Nature & Birth

Feb20

Today I read a good post called The Nature of Nature. The woman’s birth was precipitous (= 3 hours or less) and she said, “if I were to compare it to something in nature, it would be a riptide.” She concluded her post with this powerful observation: “I am starting to see that a woman’s strength in birth is also in the letting go and allowing herself to tumble fearlessly with the current, never losing sight of the belief that, when the energy of the tide is through, she will find herself upright again on the shore.”

Coincidentally, I just finished reading a book by Sheila Kitzinger called Homebirth. One of the quotes I marked to share was about the exact same thing:

“The power of birth is like the strength of the water cascading in a mighty rush down a hillside. It is the power of seas and tides, the power of mountains moving. There is no way of ignoring it. You cannot fight it. No amount of technique can enable you to be in control of it as you might be in control of a car or a computer. Your birth partner should aim not to manage, conduct, or coach you through this experience, but rather to give you strength and confidence as you allow your body to open and your baby to press through it to life.”

As I noted in comment on the blog post referenced above,  I gave birth precipitously to my second son. I viewed the brevity as a gift and felt a tremendous and irreplaceable sense of triumph, empowerment, joy and euphoria. However, I also felt RUN OVER BY A TRUCK! Actually, the analogy I often use is that it was like a train speeding past me and I had run to catch up and jump on for the ride. A nature-based image that kept coming to me was of being a rock and having waves crash into me over and over again–and then part and flow around me.

My total labor was 2 hours. The serious, intense, active part of labor was about 45 minutes in length. As I surrendered to the tides of birthing, I kept saying, “This is MAJOR!” And it was. 🙂

Another related quote from Homebirth:
“Your breathing dances, you get into the swing of contractions, swimming over each as it rises in crescendo, or breasting it like a great ocean wave. You float, you ride, you ski down the mountain slopes, or leap into the void…The imagery that is likely to be helpful to you will include active verbs of opening, releasing, spreading, unfolding, and fanning out. As contractions sweep through you, concepts that suggest power, energy, strength, and perhaps, storm or even whirlwind suddenly make sense, along with wave and water fantasies–verbs such as stream, pool, flood, gush, flow, and cascade. And all over the world, in many different cultures, woman use visual images of fruit ripening and of the baby’s head like a hard bud in the center of a flower unfurling petals. As you read about birth, and whenever you take time to relax and enjoy anticipatory fantasies, create you own images and dreams that will give positive meaning to all the sensations of labor. Doing this will help you to savor fully an adventure that can be among the most thrilling, intense and satisfying experiences of your life.” (emphasis mine)

Fear-Tension-Pain or Excitement-Power-Progress?

Feb14

I love re-framing traditional concepts of birthing to more positive and empowering perspectives. Recently, I was reading an older issue of the International Journal of Childbirth Education and came across a concept that I immediately loved and will incorporate into my birth classes from now on. Most  childbirth educators are familiar with the Fear-Tension-Pain cycle–wherein fear raises tension in the body which leads to pain and so on. Reducing one element in the cycle leads to reductions in the others–i.e. reducing tension through relaxation techniques leads to less pain and then less fear.

While this is still a very useful concept and I will continue to use it, the new perspective I just read about was the Excitement-Power-Progress cycle. The idea being that labor can be greeted with excitement and welcome instead of fear and anxiety. As the power of birth grows, so does the progress towards meeting your baby! So, you can greet the increased power with excitement and confidence and know that your body is making beautiful progress.

The author of the article I was reading (Stacey Scarborough), phrased it like this:

“Fear = EXCITEMENT about being labor and having a baby!

Tension = POWER, strength, or energy!

Pain = PROGRESS”

Educators as “bankers” or “midwives”

Feb10

I recently wrote on ICEA about two different approaches educators can take to presenting information  (birth educators or otherwise). “Bankers” teach by “making deposits” of information into their students’ minds. “Midwife” teachers do the opposite. Instead of depositing information for the student to store, they “draw out” the information the student already has–so the student “gives birth” to their own inner wisdom.

Click here to read the whole post.

Using the right ingredients…

Feb6

I seem to be able to relate just about everything I ever read to birth. Some time ago, I read a book called Things I Learned from Knitting and in it the author recounts a story about her attempt to make her friend’s delicious stroganoff:

“The recipe was for a fantastic mushroom stroganoff that I thought was one of the yummiest things I’d ever eaten. I hurried to the grocery store to buy all of the ingredients, but there was one problem: I couldn’t afford them. I decided to make do. I bought substitutes…It called for cream; I used milk. It called for portabella and shiitake mushrooms; I used regular button mushrooms. It called for butter; I used margarine. The wine? I substituted water. I painstakingly put together my version of the stroganoff and was absolutely devastated when it was a pale (and sort of gross) imitation of the glorious dinner I had eaten at my friend’s. I explained the outcome to my mum, telling her that I must not have the skill at cooking that my friend had. I proposed that I just needed practice making the dish…’Darling, practice all you want, but you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.'”

