Confusion In Childbirth 1
Working through this article: We Need to Talk About Childbirth
We’re discussing why the present childbirth message and conversation is leaving so many of us out. Today we’re going to discuss the author’s fifth suggestion. Please remember our conversation is not targeting this author as a person who obviously cares and is a dedicated midwife. We’re also not attacking the concepts she is putting forward. We just know that this concept has not served the vast majority of us as pregnant and birthing women and we want to discuss how that conversation needs to change along with the actions families take for themselves.
5. Scents and sensibility: What ambiance and energy do you wish to create in your birth-room? Make it intimate, we are sensual beings; use all of your senses. Aromatherapy is potent! Use it to relax, uplift, dissipate fear and fill you with abundance. Aromas can help to anchor affirmations and change your brain wave allowing deep relaxation when used with acupressure they can even give you a helping hand with your surges.
Way back in the early 1970/80s when natural birth was really the rage and Birth Plans were just becoming popular many women would make certain to tell their obstetrician, midwife or hospital that they wanted music or fragrances only to discover that during the labour that they hated any distraction. You’d hear women say: ‘Get that smell out of here!’ or ‘Turn off that bloody music’.
Why is that? The author connects our human sensuality to birth. Many natural birth advocates do yet the vast majority of us as birthing women do not feel sensual at all. We feel very primitive and often out of control. We can’t control when a contraction will come, how long it will last or how painful it will be. We don’t feel sexy, pretty or even generous in giving to others. We are forced to concentrate and focus. Any distraction to that deep focus and concentration is a disruption. That is why scents and music become unpleasant because they become a distraction.
There are women who read this who think we are saying that women have no control. We’re saying that unskilled women most often lack control. This is why our Trust has spent 45 years speaking out into the global conversation about childbirth and promoting a global message that pregnant women absolutely should, must and can become highly skilled to birth their baby whether they labor or have a non-laboring surgical birth, whether they like music or scents or hate them and just need to get on with what is happening.
If you know how to expand inside your pelvis with every inhalation and soften around the inside of your pelvis (The Pelvic Clock) with every exhalation then doing so becomes an anchor with every breath you take. This simple act also creates space for your baby and helps your baby move down, through and out of your body.
If you love scents … great. If you love music … terrific. What If (there it is again that always nagging question) you wanted either hoping that either would bring you peace, relax you and dissipate fear yet didn’t? And What IF you have the skills to just keep opening up with each inhalation and softening inside with each exhalation? Imagine the difference in yourself. What works is your own capability and choice to use skills!
Birthing Better skills were developed by moms and dads in the early 1970s in the US and used by many thousands globally in all types of birth. Birthing Better online birthing classes are housed in Common Knowledge Trust.
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