What a Wonderful World

In our age of doom and gloom and everyone prophesying the "end of the world," the recently deceased President Hinckley would often refer to the times in which we live as "marvelous" and he would speak about the wonderful technological advances of our day. When I would hear him talk like that I would sometimes roll my eyes and wonder if he really knew what life was like down in the trenches? However, I have recently been thinking about a subject near and dear to me -- childbirth -- and have been realizing what an amazing time we live in and how glad I am to be delivering children now as opposed to any other time in history.

Most of you know I now deliver my babies at home and I have had wonderful experiences with that. However, due to some outside circumstances, I may end up delivering at the hospital this time. When I explained this to my oldest daughter she started crying and said, "Who in their right mind would have a baby in the hospital?" It was then that I had my moment of perspective as I tried to explain complicated "grown up" things to a developing mind.

I told her how wonderful it is to live in a time with so many choices. I can have a baby at home, in the hospital, a birthing center, etc... I can have an epidural or not. I can have a c-section if needed instead of dying or having my baby die. The important thing is to have a healthy baby and a healthy Mom! It's wonderful that God has given us so many ways to go about this and has, for the most part, left it to us to decide the experience WE want to have.

My only "thing" is that I hope women take a few moments to realize just what their options are and to get educated about their childbirth experience. It wasn't until my third pregnancy that I even learned about how the uterus works and all the muscles involved with labor and delivery. Just understanding that helped me have a much better delivery.

Even though the world may be "ending", when it comes to childbirth, the 21st century is definitely the century in which to live.