The Longest Shortest Time

In Andromeda

This is probably going to be a controversial topic with LST-ers, but for any of you who have ever felt betrayed by the natural/home birth movement, you must, must, must read Brenda Shaughnessy’s poem “Our Andromeda” from her book of the same title.

I talked in episode 4 about feeling like I had failed at childbirth because I couldn’t do it without drugs or surgery, and to be honest I still can’t quite shake that feeling even though I know intellectually that what happened to me couldn’t have been avoided and that modern medicine saved my and my child’s life. I have come to believe that the generally sunny disposition of most natural birthers—telling us that childbirth is not an emergent situation, that you *must* spend the “golden hour” after your baby is born with your baby—poses a real danger to our mental and physical health. A non-emergency, a breastfeeding-filled “golden hour”: these are lovely things to hope for, and if you get them, yay, you are lucky. But lots of us, through no fault of our own or our caregivers, have no choice but to become embroiled in an emergency and send our babies to the NICU. And then, if we’ve been reading Ina May Gaskin, or listening to other proponents of natural childbirth, we are left in a void. And we sink deep. This is a terribly complex subject and I’m thinking about how to cover it more in-depth on LST, but for now: Read. Our. Andromeda.

A preview: “And why press down so hard on Cal when / it was I who grossly claimed superhuman strength: I know I can deliver him, I know I can / push. I don’t care how much pain I’m in, I can handle it! I can do it! I’m the strongest fucking woman in the world! / When in fact, if I had let myself be weak, / a C-section would have kept Cal safe.”

Is this resonating with anyone?

UPDATE: I wound up interviewing Ina May Gaskin, and telling her how I felt betrayed by her in episode #28, and her reaction completely stunned me.