Having the Best Birth for Your Baby

   Like many, my interest in childbirth education grew out my own experience-personally and professionally.  When I was 28, I had my first child.  After buying a pregnancy test, it seemed my first purchase was buying a What to Expect book.  I'm not saying it wasn't helpful, it was just a little scary.  Then I did what most women do this day in time, they start watching A Baby Story, which ratchets the fear another notch.  Add in a potential leak in amniotic fluid and later gestational diabetes, by the time 40 weeks rolls I am a nervous wreck.  Needless to say, my first experience with childbirth involved a great deal of intervention.  I felt carried away by the whole process, as if it were an out of body experience rather than an able bodied participant in my child's birth.  But something wonderful happened with my next pregnancy, I said, "why? or What if ?"
  Because of my deep dissatisfaction with my first childbirth experience, I took the time to demand more from my health care providers.  I read a book that changed my entire understanding of what childbirth could be.  Janet Balaskas' Active Birth: The New Approah to Giving Birth Naturally.  Through this book, I understood I could be an active, rather than passive, participant in childbirth.  That walking, squatting, swaying, doing whatever my body urged me to do was what I should do rather than being confined to a bed and on my back. 
  My third and final baby was born in a hospital with a doula and my husband.  Both understood and supported my desire for a unmedicated birth.  This birth involved lots of massage, dim lighting, using both heat and cold, swaying, squatting, and changing position. Six hours after labor was induced, a healthy baby was born and I felt a great deal of satisfaction in carrying out the birth plan I wanted. 
  We as consumers of our health care have a responsibility to ask questions of our providers, and do our homework too.  Many of the practices within hospitals are the result of insufficient studies, and the convienence of physicians.  I cannot overemphasize the importance of birth satisfaction.  We will forget the pain we experienced during birth, but as long as our memory is good we will never forget our children's births, and the emotions associated with the experience.