Tag Archive | birth

More Thoughts on Birth as a Creative Process

I am reading a book from the late 80’s right now called Giving Birth: How it Really Feels. It is by Sheila Kitzinger and I had never heard of it until this week. Some time ago I posted a quote about birth as a creative process. I’m only a few chapters into this book and it has so much that relates to the idea of birth as a creative process that I just had to make a new post about it.

“I believe that this is one of the important things about preparation for childbirth–that it should not simply superimpose a series of techniques, conditioned responses to stimuli, on the labouring woman, but that it can be a truly creative act in which she spontaneously expresses herself and the sort of person she is. Education for birth consists not, as some would have it, of ‘conditioning,’ but aims at giving a woman the means by which she can express her own personality creatively in childbirth.”

“The point of education for birth is that childbirth becomes not something that simply happens to a woman, in which the question of how to cope with pain is paramount, but a process in which she actively and gladly expresses herself. It is not a performance to be enacted, nor an examination that must be passed, but is a profound and all-enveloping experience in which she opens herself to the creative power of the uterus…no woman should have to suffer in labour. Instead it becomes an exciting adventure that brings with it a sense of deep satisfaction, thrilling achievement, and triumph.”

“…many women looking ahead to labour worry that childbirth pain will prove too much for them, and they they will somehow ‘give way’ and reveal their true selves. The implication is that our ‘real’ selves are nastier than the images we ordinarily present to the world–and that we require a mask to hide the unpleasantness of our inner natures. But it is this real inner self, capable of the hieghts and depths of emotion, which is also the self which can relish the excitement, drama and tumult of labor and the intensely moving and passionate experience of bringing new life into the world…a woman is completely caught up in the passionate act of creation, utterly committed to the feelings of the moment and to the vivid sensations with which her whole being is flooded.”

I personally identified with these quotes in many ways. I remember feeling that preparing for birth felt like preparing for the biggest test of my life. I remember fearing losing myself and “freaking out.” And, I remember the feeling of utter trimuph and exhaltation after giving birth. It was the most empowering and triumphant experience of my life. I felt like the outer self was stripped away and my real self was revealed and it was NOT ugly, or “mean,” or unworthy, but was beautiful, strong, powerful, magical, and of fundamental worth and value. I felt better about myself after giving birth than I’ve ever felt in my life.

Trusting Women

Sep16

I love collecting quotes about birth and the power of women in birth.

The following caught my eye in someone’s email signature recently:

“We must relearn to trust the feminine, to trust women and their bodies as authoritative regarding the children they carry and the way they must birth them. When women and their families make their own decisions during pregnancy, when they realize their own wisdom regarding birth and its place in their lives, they have a foundation of confidence and sensitivity that will not desert them as parents.”

~ Elizabeth Davis, certified professional midwife (CPM)

This one is from a book I love called Transformation Through Birth:

“There are many women who delivered their children naturally who swear by [a specific birthing method]. It is sad to see so many women credit a technique rather than themselves and their own inner resources for their birthing experiences. Women who birth joyfully do so because of who they are, what they believe, and how they live.” (emphasis mine)

The Umbilical Card

Jul31

A few weeks ago, I got a package of some adorable cards from The Umbilical Card. These cards are SO cute! I wanted to post a quick post to suggest you check out her website and get some for yourself (or for a doula, CBE, midwife, L & D nurse, or other special friend!). The cards have a pregnant belly side view and then a sweet little separate card baby on the inside of the card attached with a plastic umbilical cord. One thing that makes them extra neat is that the have real fabric, real bows, and real beads/cording for necklaces, which gives them mixed-media appeal. Really cute!

She also has “Lactationary” with nursing pairs and some with babies in slings. The cards are available with multiples as well. I love them!

The art of birth

Jun21

I love collecting and exploring creative analogies to giving birth. This one comes from Kathy De Bel’s essay in the most recent issue of International Doula:

“One may see birth like art, appreciated and respected by some, misunderstood and refused by others. It doesn’t always come out the way it was planned, but it is perfect just as it is. There are no mistakes in art.”

Movement and pain

Jun14

A brief quote from Biance Lepori an Italian architect who specializes in the design of birth rooms:

“Even pain dissolves with movement; pain killers are a consequence of stillness.” (emphasis mine)

This architect specifically designs rooms that support physiological birth–birth that unfolds accords to the natural biological processes of the woman, on her own timeline, and under her own power.

I emphasize active, normal (physiological) birth in my classes. I feel like the use of movement is one of the single most important ways we have to embrace labor and its rhythms and also to support healthy, physiological birth. Though I teach a variety of positions for labor and birth, “birthing room” yoga poses, and encourage practicing them, I believe that the movements you need during labor come from within and arise spontaneously during labor, not from specific training and practice. The key is the FREEDOM to use movement in the way you need to (many women end up being denied the right to free movement during labor 😦 ). The benefit to practicing different positions and movements prior to birth is that you gain a “body memory” of how to move your body in labor supporting ways.

Birth Talk Podcast

Jun6

Late last month I participated in a fun podcast interview with childbirth educator Donyale Abe of Birth Talk. You can download the podcast here. We had a great time chatting about birth, fear, homebirth, educating women, ACOG’s statement against homebirth, and our passion for birth and for talking with other women about birth! The audio is a little difficult to hear sometimes when I am talking (maybe that is just on my computer).

As a funny side note, the whole reason this blog ended up being called “Talk Birth” instead of “Birth Talk” is because when I went to get a gmail address, “birthtalk” was already taken. So, I settled for my second choice, “talkbirth.” Later, I set up this site/blog and called it the same thing as my gmail address for consistency 🙂 Then, several months after that I ended up making contact with Donyale via some blog posts I’d made and discovered during our emails to each other that lo and behold, SHE was the person who has the “birthtalk” gmail address I’d originally tried to get! How funny!

