So Much You Don't Know About The C-Section
Make sure you check out this week’s ADVICE TIME — so many opportunities to ask for/receive advice from strangers on the internet!
And if you want to laugh about very unserious shit: go listen to this week’s episode of The Culture Study Podcast, featuring the great Krista Burton of O Caftan My Caftan. You can find it (and a bunch of big gnome feelings) here.
And remember: your subscriptions are what keep the paywall off posts like this one, which make it possible for everyone to read and share the work of authors you might not otherwise encounter. If you value this work and want to keep it accessible, subscribe today — plus you get access to all the threads!
When I was young, probably around 7 or 8, I found myself watching something on television that I wasn’t supposed to. Or, more precisely: something on the USA Network that wasn’t within the realm of my “normal” shows. It was just for a little snatch of time, but there was a hospital, and a woman giving birth, and a lot of thick, deep red blood. For years after, that image would sometimes re-appear, utterly unbidden, when I closed my eyes to concentrate on something. The brain is wild, right? But that image imprinted on me. Birth and horror, intermixed.
I don’t think that has anything to do with me not becoming a parent, but I do think it’s part of my general suspicion of birth narratives. I don’t like pain. I don’t like its glamorization. I don’t like what seems to get obviated in gauzy narratives of it was all worth it. Kids are amazing, and it’s amazing that bodies can birth them, but there’s a lot of body horror involved, too. The reticence to speak frankly about it (apart from “it’s the hardest thing you’ll ever do”) always made me suspicious. Were birthing parents just telling the truth behind closed doors without me? Or were they, too, beholden to narrative tropes of how to understand their own experiences?
