Epidural Nation: 'Guys' created the problem.

Recently, my wife gave birth to our daughter. We used the Bradley Method: natural childbirth, no meds, no epidural, no pitocin. In a way, childbirth is like flying....

On a recent thread, I gave a brief birth story, designed to encourage other parents considering Bradley. But here, my aim is simple: a few words to convict the hearts of cowardly men who are unwilling to help their wives, and instead, weakly lean on medications to get them through the 'trauma' of childbirth. Yes, guys, exclusively, are the source of the epidural problem.

One could argue on and on that a woman is the one who has to bear the pain, the agony, of the contractions. That for men to even discuss this subject is silly at best, arrogantly patriarchal and insensitive in the worse direction.

But hear me: for a man to back down from the reality of the childbirth he initated is folly. Epidurals, pain meds, drugs, laughing gas ... whatever. Most of these 'interventions' are designed to perfectly numb the transformative experience childbirth is supposed to be. On the surface, of course, the doctors and hospitals want to minimize the 'pain' of childbirth - which they think will maximize the 'joy'.

But the truth is plainer. While the pain is muted, yes, the joy is muted far more. True, the child to mother bonding experience doesn't depend too much upon how many meds are involved.

But, Natural childbirth is about bonding, not just child to mother, but father to child and, more importantly, husband to wife (as the norm). Eagerly sought out epidural-childbirth, however, is a message from the Father to his family: "I don't have what it takes for the childbirth, and chances are good that pattern will remain henceforth regarding fatherhood and husbandry".

Natural childbirth is hard to pull off without the Dad being there, being supportive, being strong. And the fact is clear that if the Dad starts out in a mode of being supportive to the extent required by the Bradley method, then by implication, the coming years will show a Dad whose manhood supports a degree of Fathering that is beyond effective written description, to say nothing of the husbandry!

Of course, some Mothers reading this would argue that cutting out Dad is the idea all along, and a darn good idea. But these words are not for them...

These words are for those few guys out there who suspect deep in their hearts that there has got to be something more to living besides serial guy-driven exploits....

There is more to life than making 'mom' happy, indeed. Guys, another way to say this is: God didn't create you to be a life-support-system for a sperm donation machine, that coincidentally also brings home a paycheck. Husbandry is a noble calling, and stuffing your ears to avoid the calls is what boys, by default, do.

Stand up, and be MEN, you boys encased in the bodies of MEN. Stand up, unstuff your ears, and be the man your children can look up to.

One could argue that Epidural Nation, which is known as the USA, and the door mat that was once known as the WTC towers, have no connection to each other. But the men who flew those planes had no fear of us - and why not?

The kind of Men who fear the pain of helping their wives through the pain of childbirth are the kind of American Guys the hijackers evaluated as they planned their way to 9-11. The American Guys who, as a rule, were not, and still are not, man enough to inflict the kind of pain that SHOULD HAVE deterred the WTC attacks from the start. The kind of guys, for example, who empathize deeply with the 'struggles' guys like Bill Clinton endure.

For me, this has been the nagging question all along: what did those supposedly crazy men in the planes perceive was missing in the average heart of the "American Man"?

What did they witness that was missing such that these Arabic men had no fear of us, no fear for their homelands, no fear for their families, and felt free, felt bold enough, to attack us, the strongest nation the world has ever seen?

In short, just WHERE is the starting point for an 'American Man'? Why, the the birthing rooms of our nation of course - and who, I ask, is missing from these rooms?

Good, loving, supportive guys are now present in the millions .... but they are chicken-hearted, and lazy, eager to get back to their dens, Lazy Boys, and remote controls. It is, indeed, football season, and Tressel's men are doing a great job.

But the football watchers? Those guys are setting a bad example, and they are making us more vulnerable, not less, to the attacks we have seen up to now.

The Epidurals are not the problem - the guys who lean on them are the problem. Men are the solution.

Stand up Men - and enter the birthing room as a man. Our Future Men depend on it.

How is it whining to say that something was painful? It's a fact, it is painful.

I endured 18 hours of hell before I "gave in"

the only joy comes after the birthing is done

I kicked a doctor and slapped a nurse

incredible amount of agony

These are all quotes from this thread. They go a bit beyond, "Yeah, childbirth is painful", doncha think?

Wow. You're takin' a lot of heat for this post. I wonder why.

We've had 9 naturally. I was begging for the epidural with this last one. Of course, I waited too long for it. By the time the anesthesiologist came in, I was five minutes or so from delivery. And I wasn't very nice about telling him to leave. I was mostly annoyed that I was at 7 cm and the nurse told me not to push yet. As if I had another hour to go or something. I informed her to call the doctor, and she did. I hate it when nurses don't listen.

But that's not my point here. There are tvs in most LDRs. I watched the Olympics during one birth. Once, I stayed home for more than twelve hours after my water broke in order to watch the SEC championship. Bama lost, btw. :( Hubby was rather concerned that I refused to go to the hospital until after the game. But he abided by my wishes. We watched the game. And we managed to have a baby three hours after arriving at the hospital. Easiest delivery I had. Sooooo, women like to watch football, too!

"Wow. You're takin' a lot of heat for this post. I wonder why. "

Well, since you are wondering, I will hazard a guess: because the main argument I made, that too many guys basically abandon the task of birth to their wife, hit a nerve.

Mrs Gb and I were taking a walk the other day, and we were talking about why so few folks would bother being even a bit serious about going 'natural'. She said the difference is simply about trust. She trusted me to be someone she could lean on throughout the pain. At first she kept a general track of the contractions for example, but later on, when the labor basically put her on her back, I started tracking every one of them on one of the used golf score cards I keep around the house.

She said to me that watching me do that, without me being told to do it, made her feel wonderful. When she started complaining of back ache, I fished out the heating pad, and sure enough, it made a big difference. She trusted me. Even when I fell asleep later on....she knew if necessary, I would wake up and help ... and I did.

My point, which I noticed very very few guys bothered to address, was that getting to the point where a husband and a wife BOND over that bridge of trust, while their child is being born, is a really, really big deal. It transforms Mom and Baby, yes, but I believe pretty strongly, that husband and wife are supposed to draw closer. That turtle-neck guy is put away, and dress-to-the-nines man, a full husband, emerges...

Epidurals are basically a message from a guy to his wife, 'here, let the doc help you through this, I don't have what it takes to endure seeing you in pain'.

My wife said there was no way she could have done it w/o meds of some kind if I had not been there, presenting the attitude that I believed she could do it. That is how gutless guys hurt their wives, and even indirectly, inhibit their kids: they project an attitude that is fundamentally weak, and everyone picks up on it. But today, to be a guy is cool, and so no one challenges his cowardice, and essays like mine draw huge heat. Maybe my expectations are too high ... but, maybe I see American Men as they tend to be on average....and Maybe I don't like how, as a group, we seem to being failing to project a sufficient deterrence to the homocidal tendencies of other 'men'.....heck maybe I'm not watching enough football!

That all said, my wife loves, LOVES football season...ahem, I exaggerate. But she has gotten a lot better at understanding the signficance of 4th down...

(9 kids? wow!!!)

Oh, to be sure I wouldn't just annouce, hey, no meds for you babe!! We talked the natural road over together quite a bit, and took the Bradley class..; in retrospect, what is weird is the degree to which we both were so hugely timid, and intimidated, over this road. At first anyway.

(The fact remains that natural child birth is a very uncommon experience in the USA, despite the fact that the vast majority of all children, every day, elsewhere, are born without the use of the epi.)

By the way, type in 'epidural' on Google News any given day ... very interesting what shows up in the written news, but never on TV.

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