Mothers-to-be are a bit confused about what giving birth really is. First of all …the word ‘giving’ is bizarre. What does that actually meaning? Using the word ‘giving’ in connection to birth is slippery.
Let’s broaden that phrase and say: ‘Giving birth is an activity every pregnant woman must do to end her pregnancy.’
Let’s look at birth from the baby’s viewpoint. Every baby is doing the activity of being born. You might think that your baby is passive until he/she is born but that makes no sense. Your baby’s been moving inside and is doing the activity of growing. Your baby does the activity of being born as well. Actually that’s one of the skills you’ll learn in Birthing Better Online Birth Classes.
When you labor and have labor contractions, you can actually learn to read your baby’s efforts to be born by the type of contraction you have. When labor contractions are progressive, then your baby is not having difficulty being born. These skills are taught in the lessons 5 Phases and Bell-Shaped Curve. If you have a delay in 1st or 2nd Stages, then your baby is experiencing one or more of these: you are tight inside your body; your position or posture doesn’t suit your baby or something from the outside is compressing the inside of your body.
Giving birth is an activity that two people are doing together … the mother and baby. The husband, partner, friend or relative is helping the woman do the activity of giving birth. The obstetrician or midwife is doing their skills to safeguard the mother and baby. The doula is using her skills during this activity to support the birthing woman.
OK. But birth is more than an activity. Giving birth is also a journey both your birthing partner and baby make together. Most of us think of a journey as a distance like when we drive, fly, take the bus or train … A to Z. However, birth is a journey through Time … the birth starts and eventually ends. This journey is rarely completed in one minute and certainly not as long as a week.
Pregnancy is also a journey in time. That’s certainly an emotional, physiological, financial, relationship and psychological journey!
Activity + Journey does not = Know-how
While women are the only ones of our species who give birth but this does not mean women know ‘how-to’ birth. We have to learn how. What we have to learn is skills.
You’ve probably read or heard that women intuitively know how to birth just because we get pregnant. Why would we ever believe that?
We get a monthly period, do we know how to take care without being taught? Do we manage the natural occurring cramps by instinct, trust or intuition? Nope.
We can go through every single natural physiological body process and while those things happen it doesn’t mean we know how to manage, cope, deal with or feel empowered.
Let’s take sex or hunger if you want to get real. Were you a great lover the first time? And if that first time was the only time how would you rate yourself or partner?
When you’re hungry do you just go munch on your nearest bush with pretty white berries? No, you’ve learned, been taught and have the skills to choose foods that are safe to eat and not poisonous.
Birthing Better families want you to have the right skills to birth your baby well during this journey and while doing this activity.
You too!
As a father-to-be, you have to learn birth-coaching skills so you can help your birthing partner use her learned birthing skills throughout this journey and while she is doing this journey that might be very intense because the birth of a child is the most important event in any person’s life!
Birthing and birth-coach skills are what both of you do while you take this journey. You fill the Time using your skills. Together you work with your baby’s journey. This means you can always birth better even if the birth isn’t what you planned or wanted. But that’s no different than getting behind the wheel of the car. You need skills and use them at every single nano-second the journey you take.
So, take this journey as a skilled mother-to-be and birth-coaching dad/other and at the end of it … once your baby is born … you will feel more confident and empowered by what you ‘did’ rather than what ‘happened’.
‘Time is free, but it’s priceless. You can’t own it, but you can use it. You can’t keep it but you can spend it. Once you’ve lost it you can never get it back.’
― Audrey Niffenegger
All Birthing Better skills are housed in Common Knowledge Trust and developed in the early 1970s by hundreds of moms and dads. Study in the privacy of your own home with Birthing Better online birth classes.