So why is there ownership of the epidural? Even the L & D nurses refer to it as "your" epidural, or "her" epidural. You own it -- you better claim it before someone else steals it! It is the weirdest thing.
When doctors in Europe were using a combination of different drugs to "help" women through childbirth towards the end of the 19th century, American doctors didn't want to use them. They didn't feel they were safe. I know, hard to imagine now, isn't it? It was the women who demanded to have the rights to these drugs. Up to this point, the majority of American births were assisted by midwives, not doctors. More than 95% of all American births took place at home.
Much like today, women were afraid of childbirth, just for different reasons. When male doctors started assisting in childbirth, women were willing to put modesty aside (no small thing) at the promise of having "pain-relieving" drugs for childbirth. The doctors found it easier for the women to come to them in the hospital rather than have to travel to their homes.
And so it began. Hospital birth. In the beginning, only the affluent could afford to birth in the hospital. It was fashionable to be "delivered" by a male doctor with his drugs and forceps. Eventually, if you had a midwife-attended homebirth, you were obviously too poor to afford a hospital birth. By 1940, two-thirds of American births took place in the hospital. (Both my parents were born at home. They lived in southern Illinois in the middle of nowhere and were poor!) By the 1950's, only 1% of babies were born at home. It has largely remained the same after 60 years.
Historically, women fought for the right to vote just a couple of decades after drugs in childbirth were introduced, and birth was migrating from their bedrooms to the hospitals. Women entered the workplace in the late 1930's during WWII to support their families. During the Women's Rights Movement of the 1960s, women wanted equal pay and treatment. We deserved it! We wanted rights! In the same decade, midwives began to resurface and the natural birth movement began rising up. Make no mistake, 99% of women were still giving birth in a hospital with the drugs. Just like today.
For the last 110 years, women have demanded drugs in childbirth because we should not have to endure the pain of childbirth, no matter how dangerous it may be for the baby, right? As a woman, I have rights to those drugs! I owned an epidural from the minute that pee-stick told me I was pregnant! The doctors warned the women early on that the drugs went straight to the baby and were not good for the baby. The women didn't care. Today, we have doctors telling women that epidurals are safe -- there are no risks. Why would you not have one, they say? "There is no medal at the end of this race." Oh, I beg to differ -- a drug-free mama and baby is quite a reward to behold.
Yes, women's rights have done some very important things. But at what point did we get so wrapped up in our own discomfort that we can't see beyond ourselves? Is it just human nature? That sense of entitlement?
Here's the real kicker -- if women only knew the absolute empowerment that comes with giving birth to your baby without intervention or medications, they would understand that that is real Women's Lib. Don't own the epidural ladies, own your birth!
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