FAQ

Water births have a very long history throughout the world in some cultures ranging from Egyptian to Guyana to South Pacific but water births became popularized from Russia in the 1970s Do a bit of research about Russian water births. There are some amazing videos. Water birth in the US and most of Europe is quite different, the pools are shallow and there is more concern about getting the baby’s face out of the water shortly after the birth. But if you want to see amazing births and babies swimming take a look at both Russian water births and the ones in warm oceans.

For those of us born in cold climates there is no recorded documentation of water birth.

There are differing opinions about how best to use water for birthing. There’s some evidence that getting into a warm tub/pool of water too early in labor slows things down. Also if the water temperature is too hot women can feel faint and get dehydrated. If the water temperature is too cold then the woman can begin to shiver and that can be hard to stop even after getting out of the water.

Even though a water birth isn’t a shower, there are women who love spending time in a shower … once again make certain the water temperature is neither too hot or too cold. Also rehydrate often. You are in water but you are not necessarily drinking it so remember to drink room temperature fluids every hour or so.

Some people say that a woman’s position in water does not impact the labor or birth but that’s just not accurate. Whether in water or not, the position of the mother may impact the ability of her baby to move effectively down, through and out her body just as if she were not in water. What’s important is to pay attention to how effective each contraction is. If every contraction has a bell shaped curve and a distinct peak then the position the woman is in is not hindering her baby’s birth journey.

Sometimes women get into water during birth because they are having trouble coping with the natural pain of labor contractions and the water is soothing but sometimes that soothing sensations is labor ‘backing off’ and become less effective. Once again, it is paying attention to the bell shaped curve and also whether the labor contractions progress every hour or two by becoming longer, stronger and more intense. Don’t’ use water to slow birth down.

Depending on your birth provider or if you are birthing on your own, you must determine when to lift your baby’s face above the water so he/she can take her first breath. It’s important that you pay attention to your baby’s face. While the baby is attached and being oxygenated during pregnancy and birth through the placenta and umbilical cord, the placenta becomes increasingly less effective toward the end of labor. If there’s a good supply going to your baby, the cord will still be full, shiny. If the cord is flat and white then the baby is not being supported by the placenta and needs to breathe. Also pay attention to the color of the baby. A baby who has not yet taken a first breath is not pink. If there is an gasping reflex then lift your baby out of the water, place on tummy down and head slightly down so the baby can drain.

Some women love birthing in water while others get into the pool, stay a short time and don’t like it.

It’s hard to think of a woman dying in childbirth. In traditional cultures the death of a baby is less mourned then the death of a mother. The most common causes of death during birth are bleeding too much, having an infection, severe toxemia and obstructed labor. There are some less common causes such as an embolism. Those are directly related to birth. Of course, some women bring into their pregnancy health issues that can cause death such as cardiovascular disease or HIV and certain types of anemia.

Women do not die from the naturally occurring pain of labor contractions although women who lack birthing skills can feel like they will die from the pain … that’s the ‘suffering’ that is known around the world.

There is no doubt that pregnancy and birth are both a normal part of a woman’s life and are safe for the vast majority of women and babies even if there are health issues. On the other hand pregnancy and childbirth can have unfortunate outcomes … death of the mother being the most extreme.

The modern medical approach to childbirth has improved maternal wellbeing during both pregnancy and birth. At the same time, pregnancy and birth then becomes treated as though there is always a potential risk and that response is out of proportion to how women can die. In other words, although women can die in childbirth any woman is more likely to die from just about anything else then while giving birth. In other words, a woman is more likely to die in a car crash or be murdered by her partner then die in childbirth. But it frightens people to think that women can die while giving birth and so modern maternity systems become risk averse and impose a huge amount of ‘standards of care’ around pregnancy and birth as though death were common.

The justification for imposing an extraordinary amount of medical care during birth is a stated belief that if a baby or mother dies during birth that this death is the most tragic type to happen. In reality, the death of any woman or child is equally tragic to the family and friends of that individual.

If you are afraid you might die in birth then you 1) have to check with your birth provider as to whether there are any measurable risks that might lead to your death. 2) have to honor your feelings even if they are based on anxiety. 3) Do what ever you believe is necessary to reduce any risk of death that you might be facing. 4) Share those concerns with someone you love.

Every woman is hard-wired to be anxious about giving birth. This anxiety is in our cells. Prior to modern medical care, we had to take care of ourselves. Every culture has its own sophisticated health and spiritual system that focuses greatly on pregnancy and birth. This anxious is actually heightened awareness and should be cultivated. As we move through pregnancy, we are moving from ‘becoming’ to ‘being’ a mother and it is during pregnancy we develop this heightened awareness that is so important as a parent. Do not run from it but grow it. By doing so you can often recognize whether your concerns are in your imagining or something you need to pay attention to and do something about.

The frank answer … nothing. There is no pain that is equivalent to the pain associated with childbirth. But there are things to know about it.

• With the right skills the naturally occurring pain of childbirth is manageable even if you hate it.
• The pain of childbirth occurs almost exclusively when the cervix is stretching open and is only localized onto the vaginal tissue during the delivery.
• Unless you have back labor which can nag constantly, the pain of childbirth comes during a contraction, wave or rush. It starts, builds, peaks, subsides and goes away which means the pain of childbirth is not constant.
• Nagging back labor pains in birth are caused by the baby pressing on the nerves that run down the spine and through holes in the sacrum … that bone at the end of your spine. With skills you can create more room inside your pelvis and ease that pain.
• The pain of childbirth is rarely connected to a health problem and if you have any concerns you should ask your birth provider. If they tell you the pain is normal then it is. This is why skills are so essential.
• Women who have had terrible menstrual cramps often fear that childbirth pain will be like that but worse and they quickly learn it’s nothing like period pains. Most of these women find childbirth less painful or manageable because the pain comes during contractions and eases between them

We’re told that women forget the pain immediately after birth. That is shear nonsense. We always remember the pain but we can’t recreate it.

There’s also no way to know what your birth will be like but there are ways to prepare for birth.

1. Have skills to prepare your pregnant body to give birth.
2. Learn, practice and use birth and coaching skills to work through all the phases of every contraction: as it starts, builds, peaks, eases and goes away.

Every birthing woman can learn to cope with childbirth pain. No one is telling you that you need skills to birth. This means you are more anxious about birth then you need to be. Without skills we naturally feel anxious about the pain that is coming. We fret about it. When we are skilled then we know we have the capacity to cope, deal with, work through and manage pain.

Another way that childbirth pain is different is that it is productive. What a funny word but it cuts to the essence of what birth is. At the beginning of most labors, the pain of contractions is only a tightening but not painful. As the cervix is thinned and stretched more and more open the pain increases. Once the cervix is fully open and your baby moves into the birth canal if you have used skills to prepare the tissue inside your vagina you will feel very little pain because your tissue with open up rather then being stretched and the ‘ring of fire’ become the pain of 2^nd stage.

So as the pain gets more intense you are closer to the birth of your baby. Therefore, you need to understand that the labor is productive when it is progressing and progressing labors means the contractions come closer, are longer and more intense. The bottom line … learn birth and coaching skills and work with the 5 phases of every contraction.

Preparing for labor induction? Do you mean physically, mentally or emotionally? From our Birthing Better Pink Kit viewpoint the way to prepare for birth (whether a labor induction or not) is to prepare your body for birth then learn birth and coaching skills so you can work through the labor even if you have an induction.

A labor induction is when your obstetrician wants to get your labor going. It’s a medical procedure and you can use your birth and coaching skills throughout that labour induction. Don’t you think using skills would help you cope with any discomfort or anxiety you might feel during the induction of labor?

