I'm on my third read through of "Natural Hospital Birth: The Best of Both Worlds" by Cynthia Gabriel. Every time I read it this one sentence really speaks to me in the intro: "So many North American women have experienced the pain of labor, and then an epidural, that our collective memory about birth is now full of hurt but is missing the feelings of ecstasy and success that natural birth provides." Now, I do not believe that all women that have medicated births or c-sections do not feel the accomplishment or the ecstasy of birth. But I do think that this statement really is indicative of the prevalent dialogue we have going here in the United States.
We all have heard the horror stories of birth: the hours of labor, the exhaustion, the excruciating pain, the "ring of fire" of crowning. But what we hear less of is how unmedicated births can also feel good. Yes, they hurt. Yes, they are exhausting. But women do have orgasmic births (some with practice and preparation before hand and some spontaneously), and not even just that--as baby moves down and out pressure on the perineum dissipates, pain in the lower back, abdomen and groin lessens, and you may find the sensation of quite literally deflating. Once baby is born there is often instant relief, a flood of warmth and the feeling of euphoria from all those happy hormones being released into your veins.
So why don't we talk about this? I think it's partially because we live in a polite society. No woman ever wants to hurt another mother's feelings, shame her or make her feel like her birth is in some way less valid because she had an epidural or a c-section. Nor do we want to offend the ears of someone who might be squeamish, or have sensitivities towards the lexicon of sex, pregnancy and labor.
Further, pop culture has framed birth in such a way that drives home the point that birth sucks--think Katherine Heigl's character in Knocked Up screaming "I FEEL EVERYTHING!" as her baby crowns. In the movie she had been dead set on having an unmedicated birth and asked for an epidural towards the very end of her labor, to which her doctor says it's too late (which is pretty much categorically false, its almost never too late). Building this tension, with her being "forced" in the end to do what she always wanted is way more entertaining than just letting her labor without her conviction being broken.
Think of an early sexual experience, maybe even your first. Almost certainly there was some pain associated with it, but the whole experience wasn't framed in a way that you were only expecting pain, you knew there would be at least some pleasure--whether or not you achieved orgasm. But, if the prevailing dialogue around sex in the US was "This is really, really going to hurt," or "That thing is supposed to fit where?!" then we may be less inclined to do it. If we go into labor expecting only pain and no pleasure other than the mental/emotional aspects, then it will likely hurt just that much more.
So maybe we should talk more about the good side of an unmedicated birth--not just posed in the feelings of accomplishment, heroism, and satisfaction, but also in the way labor can very much feel physically good. And instead of framing it in the way of "Well it hurt so bad, but..." we start with the good. Expect pleasure, accept pain.