more on the doula vs. doctor scenario

The problem with going with the doula/natural childbirthing school is that you get their opinions and dogma foisted on you (see prior post about epidurals). Maybe it's just me, but they make you feel like you are not an intelligent person, capable of making your own informed decisions, if you go along with what the doctors might suggest. The thing is I think both models have something to offer to each other. The doula/natural childbirth school makes things out like the doctors are only there to control the situation and make sure it works out to their benefit. It's funny, but I just don't believe it. Yes, some docs might be that way, but others aren't. And the extent to which they are that way is mostly attributable to their training. It doesn't reflect any inherent, deep-seated need among all doctors to impose their will upon a laboring mom. You sometimes get the feeling that by embracing "natural childbirth" you are taking up a cause, a revolution against the establishment, and that maybe you are seen that way by both sides -- the natural childbirth people are happy that they've won you over and the docs are antagonized by your seeming rejection of what they have to offer.

I'm sure that I'm overstating this, but I just haven't been able to have a conversation with a doula or adherent to natural childbirthing methods that didn't have this tinge to it. Yes, we are using a doula, but we are paying her for her bag of tricks to assist us through labor, not to undermine the judgment of the midwives and doctors or be our cheerleader for standing up to the medical world. Doulas know all about the mechanics of positions that help the baby move down through the pelvis and ways to stimulate labor naturally. In some ways, it seems that they have more of an understanding of the mechanics of labor than doctors do or at least find it important to share it in encouraging women to be involved in their labor. They are familiar with very important ways that we all have to withstand pain that perhaps we are less in touch with now that we have Tylenol and aspirin, etc. Using relaxation and the release of natural endorphins. That's all good and there's something nice about feeling like you are helping your body to do what it wants to do naturally, what it's meant to do, about being in touch with that instinctual part of ourselves, that contemporary life can take us so far away from.

We are all on the same team, at least I hope. The doula / natural childbirthing school has brought a lot of good things to labor and delivery -- it is a natural process that women have gone through for thousands of years, but don't forget also that childbirth was the leading cause of death for women up until fairly recently. So, I'll take my breathing and relaxation and massage and movements, but I'll also take my antiobiotics (I'm Strep B pos) and my epidural (maybe) and my close proximity to an OR that can get the baby out in a hurry if something goes wrong for him or me.