{"id":8207,"date":"2015-05-07T06:30:16","date_gmt":"2015-05-07T10:30:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/?p=8207"},"modified":"2015-05-07T06:46:53","modified_gmt":"2015-05-07T10:46:53","slug":"what-i-learned-from-the-birth-of-a-princess","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/2015\/05\/07\/what-i-learned-from-the-birth-of-a-princess\/","title":{"rendered":"What I Learned from the Birth of A Princess"},"content":{"rendered":"

The world was abuzz earlier this week as Prince William and Kate Middleton welcomed their second child, beautiful baby girl Charlotte (a name I adore thanks to my own awesome Great-Aunt Charlotte). \u00a0But instead of celebrating and welcoming this precious girl into our world, people have taken to judging and speculating and it’s all just shown me one thing:<\/p>\n

We still live in a society where labor and birth are viewed as traumatic, risky, horrifying experiences, true medical emergencies.<\/p>\n

It first came to my attention shortly after Kate emerged for the first time with Princess Charlotte, ready to head home. \u00a0My Facebook feed lit up with comments about how great she looks despite how miserable she must feel. \u00a0The astonishment that she would be heading home already.<\/p>\n

When I had Honeybun, I spent two full nights in the hospital and waited until they told me I could go home. \u00a0I never even\u00a0thought<\/em> about going home sooner than a few days after. \u00a0But after moving to Ireland, receiving a lot of my prenatal care there and learning about their medical system for birth, I realized something: we are doing it all wrong here!<\/p>\n

When I returned back to Florida at 38 weeks to wait for Sugarplum (who arrived a week later), I was much more relaxed. \u00a0She entered our world at 11:37 pm after 21 hours of labor and at 8 o’clock the next morning when my nurse came in I made an (apparently) outrageous request: I wanted to go home that day. \u00a0The nurse was mortified that I would even\u00a0ask<\/em> less than 12 hours after giving birth but thanks to my amazing midwife, Sugarplum, hubby and I headed home to be with Honeybun just 19 hours after she entered our world. \u00a0Because in most other places in the world (like Ireland and the UK) it’s NORMAL! \u00a0Women an babies head home where they are comfortable and are checked in on in by their midwives in the comfort of their homes.<\/p>\n

The Duchess has every right to look amazing after giving birth. She has every right to feel amazing. She worked really hard the past 9 months to get her baby girl and she\u00a0should<\/em> be over the moon about it! \u00a0And I am here to tell you, you don’t have to be miserable after giving birth. \u00a0You can be happy, healthy, comfortable even! \u00a0I’ve done it, it’s possible (below is me minutes after Sugarplum’s birth, my sister “lovingly” calls this the “bitch picture” because she hates how good I apparently look.)<\/p>\n

\"2010\"<\/a><\/p>\n

But I didn’t feel\u00a0<\/i>horrible, I felt ecstatic to have my baby girl here. \u00a0And sure, her delivery was complication free and that plays a big part, but I’ve also never bought into the hype. \u00a0I’ve never felt birth was dangerous, scary, traumatic. \u00a0I think it’s a beautiful life event.<\/p>\n

Then the articles started rolling across my feed. \u00a0Kate delivered with midwives present (oh the horror!)<\/p>\n

She delivered Charlotte 2 1\/2 hours after arriving at the hospital.<\/p>\n

She didn’t have an epidural!<\/p>\n

Even speculation on whether or not she was induced.<\/p>\n

To me, all these things sound like the Duchess just had a normal, healthy birth.<\/p>\n

Midwives deliver over half of all babies in the UK (compared to approximately 8% of births in the US). \u00a0In many parts of Europe, midwives and doctors work together and most low-risk births are attended by midwives and there is nothing unusual about it.<\/p>\n

As for the timing, there are two possibilities: 1) She had precipitous labor\u00a0and Charlotte was born after a very short labor, it happens. \u00a0Regularly. \u00a0There is nothing really unusual about it. \u00a0Or 2) She labored at home (or Kensington Palace or whatever place she was hiding out before the birth) for hours before she went into hospital. \u00a0I would assume if this was the case, she was probably checked on regularly by the queen’s physicians or her midwives who were on call. \u00a0Most women (especially those opting for a natural delivery) want to spend as much of their labor in the comfort of their home as possible.<\/p>\n

And as far as epidurals go, their use is much lower in the UK than here (just over 30% of all births verses over 60% of vaginal births here in the US). \u00a0This is partially because UK mommies have more options for pain relief during labor including gas and air which in sparsely available in the US despite it’s proven efficacy in providing pain relief as well as its overall safety.<\/p>\n

So why the big fuss? \u00a0I don’t see anything crazy, unusual or astounding with her birth story. \u00a0She has a beautiful baby girl and good for her for relishing in the moment with her new mom glow!<\/p>\n

\"princess<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The world was abuzz earlier this week as Prince William and Kate Middleton welcomed their second child, beautiful baby girl Charlotte (a name I adore thanks to my own awesome Great-Aunt Charlotte). \u00a0But instead of celebrating and welcoming this precious girl into our world, people have taken to judging and speculating and it’s all just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8220,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,9,388],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-baby-business","category-family-life","category-the-pregnant-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8207"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8207\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8223,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8207\/revisions\/8223"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}