‘My body was designed to deliver a baby,” Riana says, pouting as she pours herself another cup of coffee. ”Why opt to cut yourself open and deprive yourself of this beautiful event.”
The conversation had again turned to babies, or more specifically births, as it is bound to do when you are sporting a boepie. Riana had a waterbirth at home, with new-age music playing in the background and a doula (or, for the uninformed, a natural birth assistant), who ensured that she stayed right where she was and did not dash off to hospital at the first sign of pain.
”Pain, what pain?” she asks, lifting her eyebrow and sounding like Thabo Mbeki at a Zim press conference.
”I was never scared and I bonded with my daughter immediately,” she says with a tone that makes giving birth sound like a religious epiphany. ”After the birth she just crawled up to my breast and immediately started suckling.”
What I first took to be gasps of disbelief are soon identified as sniggers from a friend to my left who sputters up cheesecake as soon as Riana excuses herself.
”That is the biggest bullshit I’ve ever heard,” she says. ”The only reason she did not go to hospital was because they did not have a medical aid.”
This friend has opted for an elective C-section. ”I am a sissy and afraid of the pain. So sue me,” she says. My other friend has opted for a natural birth in hospital. I will be going for natural with epidural.
All of us are extremely lucky to be giving birth in South Africa in a private hospital and to have medical aids that are willing to pay for what we choose. In many European countries our sisters don’t have that option — it is either push or push off. In some countries medical insurances are not even willing to pay for an epidural.
Of course, if you opt for a state hospital, your stay will be so short you might even wonder if you gave birth at all — except for the screaming bundle of joy you hobble out with.
But with choice comes debate and a host of activists that are even more passionate about their birth choice than an ANC delegate about her presidential candidate. Some women passionately campaign for the right to give birth at home in a tub, with no drugs whatsoever, while others will fight to the death for the right to choose their big date, their drugs and exactly how their c-section cut is done and patched up.
Genevieve, my friend from Waterkloof-rif in Pretoria, is a paid-up member of the elective C-section club — known in some circles as the ”too posh to push” outfit.
”Are you actually going to do natural?” she asks with a wriggling nose. ”Is that even allowed in private clinics? Isn’t that something only rural women do?”
Making a birthing choice is not a simple affair. I made my choice halfway through my pregnancy and I’m still not sure it’s the best one, but it feels right. During my research I was bombarded with advice about the pros and cons of going natural.
”Incontinence, liefie, incontinence. You will leak for the rest of your life and when you are old your bladder will fall out,” I heard from a host of people.
And then the real horror stories. ”Sex, what sex? Forget about it after natural — it messes you up big time.”
Riana, of course, had the perfect answer: Kegel exercises. In fact, she loved her Kegels so much she could pick up a coin with her lips (the ones down under) and declares that sex is now better than ever.
If you think Riana’s waterbirth might be a bit too much, then you’ll find the Pure Birth movement in the United States and Australia plain scary. This movement encourages mothers to give birth on their own. Yes, without midwife or even husband. You sommer pull out the baby by yourself, as you were designed to do.
Just when you have sorted out how your baby will enter this world, the b-word enters the fray — breastfeeding.
”I do hope you are not even considering formula,” my mom told me after I informed her she was to become a granny. ”You know breast is best.”
If you’re a mom who even stares at that expensive tin filled with powder, expect a lot of guilt trips. Midwives walk out of conferences where new formula products are launched; ward sisters frown at you — no pressure whatsoever!
There are breastfeeding movements more militant that abortionists and at least one breast consultant in your neighbourhood who is merely a phone call away.
Genevieve, of course, is oblivious this. ”It’ll ruin your tits,” she declares, doing justice to her French name. In France apparently they send in the lingerie salespeople to the maternity wards to distribute free samples of La Perla. Heaven forbid that your boobs should lose their shape in a country where the president divorces his wife during an election year and hooks up with a model. These people have standards to maintain.
When push comes to shove, however, there is no right or wrong. I can snigger at some of my friends’ elaborate birthing plans, but the choices they make are just as personal as the clothes they decide to wear.