You can’t make this stuff up.
From Mothering.com comes this post entitled I just want to have another baby so I can have a homebirth by YoginiMomma:
I just want to have a nother baby so I can have a homebirth that I was supposed to have, rather than the horrible traumatic hospital transfer I had (see birth stories). I’m sure this is a common sentiment… right?
Wrong!
When deliberately choosing to have another baby, the overwhelming number of women do so because they want another child to love and nurture. One of the most reprehensible aspects of homebirth, however, is that it has nothing to do with the baby and nothing to do with birth. It’s the mother’s chance to star in her own little piece of performance art. Everyone else, medical personnel, her partner, even the baby are nothing more than bit players at “her” birth.
… I feel like I really just need to have that homebirth to heal this SHIT. The problem is… what if the same thing happens (or worse)? I’m just going to keep having babies in search of the homebirth that will never happen? similar to how people keep having kids to get a girl or boy and end up with four of the same sex before they finally call it quits.
Thank you, YoginiMomma, for illustrating the immaturity, self-absorption and selfishness of so many homebirth mothers!
This is a bit much, even for the folks at Mothering.com. Although there are some supportive comments, most commentors appear to be as appalled as I am.
One commentor wrote:
I do not think that any child should be had for any other reason than parent (s) wanting to have another child to raise and to love. It is not this baby’s job to heal you.
You just had a child. Concentrate on your baby. See a therapist. See an attorney. Do not make rush decisions.
Another mother bravely offered this powerful personal experience:
I would say be wary about putting grand expectations on your child and their birth. I did that to my son and realized how unfair it was that I was expecting an innocent baby and his mode of birth to fix something wrong in me and I was so guilt ridden when he got here via failed vbac that became a lifesaving saving emergency (cord issue). He just wanted t to be born and healthy, he didnt care how it happened and I was so disappointed in his birth not being my healing vbac that I grieved for him that he had a mother that was trying to use him for her own emotional needs right off the bat.
Hundreds of years ago, a great philosopher named Immanuel Kant, made a revolutionary pronouncement, “Always treat people as ends in themselves, never as means to an end.” Kant insisted that each individual has intrinsic moral worth that regardless of whether others might or might not benefit from his existence.
In other words, it is nothing short of immmoral to bring a child into the world to meet your own needs. Children are not props whose primary purpose is to bolster your own self-image.
YoginiMomma should run, not walk, to her nearest therapist. She needs to find out why she believes that a specific birth performance is needed for her personal validation. She needs to learn that having children is about what you can do for them, not what they can do for you. Above all, she needs to get control of her overweening narcissism. Children are separate people, with their own needs and identities. They do not exist to boost the self esteem of their mothers.
And natural childbirth and homebirth advocates need to ask themselves where their philosophical movements went so wrong that women have been convinced that they are worthless unless they have a specific birth performance, and that their children are meaningless except insofar as they can bolster their mothers’ self image.
