30/05/2026
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/18qUGUgm6U/
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Women are allowed to feel like a badass for giving birth unmedicated.
The second a woman celebrates her birth, in particular for going unmedicated, everyone comes for her.
A lot of it comes from a cultural double standard.
Society regularly celebrates difficult physical achievements:
🏃 Running a marathon
🏋️ Lifting heavy weights
🏔️ Climbing a mountain
🎖️ Military training
🥊 Fighting through athletic pain
People are allowed to feel proud of those accomplishments without being accused of judging anyone else.
But when a woman says:
“I feel like a badass for giving birth unmedicated.”
Suddenly people hear:
“Women who used pain medication aren’t badass.”
Those are not the same statement.
A woman can feel proud of enduring labor without medication for the same reason someone feels proud after a marathon: it was physically demanding, mentally intense, and required resilience.
The problem is that birth has become so emotionally charged that many people interpret personal pride as a criticism of their own choices or experiences.
There’s also a long history of minimizing women’s accomplishments.
Women are expected to:
- grow a human
- labor for hours or days
- give birth
- recover postpartum
- feed a newborn around the clock
…and then act humble about it?
Meanwhile if a man passes a kidney stone, the entire family hears about it for the next decade.
You can be proud of an unmedicated birth.
You can be proud of a medicated birth.
You can be proud of a VBAC.
You can be proud of a C-section.
You can be proud of surviving a difficult birth.
The issue isn’t women feeling proud of what they accomplished.
The issue is that many people have become uncomfortable with women claiming ownership of their strength.
A woman saying, “I felt like an absolute badass giving birth unmedicated” should be about her experience, not an attack on anyone else’s.
-Love,
𝐇𝐞𝐥𝐩 𝐦𝐞 𝐬𝐮𝐩𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬, 𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐯𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐁𝐚𝐝𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐌𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐁𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐛𝐥𝐞