Or are you even pregnant? Maybe you are trying cover up a recent weight gain by pretending to be pregnant so your husband won’t divorce you when you go over your allowed weight.

But whatever it is… it all spells C R A Z Y …

I feel sorry for you because you want to control this whole thing and you can’t! I hope you wake up and realize you are no longer in the driver’s seat. This really isn’t about the day or two you will spend giving birth, it is more about the lifetime after that. Your perseverance in focusing on just the pregnancy and birth and not the *child* your body is nurturing is immature and selfish. Having a baby is when you learn to care about something other than yourself, more than yourself- not just about getting attention and having showers thrown for you. I hope you get that.

I remember my husband doing something similar with our child when he was first born. I was most touched when there were tears shed the first time my husband held him.

Coming from a woman with that experience, I think I dozed for about 20 minutes but one of my favorite memories is of my husband taking our little baby and walking around the room whispering sweet things to her as I fell asleep and woke up.

I noticed you were a big fan of the blogger Dooce’s birthing posts. I know she isn’t your style at all, but perhaps in this matter you could take a page from her book. She described the natural birthing experience in a way that was brutally honest but that also made even the most hard-line nonbeliever think twice about how wonderful it sounded. There was never a hint, a breath, a word of judgment or condemnation for those who chose a different type of birth. She didn’t say a thing that would make an epidural-taking-mother feel guilty. Just something to think about – I know it must be a challenging process for you, speaking on such a large platform, trying to figure out how to reach people in the most positive manner. Good luck.

I love your blog Jenna, but I felt judged as a woman when I am not even engaged let alone TTC.

Please just keep telling us about That Life. Don’t tell me how to live mine.

Your talk about how you’ve been “educating” yourself, when in reality you’ve been reading research that supports your fantasy birth, yet you’re ignoring any research that contradicts what you want. This doesn’t equate to being educated my friend, it equates to being ignorant.

Jenna, you really need to sit down and think about what is best for your baby. That is what any caring mother would do.

Like Kate, we live very different lives (number one being we don’t want children), but not only your post but some of your follow up comments had me shaking my head. Granted I know NOTHING of childbirth, having a baby, raising a child, etc, but to be frank, neither do you. So you’ve done some research? Awesome. That is a step in the right direction. But you haven’t ever actually pushed out a baby. I have a dear friend who recently went through an incredibly painful and intensive child birth. I would imagine this post would really upset her.

I genuinely value your opinion and enjoy reading your blog, but even for someone that does not want children, this post was painful and hurtful for even me to read.

I would love to have a natural childbirth myself. In fact, my (ideal) plan is to have a home birth attended by midwives and my husband, who is an NP. This makes him nervous, because he HAS been in a labor & delivery ward and has seen many “worst case scenarios.” But as long as we’re close to a hospital, he has agreed to let me follow this plan, IF I CAN.

My mother’s longest labor was four hours. She never had any pain medications. She’s not a big-hipped woman, and so I’m AMAZED by this. I can only hope for the same! She did have to be induced for one of my three sisters because she was in distress (WPW Syndrome and ovarian hernia) but the rest of us were quick and non-assisted, even my youngest sister born when my mother was 40.

Honestly, though, I’m not kidding myself. I know there’s a lot that can go wrong. I don’t believe that many people really ELECT for c-sections (like Britney Spears, who seemed to make it more of a cosmetic procedure than anything). But I do know that many people end up having them when things don’t go right– and that a vaginal birth on subsequent pregnancies (VBAC) IS possible, but can be dangerous.

Now, here’s where natural birth gets tricky. Some people stick to their guns on it so firmly that it gets them into trouble, endangering themselves AND the baby. For example, my friend Lindsay became pregnant and had an ideal pregnancy very much like you are describing your own ideal. She didn’t see doctors, she visited a midwife and a natural clinic. Her pregnancy was great.

So she comes to term but doesn’t start laboring. The baby cooks an extra week; then two. By then she’s at the point where they start to worry, so her midwife begins natural induction. It works and she starts to labor. So far, so good!

She labors for 24 hours at home. Then 48. Then 72. By this time she is in active labor but her water has not broken. She labors for four days before her water breaks, but still has declined to go to the hospital, although it was recommended. Why would she? Nothing’s wrong.

Finally, her water breaks, and she continues to labor for several more hours. The baby passes meconium. At this time, both the mother and the baby are at serious risk for infection. Finally, after five days of labor, she is taken to the hospital, running a fever and ill.

The worst party of the story is that after all that, she HAD to deliver by c-section, not because of the risk she was in (though that was part of it) but because her 42-week old baby was too large to fit out of her cervix!

Now, I might have given up earlier, but I commend her for trying so hard. Hers definitely WAS a worst case scenario. After delivery, her baby had to be taken from her to have IV antibiotics administered, as did she. They are, thankfully, both fine and thriving now.

I wasn’t there for the labor, but I do often wonder if perhaps she could have made a better decision for both her and the baby’s health by not sticking to her guns so firmly and placing them both in a dangerous situation.

Just like climbing a mountain and running a marathon, everyone’s experience IS different because we’re all different people. For some it’s easy, for some it’s nearly impossible. The experience matters, yes, but ultimately finishing safely is the goal.