How does this relate to birth? When women share their stories with me in person, online, or in articles, I am struck by how often they’ve tried to make do without the “right ingredients” and then blame themselves (or nature) when their birth didn’t turn out the way they had wished. They may have gone to a hospital with a 50% cesarean rate, chosen a physician unsupportive of natural birth, spent much of their labors on their backs in beds, labored while attached to any number of restrictive pieces of technology, taken powerful medications, and so on and then grieve the loss of the beautiful birth experience they had planned.

So, what are the right ingredients? Every woman is different and each birth is different and has its own lessons to impart. However, we do know that some things are the “right ingredients” for many women if they would like to have a normal (physiologically unfolding) birth:

  1. Labor begins on its own (no induction, no pitocin)
  2. Freedom of movement throughout labor (no restriction to bed)
  3. Continuous labor support (from a doula, your husband/partner, or a supportive friend)
  4. No routine interventions (any interventions should be based on the unique needs of you and your baby, not hospital protocol or “this is what we always do”)
  5. Spontaneous pushing in upright or gravity-neutral positions (try squatting, kneeling, hands and knees, or side-lying)
  6. No separation of mother and baby after birth with unlimited opportunities for breastfeeding (do not have the baby taken to the nursery and breastfeed early and often!)

Another wonderful ingredient is confidence in yourself and your body’s natural ability to birth your baby.

Please do not be afraid to seek out a care provider and a birth setting that recognizes the importance of the right ingredients and who will do everything possible to help you use those ingredients to “cook” up a healthy, rewarding, normal birth for you and your baby!

For more information about Six Care Practices that Promote Normal Birth, visit the Lamaze site.

Honesty in Birth Classes

Jan14

I just wrote a quick post at ICEA regarding honesty in birth preparation. I find it a difficult line to walk sometimes—to encourage confidence, trust, and joy in childbearing, while being straightforward about the challenges couples may face when seeking a natural birth experience in a hospital. I always encourage couples to “assume good intent” from hospital staff—they offer medications because they feel like they are helping. I also remind them that routines are powerful and if the majority of births occurring at a specific hospital are induced, medicated, heavily intervened with, etc. it can be difficult to buck the trend. Again, not out of some sketchy motive from hospital staff, but simply because of routine or “this is what we always do” or “this is what mothers want from us.”

No Right Way + Fathers at Birth

Jan10

A few weeks ago, I spoke to a mother from one of my most recent birth classes. She told me something that her husband said to her in labor that I found very profound. Staff at the hospital were becoming concerned that this mother’s labor was “not progressing” and “not normal.” She, in turn, became worried that she wasn’t normal and that something was wrong. Her husband told her: “There is no normal. There is no right way. There is only your birth.”

This was so beautiful, and so true, that it brought tears into my eyes. Last week I finished reading a new book called Fathers at Birth by Rose St. John. In it, she addresses something similar:

“Of course your baby is the greatest gift of labor. but another great gift is you are pressed to your max or beyond, and you succeed. It expands who you know yourself to be…Labor is all about finding your threshold and learning you can go beyond it…If your partner feels, for whatever reason, that labor did not unfold as she had hoped, she needs your assurance. No woman should be judged or judge herself for doing whatever she has to to do to bring her baby forth into this world. And no man should be judged or judge himself for how he attends his partner or how he responds to birth. You are dealing with life on the edge. You do not know what will happen in it, and you are not in control. Together, you are participants in the mystery, and you do the best you can…On some levels, it doesn’t matter how you both get through labor. There is no prescription. No script. No right way. Its commanding power does not depend exclusively on you or your partner to do it. No matter how you get through, it alters and expands you…whether you are powerfully present, totally absent, or anywhere in between; birth deposits its power into your lives. The transformation is enduring. You can never go back.”

She also addresses the “weight” men shoulder when attending their partners in birth:

“Since men are not the ones doing the actual labor and birth, they may be embarrassed to admit how exhausted and relieved they are once it is over and all is well. they may also be reluctant to admit the amount of dedication and work it took them to attend their partner. I don’t think most women (or anyone else) realize the weight many men shoulder during labor and birth. What happens to a man’s partner and his baby, in effect, happens to him…[quote from father re: being present for his wife in labor] I don’t think anyone has any idea of the amount of effort it takes to be in a physically supportive role where you have to take action, yet be in a witness role where you have to be truly present…”

I posted more about this new book at Citizens for Midwifery:

Fathers at Birth

and More About Fathers at Birth

and also at the  International Childbirth Education Association:

Fathers at Birth

Fathers’ Roles at Birth

What Does Coping Well Mean?

