As I get closer to the baby's due date, a lot of thoughts have come into my mind, covering a full range of highs, lows, poignancy, goofiness, realism, hypothetical, etc etc.
I was talking to someone at church on Sunday (actually the replacement to my calling, which I'll be released from next week). We talked about a lot of baby/child things (since I'm now a semi-official member of the "club"). This woman is originally from Uzbekistan and has two children.
At some point, I asked her, "Did you get nervous at all for the birth of your first child?". I am always curious to hear how other women approach labor and childbirth and all that. She considered the question for a moment and then responded. "No, not really. I just felt like everything was going to go perfectly and had a lot of confidence because we have such great medical care. I think my mom was a lot more nervous about it for me". Earlier in our conversations, she had told me about a friend of hers in Uzbekistan who, at 24 gave birth to her first child and died. It's a horrible thing to think about but her point in telling me was that in her country, they do not have some of the advances in maternal and neonatal care. Basically, I got the feeling from this woman that she almost couldn't be nervous because she does not take for granted what I suddenly felt like we in America do. We have some of the best doctors and hospitals in the world and she knew that because she could compare her experiences in Uzbekistan with her experiences here, in a modern, industrialized, western nation.
Anyway, it was something I didn't want to forget. How safe someone felt here, with a medical team she truly felt she could trust, even in an unfamiliar, often overwhelming situation. One in which your body is called upon to do things that literally seem to defy the laws of nature (despite the fact that it happens so often in nature and has for so long in history). I don't often think about how other countries handle childbirth but it is something I should probably give more thought to.
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