Childbirth in the US

Amanda at Pandagon has a post up about a review of a childbirth video: Midwives and the cult of perfection.

She mentions that the review is very defensive and how sad it is that it has to be so.

As someone who has had a natural childbirth I find myself constantly being put in the position of defending my choice - no, I'm not crazy, no, I don't like pain, no, I'm not a masochist. Yes, it hurt but not as much as I thought, etc. I also hear rude things like "you don't get a medal, you know!".

It's very frustrating to me that women feel I'm going to attack their hospital birth just because I had an unmedicated birth so they attack me first. At one point, I knew a lot of women with unmedicated births and they all said all they had to do was say they'd had one and people started attacking them. None of them attacked the women or their choices, but they were attacked for theirs.

I hear a lot of people say they're just attacking first because they're always attacked. Hmm, can I use that as an excuse? No? I know, I won't sink to that level, but if they're "always attacked" I have to wonder what they said first. I've known some very rabid natural childbirthers and none of them attacked women. They told them the information they had been given was in error and peer reviewed studies have proven it and I guess that was attacking them.