“Would you have a root canal without Novacaine?”

I’ve been thinking a lot about what the phrase “natural childbirth” means. Usually when women say they want a “natural” birth I think they mean they want no drugs (e.g. pitocin, epidural), and a home birth, and obviously the majority of humankind has done it that way until relatively recently and many women still do that. But the majority of humankind’s history was also riddled with high mother and infant birth mortality rates, so… I find the idea of “natural” childbirth somewhat nebulous. What is “natural”? No modern drugs? No modern facilities at all? Delivering in unsanitary conditions with a high probability of mother or infant mortality (because that’s what “natural” meant for most of humankind’s history)? Under that definition, any at-home birth today would then be less “natural” than the way our ancestors did it as most women live in decent conditions with 911 just a phone call away.

My doctor said to me “Would you have a root canal without Novocaine? No, probably not. So why would you have a delivery without an epidural if it got to that point for you? The technology and advancements are there. Use them if you need them.” I had never thought about it that way before.

Edit: this is not an opinion one way or another. Just that my doctor said this to me and it totally changed the way I had been thinking about it. There does seem to be a slight tendency among women for this idea of a “natural” birth and I’m just interested in diving in and exploring why that is/what that actually means.