By now you’re 37 weeks pregnant. WOW! The birth of your baby is very near ad this is one of the most special of all birthdays. Being prepared for this big day goes beyond packing for the hospital, when to call the midwife or where the kids will go.
By following these talks, you now have a pocketful of skills that you’ll use when this big day arrives and unfolds, and unfold it will. Over the past fourteen weeks I’ve shared with you some BirthingBetter skills that evolved in the 1970’s from ordinary women and men.
We took the time to prepare our body for birth in the last sixteen weeks, we learned some great childbirth, managing and coping skills for ourselves and exceptional coaching skills for our husbands, boyfriends, sisters. aunts, grandmothers. mothers or friends who attended us.
One of the biggest skill we learned was to how to work with and around all the assessments, monitoring and procedures our doctors and midwives felt were necessary, whether we liked them or not, wanted them or not or had to have them. When we bought our terrific skills into the reality of our birth we really felt the shame, blame and guilt affecting so many mother’s and father’s that lingers from their childbirth experience.
We can debate the pros and cons forever or the medical profession and childbirth but while we debate it, we want women to have skills because they’re going to have to deal with the assessments, monitoring procedures.
Whatever we believe the choices we have or don’t have, we’re also going to have another contraction, whether we birth at home, in a taxi, birth centre or hospital we deserve and are entitled to and want to have a positive birth experience and have the skills to handle that next contraction.
We can’t always control the outside environment but we can control how we respond to the next contraction and the next rest period and we can do that as a family in the presence of professionals. In the 1970’s many positive changes occurred, no more animas or shaving, we can move around, labour and deliver in the same room, no mandatory episiotomies, we could delay the cutting of the cord, we could breastfeed at birth, have rooming-in, early discharge, no bottles for the baby and being awake if we needed a caesarean.
Medical assessments, monitoring and procedures continue even with those changes and often mum’s and dad’s feel disappointed, let down, angry at themselves or others or the situation after birth. These negative feelings can last for years and can have a devastating impact on the family.
One of the great skills we’ve ever learned has been to work with whatever is happening. Birth plans may lead the way but birth reality is what you have to work with. With our BirthingBetter skills we don’t freak out at the rough internal because we’ve done the internal work and know how to relax, even if the midwife, doctor or obstetrical nurse isn’t so gentle when we have to stay in bed or are too exhausted to get up, even if we wanted to have an active birth, we continue to breathe in a relaxed manner, our husbands continue to use the common language, it helps us focus on relaxing inside the pelvis.
We do the pelvic clock Kate’s Kat and find ways to stay open. BirthingBetter families rarely feel let down by their birth, oh perhaps we could’ve done more internal work or made our sacrum more mobile but we forgive ourselves. We don’t look for perfect births; we look for births we feel proud of, of how we managed and how we worked together.
No more father’s who feel they let their wife down, no more women who are angry with her husband’ who didn’t know how to help. We wasted no time being angry with the medical profession for doing their job; we got on and did our job.
When we apply one or more of our skills at every moment we feel in charge regardless of what is happening around or to us. The funniest thing is that we all feel we have a natural birth even if it’s full of medical care and assistance because basically we feel we did it ourselves. Spread the word.