I actually got out the old book to do some reviewing. Let me say again there's plenty of good stuff in it that I'm glad I know. But this little passage is so absurd that I can't help laughing or becoming enraged whenever I come across it: "Many Bradley Method couples are able to walk out of the birth room together holding the baby. This is only possible if they have had a normal and totally unmedicated labor and birth . . . . The new mother will find that she feels fantastic after a totally unmedicated labor and birth."
Oh, my achin' sides! Or maybe, the dutifully unmedicated new mother will find herself being picked up off the floor by nurses after she attempts to shuffle 10 feet to the bathroom when half of her blood has recently been carried off in a plastic bag to the hospital incinerator! Who are these people? I've never had an unusually complicated or very drawn out delivery, but I have certainly not felt anything approaching fantastic until . . . well . . . a lot later. And maybe all my friends are bunch of weaklings and whiners, but none of them have either.
I'm thrilled if some women feel fantastic after L&D. But why make it sound like this is the norm, and even worse, set up first timers with unrealistic expectations? That's just mean.
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Oh, I don't know . . . those back and neck sprains ARE pretty great. I mean, they keep the memory of birth with me for about a month! What more could I ask? And I loves me some blood loss! I have waaay too much of that awful stuff as it is!
Perhaps you're really not looking at the full range of "fantastic." That's so like you.
Walking out of the birth room? How about walking out of the hospital 2 days later--now that's a more achievable goal.
I think I was shuffling slowly for a week and taking stairs tentatively for a month after Baby One. Then after Baby Two, I kept telling a nurse I thought I was bleeding too much, while she kept assuring me that bleeding was normal, till I insisted that she check--and suddenly she was scurrying for some pitocin and other nice stuff "just to help clamp things down a bit more quickly."
I guess Gauntlets is right; we just have to embrace the full range of "fantastic"...
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