“I tried to give birth without an epidural, but I couldn’t make it,” she said softly. A hint of shame in her voice. I was a month away from giving birth to my third child and had just explained to the woman next to me at a church event that I was planning my first home birth.
I shrugged and smiled.
“An epidural is a tool in labor just like anything else.”
I’ve given birth three times, but I’ve never had an epidural. With my first, I intentionally planned an unmedicated hospital birth after months of researching the birth process. With my second, I gave birth in the car (unintentionally, of course). The third time around, we decided home was the best option. But I meant what I said to her about epidurals. They’re a tool in labor, just like anything else.
You might be surprised to believe some women don’t agree with that statement. Some women believe getting an epidural is “cheating” in labor. Honestly, before I entered the online birth world, I didn’t believe that women still felt shamed for choosing to give birth in the hospital or for getting an epidural. That was the norm, after all.
But that day, listening to the woman next to me tell me about her epidural, I could hear it in her voice. It was subtle, but it was there. She felt less than because she couldn’t make it through labor unmedicated. I don’t know if someone she knew made her feel that way, or if she had picked up on the vibe in the online birth community. Either way, it was the tone of her voice that day that pushed me to focus on helping women who wanted to give birth in the hospital, epidural or not.
About a year before that conversation, I was lying in bed with my toddler, listening to a podcast episode about the “birth wars” among Christian women. One of the things that stuck out to me the most was how she talked about the number of moms who were shamed for giving birth in the hospital, because to many women, home birth was considered a holier choice.
I remember thinking that must be an exaggeration. Over 98% of women give birth in the hospital, most of them getting an epidural. The number doesn’t change much when you look at birth choices in Christian circles. So if the majority of women are giving birth in the hospital, who’s shaming them? The women who give birth at home or in a field or wherever are vastly outnumbered.
My personal experience with birth choices impacted my perspective, too. As a woman who had only had unmedicated births, I had the opposite experience. When I was pregnant with my first child and told other moms that I was planning to forgo the epidural, they told me I wouldn’t be able to do it. I even had family members tell me, “Just wait until you go into labor, you’ll be begging for the epidural.” Between my own personal experience and my knowledge of how common it is to give birth in the hospital with an epidural, I struggled to believe anyone was being shamed for that choice.
Then I entered the online birth space, and I realized what she said in the podcast was true. Most women, even in Christian circles, give birth in the hospital with an epidural — but the online birth community (especially the Christian/conservative birth community) is dominated by people talking about home birth and unmedicated birth.
Shame is certainly a word that brings up a lot of feelings (and a lot of opinions). I’ve seen some birth workers online claim that when a woman says she felt shamed for her decision to get an epidural, it wasn’t “shame,” but instead, her intuition telling her she made the wrong choice. Essentially, they imply that the women weren’t actually shamed by others; they just feel ashamed because they didn’t do what was best for their baby.
I’ll admit I’ve seen this happen — even on my own posts — where a certain topic comes up and someone will immediately get defensive even though I didn’t shame anyone. At the same time, I’ve also seen many individuals actively shaming women for their choices, saying things like, “This is why you shouldn’t get an epidural,” or “You should have given birth at home,” on posts when a woman is sharing about her traumatic birth experience.
At the end of the day, I know it goes both ways. There are women on both ends of the birth spectrum who shame other women because they believe their choices are superior. But when I saw a first-time mom I follow say that she wouldn’t be sharing any of her birth choices online because she didn’t want anyone to make her feel bad about them (she was giving birth in the hospital), I knew there was something off.
There are so many birth workers out there that I know — midwives, doulas, and educators — who have dedicated their careers to defending physiologic birth. Many refuse to work in hospitals anymore. Many will tell you out-of-hospital birth is the only way. As a mom who has given birth in the hospital and outside of it, I do get where they’re coming from. I know they’ve seen some of the unfortunate things that can happen in the hospital. They’ve seen too many women pushed into unnecessary interventions, leading to unnecessary C-sections. Even worse, they’ve seen the way some women are mistreated. I feel for them and understand their position.
I believe that our choices in birth matter. But I’ve shifted my perspective on who I want to help and how I want to help them because I believe every woman deserves a quality birth education. Every woman should be able to overcome her fear and go into birth equipped with knowledge and faith. There are already many women online who talk about home birth — but where does that leave the majority of women who will give birth in the hospital? Those women, in my opinion, need access to birth education even more than the woman who plans to freebirth in a field (which I do not recommend, by the way, but that’s a conversation for another day).
Birth choices are not one-size-fits-all, and they never will be. As a Christian woman, I believe that birth matters, and it’s a process we should be curious about. It’s a process we should seek to understand. But if we approach it with a black-and-white mindset, leaving no room for nuance, then we fail many women who find themselves making tough decisions without any real guidance.
Birth is a deeply personal and vulnerable experience, and if there’s one thing you’ll hear me say over and over again, it’s this: How you view birth matters more than where you give birth. If you want to know where I stand, that is the answer I’ll give you. My heart is to help women overcome their fear of birth, so they can have the mental clarity they need to make the best decision for their family.
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