Martyr Moms

I’m getting really sick of the moms who use their birth stories for martyrdom.  When you spend time with moms, especially new moms, everyone likes to swap birth stories.  You feel as though you’ve entered a sisterhood, and so you gravitate towards each other and the commonality of what you’ve experienced.  What really irks me is when people start to throw the details of their own birth stories into other moms’ faces. 

Some moms labored for days, some moms did it without any pain meds, some moms had emergency C-sections, and some moms did it unconventionally in the water and/or at home.  Many of these moms want the world to know that no one- NO ONE- suffered or sacrificed like they did.

Hey- every birth is dramatic in its own way.  Hell, it’s childbirth, and no matter how it’s done, it’s pretty traumatic on your body.  Would I have wanted to labor for days?  Of course not.  But, in the midst of my labor, as everything was progressing so quickly and I barely had time to stop and comprehend what was going on, it was pretty scary.  My point is that every labor is different, and no individual labor is better or worse than another.  I have a ton of respect for my friends who had to be induced, had long labors, and/or had to have C-sections, just as they have respect for me that I did it without any pain meds (I didn’t have the choice, but still, I did it).

Instead of trying to one-up each other, we should be coming together and celebrating the miracle of childbirth, the strength is takes, and bask in the beauty of what our bodies were able to accomplish.  What us moms should NOT be doing is competing for birth story of the year.

Because I would win.

Totally kidding :)