HW35- Other People's Perspectives

Teenagers are crazy, curious beings in our society. Vastly opinionated and emotionally driven to places and fantasies we can only imagine, we are most certainly. Thus we arrive at the subject of birth, a moment of life that turns the pages of time and carves our lineage onto the very bark of the family tree. Us adolescents, similarly to death, are mostly unfamiliar with the phenomenon, and can only rely on the audio and video that plays in our heads. These visuals we imagine come mostly from two sources, one primary and one secondary: as teenagers we have all (for the most part) heard our "birth" stories, and as teenagers we have all (for the most part) have watched taped "births" in the classroom or in the movies. While these media can serve as a basic tool to familiarize ourselves with the sensation that is birth, none can hold a candle to the actual thing, and in contrast to the cartoonish, comic-like portrayal of birth we see in the movies, the real deal is incomparable.

In my interviews of my peers I found that for the most part we all imagine how we'd like our experiences (or non-experiences) of birth to be, but that nobody knows what to really expect. I noticed that great respect and recognition was given to the role of the woman, such as when Henry Guss told me, "Men don't have to shoot an 8-point idiotic brat out of their vagina." Clearly the role of the woman in a birth is a challenge, as Lawrence Wong stated "women are willing to go through much pain to have children, this means love." When it comes to the dominant fears I saw in my interviewees on birth, the general consensus was that the worst case scenario would be the death of the child or the mother, or both. I find this really interesting because it seems like individually, birth and death can both be seen as beautiful things... but when combined it is a horrifying scene to behold.

My first interview was with Bianca Chiu. I have decided to talk about this interview specifically in its own paragraph because according to the two male interviewees, the woman's role and experience is more important than that of men. And also because she said some particularly interesting things! The first and perhaps most striking statement that she made was that pregnancy itself is often overlooked... AND underlooked at the same time. "A lot of times pregnancy is over-thought, such as how to use guys or books to their maximum usage," she stated, and I thought about how easily one's experience can be influenced by resources inspired by other births. It goes to show how intertwined women's experiences are in general when it comes to birth, and how we all make connections and give credibility to those who have already gone through such experiences. On the other hand, according to Bianca, the process can also be grossly underlooked and even under-appreciated when we divert our attention too far from the life inside ourselves. Another interesting point regarding stigmas that she brought up was the significance of stretch marks. In the eyes of one, stretch marks can be viewed as a gross, embarrassing artifact of the pain and less-glorious aspects of the birthing process. In the eyes of another, these marks serve as "battle wounds", something to be honored and prized as a symbol of life, bravery and heroism. As a male, I don't know what I would think about stretch marks in the woman's shoes, but I guess I would say I would be happy to be reminded of my accomplishment.

All in all, I found that us "wild" and hormonally driven teenagers can be quick to spit out opinions and generalizations about birth, but when we grab the thought bubbles by the throat and dig within, we simply cannot get past a certain wall of uncertainty, where we can only speculate. In reality, not many of us can really personally connect to birth other than our own beginnings... but realistically how much of that can we faithfully remember or connect to? Personally, before and after the interviews I knew the answer: NONE of it. When we relay our "birth stories" in our minds, we don't see the events as they happened, instead we see an abstract illustration of what we've been lead to believe by cartoony representations. We are an ambitious generation, and we have grand visions of what we would like to see in our own stories. All that can be said is all that can be seen, and we have yet to see or hear "birth" with our thinking caps on.