I’m super jealous of your natural birth with your baby. (This is a lie.) What a wonderful experience it must have been to have your baby in the comfort of your own home. (Ew.) I think that having a doula for your delivery is a brave and loving choice for your baby. (I’m not even sure what a doula is.)
Now I may be a creative, guitar playing, free-spirited daughter of San Francisco hippies, but I pushed out three babies in three years with help from a little thing I like to call “modern medicine.” They are sinister words – ladies, brace yourselves – but epidural and episiotomy were my two besties. They were the right choices for me. And I would do it again, 10 times over. Don’t quote me on that. I’m not sure I could handle 13 kids.
There’s so much diversity in the arena of pregnancy and birthing choices, it can be overwhelming trying to navigate the waters these days. Every time a friend of mine gets the glow, I hear about some amazing new way a mom is going to interface with the birthing experience. (Did you do air quotes like seven times during that sentence? Oh, just me? Mkay.)
By the way, did you know you can have a baby in a hot tub? No beer or bikinis or bad choices, but a hot tub nonetheless.
So if you want to have baby Phoenix naturally, please do. I think that’s awesome, and I will high five you and give you mad props. If you have decided to light candles and play music and have baby Chopra in your bed… then I have so many questions for you. Like who does the laundry afterward?! But then I will commend you, because you are DOING IT, friend. And I support you a hundred percent. The point is, to each her own. These choices exist for a reason, and our convictions are so personal that it’s weird to even compare one to the other.
The best part? At the end of each unique experience, we get a baby. We stare at that sad sack of tiny human that is the most unbelievable thing in the cosmic universe and we say, “I did that. And I am so very proud.”
Susana Fletcher is a writer, mom and champion of whatever crazy personal choice you want to make for your bad self.
