ucbesvax.turner@ucbcad.UUCP (05/24/83)
#R:hp-kirk:16500006:ucbesvax:10300011:000:1993 ucbesvax!turner May 23 22:33:00 1983 Apparently, natural childbirth is getting to be quite a science! The recent, detailed submission in net.med was well worth reading. It's good to hear that, at least in some places, hospitals are loosening up a little. Easter brunch with my family had a few surprises, along these lines. One was a nephew, whom I had heard about (born 1.5 weeks earlier) but not yet seen. (Named "Luke"--for the Apostle, not the Skywalker.) My step-mother's parents were at the brunch table when photographs of various delivery room events were being circulated. (Nothing terribly explicit.) An interesting thing: "Pa" stiffened noticeably, and was quite uncomfortable, and gave the photos no more than token glances. "Ma", however, who is 75, looked at them for quite a long time, and with considerable interest. She then commented that she had seen NONE of her babies until many hours after they were born. "And I had four!", she said. A notable thing about this: until then, we had only heard about the three that had survived. Another interesting thing: my sister and her husband are fairly conservative, and I had always thought of Dave as being on the macho side, and Terry as very "wifey" and deferential. The effect of this baby has been quite startling, in some ways. Terry is a good bit more assertive. Dave has no qualms about offering to change diapers. Not a reversal of roles at all, but a conspicuous blending of them. I speculate that Dave's presence in the delivery room had much to do with these changes. Perhaps the experience really brings home to men how much of the work a woman has already done for a baby by the time it's born. It makes them realize that they have a somewhat artificial role in raising children--and yet, should work that much harder at being fathers (not just "breadwinners") to take their deserved place as parents. Pure speculation. I have no children. What do people out in netland think? Michael Turner ucbvax!ucbesvax.turner