LOOKING FROM DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES: Part #3
When you think back on all the changes that have occurred in childbirth, you have to ask why a successful Skills-based approach did not continue to evolve alongside the desire for a Choice-based one. There are so many reasons. Remember lots of people were talking, groups were forming, authors were writing and births continued to happen.
Here is just a partial is of why skills unfortunately were left behind.
- The belief ‘There’s no way to know what your birth will be like’ was still a foundation belief that ended up with this tagged on ‘therefore there’s no way you can prepare for it’. Skills were put on the back burner and choices came forward. Women tried to ‘control’ their birth experience through choice.
- Famous people were promoting birth as a ‘normal and natural’ part of life. It is but that brings us back to how those simple words were distorted to imply: easy, safe, instinctive
- The 3 founding fathers: Lamaze, Bradley and Grantly Dick-Read all connected their systems to achieving more ‘natural’ births. There was an underlying implication that skills 1) Could achieve more natural birth 2) If your birth was medical that skills didn’t necessarily work. Unfortunately this has led to the division experienced in birth today and narrowing down the group of women who can have a positive birth. This is why we absolutely MUST grow a skilled birthing population again but focus on ALL births whether there was medical care or not.
- Choices were varied such as: rooming in, early discharge, late cutting of cord, getting out of bed, being able to eat and drink during labor, having more than one support person, baby to belly, baby to breast, delayed delivery of placenta, no cutting down there.
- Choices were coupled with the natural birth message … that somehow women didn’t need to learn how to birth any more than cats or cows. Somehow it was assumed that women knew how to birth just because they give birth. We certainly know that 100% of pregnant women will give birth but just because something happens to you doesn’t mean you know how to do it.
- Skills were actually difficult to define and often see. Choices are more obvious. You choose something and either you get it or not.
Because our goal is to re-enliven a Skills-based Approach to all pregnancies and every birth, we are faced with sorting out the complexity in the conversation around childbirth. Once a woman become pregnant she is thrust into a select group … other pregnant women. During a short period of her life she is pregnant and then it’s over. For a shorter period she is giving birth and then it’s over. Pregnancy is a special time demanding many adjustments. Choices are in fact easier to promote. Most women make a few and leave the rest to ‘whatever happens’ because everyone is still using ‘there’s no way to know what your birth will be like therefore there’s really no way to prepare for it’.
And women truly believe that choosing what color to paint the baby’s room, which stroller and crib is the same as making choices about which obstetrician or midwife, whether to use medical pain relief or when to go to hospital or have the midwife come.
And families got busier as our societies changed. People stopped going to classes.