According to Parenting magazine, 28% of moms admit to swearing during childbirth.
Now, I am actually surprised that number is so low. Part of me thinks a lot of the women polled may have sincerely forgotten, and another part of me thinks this may be a case of selective memory. I realize a lot of you are C-sections survivors, and so the need to utter an expletive didn't really come until after the baby arrived and the pain medication began to wear off. Others of you may have used your epidural release button like a crazed Jeopardy contest and felt more like singing than cursing. Whatever the reason, I imagine that number would be much higher if the poll was given exclusively to mothers who endured natural childbirth.
As for me, my first experience in labor and delivery involved some challenging back labor, a plentiful baby, and an anestieologist who may or may not have just come from happy hour. Nevertheless, I felt a lot of the labor and, consequently, let a few mild expletives slip. To be clear, I probably would have passed through primetime television, but my PG-13 rating would have been well earned.
However, my second experience was completely different. My son was induced, my anesthiologist was a magician, and, since I went into labor before my husband made it to the hospital, my Ipod had me singing intensely while I waited for the epidural.
The nurses were actually laughing at me. Instead of a litany of expletives, the only sound coming out of my delivery room was:
"Hey, there - ouch- Delilah, we've got -oh no- so much left to say -whoa- if every simple song I wrote -mother of heaven- to you would take -sweet Jesus- your breath away- yikes- I'd write it all- wow."
Though, in the end, I couldn't tell you which was worse...the sounds of my mild swears or my off-key singing.
Did anyone else offend?
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As an L&D nurse, I kind of have to go with the poll. I think more women swear at the IV and epidural insertion than for the actual labor and delivery. I believe the majority of women become self-focused, and drawn inward. Their bodies take over and they are just along for the ride. In my experience,the gals that do rate a PG-13 or R for language are, generally speaking of course, the very young, the extremely unprepared, and those with a "patchy" epidural. I'd be interested to see the statistics of the gals that swore and the gals that didn't receive adequate anesthesia when requested.
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