Introduction
Catching the Wily Fox:[1] Build an eight-foot-long wooden fence in the forest. Lay out some bait and then go away for a week, the wily fox is too crafty to be caught in a simple trap, and he will smell you and avoid the fence for days. But eventually, he’ll come and eat the bait. At the end of the week, build a second length of fence at a right angle to the first. Leave more bait. The fox will avoid the fence again for a few days, and take the bait.
At the end of the second week, build a third wall and a gate. Leave more bait. When you come back at the end of a month, the fox will be happily prancing in his safe enclosure, and all you will have to do is close the gate. The fox will be trapped.
This, of course, is what happened to us, the industrial age, medical institutions built the trap we are mired in, but it did not build the trap all at once; that took centuries to perfect. And we were seduced. Seduced by the bait of natural delivery is risky and C-section is painless! Seduced by the bait for medical institutions that C-section is safer and earns more money in less process (Operation Theater) time. And once the gate was shut, we were kept in by the threat of shame and the amplification of risk.
For us, though, the situation is even more distressing than it is for the fox. As the industrial age has faded away and been replaced with connection economy & freedom of choice, the fence had been dismantled. It’s gone. But most of us have no idea that we are no longer fenced. We have been so thoroughly brainwashed and intimidated and socialized that we stay huddled together, waiting for instruction, when we have the first, best and once-in-a-lifetime chance to do something extraordinary instead.
This was our situation in 2013, when we were expecting our first child, we were following the herd. We did not notice that we could have opted for natural birth rather than C-section. Luckily, my wife found about “Birth Village (http://www.birthvillage.in/), The Natural Birthing Centre” in 2015, she has followed Facebook page since 2015 and read almost all the birth stories.
When we confirmed the news of the conception of our second child in 2019, she informed me about natural birthing center and process. Unsurprisingly, I was not interested to listen. But today I am writing my experienceJ. She was determined and she was not Wily the Fox.
The journey towards natural birth started, and we had VBAC/natural birth of our second child in Mar-2020.
To all the mothers and to be mothers out there, come out of the fence and be an educated decision maker for your extraordinary opportunity. To all the fathers and to be fathers out there, do research, support your partner and destroy the fence around you.
This book shall inspire fathers to face the reality, and I am prejudiced that this book will be referred by the mothers and they are already aware of the reality. So the book is more from the father’s perspective.
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