This Phase #4 of pregnancy is sort of like phase #1 of pregnancy but sort of in reverse. Phase #1 was getting used to being pregnant. Phase #4 is getting used to becoming a father. Phase #4 focuses your attention on The Birth and being a father immediately after the birth.
If you’re using the Birthing Better online birth class then definitely start with the Internal Work audio. You can also start to listen to Birth Journey which guides you through practicing your skills through a dramatized birth. Simulating contractions gives us an opportunity to explain each of the 5 phases as well as how to see and hear exactly how a woman is experiencing her internal sensations.
You’re feeling your baby through the mother’s belly. You now know that your baby is growing. This means your ability to visual this 3-dimensional process of giving birth grows. This means a reality check is important during these short 8 weeks … your baby is big and it’s coming out this woman’s body.
Doing the internal work helps to prepare the woman’s birth canal to stretch and open up to let this big object out. Although women are physiologically designed to have babies, it does not mean that specific preparation isn’t essential. You don’t want your baby’s birth to be delayed because the tissue of the woman’s body is tense and tight. You don’t want this woman’s body to be traumatized or damaged because such a big object came through her tense and tight tissue.
Your job as a man is to switch your relationship to being a partner and father who will help to safeguard both her and your baby. Your job keeps going. You play an important role in helping to prepare the tissue of the birth canal. This takes patience and kindness.
If you have not been working with Birthing Better Childbirth Preparation before, it’s not too late. There are families who discover this valuable resource a week before their birth and learn heaps of skills that enrich the experience.
Three types of births
There are only three types.
- There used to be only #1 … labor contractions and vaginal birth.
- #2 is a labor with contractions yet the birth is an unplanned Caesarean
- #3 is a surgical birth with no labor … just a Caesarean delivery.
If the woman you’re with has had a previous Caesarean then she might be hoping to have a VBAC.
If you’ve been reading this blog you now know that there is a separation between pregnancy and birth. Because you are pregnant then you and your baby’s mother need to prepare her body for birth and learn skills to work with your baby’s efforts to be born.
As you know this should happen no matter which one of these three birth types you end up having. This is so important to really understand. A huge aspect of giving birth is staying connected to the whole process. For women and men who become passive and let the birthing process happen to them without true participation, too often they feel disconnected from their newborn at a time when being connected is so important for starting this phase of being a parent.
This cannot be stressed enough. As a man, you might not understand this because no one has pointed it out. Too many women feel shame, blame, and guilt about their birth experience. This means they still focus on the birth experience when they need to move along to being a mother.
You may have experienced this in your family. There may have been birth trauma in previous birth and you watched your baby’s mother feel disconnected to your baby and you!
If this is your first baby you need to know that this disconnect is all too common. This is directly due to the lack of specifically preparing the body for birth … taking time, being connected, taking responsibility for getting connected. This also comes directly from families who do not have the skills to work with their baby’s efforts to be born … whichever birth they have!
Birth is so important. It’s like a wedding. You don’t just let that happen. You plan it down to details and you participate actively! Then there is the marriage or parenting. You know, as a man, that women have long memories about small details. Giving birth is something happening inside her body and if she feels disconnected to that she really feels disconnected and nothing you say will change that. That is why what you DO is so important!
You also may have realized if you’re already working with The Pink Kit Package that learning about each other’s bodies is often new and unfamiliar. Preparing for birth is not the same as sex … it’s a whole new language, knowledge, and skills. We see sex all around us but birth is still very much hidden except those short videos of the baby being born. If you’ve ever sat down and watched a normal, 12-hour birth from start to finish you would be bored. But while the woman is doing this monumental process she can’t get up and leave for a snack and she doesn’t expect you to either.
This means you do need to prepare the pregnant body to give birth and learn the skills you’ll both commit to using no matter what birth you experience. The birth of your baby demands your full attention even if it is a medically induced non-laboring delivery. Time still passes. Skills are used during the passage of time. You owe it to yourself as a man, father, and partner. You owe it to your baby so that you can feel totally comfortable with your child as soon as he or she is born. You owe it to your baby’s mother regardless of whether you remain in a relationship with her.
Bottom line
During this phase, you are increasingly working toward The Birth and you’re doing that by bringing your fatherhood qualities to this preparation process. Then in Phase #5 … The Birth you will feel perfectly capable of working with your baby’s mother as she works to bring forth your baby
Head to Udemy for all the Fathers-to-be Pregnancy Academy courses. Then at 24 weeks of pregnancy, come back here for the online birthing classes and start with the birth preparation and birth-coaching skills … all developed by hundreds of dads and moms.
Birthing Better skills are housed in Common Knowledge Trust.