5 ms·

Feminists Fought for the Right to Forget Childbirth

24 points by serverlessmom 5y ago

drewcoo 5y ago
"In 1914, Feminists fought for health care for women" just doesn't have the same click appeal as that title.
- hypertele-Xii 5y ago
  While you're strictly speaking technically correct in your statement, after reviewing the article in question, I reject your comment. The title is appropriate to the fascinating details in the article's subject matter concerning a drug for women to sleep through the painful experience (in the most literal sense) of childrearing which feminists demanded access to.
  - drewcoo 5y ago
    Go tell an anesthesiologist that they're not practicing medicine. It's medicine. And it is expected that feminists would fight for better women's health care. The title tries to fool us into thinking something unexpected happened. Thanks for the personally directed rejection, though. I live for that crap.
  - B1FF_PSUVM 5y ago
    > the painful experience (in the most literal sense) of childrearing That is one amusing typo ...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
hirundo 5y ago
I wonder if there's anything here to the puritan notion that virtue requires pain. It's cliche that men bond particularly tightly in the blood and fear of war. Does that apply to birth? Is the maternal bond strengthened by birth trauma? Or it could be that a painful birth weakens the bond with resentment.
- renewiltord 5y ago
  My aunt was, decades ago, an obstetrician in the UAE where, in a certain community, there was a belief that painful childbirth formed a strong bond between mother and child. In practice, that meant there was a lot more screaming in the operating room there than in Leicester. As far as she could tell, the children weren't any more loved.
  - igetspam 5y ago
    Wow... that's terrible. If being in pain during childbirth was a way to create a stronger bond AND we actually believed it, we'd jab fathers with hot pokers while the mother was in labor. Pain would be a shared experience and we'd all bond. But that's not what would actually happen. We'd have a lot less childbirth if men had to endure physical pain during the hours of labor. It's more likely that they just wanted women to suffer for some fictional sin they found in one of their fantasy novels about gods. There's no way I'd have participated in the suffering of childbirth. Women who do it are tough and I just don't have it in me to suffer like that for a kid. Perhaps I'm unique in that but I doubt it.
    - renewiltord 5y ago
      For what it's worth, the screaming did not correlate with amount of anaesthetic administered. As a doctor, her role was definitely to ensure safety of mother and child and appropriate care for the mother, which she fulfilled. Absence of screaming was culturally believed to be evidence of lack of pain, however. And lack of pain was culturally believed to be evidence of lack of bond. And lack of bond so observed by family would be shameful for the mother. Fortunately, few women in this culture ever failed to form a bond with their children through this mechanism, so little shame was experienced. One can only conclude that our conventional mechanisms of analgesia do not function for people in this culture for some reason.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  Shared adversity builds strong bonds but that kind of goes out the window if one party can't remember it and the adversity is therefore not shared. It's probably closer to sunk cost fallacy at that point.
bonniemuffin 5y ago
Not gonna lie, if I had been offered this, I would've done it. It sounds pretty great to me. Regular childbirth is pretty horrible and I wish I didn't remember it. It sucks that as a result of women being forced to do twilight sleep even if they didn't want to, now we've taken that choice away completely and you can't do it even if you do want to.
- ars 5y ago
  Are you sure about that? You'd still feel the pain during the birth though - in fact you'd probably feel even more pain than without it (since there would be less mitigations, since you'd be tied up). Do you want to subject yourself to extra pain, in order that you would forget it later? > and you can't do it even if you do want to. You actually can, nitrous oxide removes the unpleasantness of the experience of pain.
  - bonniemuffin 5y ago
    Yes, I'd rather experience the pain but not remember it. I used nitrous for childbirth and it was helpful in early labor, but the pain pretty quickly reached a point where the nitrous barely touched it. Nitrous works great at the dentist, but it was so profoundly insufficient for labor.
    - kkfx 5y ago
      A classic modern caesarean is FAR better, with epidural anesthesia, since your body does not feel the pain and so after, if well done, you have almost zero sufferance, instead if you are unconscious but your body feel the pain the aftermath is FAR painful. Not only: an epidural must be done well, but it's far lighter for the body and the newborn. The only issue of modern caesarean beside abdominal adhesions (witch means you can't do much of such surgery) and a very small sign on the skin is the absence of vaginal bacterial charge transfer to the child that reduce a little bit it's future immune system development, but still far less dangerous that too many other thing we do on children... The main issue is not much medical but more (an)ethical since there are too many push toward natural childbirth (harmful for the woman and not less risky than caesarean) and other religious/reactionary a-scientific ideas around. And that's REALLY harmful for all.
beardog 5y ago
Feminists also fought for non-paid public bathrooms, which is certainly a net gain in my view.
- david38 5y ago
  Unfortunately they’ve turned into drug stalls in many places. I would happily pay a higher tax for clean public restrooms.
thriftwy 5y ago
This higlights the importance of people stopping having opinions about what other people need, while keeping their ego as small as possible. This includes doctors, and maybe even starts and ends there.
ars 5y ago
This brings up a question I've long pondered: Does it count as pain if you don't remember it? What if you remember it for a year, and then forget? What if you remember it for a lifetime, and then die, and thus forget? I don't have answers, only questions. But I think the answer for me is it counts as pain even if you don't remember it, making twilight birth horrifying. A thought experiment: How much money would it take to allow yourself to be tortured by a sadist, only you would be on this drug so you don't remember it after?