Truthfully … many unskilled women believe ‘childbirth is the worst pain I’ve ever felt’. In other words, unskilled women think childbirth is bad … meaning painful.

The most important word is ‘unskilled’. Skilled birthing women absolutely can cope, manage, deal with and work through the natural occurring pain of childbirth and don’t find childbirth too bad. They find it manageable.

If they have a skilled birth coach (husband, partner, friend or relative) then any birthing woman will cope even better.

Prepared childbirth comes in two forms:

1. Research, gather information, think deeply, make choices and write a Birth Plan. All of this would be considered prepared childbirth in the present Choice-based childbirth trend.
2. Prepare your pregnant body by using specific skills to soften, open and create space in your pregnant body then learn, practice and use birth and birth coaching skills during your baby’s birth. Create a Skills-based Birth Plan so your birth professional knows what skills you’ll use during your baby’s birth.

Ideally, create both a conventional Birth Plan and a Skills-based Birth Plan and then you’ll truly be prepared for childbirth.

Childbirth is not painful with an epidural. Birthing women use an epidural because childbirth is too painful.

For a few women having the epidural administered is painful for a few minutes and sometimes the epidural doesn’t work well or at all.

It’s always best to allow your body to recover after childbirth. There are different forms of exercise that you can use immediately after childbirth … the best ones are gentle such as yoga. Vigorous exercise after childbirth should not occur until after 12 weeks after childbirth. Your uterus has gone back to pre-pregnancy size.

If you have had a Caesarean then your obstetrician or midwife will advise you to when you can exercise after childbirth.

For most unskilled birthing women nothing is more painful than childbirth. We’re often told ‘once it’s over you forget how painful childbirth is’. That’s nonsense. We remember the pain but we can’t bring it back. Just as we remember the pain of a toothache but once it’s gone we can’t bring it back or a broken bone etc.

There are lots of painful things in life beside childbirth but childbirth is painful in a particular way. Often we’re told ‘childbirth pain is productive’. That means that as labor progresses the contractions become more painful because they get longer, stronger and closer together.

The pain is associated to the dilation of the cervix. We could almost have a survey and ask other women what was more painful than childbirth.

There’s always been a belief that the best way to prepare for breastfeeding before birth is to toughen your nipples. That’s done by briskly rubbing them. Does that work? Probably not because the baby doesn’t rub the nipple but sucks vigorously on it and it gets wet and the milk ducts have to open up and you have to let your milk flow down.

One really good way to prepare for breastfeeding before birth is to watch other women breastfeed … either personally or on YouTube. Notice everything the woman is doing and imagine yourself. Watch babies at different ages because breastfeeding is a learned skills between your baby and you so it takes time to become an experienced breastfeeder. Watch and learn.

If you have had a simple, straightforward birth then you can recover from childbirth in a few hours. If you’ve had a complex birth with lots of medical assessments, monitoring and procedures then it can take up to 12 weeks to recover from childbirth.

If you’ve had a c-section then you can either recover quite quickly (although your obstetrician will give you guidelines so recover is smooth and you don’t run into difficultles). Other women who have had a Cesarean take a long time to recover from birth.

There is both the physical recovery from childbirth as well as emotional recovery from childbirth. Some women experience birth trauma and it takes years or never to recover from childbirth.

The cost of natural birth depends on where you live. If you live in a country where medical care is free or of minimal costs then the cost is nothing or not high. If you live in a country where you have to pay for your health care then natural childbirth can cost up to $5,000. You’ll have to shop around.

Remember you can have a natural childbirth in hospital, Birth Center and at home. So the cost of natural childbirth will depend on where you birth.

The reality about natural childbirth is simple … giving birth is like nothing else you’ll ever do. Natural childbirth is a relationship between the birthing mother and her baby. For 9 months or so, the baby has been growing inside the woman. At some point the baby wants to be born. For a baby to be born via natural childbirth he/she has to open up the mother’s body so he/she can come down, through and out that body.

To be born a baby has to open the container of the mother’s body and this activity produces a stretching inside the mother’s body that has either never happened before (first birth) or has (subsequent births). This stretching can be very, very, very painful or manageable or relatively painless.

Natural childbirth is not like anything else but it’s understandable as it unfolds. The best way to cope and deal with natural birth is to become a skilled birthing woman and skilled coaching father. Natural childbirth does not have to be like anything else and it’s unknown until it unfolds but when it does unfold, natural childbirth has a rhythm … contractions. So you learn skills to work through the 5 phases of every contractions.

The #1 best way not to tear during childbirth is to learn the skills to prepare your baby’s birth passage for birth. In The Pink Kit there is a resource called The Internal Work. You’ll be taught how to have your partner help you prepare ‘down there’ and how to do it yourself. Start at 32 weeks of pregnancy and do it religiously 5-10 minutes/day and the likelihood of tearing during childbirth will be reduced by 80% or more.

The very, very, very best way to get through natural childbirth is to learn, practice and use birth and coaching skills throughout your natural birth. Childbirth is natural which means it will happen after pregnancy. You will not naturally know how to cope with the pain of contractions. However, being a skilled birthing woman and skilled birth coach means you will get through childbirth by working through each of the 5 phases of every contraction.

You get through natural childbirth by staying on top of and remaining in control as your cervix opens during the 1^st stage of labor that is where the intense pain can occur. You can also prepare your baby’s birth passage from 32 weeks onward and then the ‘ring of fire’ associated with 2^nd stage is prevented or greatly reduced.

Having skills means you’ll get through natural childbirth more easily.

Every woman wishes there were a quick fix to lose weight after childbirth. Certainly one of the best ways to lose weight after is breastfeeding at least for a year. Consider this. A newborn drinks a few tablespoons of milk but a year old drinks over 12 oz at each feed. This means your body has to produce more and more milk and this means burning lots and lots of calories.

If you don’t breast feed (and even if you do) the best way to lose weight is exercise … both aerobic and strengthening muscles. Muscles burn more calories so do both. Also be considerate about the foods you eat.

The one thing you need to know about packing your hospital bag for childbirth is this: Anything you don’t have someone can get you easily. You are not going to a foreign country without resources so pack lightly and have your family and friends bring you what you need.

Pack in your hospital bag for childbirth with a tooth brush, change of clothes, clothes for your baby and bring book/magazines to read, music to listen to and snacks. Hospital food is never good so pack snacks.

That’s such a great question … how does early labor feel? For different women it feels different. Some women feel excited and just a tightening in their uterus that is a little stronger than the Braxton-Hicks contractions. Some women get heaps of energy. For other women early labor starts with the water bag breaking and that just feels wet. For other women early labour feels like full-blown labor with defined contractions but they come and go, tire the woman and are frustrating.

The one thing you should know during early labor is this. Early labor progresses into active labor. Active labour is defined by labour contractions that become longer, strong and more intense.

Many women are confused about what early labor feels like compared to active labor. The clue is simple. If the contractions don’t get longer, stronger and more intense every hour or two then you are in early labor and not active labor.

Some people say that the pain during childbirth is relative to a woman’s perception. That’s hard to prove one way or another. Regardless of how much pain there is during childbirth, if you are skilled then the pain will be manageable.

Hum. It’s really hard to describe what childbirth feels like. If you labor, then you will have contractions. Contractions have 5 phases; they start, they build, they peak, they subside, they stop and there’s space in between. If you have back labor then the tightening or pain of contractions can be still felt during that rest period.

