Instagram almost shamed me into refusing pain relief in childbirth

“Ten partner-assisted positions for natural pain relief in labour.” “Five reasons why I refused medical interventions while birthing my baby.” “POV: you birthed your baby at home and it could not have been more perfect.”

I cannot count the number of similarly titled Instagram reels my thumb paused over during my pregnancy. Blissful women sat in blow-up baths, fairy lights casting an ethereal glow as they cradled a freshly birthed baby, naked and covered in bloody mucus. Toned arms expertly strapped three-week-old babies to chests with organic cotton wraps while they explained in detail the power of birthing at home. Flushed women with rotund bellies spoke frantically to the camera about why they would be refusing an epidural during labour.

Mother and child doing well: Bethany Williams with her daughter.Credit:

I kept watching, the algorithm kept calculating, and before I knew it, my entire social media feed was filled with freebirthing content. Home births take place outside a hospital but include a trained health professional – usually a midwife. Freebirthing (or unassisted birth) involves giving birth without any medical assistance.

Speaking to friends at a similar life stage – pregnant or trying to be – it would appear that this is a broader trend rather than my algorithm. And given how much it costs to birth at a hospital in the US (where most of this content is produced), it’s easy to see why more and more people are interested in birthing at home.

After deciding that hospital would be the best option for my first birth, I made a concerted effort to avoid online advice. I refused to follow any influencers, educators or birthing professionals on social media. Despite this, I was being influenced by my algorithm to believe that hospitals were dangerous places, and that medical pain interventions were the choice of a bad mother.

Baby delivered: Bethany Williams with her newborn child. “Even with an epidural to mitigate the pain, pushing my baby out was the hardest thing I have ever accomplished.” Credit:

The tricky thing was, I found the idea of home birth compelling and interesting. When I was 13, I watched my mother give birth to my youngest brother in our living room – her seventh time giving birth, and second at home. But social media doesn’t allow a woman the nuanced exploration of an unmedicated birth without her being aggressively evangelised to join the “natural” way.

And I was convinced. Although I planned a hospital birth, I was determined to go unmedicated. An epidural was an evil device that would ruin the magic of labour and drug my baby. It would prevent us from bonding properly. It would push me down the unstoppable slippery slope to an emergency C-section. Yet these misguided beliefs came from content, not conversations. I was consuming information in bite-sized pieces, from women I had never met in countries I had never been to, without any ability to ask questions or dig deeper.

By the time I went into labour, my brain was awash with conflicting opinions. Scraps of information floated to the surface at different times only to be pushed away by another contraction. What were those 10 partner-assisted labour positions? Surely I wasn’t supposed to start timing my contractions yet – that would produce stress hormones which would slow labour!

In the hospital, I got into the bath and couldn’t tell if I loved or hated it. But wasn’t this the most relaxing place to be? Another contraction – was I supposed to breathe through it or return to my breath after? And another one – why were they coming so fast? Everything felt wrong.

After six hours, I gave up my dream of an all-natural birth and demanded an epidural. It was another two hours before an anaesthetist finally administered the fishing-line-thin plastic tube that allowed the medication to flow and the pain to stop. I couldn’t quite believe it actually worked. So much of my birth preparation had been taken up by steeling myself against this one intervention. I had been so sure it was a terrible thing to resort to, and here I was, in the middle of labour, without pain.

I have no doubt that giving birth with no pain relief is an incredible feat. But so is giving birth with pain relief, and birthing via a c-section. Even with an epidural to mitigate the pain, pushing out my baby was the hardest thing I have ever accomplished. It doesn’t matter how many influencers tell you the “right” way to have a baby – the right way simply does not exist.

This is not to play down the very real birth trauma that many women experience as a result of unnecessary interventions within the hospital system. Birth in Australian hospitals is often treated as a medical emergency that needs to be solved, rather than a human experience that needs to progress in its own time. But although birth is a natural process, the advances of medical science provide miraculous, life-saving pain relief and operations that bring many babies safely into the world and many mothers safely through traumatic labours.

The birth of my daughter was complicated and nothing like I dreamt it would be. In some ways, I was disrespected, but for the most part, I was magnificently supported by the professionals around me. It was not a distinctly beautiful or awful experience, yet completely earth-shattering in its own right. I have birth trauma from some parts, and sheer relief and gratitude for others. But in the end, I listened to my instincts over Instagram, and gave birth in the way that was best for me – and my baby.

Bethany Williams is a 28-year-old first-time mother living in Sydney. She is now enjoying maternity leave and finding time to write in between feeds, nappy changes and generally keeping a baby alive.