24 points by serverlessmom 5y ago

drewcoo 5y ago

"In 1914, Feminists fought for health care for women" just doesn't have the same click appeal as that title.

hypertele-Xii 5y ago
While you're strictly speaking technically correct in your statement, after reviewing the article in question, I reject your comment. The title is appropriate to the fascinating details in the article's subject matter concerning a drug for women to sleep through the painful experience (in the most literal sense) of childrearing which feminists demanded access to.
- drewcoo 5y ago
  Go tell an anesthesiologist that they're not practicing medicine. It's medicine. And it is expected that feminists would fight for better women's health care. The title tries to fool us into thinking something unexpected happened. Thanks for the personally directed rejection, though. I live for that crap.
- B1FF_PSUVM 5y ago
  > the painful experience (in the most literal sense) of childrearing That is one amusing typo ...
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

hirundo 5y ago

I wonder if there's anything here to the puritan notion that virtue requires pain. It's cliche that men bond particularly tightly in the blood and fear of war. Does that apply to birth? Is the maternal bond strengthened by birth trauma? Or it could be that a painful birth weakens the bond with resentment.

renewiltord 5y ago
My aunt was, decades ago, an obstetrician in the UAE where, in a certain community, there was a belief that painful childbirth formed a strong bond between mother and child. In practice, that meant there was a lot more screaming in the operating room there than in Leicester. As far as she could tell, the children weren't any more loved.
- igetspam 5y ago
  Wow... that's terrible. If being in pain during childbirth was a way to create a stronger bond AND we actually believed it, we'd jab fathers with hot pokers while the mother was in labor. Pain would be a shared experience and we'd all bond. But that's not what would actually happen. We'd have a lot less childbirth if men had to endure physical pain during the hours of labor. It's more likely that they just wanted women to suffer for some fictional sin they found in one of their fantasy novels about gods. There's no way I'd have participated in the suffering of childbirth. Women who do it are tough and I just don't have it in me to suffer like that for a kid. Perhaps I'm unique in that but I doubt it.
  - renewiltord 5y ago
    For what it's worth, the screaming did not correlate with amount of anaesthetic administered. As a doctor, her role was definitely to ensure safety of mother and child and appropriate care for the mother, which she fulfilled. Absence of screaming was culturally believed to be evidence of lack of pain, however. And lack of pain was culturally believed to be evidence of lack of bond. And lack of bond so observed by family would be shameful for the mother. Fortunately, few women in this culture ever failed to form a bond with their children through this mechanism, so little shame was experienced. One can only conclude that our conventional mechanisms of analgesia do not function for people in this culture for some reason.
throwaway0a5e 5y ago
Shared adversity builds strong bonds but that kind of goes out the window if one party can't remember it and the adversity is therefore not shared. It's probably closer to sunk cost fallacy at that point.

bonniemuffin 5y ago

Not gonna lie, if I had been offered this, I would've done it. It sounds pretty great to me. Regular childbirth is pretty horrible and I wish I didn't remember it. It sucks that as a result of women being forced to do twilight sleep even if they didn't want to, now we've taken that choice away completely and you can't do it even if you do want to.

ars 5y ago
Are you sure about that? You'd still feel the pain during the birth though - in fact you'd probably feel even more pain than without it (since there would be less mitigations, since you'd be tied up). Do you want to subject yourself to extra pain, in order that you would forget it later? > and you can't do it even if you do want to. You actually can, nitrous oxide removes the unpleasantness of the experience of pain.
- bonniemuffin 5y ago
  Yes, I'd rather experience the pain but not remember it. I used nitrous for childbirth and it was helpful in early labor, but the pain pretty quickly reached a point where the nitrous barely touched it. Nitrous works great at the dentist, but it was so profoundly insufficient for labor.
  - kkfx 5y ago
    A classic modern caesarean is FAR better, with epidural anesthesia, since your body does not feel the pain and so after, if well done, you have almost zero sufferance, instead if you are unconscious but your body feel the pain the aftermath is FAR painful. Not only: an epidural must be done well, but it's far lighter for the body and the newborn. The only issue of modern caesarean beside abdominal adhesions (witch means you can't do much of such surgery) and a very small sign on the skin is the absence of vaginal bacterial charge transfer to the child that reduce a little bit it's future immune system development, but still far less dangerous that too many other thing we do on children... The main issue is not much medical but more (an)ethical since there are too many push toward natural childbirth (harmful for the woman and not less risky than caesarean) and other religious/reactionary a-scientific ideas around. And that's REALLY harmful for all.

beardog 5y ago

Feminists also fought for non-paid public bathrooms, which is certainly a net gain in my view.

david38 5y ago
Unfortunately they’ve turned into drug stalls in many places. I would happily pay a higher tax for clean public restrooms.

thriftwy 5y ago

This higlights the importance of people stopping having opinions about what other people need, while keeping their ego as small as possible. This includes doctors, and maybe even starts and ends there.

ars 5y ago

This brings up a question I've long pondered: Does it count as pain if you don't remember it? What if you remember it for a year, and then forget? What if you remember it for a lifetime, and then die, and thus forget? I don't have answers, only questions. But I think the answer for me is it counts as pain even if you don't remember it, making twilight birth horrifying. A thought experiment: How much money would it take to allow yourself to be tortured by a sadist, only you would be on this drug so you don't remember it after?