Childbirth contractions really feel like a wave, rush or contraction or tightening and then untigthening. Whatever word you use you might experience discomfort or pain.

Usually in the space between contractions there is no pain. That’s a great time to rest your self and totally relax. Usually the very beginning of the contraction there is not much pain but as it builds (the pain increases) there is more pain. The peak is always the hardest to manage but it lasts for the shortest amount of time (usually 10-15 sec). Then as the contraction eases that means the pain eases. This means you can let go of the pain and your feelings about feeling pain.

The question women really want to ask about what childbirth feels like is ‘how do I cope with’ how childbirth feels. The best answer to that is to become skilled. When you have birth and coaching skills then you’ll manage, cope, deal with and work through how childbirth feels as it unfolds for you.

If you are having a non-laboring Cesarean then going to the hospital usually feels exciting and anxious. Being prepped can feel uncomfortable so use your skills. The surgery itself is usually not painful because you’ve been given a relaxer and epidural. Recovery can be uncomfortable or painful while you recover.

There are several things that happen after childbirth:

1. You have to tend to a newborn
2. You have to recover physically and emotionally.
3. You have to adjust to having a new member of your family.
4. You and your partner will be adjusting your relationship.

Each category is full of things that happen after childbirth.

• You have to tend to your newborn
  • Feed your baby.
  • Learn to dress a newborn
  • Figure out what crying means
  • Figuring out how to put your baby to sleep
  • Burping your baby
  • Get to know your baby and if you have other kids letting them get to know their new brother or sister.

• Your physical and emotional recovery
  • Take care of yourself both physically. Your baby needs you and the best way to take care of others is to take care of your self
  • If you feel traumatized by your birth then seek help and heal over time.
  • If you have other children get them to help or get help to help take care of them.
  • Get family and friends to clean, cook and do laundry and come in to take care of your baby so you can sleep.
  • Slowly begin to exercise. Take your baby for a walk.
  • Sleep when your baby is sleeping.

• You have to adjust to having a new member of your family.
  • Learn to read the body language of your baby. There are great books on Baby Whispering.
  • Take time together as a couple to get to know your baby together just by watching and learning through observation.
  • Get your other kids involved in taking care of the baby and of you.
  • Remember to take care of your self so you can take care of others.
  • Remember the old adage: ‘It takes 9 months to grow and 9 months to know’. By the time your baby is 9 months old you will know this baby and he/she will totally fit into your family.

• You and your partner will be adjusting your relationship.
  • This is a big one … you have to adjust in so many ways
  • How did the addition impact your financial situation?
  • Your sex life will change for a period of time.
  • Remember that having a baby is an addition to your family and not a way to split it in two so integrate your baby into your family.
  • Keep in mind that any child can be brought up in any culture so your baby does not automatically know. You have to teach your children about how you live.
  • Remember that you and your partner do not need to agree on everything. Your child will have to adjust to differences as they grow. You just don’t want to fight each other because you do things differently.

Your midwife or obstetrician will ask when you got your last menstrual period then take away 3 months and add one week.

Too many women get confused as to whether they are in labor or not so labor can feel very much like whatever has been happening before. Unfortunately labor does not feel a specific way when it starts. Some women bang into labour when it starts and the birth takes place in 4-6 hours or faster. Some women feel almost nothing when labor starts or contractions come and go for days. Some times the water bag breaks and then nothing happens. It’s hard to say definitively what labor feels like when it starts but start it will. Once you’re pregnant you cannot avoid giving birth.

You can best prepare your self for labor in two ways:

• Do the research, gather information, make choices, write a Birth Plan about what you want and don’t want at your baby’s birth.
• From a Pink Kit viewpoint, prepare your pregnant body to give birth then learn and practice birth and birth coaching skills

Both mothers and fathers-to-be need to prepare for labor. Pregnant women will give birth and expectant fathers will be there so both should be skilled and then work together throughout their baby’s birth journey.

Giving birth to a baby is like getting a grapefruit out of your body. Someplace say it’s like pooping a watermelon but a baby isn’t that big. If you have not prepared your baby’s birth passage then you can be very sore down there or torn or cut and stitched up. This means you can be very sore and will be advised to have a sitz bath.

So a sitz bath after childbirth is a shallow and soothing warm water … sit it in and soak your crotch down there. You can use herbs in the sitz bath as well.

A woman’s crotch is warm and wet and a great breeding ground for bacteria so it’s important that you use the sitz bath as a way to get rid of the bacteria. Just pat dry and use a sitz bath after childbirth as often as you want each day. Usually use a sitz bath when you are feeling uncomfortable down there. In the first few days you might sit in warm water 3-6 times/day and within a few days it might be only 1-2 times.

What you pack for childbirth will depend on whether you are birthing in a Birth Center or hospital and whether you have a simple, straightforward birth or a Cesarean. Either way, friends or relatives can bring you more.

Don’t over pack because you’ll have your baby to take home and usually stuff given to you so pack light and practically.

Check with your obstetrician or midwife as to when you can use tampons after childbirth. Usually they don’t’ want you to put anything inside for at least 12 weeks but remember you probably won’t get your period for months and months so there will be no need to use a tampon.

The best advise for what to eat after childbirth is this:

• Wisely
• Drink heaps particularly if you are breastfeeding.
• Try to eat healthy
• Drink to stay away from soft drinks
• Have friends and family cook for you for weeks before and freeze.
• Drink heaps particularly if you’re breastfeeding … repeat again and again.

Actually Decibels is most often about loudness … what you hear. But there is a pain scale and childbirth. If childbirth pain is felt very intensely by women then the Decibels can be very high. Sometimes birthing women feel absolutely no pain so really women experience the pain on a scale from nothing to ‘thought I would die.’ Women who feel like they are going to die and don’t because women aren’t going to die of pain in childbirth will say afterwards ‘I didn’t die’ and when they get pregnant next time say ‘I know I won’t die’.

Whether the pain of childbirth has many Decibels, if you are skilled you can manage the pain. Without skills then if you feel heaps of pain the there are many Decibels of pain in childbirth.

There are a number of ways to treat piles (hemorrhoids) after childbirth but before we answer that question why not prevent them or reduce the possibility you might get them. The Pink Kit has a wonderful skill called The Internal Work.

Before you say: ‘Yuk’, if you don’t want to tear, be traumatized down there, have your baby delayed coming out and causing those pesky piles … then really consider doing The Internal Work from 32 weeks onward at least 5-10minutes each day.

Women in the ultra-orthodox Jewish community in one country have between 10-20 children and many of the women suffer from piles after childbirth. They also have a religious/cultural behavior. They can’t resume having intimacy after their menstrual period until there is no blood. They have a special white clothe and go into every crease and crevice of their vagina and show their husband. When there is no pink stain then they can resume intimacy so every ultra-orthodox Jewish women ‘know their vagina very well’ but never knew how to prepare for birth.

They call the Internal Work their ‘homework’ and are religious in doing it. After their birth they say ‘I did my homework’. They also say that for the first two weeks it’s uncomfortable but after two weeks or so then you can ‘knead down there like bread dough’ or ‘massage down there like you’re using a scrub brush’. Not the most exciting terms for the practical skill of preparing your baby’s birth passage so you don’t end up with piles after childbirth.

There’s now a group of ultra-conservative Peshawar Muslim women in Pakistan who now teach their daughters and daughers-in-law. Start at 32 weeks.