Lamaze: Pregnancy, Birth, & Beyond

Jun4

In addition to the Healthy Birth guides I posted about in my last post, I also received my first shipment of Lamaze’s new publication, Lamaze: Pregnancy, Birth & Beyond. This magazine is excellent! I was very favorably impressed. It is brief, but provides an excellent, positive, overall overview of pregnancy, birth, and early parenting. I found myself thinking that if I could give only ONE handout in class, this would probably be the one to choose, since it neatly touches all the important bases and in the tone of confidence, trust, and respect that Lamaze does so well. There is a particularly good article called “Position Statement” that reviews the pros and cons of 11 different positions for labor. It has great photo illustrations as well as clear, accurate information.

I was really pleased with this magazine. The articles are clearly written and easy to understand and takes a clear position on the normal, healthy nature of birth. I also appreciated the articles for new parents about taking care of yourself after the baby’s birth, safe sleeping, and breastfeeding. It is important to remember the continuum extends from pregnancy, through birth, and on to breastfeeding and newborn care! Childbirth educators can sign up to receive their own free shipments of these magazines here. It is published once a year, but shipped quarterly.

There is advertising for disposable diapers as Huggies is a sponsor of the magazine, but absolutely NO formula or bottle advertising, which, of course, is no less than I’d expect from Lamaze and their philosophy.

Speaking of Lamaze, I also really enjoy their basic guide, Giving Birth with Confidence.

Birth as a creative process

May30

I recently finished reading the book Rediscovering Birth and there was a section in it that I absolutely LOVED about birth as a creative process. The author quotes another writer, Dr. Michelle Harrison. She forms an analogy about women giving birth as like dancers on a stage and how just as routine interventions for the purpose of “just in case” would hinder the dancers in their creative process, so too, do routine obstetrical interventions hinder the woman’s capacity to give birth in her full strength and creative power:

“Birth is a creative process, not a surgical procedure. I picture dancers on a stage. Once, doing a pirouette, a woman sustained a cervical fracture as result of a fall; she is not paralyzed. We try to make the stage safer, to have the dancers better prepared. But can a dancer wear a collar around her neck, just in case she falls? The presence of the collar will inhibit her free motion. We cannot say to her, ‘this will be entirely natural except for the brace on your neck, just in case.’ It cannot be ‘as if’ it is not there because we know that creative movement and creative expression cannot exist with those constraints. The dancer cannot dance with the brace on. In the same way the birthing woman cannot ‘dance’ with a brace on. The straps around her abdomen, the wires coming from her vagina, change her birth.”

More Words for Pain

May10

A while ago I posted about needing more words for pain. I got a book for my birthday called Labor Pain (I wanted it in hopes it would have more good coping ideas for me to share with couples in birth classes). In it, she discusses the results of a study about how women feel labor pain. The most frequently used description was “sharp” (62%) followed by camping, aching, stabbing hot, shooting, and heavy. Tiring was another word used (49%), exhausting (36%, intesne (52%), and tight (44%). Other words and descriptions used were burning, grinding, stony, overwhelming, terrific, bruising, knifelike, invaded, baby in charge, powerful, relentless, crampy, like period pain, like thunderbolts, excruciating, frightening, and purposeful. Only 25% of first time mothers and 11% of mothers with other children described pain associated with labor as “horrible” or “excruciating” (the top of the pain-scale range).

Do Epidurals Impact Breastfeeding?

May10

There was a question recently on a list I belong to about the impact of epidurals on breastfeeding. The person asking the question had been told by several hospital based childbirth educators that epidurals do not “cross the placenta’ and thus do not have an impact on the baby. Since this is an issue of concern, I thought I’d share some of my response/thoughts regarding this question here. I was happy to hear Linda J. Smith speak at the LLLI conference luncheon session about this very issue–the impact of birth practices on breastfeeding–and she covered a ton of material about the impact of epidurals on breastfeeding (she also wrote a book on the same topic with the late Mary Kroeger). There is some good information, though much less complete, on her sit e. The biggest problems with epidurals are the impact on the mother rather than the baby, though the medications used in epidurals DO cross the placenta and get to the baby, they are much less seriously impactful than IV or IM narcotics. An epidural refers to the means of medication delivery not what is actually being delivered into the body, so it is hard to say definitively that one has no effect, because different anesthesiologists use different “cocktails” of drugs in their epidurals. They usually use bupivacaine as the anesthetic, but there are opoids included as well, such as *morphine* or other related opoids like that.

All the books I have as a CBE say that medications used in epidurals do make it to the baby, but effects vary. Most effects are connected to what is happening to mom—i.e. mother gets a fever as a side effect of the meds and that stresses baby. Fluid overloading leads to more fluid in baby’s lungs, etc. The main breastfeeding impact on the mother’s side is excess fluid retention in the breasts due to the fluid “bolus” administered prior to an epidural. Baby is a little sleepy following birth and then can’t latch to severely swollen breasts (which are not “normally” engorged, but excessively so due to excess fluid), and so it goes. You often hear from mothers that their nipples are “too flat” for the baby to latch on to and as you probe further you find that the flatness has NOTHING to do with the mother’s true anatomy, but has to do with that excess fluid. Women are so programmed to look inward and blame themselves for problems that it is really unfortunate (like mothers who “aren’t making enough milk” when it is really a pump with bad suction).

Basically most breastfeeding problems that have to do with birth practices are not correctly attributed to the source—the birth practices—and are instead blamed on the mother (“flat nipples”), the baby (“lazy suck”), or breastfeeding (“sometimes it just doesn’t work out”).