In our normal lives (in other words, outside of childbirth), the word delivery speaks of a relationship. Specifically

• the mail carrier delivers the mail.  Or
• the pizza guy delivers your pizza.  Or
• the stork delivers babies to the doorstep.

Our relationship to the word ‘delivery’ is actually the relationship.  Delivery isn’t so much about an object so much as it is one person giving another something.

This idea we have about delivery also has an important component about ownership attached to it.  In each of the above examples, there is an expectation that what is coming to me by delivery is mine—but we don’t possess it yet.  The transaction isn’t complete.  Once the delivering party has their money and the receiving party has their object, then entire ownership is granted.

So what does this have to do with babies?  Nothing.  What does it have to do with childbirth?  Again, nothing.  Except that what it has to do with childbirth in the United States is everything.

For all of human history, pregnancy and childbirth has been women’s work.  For what is more quintessentially “woman” than giving birth?  Then a century ago, that started to disappear for us.

We have come to see the experience of childbirth as the part of this process to be avoided.  We think it is because it is painful, or because we have so many other things to worry about.  That’s bull.  The reason is that men stole the work so that they could give the result (a beautiful baby) as a gift.  See, babies can’t be delivered as if they were a pizza, because doctors don’t own them.  They didn’t grow the baby in a lab to deliver it to you for a fee.  Doctors don’t deliver babies.

Women give birth to their own babies.  There is no gift of a baby presented to them: it is hard work!  Incubating precious life, then caring for her as she makes her entrance into the world is nobody’s job but the mother’s.

There are rare cases in which interventions are necessary in childbirth—and I say rare because for the industrialized world, it is less than 10%.  The United States is the anomaly.  And the problem.  Check out this graphic:

 

Women: you are rock stars.  You can give birth to your babies.  You just need to avoid reading any of the What to Expect… books and work with someone that will help you take charge of your own birth rather than keep you in the dark about the nature of birth.

If you want to keep believing in the stork, that’s on you.  Just stop making it harder for women in the U.S. to believe they can do something that women everywhere else in the world are doing: giving birth to their children naturally.