AWOB - Break Homework

EQ: Why Don’t People talk about it?
The experience of one’s birth is often not a subject that one would usually come across in a conversation. Occasionally, one would only talk about their birth if he/she were asked to describe his/her birth—and that’s based on personal experience. Based on the multiple opinions between males and females, one may find birth rather disturbing than it is beautiful, or vice-versa. Most men are more frightened of the sight of a baby coming out of the vagina they had once “made love to” rather than it process being a ‘beautiful moment’. Meanwhile, women believe the opposite and think that the birth of their child is the most beautiful thing that could have happened to them. In the end of the process of giving birth, a baby is born, though it does pop a question—why don’t people talk about it? Why do people decide not to talk about how a baby is born, if the birth was a normal or natural birth, what extra procedures were done to help deliver the baby? Etc. Based on my YouTube experience over the break, it seems that people do decide to talk about their birth by posting it on the internet for millions of viewers to watch. On a serious note, people have the decision not to talk about birth/child birth due to the fact that it is a personal experience that should be kept and reminisced between the family and close friends. It also involves medical professionals who do not discuss the medical risks that could be involved when having certain procedures done when having a baby in a hospital in comparison to a home birth. One can believe that doctors do talk about some risks, but why do they ignore the risks by continually giving the patient, for example, an epidural?

In the home birth YouTube video, the process of giving birth was looked very calm and concentrating. The mother did have a lot of support and seemed relaxed, although she was still in labor; she looked like she had the patience to deliver her baby by just closing her eyes and having contact with her husband who was with her 90% of the time. During the process, I couldn’t help but notice how the person, who was guiding the baby out of the birth-canal, seemed like she was tugging on the baby’s head. From what I remember being said in class that a person should never pull the head of the baby due to the risk of pulling the head out of place. Aside from that small dilemma, the couple seemed very open about their birth which puts them on the fence to why people do not talk about it, when this couple had the courage to post their experience on the World Wide Web.

The C-Section YouTube video was an interesting kind of birth rather than it being disturbing. Don’t get me wrong, I do not like the sight of flesh being cut up, but the way the baby was taken out of the mother’s uterus was much faster than the average birth with having to push the baby in and out of the vagina. The process had me thinking about the possible risks doctors could have ignored when giving the mother a c-section, but because majority of c-sections across the world have been successful & expensive, all risks are most likely ignored by doctors.

The giraffe & dolphin birth looked rather similar. In both YouTube videos, the end of the baby was sticking out of the vagina, the baby dolphin’s fin and the four legs of the giraffe. The birth was obviously natural and did not involve actual people trying to help deliver their baby. I was amazed to how the fast a baby dolphin learns how to swim right when he/she is delivered. I also thought how painful it looked for the giraffe to be dropped on the ground instead of having the usual support a baby would need when given birth. I honestly thought that the people who worked in the zoo would put some sort of soft pillow under the mother giraffe, but instead put a kind of sand which acted like the support of the baby giraffe. When the topic is about mammals and how they give birth, animal experts are open to talk about how an animal gives birth, and what habits they do when trying to deliver the baby. In this case, the dolphin swims around while the giraffe just stands and is slightly squatting. A reason to why animal experts are open to talk about the animal’s birth is to show how similar it is to when humans give birth to their babies.

Situations that involve people talking about his/her birth story or their child’s birth story either has a positive or negative offense. With my own experience with asking my mom about my birth, she felt curious to why I wanted to know so much about how I was born and what happened when I came out of her. Although it was me who was being born, she took it personal and thought that the experience should be kept in the family. I asked if there were any recordings of my birth. In her response, she did not hesitate to say no. She told me that she did not think it was appropriate to record or talk to anybody about her birth experience with me or my sister. From my mom’s perspective, I could understand why she would want to protect her experience, similar to how she protects my sister and I. People do have their own reasons for not talking about their birth, possibly due to the personal experience of the pain that it involved, mental/physical pain of giving birth, or if the father was even there to support his child, or the experience it had between the mother and the father.