For this assignment I interviewed two women and a man about their experience with birth and pregnancy. One of the women I interview had birth related complications, while the man was a product of a complicated birth.
The first woman I interviewed has given birth twice. She told me that the second birth was much easier for two reasons, one was that she knew what to expect from the first, and two, her second labor time was only a few hours; compared to over 24 the first time. She said that while pregnant for the first time that she was nervous, that she never had felt a change like that before. She was always very active and loved to work. When she got pregnant at first, not much changed. As time passed and her pregnancy progressed she just felt really drained. After a while she couldn’t go to work anymore. Without work or anything she was bored all the time. She said it made her depressed. Not only did she have to deal with the physical sickness and other woes of being pregnant, she lost the life she had. She was limited from doing a lot of the things she enjoyed. She did say that she had a lot of support from her husband, friends, and family. Which was the highlight of her pregnancy, because she got a lot closer with the people around her. She said it was hard for her to go through, especially the first time because she didn’t know how it was until she actually went through it.
The other woman I interviewed said that her one (and only) pregnancy wasn’t terrible. She said it gave her a lot of free time to do things that she had wanted to do, most notably, relaxing. She said being pregnant makes you think a lot, and if you can do that without becoming overwhelmed it is enlightening. She said she didn’t physically enjoy being pregnant, but mentally it helped her. She said that she had complications when she gave birth, but she didn’t want to go into it. Which of course I wouldn’t push for her to talk about but it did make me wonder how scared she must’ve been about that (See end of post, this what I built off of.)
The last interview, which was with a man, who is a father of two, isn’t worth giving a whole paragraph, because there really weren’t that many good insights. But there were a couple. He talked about how hard it was to help his wife try to cope with pregnancy birth because he couldn’t even imagine going through it. He also said that he was a lot more stressed out during the process, but he doesn’t regret having children at all.
I don’t know how these stories will fit into the unit, because I have nothing to compare the stories to. I can compare them to what I see on television, but I don’t believe that birth is depicted well on television, that it is mocked. Later on in the unit, perhaps when we are in the scholar phase I could analyze these stories more accurately. Right now I’m still unsure of what I should think about birth. They did answer some of the questions that I had about how it feels to be pregnant, saying that physically it isn’t pleasurable. Which is understandable because when you make it as simple as possible, being pregnant is just having a large parasite. It’s funny that people are happy to have parasites sometimes. That being said, all of these people made the process of pregnancy difficult, but they also would all say it’s worth going through.
What long-lasting affect (if any?) does losing a child (especially during labor) have on parents?
Kevin,
ReplyDeleteI really like your observation of not really understanding what these stories mean especially because you have nothing to compare them to because the t.v. does lie to us. I feel like this blind intelligence is really something that you can build off of to help further your independent research because what do these stories mean? Was what the first women really went through significant in terms of birth stories (it seems so to me). I feel like maybe going in depth a little more on the other stories would have given it something to compare it to. But i can understand your interest in the first one because it caught my attention as well. Good writing Kevin.
Sam
From mentor (dad):
ReplyDeleteThe sharpest insight that I saw in this post was when you were trying to relate these stories back to the course, or anything. You said that you don't have anything to relate it back to because the little extent of your knowledge is very questionable. You also had a thought provoking idea when you talked about the fetus being a parasite. I never heard anybody Call a fetus that before but the way you presented it made sense.
One thing that you should work on in future posts is your wording and flow. If you can get your posts to flow better, they will be better.
From protogé (little brother):
ReplyDeleteI think the best part of this blog was the first story you talked about. You went into a lot of detail in that one, and that made it interesting. You also used some good words to describe how she felt "her life changed completely". Other then that your tv thing was good too.
This post made me want to hear my own birth story. It made me realize that every pregnancy story is not the same. Every one is different and there are a lot of things that affect birth.
This blog post was very strong Kevin, you obviously put alot of time and effort into. Specifically your thoughts on the males position in the birthing processnshowed alot, you stated that he didn't have many good insights and I think your ability to sort the good insights from the not so good shows a deeper level of analysis. My favorite thought is when you stated that "I can compare them to what I see on television, but I don’t believe that birth is depicted well on television, that it is mocked." I felt this line was the strongest because I could relate to it the most. I have never seen a real birth but I have seen it on t.v. And after hearing the birth stories that I retrieved and everyone roses it does seem like they are almost mocking it on t.v. As you said.
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