If you don’t do the Internal Work or didn’t know about this skill and end up with piles after childbirth then you can treat your hemorrhoids several ways:

• Modern medicine … over the counter or prescription
• Natural remedies
  • Homeopathics
  • Acupuncture
• Diet
  • Drink heaps of room temperature water
  • Stay away from fizzy drinks, coffee or tea
  • Fiber such as ground flax seed, chia seeds, psyllium seeds
  • Stay away from white breads and use whole grains instead
  • Stewed fruits
  • Soaked prunes
• Behaviors
  • Don’t strain
  • Use an enema
  • Suppository
  • If your lips are dry then your rectum will be as well so drink more

What an interesting question. When you’re pregnant you often dream of different types of birth. There’s good reasons for this. Your body, mind and emotions (often led by hormones) are all preparing for both birth and being a mother. This means you can use those extra-sensory awareness that is often called intuition or instinct.

We don’t need to use words that are complex. When you’re pregnant you are maturing your awareness to detail. Regardless of whether you are going to labor and have a vaginal birth or a non-laboring Cesarean your body is preparing to labor and have a vaginal birth. Not only that but your body is preparing to do the birth on your own. It’s only recently that a medical maternity system has existed. Before modern medicine each of us lived within many diversified cultures with their own unique health system. Each of these health systems was unique to the beliefs and environment.

Even with all our unique diversity, we share the same human body. We all blink, cough and if we are pregnant we will give birth one way or another. All humans learn through waking (day dreaming or paying attention) to dream states so we can dream of many different types of births. We are envisioning all of them.

But we dreams don’t mean they are real. We can have great dreams or really scary ones. The scary ones are really scary and we always hope they are not going to be reality. There are some who believe if you think negative thoughts that you draw to you but that’s rarely so just as dreaming good ones are right.

However, you can use your consciousness to envision how you will birth not what your birth will be like. In other words use your mind to see yourself doing your birth rather than hoping for a particular type of one.

This is where birth and birth coaching skills become so essential. When you have actually learned and practiced skills then you can actually see yourself using them. Then use your dream states to reinforce your deeper and deeper usage of your skills in every type of birth that might unfold for you.

How To Prepare Yourself For Labour?

This can vary from a few weeks to several years with 6-18 months as being the most common.

Labor begins differently for each woman. That drives women nuts. If you’re pregnant with your first baby just rest assured the pregnant woman waiting for labor to start for her 8^thbaby is wondering ‘How will labor begin?’

Every birth is different even for the same woman. There’s the old adage: ‘You never know what your birth will be like’. This means you’ll not only be uncertain how your labor will begin but you’ll also not know how long it will last, how intense it will be or whether you’ll cope well with what happens.

There are common ways that labor begins:

• Your water bag breaks suddenly with a big gush and contractions start within an hour or so.
• Your water bag breaks suddenly with a big gush and contractions don’t start for a day or more then either do or you end up being induced.
• Your water bag begins to leak and either contractions start or don’t.
• Your water bag doesn’t break but your contractions start an every hour they get longer, stronger and more intense.
• Your water bag doesn’t break but your contractions niggle on and off for a day or more and then either labor actively starts or you are induced.
• Your labor is induced.

First stage when your cervix is dilating. Second stage when your baby is coming down and out your vagina. Third stage when your placenta delivers.

The Bradley Method and The Lamaze Method really were the first two skills-based childbirth management resources. They were both developed by obstetricians and taught in classes mostly in the US in the 1960s/70s and less so onwards.

The US was unique because it was the only country that had a societal expectation that all families become skilled. Fathers were just coming into the birth. In the US all of maternity care was hospital based and attended by staff Labor and Delivery obstetrical nurses while in most countries there were staff midwives. In the US there were few home births while in other countries women still could birth at home within the maternity system.

Bradley and Lamaze gave mothers and fathers some techniques to use together throughout the birth. They also wanted more families to have natural birth.

In the 1960s/70s staff and obstetricians saw millions upon millions upon millions of skilled birthing women and birth coaching dads. This absolutely changed childbirth in the US … more choices became available.

In the 1970s/80s birth advocates (natural birth and midwives) wanted women to have more choices and from they’re efforts the present choice-based approach to childbirth was developed … The Birth Plan.

Supporting childbirth choices was great but birth advocates dismissed the need for birth and coaching skills under the belief that ‘birth is natural and cats don’t need to learn to birth’. This basically destroyed the skills-based approach that had been so successful.

Birthing Better with The Pink Kit Method® developed in the early 1970s but it was developed by families to address all the gaps that were still left by The Bradley and Lamaze Methods.

You can use Bradley, Lamaze, Hypnobirthing, The Pink Kit and Active Birth together. Just learn, practice and use skills for whatever type of birth you actually have. Skills will fail if you believe they are only good to achieve a natural birth. All the other skills-based resources are focused on only a natural birth. The Pink Kit was created by families for every type of birth.

Often nothing. Sometimes there remains a certain numbness that usually goes away shortly after birth. If you had a problem with the epidural then you can have side effects.

There’s some research that indicates that epidurals have a residue on babies but there are so many things that do.

If you believe you’re having any side effects of the epidural after childbirth then contact your birth professional.

That’s like asking what breaking your leg feels like or what’s it like to have sex if you never have. We cannot project to what we don’t know at all. For women who have birthed before they know what their last birth was like but know they don’t know what their coming birth will be like.

That’s the bad news.

The good news is that you will be fully involved with your birth as it unfolds. And you’ll have trouble explaining to others what childbirth really is like. It’s like nothing else. That’s not because birth has unique sensations but because you are bringing a whole new human being into life and that changes you.

If you want to know what the sensations are like that will depend on whether you labor and have a vaginal birth, labor and have an emergency Cesarean or a non-laboring Cesarean.

If you have contractions then just know that every woman who labors will also have contractions. If you have a vaginal birth just know that every woman who has a vaginal birth births out her vagina and not her ear. In other words, we can learn from each other the bigger brush strokes of what childbirth is really like even though we can’t teach how we’ll respond to it. And this is why you need birth and birth coaching skills to work through the experience that you are actively working through.

If you labor and end up with an emergency c-section then you’ll be prepped and then have the surgery. How you cope with experiencing these things is so much more important than just learning what will happen to you … that is why you need skills so you can use them while things are happening to and around you. Then you won’t feel overwhelmed.

If you have a non-laboring c/section then you’ll have to get to hospital, checked in, eventually prepped and then have surgery. You can use your skills while you’re getting to hospital and through every single moment of your baby’s birth.

What is childbirth really like? It’s an activity. You have to do the activity or you’ll just let it happen to you and then you’ll wonder … what happened?

The question you’re really asking is this: ‘Can I consciously experience childbirth in a way that I feel involved, engaged, empowered and fully participating as I birth my baby?’ And the answer is YES but you’ve got to become skilled and that is not hard. That’s what The Pink Kit is offering you … the skills that other fathers and mothers developed for them selves and they gifted them to you.

Right now you’re being told that the very best way to prepare for giving birth is to make choices about what you want and don’t want for your birth. If you’re reading childbirth books then you’ve been told you know what you want so you just need to make a Birth Plan so your birth professional knows what you want.

You’re being told you’re the consumer of the maternity system and you have the right to informed consent, evidence based maternity care and a profession that gives you the birth you want. Well, good luck.

Why is it so hard to just plan the birth? Well, birth is like anything in life … pretty hard to plan. It’s not like a birthday party or wedding where every detail can be planned and hopefully unfold as planned. Birth is more like the next moment of your life … unknown until it unfolds. We just think we’re in control of planning our life but in fact we should be more in control of how we consciously live our life.

