CHOICES FAIL TOO MANY WOMEN … AND HERE’S WHY!
There will be both women and women who work as birth providers who are tearing their hair out with these posts … or probably ignoring them.
Sure there are women who have made ‘choices’ about their birth and all has unfolded as planned. But these are few in number and few and far between and we all know this. So where how did we get to this place where only a handful of the 3,800,000 birthing women each year have a great birth experience? Why do we shut down the truth and what can we do about it?
There are so many reasons why the present Choice-based childbirth trend fails and every post is touching on all those reasons. How depressing there are so many. So here’s another one.
INFORMATION, KNOWLEDGE, WISDOM
The Choice-based approach focused almost exclusively on gathering ‘information’ with a belief that the more knowledge you have the better choices you’ll make and that by gathering information, being knowledgable that you have achieved wisdom.
How sad when a woman has done all of this with due diligence and labor kicks in with painful contractions and everything she’s learned and all the information just doesn’t help her cope and becomes irrelevant.
When was the last time you knew in your body’s experience what 3 cm, 50% effaced and a +2 baby meant to what you were feeling?
We’ve treated birth as though it’s a Mind experience rather than a body one. Whether you have a labor and vaginal birth, labor and Caesarean delivery or non-laboring surgical birth it’s still a body experience … in fact an activity you’re doing.
In order to change childbirth we’ve got to grow that skilled birthing population. And it’s hard! Few women or men have been at any birth much less many births. We just do not see the range of behaviors that women exhibit as they do the activity of birthing.
This means birth and coaching skills are more important. That’s why a societal expectation that families learn birth and coaching skills is so important. We should want to go into our own birthing experience knowing we are skilled. We should want our loved ones to be skilled birthing their children.
Learning and practicing skills eventually creates mastery. Information alone does not create mastery. We can clog our minds with information and knowledge but when we do any activity it is best done with skills. Does information and skills work well together … sure. But information alone has not proven to change childbirth for the majority of women and men having babies.
What’s neat about skills is they can be used in any birth. No longer do we have to see only certain births as ‘good’ and others as … well you know. And this is done all the time. You just have to read the blogs and comments online about the benefits of ‘natural’ birth and how the medical profession is robbing women of good births to know something is way out of balance. This attitude is what has produced the shame, blame, guilt and so much disappointment … and frankly the tuning out of the conversation.
Ideally a Choice-based and Skills-based childbirth trend would be best but we have to deal with the issues around ‘choice’. What happens to women who choose ‘natural’ birth and the unexpected happens? Are they now left out from having a good birth or do they have to just settle for ‘that’s the way it goes’ or ‘tough luck’? Shame on us. What happens to women who ‘choose’ lots of medical care. Are they just left out because that’s what they want and looked down on by other women? Shame on us. What happens to women who choose a birth provider who gets sick that day and she ends up with someone she’s never met and doesn’t like? Is she left out from having the birth she wanted? How sad.
You can see why choice fails so many women because choices are variable and very ephemeral. Skills however are grounded. This means that no matter what is happening to or around any birthing woman she can have a set of skills to work through the activity of birthing her baby. This is power! We must want this for ourselves and others.
We can only reach out to each of you through the passion of our words and the thoroughness of our consideration on the topic of childbirth.
Here’s a link. This link will be put on all the posts. Kristen has 6 kids, the last 3 are PK babies. She KNOWS about birth and is one of our affiliates. That means if you purchase The Pink Kit through her she gets a commission. Her husband Scott’s first baby was a Pink Kit experience. He’ll explain how The Pink Kit made certain he was able to become a skilled birth coach to a woman who had previously had three great births.!
Kristen’s written a time-line calendar for use of The Pink Kit. You just need to sign up to her mail list (we don’t keep a mail list) and she’ll send you the Time Line. She’s worked through both Edition #2 and #3 of The PInk Kit so she knows all it’s imperfections and la-dee-dahs past them to the skills she wants to improve for each birth. Can women and men have better births each time? Sure can! The more skilled, the more we master the experience.
http://blog.naturalbirthandbabycare.com/pink-kit-timeline-from-natural-birth-and-baby-care-com/
Please join the Movement to grow a Skills-based childbirth trend. Don’t’ let another birth go by without that family being skilled.