergent c-section for a cord prolapse.  I’m thrilled she could say that she “felt great” the day she came home from the hospital, didn’t feel “that much pain,” and didn’t think her birth experience was “that big of a deal.”  It’s really, truly fantastic.

And I only wish that all women who have undergone major surgery to birth their babies could say the same.

But they can’t.

And  in response to those women who can’t say the same–in response to those women who feel emotionally devastated by their cesarean experience–Chase’s guest also commented that she has never let her c-section experience “get in the way of who she is.”

To which Chase replied that “if [women] feel guilty about what happened, it’s not going to help [them] move forward at all.”

And then she encouraged listeners to get on with their lives and “have a giggle about it.”

And then followed that up by joking that the cesarean-birthers out there should “CELEBRATE THE FACT THAT YOU HAVE A TIGHTER VAGINA THAN ME!”

As well-intentioned as the humor in these comments might be, the comments themselves are not helpful to moms seeking sex-after-cesarean advice.

They are not helpful to women who have experienced birth trauma, either as a result of a cesarean or a vaginal birth.

And for a woman who is experiencing sexual dysfunction (let alone other physical problems) as a result of adhesions or post-traumatic stress disorder or postpartum depression or incision-site infection or emotional scars or secondary infertility, the celebration of a “tight vag” is of little comfort.

Which is why I’m going to devote some of my posts over the next few weeks to SEX AFTER C-SECTIONS.

Yes.  Me.  Writing posts about sex.

Because even though I’m far from a sex-columnist (ha!), I also think women deserve better than what Chase was offering her listeners this morning.

They deserve more respect, more sensitivity, more insight, and more knowledge about the many sexual complications that can occur after cesarean sections.

And I even have some ideas for a few upcoming posts:

Sex after C-section is Sex after Major Abdominal Surgery

Who Has Time for Sexual Healing when You Need Emotional Healing?

The Sexual Body (Beyond the Vagina)

Vaginal Dryness: It Doesn’t Just Happen to Vaginal Birthers

Numb on the Inside/Numb on the Outside

New Moms Need “Time to Themselves” (If Ya Know What I Mean)

C-sections and Secondary Infertility: You are Not Alone

And now I ask you, dear readers:

WHAT SORT OF “SEX AFTER C-SECTION” ADVICE TOPICS WOULD YOU ADD TO THIS LIST?

Updated to add: Danielle from Momotics has archived last night’s radio show, “Cesarean Mothers Speak Out,” featuring Desirree Andrews from Preparing for Birth (and the current President of ICAN) and Gina from The Feminist Breeder.   The show was a response to the earlier Mominatrix radio show, and it’s a must listen.