I Ran Across This Thing Today

[ricevermicelli]

(From here.)

C. Jane Kendrick contemplates the story of her own birth, and the realization that her mother's labor was induced. Labor induction is not without controversy. It can be a tool in reducing neonatal morbidity and preventing c-sections, or it can be the evil intervention that leads almost inevitably to that very c-section. But C. Jane (as I can't stop calling her) goes for more. Babies apparently choose when to be born. So induction is the theft of "the first gift of mortality: agency."

I haven't been able to find information concerning how many offspring C. Jane has, but they must be either quite small, or uncommonly disinclined to be willful.

The thought of allowing my children untrammeled agency makes me laugh and laugh and laugh. Did we go to McDonalds tonight? Did Danger Lad! eat fries and fly a new Sinestro toy around the living room while Hotspur had two bites of cheeseburger and then licked a pint of ketchup off her fingers? Are we having a Clone Wars marathon and then staying up all night playing Angry Birds? No? Alas for that first gift of mortality. My babies can have their agency back just as soon as I finish spending their therapy funds on caramel lattes. Even assuming that babies decide when to be born (I doubt it), we generally don't feel that they should be responsible for important decisions until they're old enough to understand the consequences.

C. Jane then goes on to relate this one circumstance of her birth to her infant personality. "'No wonder I was a horrible baby,' I said to Chup, my mind reeling in these new discoveries. 'I'm sure some babies don't mind the chemical push, but that sort of thing would've just made me mad.'"

To the extent that any baby is horrible (and I certainly see that most of them are, at least from time to time), it is just a stage that they go through. It's not anything anyone did. While you're in the early stages of adjusting to the change from perfect comfort at all times to life in this cold world, where it is possible to be tired, hungry, wet, stinky, and uncontrollably bashing yourself in the face with your hands, it is only natural that you will do a little screaming, to take out your frustrations on those around you.

Labor is not, ever, a particularly comfortable experience for a baby, but I don't know that it makes them mad at their parents. That would imply that they understood what was going on, and how and why it happened, which is a lot to expect of someone who is at least a year away from the understanding that you shouldn't stick paperclips into the electrical sockets. Maybe if we acknowledged that the baby didn't have this kind of comprehension, it would be easier to cut the entire family some slack.

Comments

[asciikitty.livejournal.com]

Wow. That's the first time I've heard *that* theory. Fascinating.

[asciikitty.livejournal.com]

It looks like she has two or three children, and the family is Mormon? So perhaps they are, in fact, disinclined to be willful.

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

*contemplates how much Ms5's birth, which included an induction, really basically sucked*

*thinks about how she was the most mellow infant ever*

BWAHAHAHA.

I mean, sure. There were lingering effects of that whole labor thing on her. Like there was that bruise over her ear for a week. Which I'm sure had an enormous effect on her temperament.

[ricevermicelli.livejournal.com]

I was an induction *and* high forceps baby, and my mom just oozes schadenfreude when the kids are being beastly. I evidently spent my early years making her crazy. (Some of the later years too, to hear tell.) I never related it to the birth stuff though. I always thought I was just stubborn.

[jealoussister3.livejournal.com]

You were induced?!?! I had no idea.

[ricevermicelli.livejournal.com]

Yup. Mom was super uncomfortable, and tired of being pregnant, and her doctor was going on vacation, but he said he could put her in as an induction on the night shift. The whole thing seems to have taken about three hours from start to finish, which suggests that they were aggressive with the forceps.

Mom's birth stories underwent radical changes while I was pregnant. Has she told you how her OB's secretary had to make her get a taxi when she was in labor? She was planning to walk from MGH to B&W.

[zuleikhajami.livejournal.com]

I swear to god some people should be banned from writing about birth and motherhood due to criminal stupidity.

[drwex]

O_O

Pre-birth babies... agency... uh... *boggle*

Yeah, i got nothin'. Seriously, this woman needs to get a firm, two-handed grip on reality. Or at least one hand.

[dee-cee.livejournal.com]

I just...but...are you KIDDING me????

I got as far as the line "I would send a message of distrust to both me and my baby..." before I started to sputter.

Yet again, another way to shame a woman over her choices.

[robbbbbb.livejournal.com]

My two year old was just using his agency to bang a tank against the living room window. Perhaps he shouldn't have free reign of his choices?

[ricevermicelli.livejournal.com]

That'd be my opinion of two year-olds, yeah, otherwise expressed as "you may not torture the cat, hit your brother, damage the building, or eat balloons."