Tuesday, July 14, 2009

A Dooce of a birth story

I am probably the only person not to have heard of the blogger Dooce (aka Heather Armstrong, author of It Sucked and Then I Cried and Things I Learned About My Dad in Therapy). Until this morning, when I saw that she had written a glowing review of Your Best Birth. I was curious to find out who this famous blogger was, and so I read her Labor Story, Part One. I laughed, I nearly cried (from laughing), and I left wanting more. After all, she didn't even get around to the being-in-labor-part by the end of Part One.

Here's some of what she had to say about Your Best Birth:
Up until about the 30th week of my pregnancy I hadn't given labor much thought, only that I was going to ask for the epidural two days before contractions started. I'm not kidding, that was the extent of my birth plan. There was no need to experience any of the pain, I thought, especially since I had been through this before and I remember thinking that the pain was so awful that it was going to kill me. Give me the epidural and any other pain relief, maybe throw in a couple dozen shots of bourbon, oh and how about you just put me under general anesthesia and wake me up two days later. I'm not good with pain. I tend to complain and holler and call people regrettable things. It's like the Hulk, only he's on his period....

But then out of no where the publishers of Ricki Lake and Abby Epstein's book Your Best Birth sent me a copy, just like the publishers of many books send me copies of other books all the time. Internet, I have rooms full of books that publishers have sent me. ROOMS FULL. And I was just about to toss this onto the mountainous pile of ones I'd eventually drop off at Goodwill when, I don't know, I flipped through a few pages and gave a full minute to one or two paragraphs. And those two paragraphs happened to be ones that really pissed me off. So much so that I read them aloud to Jon and said something like GOD, THOSE HIPPIES! or I BET THEY SMELL LIKE PATCHOULI!

You know, something totally open-minded.

Those paragraphs pissed me off so badly, in fact, that the one part of me that resembles my father the most — no, not the pointy chin or the metabolism or the absolute inability to watch a movie where everything goes wrong and the protagonist just keeps getting pummeled by life and I'm all MAKE IT STOP and then I have get up and actually leave the theater, no, none of those things — my righteous indignation, it flared up so magnificently that I sat down to read the whole book, just so that I could be angry at it. WHO DOES SHIT LIKE THIS? Me and Michael Hamilton, that's who. Both he and I will go to our graves filled with an inordinate amount of unproductive anger, but a smile will mark our faces because we will feel so justified. So RIGHT.

And then, oh God, the worst thing happened. And I didn't even see it coming, but I'm sitting there reading that book, gritting my teeth, shaking my head when all of a sudden it started to make sense. I started to see just how medicalized labor and birth have become in America AND THERE GOES MY WORLD VIEW.
There goes her world view, and then comes her first unmedicated birth this July, which she describes as "sacred and spiritual." I can't wait to read more about it. If she can ever actually makes it to the labor and birth parts!

17 comments:

  1. Ricki tweeted the following today:

    "Hey, thanks to Dooce.com our book, Your Best Birth is now #427 from #16,000 on Amazon!"


    The power of Dooce.

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  2. I've been reading Dooce for a couple years and I was pleasantly surpised when I read Part One this morning. Can't wait to read Part Two.

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  3. I've been reading Dooce for about a year now and I had been dreading reading her birth story because I was certain it would just be another story of drugs and interventions. I couldn't have been more thrilled to be wrong! I just had this huge grin the whole time reading it. Thank heavens for whoever decided to send her that book!

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  4. I've been reading Dooce for ages and she just kills me. Like a commenter above me, though, I wasn't expecting to be so pleasantly surprised at the start of her birth story. Yay Heather! :)

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  5. Glad you saw the post -- I meant to send it to you yesterday, and then I thought for sure you'd see it.

    Dooce is a fantastic writer; just be prepared for some Mormon-bashing if you become a regular reader. It's not enough to make me stop reading and enjoying her, but it might also surprise you.

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  6. Heather Armstrong is a fantastic and hilarious writer. Based on her traffic, my guess is she will have the second most read birth story in history.

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  7. So whose birth story is the first most read?

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  8. Rixa,
    I am gonna guess it is Baby Jesus's. The whole Christmas thang ya know :)

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  9. Ah, I missed the "in history" part of your comment and was wondering who this other famous birth blogger was that I had missed!

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  10. Rixa,

    You can take comfort in knowing you're not the only one who has never heard of her. Of all the blogs I subscribe to, I'd never heard of it; but my jaw dropped when I saw nearly 700 comments on her post, and knowing that only a fraction of people who read comment, figured she must have an awful lot of readers -- even aside from the comment in Jill's post. There are about 14,600 subscribers through Google Reader to her blog, plus who knows how many more through other methods of subscribing or bookmarking. Wow.

    -Kathy

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  11. Well that is good news. I would really like folks to come in and say, "Pinky I would like to go natural and this is what I am going to do for the pain." With that, I can certainly work with them.

    Also it has gotten a bit boring with the Iv,induce, epidural, bla bla bla... the birth is always fascinating no matter how the baby comes out. At least it is for me.

    It would be nice to have a few folks come in and actually want a natural birth. I think most folks don't want it cause they see no benefit from it. Which is incorrect. Many women feel much better after having a natural childbirth.

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  12. haha! I had to re-read the parts you quoted even though I read the whole post yesterday. She has quite a way of expressing herself, doesn't she? I'm excited that thanks to Heather so many people will discover more options and look into other ways of giving birth than 'traditional' medicated or surgical ways.

    I was thrilled to see her finally starting to share the birth story, as I got the feeling before that her view of the birthing has changed since Leta's birth, and even since she got pregnant with baby Marlo. Naturally I wondered what brought on that change, and now it all makes sense. You just can't ignore the facts when you look into them, can you? I saw the movie over a year ago, but never read the book. Must check it out just so I can have my personal experience with it...

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  13. No, you are SO not the only one who had never heard of her. Thank you for introducing me...I'm hooked, she's HIGHLARIOUS!!!! :)

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  14. I hadn't read Dooce before this stuff came out either. I can't believe the impact she's already had. Is this the start of a cool new trend? Do we get to brag now that we thought natural childbirth was cool before Dooce did? ;-)

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  15. I'm just so happy for Ricki and Abby. The number of comments on that post was astounding!

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  16. I'm also been reading Dooce for a few years & I was pretty (pleasantly) shocked by her Part 1 post. It seems that Dooce's regular commenting audience is rather diverse (and large), so I'm beyond thrilled by her endorsement of the book. Her post might get a lot of women to consider natural birth who would have never considered it in a million years.

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  17. I'm so glad you mentioned this here, Rixa. When I read Heather's post the other day I thought of you and wondered if you'd see it. Hooray for a woman like her to make such a statement about birth.

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