The Wisdom I Wish Others Knew: Women Were Not Made To Have Babies
This myth is harmful to women with and without children
Somewhere along the line I fell prey to the myth that women were made to have babies.
Maybe it was because I knew what it meant to have “child-bearing hips” or was given advice during my own first pregnancy about just letting my body do “what it was made to do.” Maybe it was more insidious than that, this myth stealthily invading my subconscious in ways I cannot even now trace.
It has never served me, though. And while I have children, some of my most beloved friends have chosen not to have children or have had that choice forced upon them, and this myth doesn’t serve them either.
I wish I’d known sooner that women are made for so many things, but having babies isn’t necessarily one of them.
The birth of my first child was…traumatic.
I’d made a birth plan (how adorably naïve of me) that included massage, aromatherapy, and no pain relief. I imagined this birth being one that would affirm my identity as a woman, granting me admission to a blissful club of mothers.
If what I imagined was a kumbaya campfire experience, what actually happened was a dumpster fire. My labor did not progress, and I…
