“Can I write a guest post?” I emailed. “I did a stupid thing and lost my blog name, and now I need your help in getting the word out that I still exist, that I still blog, that I miss my community of women.”

“Absolutely,” she replied. Such is the link between bloggers.

18 months ago my application to blog for Weddingbee was accepted (Mrs. Cheese here!). I can honestly say I had no idea what a rewarding and necessary experience blogging would become. I did know that, as a previously-married, not-sure-I-liked-being-engaged, didn’t-really-want-to-plan-a-wedding bride, I felt unrepresented in the wedding world. In a modern world, I thought, all of our experiences should be represented. Such is the magic of the internets!

When I drafted a guest post for you, her dear readers, I thought I’d do a quick “Top 5 Things I’ve Learned From My Friends’ Pregnancies” kind of post. It listed things like warning your husband never to say “Wow, you’re so… big!” to any woman for any reason and making it a point to visit friends’ newborns even though you feel it might be an imposition. (I’ve found my new-parent friends to be very happy to retain a link to their pre-baby world, especially in the isolating month after meeting the squee-worthy bundle of adorable-ness. And I make sure to be honest and verbal about my love of their baby’s cute cheeks and sweet skin and overwhelming yumminess. It helps.)

But the flippant list of things I’ve learned didn’t feel authentic, though they were all true. What I’ve learned through my friends’ experiences has been much more than what not to say to them; it’s much, much more profound.

As a newlywed woman — and one who bonded with so many internet friends through her engagement experience — it seems all my friends are having kids. My husband and I, however, have only recently managed to talk about trying to conceive without giggling, so we’re about a year away from really trying. I am an innocent bystander (okay, okay, willing participant) in too many conversations about weight gain and expanding girth and the craziness that is childbirth.

But why? Why is it that so many of us know so little about the childbirth experience? I’ve been around kids my whole life (so I find myself explaining things to my husband — and friends, even the new parents! — all the time) but somehow managed to avoid much knowledge about childbirth.

I knew this: it would hurt, I’d want drugs, I was (am) scared, and the miracle of modern medicine would keep me (and my baby) safe.

Then Jenna posted this and I thought, “Hmmmm. I do believe I am ignorant and that just will not do.” I actually don’t mind realizing I’m ignorant (definition: not knowing) because not knowing is an easy problem to remedy.

So I started reading, a habit of mine that always prompts my husband to prepare for sentences to start (and often end) with, “A study just reported….”

Wide-eyed and slightly horrified, I read Ina May’s “Guide to Childbirth.” Embarrassed (why? I don’t know!) and spellbound, I read Ricki Lake’s engrossing, “Your Best Birth.” And now, completely and absolutely freaking horrified (though for a different reason), I’m partway through “Pushed: The Painful Truth About Childbirth and Modern Maternity Care.”

So here we are. “What I’ve Learned From My Friends’ Pregnancies” is much less flippant and much more necessary, something I’ve come to expect from blogging in a community of smart and interested women. Our conversations are deep, our topics important, and our connectedness necessary. I have yet to find a situation that can’t be improved by reaching out to my network of female friends. Thank you all for being a part of that.

You ready?

What I’ve Learned From My Friends’ Pregnancies:

1. Being pregnant can be joyous, stressful, fun, enjoyable, difficult to adjust to, perspective-changing, mind-boggling, exciting and fantastic. It’s neither all scary or all rainbows, but being prepared and present will help you get the most out of the experience. Just like life.
2. It is my job – as the child-bearing partner – to do the research, decide on a plan, and take a position. Unlike everything else in marriage, this experience is not one to be equitably shared. My husband can neither imagine nor experience first-hand the magic that is having your body rearrange itself to expel another. My body, my choices… with his input and comfort taken into account, of course.
3. Research is never a bad thing. As I read, I imagine myself going on my first prenatal visits, armed to the teeth with knowledge and willing to back up my specific requests with evidence… and I cringe. Literally. Every time I imagine that path, my shoulders climb up to my ears, my body shrinks into a little ball, and my heart starts racing. Then I remind myself: it is nobody’s primary job to act in my best interest but mine.
4. Scary is not the same as wrong. I’ll be honest: with every childbirth book I read, I’m scared. More accurately, despite continuing to read about childbirth, I’m scared. Having a creature (a very cute one who will hopefully have my husband’s sense of humor and my cast iron stomach) emerge from one’s girly parts is a scary situation, and fear often causes one to leap willingly for anything that will assuage the knots in one’s stomach. But women (and their bodies) are made for giving birth. I have to keep reminding myself.
5. We all need to support one another. It’s so easy to think we’re broken, or weird, or wrong, but in this experience above all others, it’s your body and therefore your choice. We grow up in a world where modern medicine is a given. We get sick, we take drugs – right? Have a headache? Take a pill… not rehydrate, or back off on the caffeine, or get your eyeglass prescription adjusted. So of course we don’t know much about what childbirth is like! It becomes our responsibility, then, to support each others’ experiences – WHATEVER THEY MAY BE. If you do the research and decide you want a c-section, that’s your call. If you know you want an epidural and have read up on the risks, more power to you. You want a homebirth? You go, girl! (Yea, I totally know that expression is so 1990.)

So that’s where I stand in the childbirth wars: still sure it’ll hurt (although now I’m reading Hypnobirthing and maybe it doesn’t have to hurt?!?), not sure about the drugs, definitely scared, a lot less trusting of the medical community, and firmly on the side of informed decisions. I spent a lot of time blogging passionately in favor of finding myself, knowing myself, and choosing my marriage (while navigating through the wild and wonderful wedding planning world) and now it seems I’ve found another cause.

In another year or so, that is!

(Mantra: she who is still too squeamish to envision the possibilities – and wants to giggle and hide when faced with explicit descriptions – is not ready to TTC. She == Me, by the way. If you’re squeamish and ready, have at it.)

In the meantime, I’ll be following Jenna’s journey and blogging about my own (like how reading about childbirth improved my sex life!) at Parenthetical Me.

Also:

• Guest Post: The Righting Reflex (or Why We Are Obsessed With That Wife’s Degree)
• Guest Post: A bit of advice from this semi-veteran mom
• Guest Post: Kate’s Story, One Year Later