Birth is very much like driving a car. You have to learn a set of complex skills, put them all together then adjust and adapt them on any journey you take from A to B … this place to that place. Sadly, no one has told you that you need to learn a complex set of birth and coaching skills, put them all together then adjust and adapt them to the journey you take during the birth from A to B … from X time to Y time. Instead you’re basically told to pick the car you like and decide the route but end up with not knowing how to drive and end up with a horrible experience.

Come with us … get skilled. Birth and birth coaching skills are not rocket science and also don’t take as long to learn how much time you put into learning to drive. And there’s one more difference between driving and giving birth … birth is a one off and you can’t replay it. So learning birth skills is all about taking a practical driving test once and either you do well or feel out of control.

So the best way to prepare for childbirth is to learn skills and use them.

Childbirth classes taught in 2015 are very different than they were when The Pink Kit skills were first developing in the US in the early 1970s. In those days in the US childbirth classes were either Lamaze or The Bradley Method and basically taught breathing and relaxation skills.

By the 1980s the childbirth classes shifted to giving women and men information about the pros and cons of every type of maternity care so that a Birth Plan could be written about what the woman wanted and didn’t want. And also the childbirth classes explained the standards of care that could be expected in the local hospital.

There are many more choices in childbirth classes now. You can take a pregnancy yoga class or even a pregnancy water yoga childbirth preparation class. You can still take Lamaze or Bradley in the US and in other countries there will be classes offered through a childbirth education organization.

Classes everywhere try to cover as much as possible about pregnancy, birth, after birth and newborn care. They can be overwhelming but are essential. You can also take childbirth classes that fit your viewpoint about birth. And luckily you can also take online childbirth classes. This means you can research what is offered and pick and choose what you would like to know about.

What we’d like to invite you to consider is this. Giving birth is an activity you have to do so make certain you learn birth and birth coaching skills whether on your own or in a childbirth class, along with learning as much you can and making choices. Skills will what do or use. What you don’t want to find yourself saying is: ‘Everything I learned in childbirth classes went out of my head as soon s birth started’. If you are skilled then you’ll say: ‘The skills really served me well.’

This is too broad a question to answer. There are so many variables. Do you want to know the stages of labor? Those can easily found in almost every book on childbirth. Do you want to know what your hospital’s standards of care will be? Ask them. Do you want to know what unexpected things can happen during childbirth? Do you want to know how you’ll respond to the sensations of labor contractions or how you’ll feel while being prepped for surgery for a Cesarean?

What happens in childbirth is so dependent on your unique situation EXCEPT ONE FACTOR. You will give birth, every single pregnant woman will give birth.

So the question you need to be asking is ‘What should I be doing while childbirth is happening?’ And that can be answered simply. You should be using breathing and relaxation skills at the minimum. Your partner, friend or relative should know how to help you use good breathing patterns and how to relax and cope with whatever is happening in your childbirth.

Giving birth is something you have to do. Sadly you have not been told by anyone that you need skills. And there are so many wonderful skills available to you such as Teamwork, how to cope with pain, how to create space for your baby, how to prepare your baby’s birth passage, what positions will your baby like, what are positive and negative birthing behaviors and how to stay using the former and reduce the use of the latter.

The reason so many women ask: What happens in childbirth?’ is because without skills childbirth happens to you rather than you do childbirth no matter what is happening to or around you.

The very best way to cope with childbirth is by using great birth skills. All these skills have to be learned in pregnancy and you should start about 24 weeks but if you’re 40 weeks + when reading this then learn skills anyway because the best way to cope with childbirth is by using skills … even just one.

To cope well with childbirth you have to be skills just as if you want to get from A to B driving you have to learn, practice and then use wisely your driving skills that you adjust and adapt at every moment of the journey. Giving birth is a journey through Time not over distance.

You cope with childbirth because you learn skills to manage, deal with, work through everything that is happening to or around you.

Women and men both want to know how to cope with childbirth. It’s such an unknown before hand but unfolds. When both the woman and man share a set of skills then they work as a team to cope. But coping implies ‘grin and bare it’ but having skills takes you to that place of empowerment. You are doing something to work with your baby’s birth journey and that’s exciting.

Coping with childbirth implies that you ‘suck it up’ but being skilled means you behave in a skillful manner and humans thrive of feeling skilled.

Being a skilled birthing woman and skilled coaching man, friend or relative means that you participate fully in the activity you are doing of birthing your child.

Any that make you feel comfortable. Just remember the bleeding should not exceed a heavy menstrual day nor have a very bad odor or weird color. Check with your obstetrician or midwife if what’s coming out of you seems unusual.

Always keep in mind this old adage: ‘If you’re going to take care of others, take care of yourself first’.

Back labor is almost the White Elephant in the room for all pregnant women. When Birthing Better with The Pink Kit Method® started to develop in the early 1970s by ordinary mothers and fathers obstetricians and midwives weren’t concerned about ‘posterior’ babies or back labor. Back labor was just considered to be sometimes part of labor. Some women have strong uterine contractions, others have both back labor and uterine contractions, pains that run down the butt or down the inside of the legs.

What makes back labor, leg labor pains or butt labor pains, pain in the pubic bone or inside one hip is that these types of pains tend to remain even when the contraction is over. This does not necessarily make uterine contractions easier to cope with.

But it’s important to know how back labor starts … the baby presses in the inside of the sacrum and pinches the nerves that run through the sacrum and up the spine. This means you will not have back labor pains is your baby has not started to come through your bony pelvis.

Think about what your baby has to do to come down, through and out your body. Your baby has to move down through your bony pelvis, open your cervix then move into and out of your vagina. So you will not have back labor pains if your baby has not come into your bony pelvis or once it’s in your vagina. So you have to figure out how to prevent or reduce the pressure on your nerves by your baby.

The good news is that The Pink Kit has the skills you need to create space inside your bony pelvis … and this is done over the last 16 weeks of pregnancy. You can learn such skills as The Hip Lift or Sacral Manoeuvre to name just two. Then you need skills to keep your pelvis open as your baby moves down and through your bony pelvis such as Kate’s Cat and The Pelvic Clock to name just two.

The good news is that as the back pain moves then that indicates your baby is moving down and will shortly come through.

Presently the technique that is being used to deal with back labor pains is to press in on the sacrum by some one else. Now that you know that you need to create space inside does pressing in on the sacrum make sense? NO, you are closing the space. It may help a bit with the mother’s pain but can cause the labor to go on and on and on. Instead learn to open up and create space.

There are 4 main reasons why you can die in childbirth.

• Severe bleeding (mostly after childbirth)
• Infections
• High blood pressure during pregnancy (pre-eclampsia and eclampsia)
• Unsafe abortions

These account for 80% of all maternal deaths. There are a few others like embolism or HIV.

The likelihood of you dying in childbirth is much less then dying in a car accident so get a grip of reality and check out whether you actually have a potential problem that could lead to your death or your baby’s or whether you are feeling the natural anxiety that the vast majority of women feel as they approach birth.

Women are hardwired to feel anxiety and heightened awareness as birth approaches. This is good because it sets the trigger for women to become mothers and be able to pay attention to details. Remember the medical profession is very, very recent and women around the world took care of themselves within the health system of their unique cultures.

In reality if lots and lots of women died in birth, we’d all cross our legs and never get pregnant.

Due your diligence and talk to your obstetrician or midwife if you have concerns. Talk to someone.

You explain an orgasm and then I’ll try to explain what a labor contraction feels like. It’s hard. Try explaining the colour green. Try explaining love.

Really the question should be: ‘How do I cope with contractions of labor?’ In reality you don’t care what it feels like so much as how to manage the feelings or sensations if you find them unpleasant or painful.

