Have you ever played the game, Brick Breaker? The point of the game is to use your pod at the bottom of the screen to catch and bounce a ball back and forth to the top of the screen to break bricks. But as you break the bricks little icons fall down your screen and you have to avoid them because their sole purpose is to make the game more difficult for you.
While taking everything that is going on into consideration, you also have to keep your eye on the time, because as time passes, all of the bricks begin to creep slowly down the screen toward your pod. Once those bricks touch your pod, the game is over. You either have to know what you are doing or you are most certainly going to lose. And sadly, even when you think you know what you are doing the game might toss you a curve ball and you could still lose. This game reminds me an awful lot of laboring women in hospitals.
A woman laboring in a hospital is very similar to the pod you are trying to protect in Brick Breaker. Getting through her contractions is like breaking those bricks. Finally, giving birth to her baby is the equivalent to eliminating all of the bricks! However, before that can happen, the hospital, much like Brick Breaker, is going to make that a difficult venture. They will offer her Pitocin, to speed up her labor.
Then they will offer her an epidural to ease the pain that accompanies Pitocin; but an epidural slows down labor. She better keep her eye on the time, because the longer she takes, the closer a cesarean section comes to her precious pod, ultimately keeping her from winning the game. What I would call winning, in this situation, is the woman being able to deliver vaginally and without medication or intervention – inherently, how she intended.
If women have a choice, why would they choose to play this sort of ‘game’? If a woman wants to have a natural, un-intervened, vaginal birth she should be able to do it. It is her game; she should be able to make her own rules. After all, birth should not be about avoiding impending doom, it should be about happily bringing a child into the world.