Just because nobody asked, let me give you the highlights of yesterday's childbirth education class. (Hey, a pregnant lady gets LOTS of unsolicited advice, stories, and other information. I'm just giving back to the community.) The unquestionable highlight of the show was the video they showed us from the 1950s, to put into perspective for us how much more pleasant it is to give birth nowadays.
This was an instructional video for the U.S. Navy to give wives a preview of what it would be like for them to have their babies at a military hospital. Having sat through both this Navy video and Gone With the Wind, I would rather give birth in the middle of the siege of Atlanta, with Prissy standing by offering her mama's advice to put a knife under the bed to cut the pain in two.
Okay, what was the best part of this highly informative film? Maybe it was the fact that the patients were all shaved, then mopped down with iodine like meat on a barbecue grill. Or maybe it was the "bracelets" they used to hold the patients' arms in place, so they wouldn't risk "contaminating the sterilized perineal area". I liked the way they extolled the virtues of forceps, and in demonstrating their use looked like a dress rehearsal for the famous Roswell Alien Autopsy video. And just think, this was all to reassure those poor Navy wives and make them grateful for the fact that they were not going to be squatting in a rice paddy.
So yes, giving birth today is perhaps less tidy than it was in our mothers' time. We walk and talk and breathe funny and poop while we're in labor. And I'm sure the U.S. Navy is much improved these days (gads, I should hope so!!!). And yes, Bill Cosby is right, you know you're overeducated when you're taking classes to learn what comes naturally to billions of people. But you know, I'll take the postmodern approach any day. All in all, I feel good about my options for giving birth in a civilized, civilian facility with lots of room to walk around and lots of drugs on demand. I feel like I've achieved a happy medium between the rice paddy and the operating room. Lucky lucky me.