And this is where the present Choice-based childbirth trend can’t help you cope, manage, deal with and work through the contractions as you feel them. You need to take a Skills-based approach to your birth.

Look through the skills you’ll learn in the Pink Kit and know these skills were developed by ordinary mothers and fathers because everyone wants to know how to cope with labor contractions when they feel like pain. You’ll learn from the best and after the birth when someone asks you ‘What does a labor contraction feel like?’ you’ll tell them ‘With skills they are manageable but without skills you can feel out of control because they hurt.’

Ask other women. Their response will vary on a scale from: ‘Didn’t feel anything’ to ‘Not as bad as I imagined’ or ‘It was hard but I got through it’ to ‘ Much harder than I imagined’ to ‘Terrible’ to ‘The worst pain I’ve ever had’ to ‘I thought I was going to die’.

How does that break down in percentages? Less then 5% feel no pain and less then 5% think they will die. The vast majority of women will say that the pain hurts and sometimes they felt out of control but somehow they managed and got through it.

And what women will also tell you is ‘Next time I will relax more’ or ‘I’ll focus more my breathing’.

This should tell you something. The vast majority of women are not going into their birth with any skills at all. That means if the pain isn’t too bad they come away from the experience thinking … ‘Not too bad’ or ‘I DID IT!’

But also think what women are saying about what they learned … ‘Next time I’ll use relaxation (skill) and breathing (skill) better.’

What The Pink Kit is offering you are the skills you need for this birth … not the next one!

Even women who find childbirth ‘THE MOST PAINFUL THING I’VE EVER EXPERIENCED’ still birth better when they use effective skills because this is what they then say: ‘I HATED EVERY SINGLE MOMENT BUT THE SKILLS WERE GREAT AND AFTERWARDS I/MY PARTNER FELT SO EMPOWERED. NEXT TIME WE’LL BE EVEN MORE SKILLED.’

There’s good news and bad news here. There are not an infinite number of complications that can occur during childbirth. In other words if you are not pregnant with twins you will not have complications during childbirth about twins! Duh.

But that’s not how we think. We think: ‘What if there is a problem?’

So here’s the low down. Figure out what potential ‘problems’ you might have (talk to your obstetrician/midwife) and narrow your focus down to what complications can occur for you during childbirth. Then figure out if there are things you can do to prevent or reduce those complications.

The medical maternity profession uses medical assessments, monitoring and procedures to safeguard you and your baby. That is what they do. You then have to figure out whether the risk of complications that are specific to you require all, none or some of those assessments, monitoring and procedures. That is called your Birth Plan.

But there’s another way to approach potential complications that might occur during childbirth … becoming a skilled birthing woman and birth coach dad. No kidding. The more skilled you are the more likely you will cope with and manage yourself whether complications occur or not.

Hope that helps. Families who developed The Pink Kit skills did so whether there were complications or not. Women who had lots of medical risks still wanted to have a great birth. Fathers wanted to help. Women who suddenly developed pregnancy/birth related complications wanted to be able to cope with the experience … and skills were the answer.

And remember. Not every complication is going to risk you or your baby. Another thing to remember is the most common ‘complication’ is when women don’t cope well with the natural occurring pain of contractions and that tells us how unskilled birthing women are presently. The bottom line … become skilled.

You body will change after birth just like it changed during pregnancy. Could anyone have explained that to you?

If you breastfeed for any period then your breast will change the most after birth and it takes about a year after breastfeeding for them to sort of go back to how they were. You’ll recognize them even if they aren’t the same.

The major thing that happens to your body after childbirth is that your body matures. Before pregnancy, in many ways you still have a child’s body even if you’re 40. Pregnancy and birth matures your body into a woman and mother’s body. You take it less for granted and if you’re sensible you’ll take care of it.

Remember the old adage: ‘As a mother you’ll take care of others so take care of yourself first’.

It’s really hard to explain what childbirth pain is like because women experience it so differently. If you ask a woman who just feels a tightening of her uterus then she’ll tell you ‘I didn’t feel much’. If you ask a woman who had a very quick labor with contractions coming 10 seconds apart and each one lasting 60 seconds+ then she might say: ‘I felt totally overwhelmed and thought I’d die’. So what does that tell you about what childbirth pain is like?

Added to this is the reality that most women find early labor contractions to be quite manageable. Even women having a subsequent baby will say: ‘This isn’t as bad as I remember’. Yet, when labor becomes very progressing (from 5cm-fully dilated) then that same woman will say: ‘NOW I REMEMBER!’

If a woman has back labor pains then the pain may last even when the contraction is over and that pain may feel like its ‘lingering’ and ‘nagging’ and women feel there’s nothing they can do.

But the question should be ‘Why do women use pain relief in childbirth? ‘ And the answer is simple … they lack the skills to manage the pain. Childbirth pain is very manageable if you are skilled but women aren’t skilled. Why? Because when you read childbirth books or go to classes you are rarely, rarely, rarely taught birth and birth coaching skills. Instead you are told to choose, make a Birth Plan and use informed consent to any medical care.

There is absolutely NO societal expectation that mothers or fathers-to-be become skilled. There are two reasons:

1. Birth is perceived of as natural and then that concept is interpreted as meaning … Women know how to birth.
2. There’s no way to know what your birth will be like and therefore there’s nothing you can do to prepare for it.

Both of those comments are truth and inaccurate. It is natural to give birth but that does not mean that you naturally know how to cope or manage with the intense sensations of labor contractions. And yes, there is no way to know what your birth will be like yet you can learn skills to prepare your pregnant body to give birth and to work through birth as it unfolds.

The Pink Kit is your go-to place for skills, skills, skills because mothers and fathers who developed these skills did so because they wanted to cope with the pain of childbirth contractions if they hurt.

It’s always so interesting to hear this question … ‘How bad does natural childbirth hurt?’ You’d think if childbirth is natural then either it would not be very painful or that women had a built in capacity to manage any pain.

Here’s the reality. Childbirth is natural and the contractions can be really intense and women do not have a built in ability to cope with the natural occurring pain of contractions. Breaking a leg is natural a part of life if that happens to you but that doesn’t mean you cope well with the pain. Your menstrual pains are natural but that doesn’t mean you manage those pains well. Think about headaches, sore throats or having a rash … do you naturally know how to cope or manage?

And how bad are the pains connected to all those natural things?

There has always been something missing in the childbirth conversation since the 1980s. Believe it or not, the message given to expectant families (in the US only) in the 1960s/70s was a different one. And there was a different one prior to that. But the present message is that you will ‘know what to do on the day’ and manage labor well if you just aren’t afraid and trust birth. Prior to this message families were told to become skilled and learn relaxation and breathing skills to cope with the natural pains of natural childbirth. Which do you choose?

Pink Kit families who developed these skills in the early 1970s said: ‘We want skills and more than what was available’. So, if you want skills (for both you and your partner) then become a Pink Kit family and learn the broad range of skills to cope with any situation in any birth.

A childbirth educator is a person who cares about expectant parents and wants to share or pass on information to them. Most childbirth educators have been formally trained in a system they like, probably have used and want to pass on to others.

The way women describe back labor is simple: ‘nagging’. That means after the contraction is over the discomfort or pain continues which means there is no relief between one contraction and another. This nagging pain is tiring because without having skills then women don’t know how to cope or manage.

