1. You can’t wait to give birth, unlike your buddies from antenatal class who are all petrified
2. You eat, sleep and breathe birth stories…
3. …especially those about home/unassisted/unmedicated birth
4. You probably know more about birth than your average midwife
5. Thanks to you, your husband/partner probably knows more about birth than your average midwife
6. You’d trust a tribal woman over an OB to look after you during your birth
Image courtesy of Travis S @ flickr
7. You have had/are planning/would consider an unassisted birth
8. When someone tells you they have to have a caesarean section, you have to fight the urge to quiz them about it as you’re convinced it probably isn’t necessary
9. Similarly, when your friend tells you she is being induced because her baby is ‘too big’, you have to battle the urge to march to the hospital and give her doctor an earful
10. The idea of using pain meds during labour is baffling to you
11. You are/want to be a doula
12. You know what a doula is
13. You have owned at least three copies of Ina May’s Guide To Childbirth – you keep dishing them out to friends when they fall pregnant
14. You refuse cervical checks during labour, and are able to inform your midwife of several alternative methods of gauging how far along you are
15. When you hear of other peoples’ bungled births, it makes you want to march to the hospital and bitchslap their doctor/midwife
16. You assume that, if a birth is bungled, it probably happened in a hospital
17. Your midwife doesn’t bother going through your birth plan – she knows from experience that it’ll be water-tight
18. If you give birth in hospital, they’ll know what room you’re in due to your birth plan being blu-tacked onto the door, and from the smell of clary sage wafting out from within
19. You’ve eaten or encapsulated your placenta, and if not you at least know why someone would
20. The closest you’ll get to drugs during childbirth is all of that Oxytocin coursing through your body
21. Almost all of your recommended videos on YouTube are birth videos
22. You’ve made a birth video… and put it on YouTube
23. You aren’t allowed to watch mainstream TV programmes about labour and birth because your husband/partner gets annoyed with your constant commentary of “Get OFF the damn bed” and “She doesn’t need to be augmented, she needs to be LEFT ALONE” interspersed with occasional outbursts of “OMG”, “WTF” and “FFS”…
24. …or you choose not to watch them because they irritate you so much and you refuse to give ratings to a show that perpetuates the western fear of childbirth
Care to add to the list? I’d love to hear your contributions!
Love #5!
Haha thanks :)
LOL…#23 is so me…and the funny thing is…my 8 year old daughter does the same thing (although without the foul language).
Haha that’s fantastic, you’re raising a birth activist in training! :D
Oh my oh my what a fantastic post!!! So many of those apply to me – so glad I’m not the only one!! Honestly I tell people I would give birth every week if I could – but even if that was possible, these little people take a lot of looking after once birth is done so I have to restrain myself to my 2 gorgeous babies and 2 wonderful birthing memories.
I’m absolutely with you on this one, haha. I’m so rushed off my feet with my two I’m not sure I could handle many more, but I wanna give birth again *whine*
Thank you for your comment :)
If you use the term “bitchslap” or violence in general you kind of negate all the rest of this post.
Just saying, where in birth is violence or equating women with female dogs appropriate?
Um… ok. I’m sorry if my choice of language offended you, but that’s just how I write.
LOVE THIS!
I’d add: You know you’re a natural birth activist when find yourself biting your tongue at baby showers while everyone excitedly tells their birth stories (which ALL took place in hospitals with OBs). And, you can’t WAIT for someone to ask, “What hospital are YOU giving birth in?”
Muahahahah!
Haha oh goodness yes, yes! I love it when people ask me if I had Squish in this or that hospital, and I say ‘neither!’ :D
LOVE IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT
it’s me summed up in 20 points!
I had to have my first baby to wake up, before that I was a dormant activist!
hehe me too, its like you don’t realise how passionate you are about having babies until you have babies :)
You know you’re a natural birth activist when you stumble upon posts like this because you have a Google alert set for “natural birth.”
haha, good one!!
You know you’re a natural birth activist when there is a placenta in your freezer.
Fantastic!! XD
I can identify with most of those, thanks. Just one thought- I recently spent some time listening to Michel Odent and he has totally put me off birth videos- either making my own, encouraging others (doula) or even watching them on you tube. It’s the whole being observed thing, even by a camera lens.
And I agree with the bitchslapping (the thought, not actually doing it) :) you can love peaceful birth but still feel angry at injustice- a little bit of anger and frustration can drive you to change things for the better :)
Yeah, I have to admit I wasn’t fond of the idea of being filmed. I mean, it would have been nice to have filmed it so I could have watched it back later on but it felt like a very private affair, for me anyway.
Hehe yes, I agree! I am generally a non-confrontational, peaceful person but I certainly have a more feisty side ;)
Thanks so much for commenting!
When someone tells you that they took the hospital childbirth classes and “they REALLY support natural childbirth” the first thought that comes to you mind is “really? Then why does that hospital have a 90% epidural rate?” and the second thought is “I hope she doesn’t really think that 6 hour class taught her enough to really be prepared for an unmedicated birth.”