I saw a movie the other night and a line stuck with me: "The hardest part of being a woman is having women friends". My goodness, we women can be quite hard and judgemental with each other.
I've never heard men criticize how they parent their children but I sure hear women do that to each other all the time. Because criticizing decisons women make about how they give birth is doing just that.
This is an interesting thread and I do agree, it seems insane to push something that weighs up to 8 or 9 pounds (or more God help them) out of your body when you are in a position that is the opposite of getting that done. Never made sense to me before I had my son and while I was having him it made even less sense!
But as usual with these threads, we women have to preach, beat up, quote, and get huffy with each other. Its too bad. We are all women, most of us seem to have given birth at one time or another and for some of us like me, it was quite a few years ago. Yet its still a hot button topic.
I see somebody make assumptions about epidurals and suddenly I am right back in my kitchen in 1994 talking with my "friend" who had not given birth at that time and listening to her ask me why I had "done that". "That" being have an epidural. I felt put on the spot and ashamed. As if I had been caught smoking a pack of Marlboro's and drinking a six pack of Budweiser the day I gave birth instead of doing what my doctor and nurse suggested after a long, hard labor. Years later when I visted her in the hospital when she had her baby, I played nice and didn't ask her why she had done "that". But she sure as heck did have her own epidural, and I sure as heck got a bit of a laugh about it!
Funny how this topic always brings out the best and worst in people.
Bottom line, if you can, ask to squat or sit if you've been pushing a while. I pushed for four hours and when my doctor finally left the room for a minute and the nurse cranked my bed up, it was amazing at how much easier it got.
I'll leave some of you ladies to your medical theories and opinions.