"Butter Birth"

If you've been in the birthy world long enough, you've heard the term "butter birth". Essentially, this means a labor and birth that was smooth as butter. A labor where mom hardly had any pain, a very short pushing stage, no extra bleeding, and probably not any tearing. Butter birth.

While I get the sentiment and glee over a "butter birth", I think that perhaps it does a disservice to women who don't have easy births. I don't have easy labors or births. I have really sucky, mostly excruciating and long labors. Would I LOVE to have a "butter birth"? You bet your ass I would. Just ONCE, it would be nice to have an easy-going labor where I'm in labor for less than 24 hours. And no, I'm not a mom who counts the early contractions that you can ignore as labor. I'm talking the, "gotta be up and moving, this shit hurts!" point in labor when I start counting. I'd love to be in labor for less than 24 hours, NOT have my back feel like it's splitting in two (thank you, asshole with no insurance who rear-ended me, leaving me with permanent damage). I'd love to only have the fetal ejection reflex for only a few minutes (rather than hours) before my baby slides out into my waiting hands.

That's not in the cards for me. I'm done having babies now. But I have to wonder, for women who are physically and emotionally scarred by how tumultuous their labors are...can there ever be a peace about variations in normalcy? Sure, we get the "I don't know how you did it, you're amazing!" compliments. But really, I'd much rather a "butter birth" than the bravery comments.

I recently saw a woman complain about birth stories. She searched "Peaceful birth stories", and was irritated that some of the stories contained long, difficult labors. She missed the point entirely...and I think part of it was due to this idea that peaceful = butter birth. You see, while my labors completely sucked, they were peaceful. I was at home. I didn't have strangers coming in and out. I didn't have anyone freak out because I was past my due date with a HUUUUGGE baby (10+ lbs), or because my labor was long. I didn't have an IV. I didn't have anyone making decisions FOR me. To me, after some of the experiences that I've had in the hospital, this was the epitome of peaceful. Even with the sucky labors, and really difficult births.

But women don't want to hear about that. We have this idea in our culture that a good birth is the "butter birth" with a relatively small baby.

I really believe that this is a part of the problem with women thinking that they can't possibly have a birth without intervention and drugs. Because they don't have butter labors. They don't have butter births. Therefore, it's not even worth trying.