Brazenmom

Recently I was accosted with a vision that went something like this: me, lying on a hospital bed with my legs sprawled marinating in my own placenta juices. Like a pickled onion in beetroot sauce. Disgusting. I am repeatedly told that “birth is beautiful”. In spite of the fact that I have the maternal instinct of a flea I am happy to acknowledge that babies are beautiful. But birth. What planet are people living on? Birth is pretty damn yuck. How can episiotomies, stitches, blood, umbilical chords, forceps, injections and pain be beautiful. Associating pain and grossness with beauty sounds pretty masochistic to me. Life is beautiful. Producing life is miraculous. Giving birth may be both miraculous and beautiful theoretically and romantically but certainly not practically and realistically. It’s painful, it’s gross and it’s humiliating. Nope, I have never given birth but I am not about to delude myself into thinking it pleasant and beautiful in any way. I like to call it keeping it real. It is this very philosophy that has dictated the abandonment of my usual ‘cut the bullshit keep it real’ attitude for a brief sojourn in Pleasantville that will end, rather unpleasantly I am sure, on December 17th 2009. Read the rest of this entry »