Is Labour Just Too Uncivilized?

On the CBC Radio this afternoon, they hosted a call-in on C-sections.

To be honest, I ignored most of the broadcast, since I assumed it would be the classic face-off that makes doctors look like scalpel-wielding monsters and midwives appear like pro-vagina-stretching pilgrims.

But the last caller of the show was so confident and weird, she grabbed my attention. According to the caller, after she watched a filmed delivery in her pre-natal class she announced she was going to have a C-section and left.

According to the caller, she insisted both her babies be delivered by C-section, despite what she characterized as unfair pressure from her medical caregivers to deliver naturally.

In her words: Giving birth is "barbaric."

She also equated ignoring the option of a C-section as being as absurd as ignoring medical life-saving measures when faced with death.

When I heard the woman's vehement description of the barbarity of birth, I felt an intuitive disgust with her. Is this the same kind of woman who carries anti-bacterial spritz in her purse and keeps her eyes closed during sex?

Last night I accidentally caught a C-section delivery on the Discovery Network (it's baby month)and I have to admit, when I saw them whip the baby out of the stomach, I was like: That is fucking disgusting.

It just looked so wrong seeing a baby come out that way. Of course, I didn't fault the woman (who had no choice in the matter; it was deemed necessary by her doctors). That said, the woman was actually smiling while the doctors pulled the kid out, and chatting to someone off-camera.

I've spoken to a woman who recently had a C-section and she said that she didn't even realize the kid was out until the doctors handed it to her. Apparently morphine trumps motherly instincts, which would explain why there are so many heroine-addicted moms on Intervention.

I also recently saw a natural birth on the Discovery Network and my stomach did a complete Holy Shit flip. I mean, wow.

So the real question is: when is too much information, well, too much information? Without the context of knowing the woman and celebrating the miracle of birth, should expectant parents bear witness to labour? Does watching a complete stranger in what appears to be great anguish do any kind of service for first-time parents-to-be?

It's not like watching CSI stops folks from killing each other, so I can probably safely assume delivery shows won't inadvertently put an end to the human race.
But as Western medicine becomes increasingly specialized and patients become increasingly disempowered, perhaps de-contextualized labours should be shelved in favour of discussions with our mothers on how they remember their labours.

A picture might be worth a thousand words, but sometimes the words they express aren't the ones we need to hear.