Response to 4/11

                 In tenth grade, I took a class called Human Development. Instead of a health class, this was in the family and consumer sciences, FACS, or what my parents call home-ec. My class was about 10 girls, as not many boys wanted to take this elective. As the title suggests, we discussed the development of the child. We spent a fair amount of time talking about how children grow, what they need to survive, and even had to have those crying dolls for a weekend. As a part of that discussion, we talked about fetuses and the birthing process. We did the whole video thing too, not that it was particularly educational. However, the most memorable thing about that class right now is the day that we went on a field trip. We went to a maternity wing of one of the hospitals.

               We talked to a couple of the nurses who worked on the floor to see what the process was like. The birthing rooms that we saw were large rooms, much larger than the ones I have seen on television. They had a bed, some type of chair, and a cupboard with a TV. They had plenty of room for any equipment needed and for people if they come in. We also got a small tour of some of the areas for the newborns. This particular hospital has strict rules about who can go where, so we did not actually see newborns. From what I remember, the nurses made the whole experience sound like a painless process. Well, as painless as childbirth can be. They let women walk around the floor and sit on exercise balls to help with the process. I didn’t get the impression that they perform many c-sections, but they surely do some. It may have something to do with location, but where I visited never felt too institutionalized and like they were just trying to get women in and out.

                It has been roughly 5 years since that field trip. Since then, four of the girls from that class have had children. I wonder if they were prepared when they gave birth. Is it something that they felt that they knew enough before they gave birth? Did they know all of their options before they did it? Thinking about their experiences makes me wonder about what knowledge the average woman has. Is it her responsibility to read the books to find out or is it the doctors’ to inform her of everything?