Jan7

“I believe with all my heart that women’s birth noises are often the seat of their power. It’s like a primal birth song, meeting the pain with sound, singing their babies forth. I’ve had my eardrums roared out on occasions, but I love it. Every time. Never let anyone tell you not to make noise in labor. Roar your babies out, Mamas. Roar.” –Louisa Wales

Occasionally, I hear people telling birth stories and emphasizing not making noise as an indicator, or “proof,” of how well they coped with birthing–“I didn’t make any noise at all,” or “she did really well, she only made noise towards the end…” Women also come to classes looking for ways to stay “in control” and to “relaxed.”

This has caused me to do some thinking. Though relaxation is very important and helpful, to me, the goal of “laboring well” is not necessarily “staying in control” or “staying relaxed” or “not making any noises.” Instead, I view “laboring well” as involving: listening to yourself; respecting your own needs and acting on them; working with your body; finding your rhythm; trusting your instincts; following your body’s urges/signals; accessing your inner wisdom; finding your unique way along the path; journeying with openness, curiosity, acceptance, excitement and joy; and responding to coping strategies that spontaneously arise from within.

I have been reading Penny Simkin’s The Labor Progress Handbook and she addresses this subject as well:

“Childbirth education programs first emerged in the 1940s, when much less was known about the powerful, multisensory ways in which women spontaneously cope with labor. Much has been learned since then, but older ideas have left their stamp on Western culture…Many people still think that ‘coping well’ means that the woman remains silent and does not move during contractions. Often, caregivers, partners, and the women themselves believe that women who are physically active and vocal are coping poorly, and may strive to help these women to be quiet. However, we now know that women with kinesthetic and vocal coping styles often find much more effective relief from pain and stress when they move and make sounds, than when they try to use the quiet, still techniques of early childbirth methods.”

During my own births I found movement and sound to be of tremendous importance. With my first baby, I felt more inhibited and primarily coped by humming. I spent a lot of time kneeling on the ground with my head on the bed. With my second, I was alone with my husband for most of the time and was much more vocal–“talking” myself through contractions. I also moved around a great deal and found it very important. Talking (well, really rhythmic word repetition) and moving, for me, are parts of “surrendering” to the power, process, and intensity of giving birth. This fits with my personality as well as in “normal” life I talk a lot (talk-to-think) and I also have a lot of physical energy that leads to my “buzzing” around the room a lot or stepping back-and-forth as I speak.

Edited to add that the Feminist Childbirth Studies blog linked to this post with an interesting and insightful further development/exploration of this subject in the post characteristics of a ‘good’ labor and birth experience?

I revisited this topic in a later post: The Power of Noise in Labor

Birth art sculpture depicting pushing the baby out. Roar, mama, roar!

Benefits of Childbirth Education

Dec27

People sometimes wonder what are the benefits of childbirth education. Classes can seem expensive and they wonder what they will get out of them. The main question that researchers have examined is whether classes reduce labor pain (inconclusive). I have a book called Labor Pain that cites research indicating that classes do reduce the need for medication during labor. According to the same book, though study results do not always agree, various researchers have also found:

  • possible decrease in length of labor
  • lower levels of uterine dysfunction requiring augmentation
  • fewer cases of elevated blood pressure
  • “less maternal illness and less use of antibiotics after birth”
  • “more stable heart rate readings in babies during labor”
  • “more involvement by partners”
  • “more positive feelings about birth and giving birth among women attending”
  • less pain during labor
  • “less frequent use of forceps at delivery”
  • “greater awareness at birth”
  • “more enjoyment of birth for women who had attended classes than for those who had not”

Sounds like there are lots of benefits to taking birth classes! 🙂

The Orchestra of Birth

Dec27

I wanted to share a nice quote from Sheila Kitzinger:

“A woman who is enjoying her labor swings into the rhythm of contractions as if birth-giving were a powerful dance, her uterus creating the beat. She watches for it, concentrates on it, like an orchestra following its conductor.”

Rhythm played an important role during my first labor as one of my primary coping tools was humming a song repeatedly–the intensity of the humming increased with the intensity of my body’s work.

During my second birth, which was very rapid, it felt less like a “dance” or a meolody to follow and more like a train that was speeding by very rapidly and in order to stay “with it” I had to “run fast” (mentally) and hop on for the ride!

Questions During Labor

Dec20

One of the things I talk about in birth classes is about avoiding asking the laboring woman too many questions. Questions make her leave “birth brain” and throw off her rhythm and coping skills. I recently read a newsletter from Birthing from Within that touches on this issue in a beautifully articulate way:

“Watching this scene reminded me of what frequently happens to mothers in labor being admitted to the hospital. A mother is mustering up courage and immersed in the profound act of creation and personal transformation–but that is overlooked when she is asked, ‘When did you have your last bowel movement?’ and twenty other questions! When we recognize the hard work and intensity of labor, and stay present to the birthing woman’s experience, rather than blindly following our own agenda, we honor her Warrior spirit.“