Healthy Birth Blog Carnival

http://www.scienceandsensibility.org/ is hosting a Healthy Birth Blog Carnival  with the theme this year being:

Avoid giving birth on your back and follow your body’s urges to push

So everyone knows that I gave birth in a giant horse trough (or birthing tub, as it would more commonly and nicely be put) in the middle of our living room. What most don't know is that both the midwife and my husband insisted throughout my entire labor  that the labor would last well throughout the day (as it was my first, and most first moms take awhile) and that I should just work through it. I knew (as most mamas do) what was actually going on with my baby and my body, and she wasn't going to wait around all day to be born. I tried my hardest to be calm when my midwife insisted on taking her first appointment of the morning before coming over, but I knew (I KNEW) that she was coming whether the mdiwife was there or not. And all I wanted was to get in the tub and puuuush. My midiwfe arrived and announced, "you're ready to push!" Well, duh. I climbed in the tub - ahhh the absolute best feeling that could be had while having contractions. I started to push almost immediately - b/c we were READY. I didn't need coaching or encouragment. I knew what to do and when to do it.  I couldn't imagine a doctor telling me that I couldn't push. Or to wait.  The best part was the ability to be in the tub and stand and let gravity help this baby come out. Doctors and medical "professionals" can say whatever they like, LOGICALLY speaking, gravity will work with you if you let it, it will also most certainly work against you if you lay on your back and expect to be able to push a 7lb, 20 inch long baby out.
From an anthropologic point of view - women have been birthing for over 2 million years. Women have not had beds and stirrups and forceps and someone telling them - don't push! don't push! Women have squatted in a field, between the gathering, and let gravity and their bodies help them to birth. They listened to their bodies. They didn't ask for epidurals (which, by the way, numb the lower half, thus forcing someone to lay on her back and making it that much a harder and longer labor); their bodies were designed to give birth. That is the evolutionary POINT of women - to further the species. We are mammals. There are no mammals in the wild, giving birth on her back with legs in the air. Because it just doesn't work that way.
My labor lasted 10 hours - start to finish. I pushed for about half an hour. No medicine, no machines, no intervention at all. I had the most beautiful healthy baby, completely coherently and the way I wanted to.