Presently if you have back labor then you might be encouraged to have someone to push inward on the sacrum but that actually closes the space inside the pelvis that the baby is trying to open up. It is the baby trying to make more space by pressing out on the sacrum from the inside. By pressing inward on the sacrum then closes the space for the baby and can cause the labor to go on and on and on and on. This is why Pink Kit families thought more about the relationship between 3 dimensional relationship between the baby and mother and created skills like the Sacral Maneouvre, Kate’s Cat, The Pelvic Clock and more to create space, reduce pain and help the baby move down, through and out of the bony pelvis.

If a woman is asked ‘where is the pain in your back?’ a woman can put her finger on it exactly. That tells you where the baby is pushing out. As the baby moves down, the pain moves down and once the cervix is open and the baby moves into the birth canal then the pain stops entirely.

Your job is to open your pelvis, create space, soften inside, keep your sacrum mobile and help your baby move through your bony pelvis effectively.

The best way to help stitches heal after childbirth is to use an herbal soaked pad that has been frozen. Herbs like Comfrey, St. John’s Wort, Plantain, White Willow Bark and others. The next best thing is to wash down there without soap using warm water whenever you feel discomfort. Some people use a sit bath where you sit in shallow warm water. That’s good but clean the tub thoroughly or bacteria can breed in your bathroom and water. Stay clean down there.

You can also take homeopathics such as arnica, calendula, ledum.

Are women encouraged to prepare for a cesarean birth? For many women once they’ve made the decision to have a non-laboring Cesarean just plan for their baby. A few women are making a Birth Plan for their c-section … what they want and don’t know to happen during the surgery. NO ONE IS TELLING YOU TO:

1. Prepare your pregnant body to give birth because your body is still preparing for a labor and vaginal birth and your Mind is preparing for a surgical birth. You can still thoroughly enjoy preparing your body for birth and delight in that part of getting ready to birth your baby.
2. Learn and practice birth and coaching skills then use them on the way to hospital, while being prepped and during surgery. This is your baby’s birth so skillfully birth your baby.

It can just take a few days for hemorrhoids to heal after childbirth or they can linger for months or years.

The best way to prevent or reduce the possibility of even getting hemorrhoids during childbirth is to really prepare your baby’s birth canal by using The Pink Kit’s Internal Work audio CD.

Spending 5-10minutes each day for the last 8 weeks of pregnancy by doing The Internal Work can reduce the chances of getting hemorrhoids because you prepare your soft tissue to open rather than be stretched. The cause of hemorrhoids in childbirth is from having tight soft tissue and pushing your baby against that tight tissue.

Very infrequent in modern countries. In fact, you or your baby is much more likely to die from anything else during life than being born dead or dying giving birth.

Having a natural childbirth basically comes down to two things:

• Making choices
• Becoming skilled

You’ve probably heard about the first … making choices and you probably have not heard about the second …becoming skilled.

But this question actually is asking is ‘how-to have’ a natural childbirth not ‘how-to prepare’ for a natural childbirth. Preparing is still about those two things. You prepare for your natural by making choices and we now hope you’ll also prepare your pregnant body to become a birthing body for your natural birth.

However when you ask how-to have natural childbirth means you want to know you need to do throughout the natural birth experience. And here’s where the rubber meets the road. Your choices may unfold as you hope and they may not. Your skills can be used in every situation without exception. That is what separates ‘choices’ from ‘skills’.

Choices are what you want or don’t want to happen to you or around you in your natural childbirth. Skills are what you ‘do’ or use while your birth unfolds as you experience it.

When push comes to shove, too many choices change or don’t unfold as a woman hopes but having skills mean that you can skillfully work through your baby’s birth no matter what. Curiously, skilled families pretty much feel they achieve natural childbirth even when there is medical care because skills give them the focus and capability to work through the birth journey. This is a phenomenally important message.

When you make ‘choices’ in childbirth those often focus on medical ‘interventions’ … saying ‘no’ to many of them. Skilled families see medical care as assessments, monitoring and procedures and nothing more or less … just medical care that skills can work with and around. So choices are more about avoiding things and skills are more about having something to do no matter what.

This is almost too hard a question to answer. It’s certainly not a question that can be answered easily. Probably the biggest difficulty about to know what to expect in childbirth comes from the fact that few of us ever see one birth much less many births unless we’re a birth worker. Because birth is hidden from us then we have no clue what to expect in childbirth.

You might see some ‘acted’ births on TV in a series or you might be watching parts of a real birth on some of those reality birth programs but it’s really challenging to know what actually is happening during the birth.

This is almost the real reason hundreds of families developed The Pink Kit skills is facing the fact that it’s almost impossible to know what to expect in childbirth. In facing that reality, families wanted skills so they could ‘do’ something. This change the whole focus on how Pink Kit families prepared for the birth of their baby. This is what we are offering you … all the skills so you can work with your baby as he/she is being born.

Really think about this. If you don’t know what to expect in your coming birth then won’t you want to have the skills to cope and manage whatever happens? You bet!

Childbirth is both safe and unsafe for sure. That’s the reality. Let’s break that reality down and look at childbirth from different perspectives.

1. You and your baby are more likely to die of anything then giving birth or being born. Research the vital statistics in your country for maternal and infant mortality and morbidity. This is so important to understand. Compared to dying from anything else, childbirth is incredibly safe.

Now let’s look at childbirth from this perspective.

2. If 1000 women were in a room and not giving birth there would be many with health issues but the likelihood of any of those women having a major problem within a 24 hour period is minimal. However if all those 1000 women were giving birth then there would be most potential problems. They would still bring into birth health issues but there are specific health problems that can arise in birth. The likelihood of a woman or baby having a problem in a 24 hour period is much higher. From this perspective childbirth is more vulnerable.

The question that really needs to be asked is: ‘Are there ways I can reduce or prevent problems in childbirth that could make it dangerous?’ The answer from the Pink Kit viewpoint is YES!

Many Pink Kit families were medically high risk and skills reduced and prevented many of those risks from becoming a problem. This is so important for you to understand. Many problems in birth that lead to danger often result in the birth being delayed. The whole focus of The Pink Kit skills is to make the separation of the mother and baby easier.

Only one way … learn birth and coaching skills. That’s it. Become skilled and use your skills at every moment of your labor and delivery. You can make childbirth less painful for yourself by being skilled. The pain might still be there but you’ll be able to cope, manage, work through and deal with the pain of contractions.

You can hate every moment of the childbirth pain but with skills you’ll still feeling empowered because you worked through the pain.

Do the Internal Work offered in The Pink Kit … a skill to prepare all the soft tissue of your baby’s birth passage so you open up to your baby as he/she moves down, through and out your vagina.

Hemorrhoids are caused by pushing your baby down aggressively through very tight tension of the soft tissue of your vagina.

There is not a general ‘what can go wrong during childbirth’. There are not an infinite number of problems. And you are not able to have every problem possible. In fact you will only have a few potential problems but you have to find out what those may be.

For example, if this is a subsequent birth you are not a first time mother-to-be. If your baby isn’t breech you don’t have a breech problem.

What a question like this means is simple … women can be terrified that the unimaginable can happen suddenly and horribly. In reality that is so rare but when we hear about terrible things about childbirth then we become anxious.

There have been many Pink Kit families where something did go wrong during childbirth and still these families felt empowered because they used the Pink Kit skills. That might be hard to comprehend. How could a family experience a trauma or disaster and still feel empowered? It’s not simple or complex. Any person who is skilled will always handle challenges better then someone who lacks skills. Become skilled.

And another thing to think about. Because you or your baby are more likely to die or be injured by anything else than childbirth, you have to develop a reality check on yourself. Do you feel that a birth problem is more devastating than occurring at any other time? Many people think that birth trauma is the worst there is until they experience a trauma at some other time. Life is dangerous and not dangerous and being skilled helps everyone cope better and become more resilient.

There are 3 stages of childbirth. The first stage is associated with the opening up of the cervix. The second stage is associated with the movement of your baby down, through and out your vagina. The third stage is associated with the delivery of the after birth.

In some countries there is no cost. You have to ask to find out in your local area and find out what the cost of a simple, straightforward birth is compared to a Cesarean and an extended stay in hospital. Also find out what the cost of having intensive care for your baby.

Birth actually has lots of rich, earthy smells and heaps of colors, emotions, actions and sensations. Birth is Life and Life is vibrant.

Do the Internal Work from 32 weeks onward from The Pink Kit resource.

Become skilled and you’ll make your childbirth easier.

Childbirth is like an activity you do and not an experience that just happens to you. You are doing the activity of giving birth no matter the type of birth you have. Childbirth is like that … an activity!

Expect to take care of your baby and grow as a mother and father-to-be. Expect to mature. After childbirth expect to keep learning more and more. After childbirth expect to be challenged again and again as your child grows. After childbirth expect to forgive your mother and father because now you KNOW! After childbirth expect to delight in what your child does. Expect to feel loved like you’ve never been loved and to love like you’ve never loved. Expect to look at the world from a child’s eye and be able to enjoy another childhood. Expect to look back on your years as a parent and forgive yourself for anything you don’t feel good about. Expect magic and discouragement. Expect pleasure and hidden or revealed dislike. Expect lots.

You can’t always make childbirth painless but with skills you can always manage, cope, deal with and work through the natural occurring pain of childbirth. Some women just don’t feel any pain but it’s not so much as not feeling pain as it is learning to stay on top of and in control of the pain, discomfort or sensations that occurring naturally during birth.

Usually between 6 and 12 weeks. The bleeding should not be too heavy and if it is then please consult your obstetrician or midwife.

Childbirth looks like a kaleidoscope of Life. Birth workers attend lots of births and see women giving birth and babies being born. They see the birth environment such as their hospital, Birth Center or home birth. They see the medical assessments, monitoring and procedures that are done to the birthing woman.

But what do you see as a birthing woman? You see what’s around you and you watch what is happening to you or around you.

And what do you see as a birth coach? You’ll see the woman’s face and those of the birth workers. You’ll see all the equipment, hear all the sounds and smell all the smells.

Birth is dynamic and calls attention to details. You’re likely to have very little experience with birth so everything you see looks new and stimulates new neurons. You can become overwhelmed by the newness of what childbirth looks like but if you are skilled you will focus on using your skills and doing that will settle your energy.

What is happening to or around you or what is happening to your birthing partner can cause you to feel totally out of control if you are not skilled. When you are skilled you remain in control of your responses to new experiences.

To prepare for labor and delivery is simple … become skilled. Your very best preparation for labor is to learn how to cope with and manage the natural occurring pain of contractions. Your very best way to prepare for delivery is to do The Internal Work so you’ve prepared your baby’s birth passage so delivery is not delayed and your body is not traumatized.

A prolapse after childbirth is either the uterus and cervix or bladder. Giving birth puts lots of pressure on the soft tissue inside your body and sometimes these tissues don’t recover as well as they should and they sag.

Once the birth hormones leave the body within six months after birth usually these organs (soft tissue) stop sagging but sometimes you’ll need some help ranging from homeopathics, acupuncture, exercises and sometimes surgery.

Oxytocin is a hormone that softens the soft tissue and bones of your pregnant/birthing body. It’s also present during breastfeeding. It’s a hormone connected to cuddling and love.

Hum … how hard is natural childbirth? Why do they call contractions … labor? Labor is hard work even if not painful. Why is natural childbirth hard? Your baby … a big 3 dimensional object … is working to open up your body so he/she can come down, through and out of your body. This means your 3 dimensional body only has to open up like this during birth. That’s how hard natural childbirth is.

The good news is that The Pink Kit skills help you prepare your pregnant body to become a birthing body and to have the skills to do the work of natural childbirth so it’s not so bad and not so hard.

Don’t. Take a deep breath before you either sigh in relief or get confused about the present message that women shouldn’t be afraid of birth and just trust it.

You know that women throughout Time have given birth all around the world. And you absolutely know that the modern medical profession is very new (few generations) and not available in many parts of the world. That means Women have mostly birthed without any Plan B.

The goodness of our human history is that every culture had a health system and pregnant women, birth and newborns are really cared for within every health care system. Even with the best of care all cultures knew at pregnancy, birth and the post natal period was fragile. In fact women were considered to sit between Life and Death during this period. While death is relatively rare in childbirth, there are other issues … for example not all women cope with the natural occurring pain of contractions, tearing, getting an infection or bleeding too much.

This means women are absolutely hardwired to be anxious or afraid of birth. But let’s look at ‘fear’. Fear and heightened awareness sit in the same place within us. This means that what is the natural occurring fear/anxiety about birth is actually the natural maturing that women go through as they move from ‘becoming’ to ‘being’ a mother. That maturing is opened up with women as heightened awareness.

This means that you should take a look at your fears/anxieties and consider whether they are just your heightened awareness developing (in which case be grateful and nurture it) or whether there are real concerns that you need to speak to your birth providers about.

You should not try to overcome fear of childbirth. Instead see them as a pathway to your own growth as you move into the amazing role of being a mother or father. You’ll find throughout the years of having a child that these fears/anxieties will come up again and again. But now you know you can see them as heightened sense of awareness.

The good news is that childbirth does not last forever even though labor can feel like that sometimes … although it can also feel as though it happened ‘so fast’.

The other good news is that childbirth does not last as long as pregnancy and the good news is also when you fall pregnant you do not give birth 24 hours later.

To determine how long childbirth takes you need to determine when you are going to start timing birth. Modern medicine really only times childbirth once labor becomes active or progresses … that means your contractions are lasting one minute long and are 3-5 minutes apart and you are at least 3cm dilated. However, if your contractions have been coming and going for days then you’ll actually time your labor from all that niggling stuff you’ve done. This is why you’ll hear some women say ‘I was in labor for 72 hours or 5 days’.

In reality if you read the ‘notes’ the active/progressing part of even these labors are usually 6 hours or less but to get to an active labor the woman does all this niggling stuff.

Most active labors run between 3-12 hours.

You’ll have to ask around in your local area and see if it’s covered by your insurance. If you live in a country that offers free maternity care the only cost of a water birth may be the tub rental.

If you’re breastfeeding your libido might not come back after childbirth until some months after you stop breastfeeding.

But let’s look at the difference between libido and sexual or physical intimacy. There’s nothing more intimate then lying together with your baby between you and thoroughly enjoying that intimacy. It’s not sex (but then you are not interested in getting pregnant again so soon) but it’s the deep intimacy of a family growing together.

In many traditional communities a couple doesn’t engage in sexual intimacy while breastfeeding. You may have heard that you can’t get pregnant while breastfeeding. Yes you can. The reason traditional women didn’t was connected to not having sex while breastfeeding and that went on for over 2 years. This is a natural form of birth control … makes sense really.

And your libido starts to come back when your body wants to get pregnant again which is about 18 months to 3 years.

The best way to prepare for any labor including for an induced labor is to learn skills you’ll use throughout your labor. Labor induction can take about 1 minute or less if your water bag is ruptured or you can have a membrane sweep or inserted hormone suppository.

You can use your skills while an induction is being done to you as well. Your birth and birth coaching skills can be and should be used throughout your birth experience. An induction of labor is done to you but skills are what you do while labor is unfolding.