Any activity is done better when you ‘have’ the right skills. We all like to feel skilled. We take pride in our own ability and we enjoy the praise from others. We hate to feel incompetent or to embarrass ourselves by behaving poorly.
All skills are first learned then practiced repeatedly until they become easy to use. At first we might feel a bit foolish and awkward while learning. But once we ‘have’ learned skills for any task, we actually know our level of capability. We can then constantly improve skills by repetitive doing. We also self evaluate and improve all the time … ever so slightly. If we are sensible we don’t denigrate ourselves senselessly if we aren’t ‘perfect’.
Childbirth is an activity that lasts for a finite period of time but it’s never over in a blink of the eye. You ‘have’ plenty of opportunities to use and improve your skills throughout.
Your birth and coaching skills will enrich this activity that you ‘have’ to do.
We Do Not Take Childbirth Seriously
We often treat childbirth as ‘they’ will do it for me or ‘of course my Birth Plan is what I want.’ These are inaccurate perceptions and you need to understand why in order to truly be willing to become skilled during your pregnancy.
Pregnancy gives you a reasonable amount of time … about 9 months to prepare for a very intense but time short experience (giving birth). But most women do not think about birth until 24 weeks or so that only leaves 16 weeks to learn skills. It’s a bit like cramming for an exam but really quite do-able if you do not procrastinate. Just do it! Make it a priority.
Too often Life interferes because we do not put a societal acceptance and expectation on learning childbirth and coaching skills. It’s not high on anyone’s list although it should be. We treat having a baby with less importance than driving a car. No wonder there is so much negative birth stories out there. No one has skills so birth is something that happens to them. This is the ‘one way or another’ reality of childbirth. So you do have a ‘choice’. You can choose to learn skills, prepare your body then use your skills (that’s one way) or you can just let it happen and most likely not be really happy with the experience (that’s the other way).
Learn the variety of skills with conviction so that during your short/intense birth experience you will use/apply your birth skills at every single moment of the activity.
The Language Of Childbirth Is Primarily Physical.
Childbirth is a physical activity even if you never move from the chair, have your eyes closed the whole time, while you lie on an operating table, hate every moment of it and swear you’ll never do it again. Your body is physically opening up to let your baby out. Put another way, your baby is opening up your body so it can get out.
Your baby wants to be born just as you wanted to be born when you were in your mommy’s tummy. If you have a labour and vaginal birth your baby will physically open your pelvis and birth canal. No woman gives birth out her ear.
If you have a non-labouring surgical birth, your lower belly will be cut open. No woman has a doctor reach down her throat and yank the baby upward.
At the present time we accept having a non-skilled birthing population for what is a physical experience equivalent to climbing Mt. Everest or participating in a triathlon.
Yet we’re given a strong message that ‘there’s no way to know what birth will be like, therefore there is no way to prepare.’ This isn’t even close to accurate but in some way is. We don’t know what the next moment will be like in any of our Life but we’ve learned skills over the years so that when the next moment is occurring then we continue to do what we know how to do. Childbirth is the same. There is a set of skills, previously not known that apply to every birth because births are so similar. All we have to do is learn the skills, practice them sufficiently that we’ll use them thoroughly during a previously unknowable experience that reveals itself on the day.
So, although you don’t know what your birth will be like, you can still learn skills to handle the experience as it unfolds … why not?
Birth does not need to just happen to you. You can make your birth positive although you might not have a perfect birth. You can have a positive birth even if you have more or less medical care than you want. You can have a positive birth even if you don’t like the experience. You can always have a positive birth because you can always use a skill during the whole process … that’s your ‘choice’.
Women and men who feel they participate in this unique process, activity and experience always feel much better about the ‘experience’ than people who feel out of control, or just go along for the ride, feel passive and know they don’t have a clue what is happening.
Unfortunately at the present moment in time and for the past 35 years ‘being in control’ has only meant ‘making choices/Birth Plan’ whereas with your BirthingBetter skills ‘being in control’ means choosing your behaviors in response to what you’re experiencing at any moment. Birth Plans represent the Big Picture while your skills are the individual brush strokes of time passing.
However, if the Big Picture/Birth Plans change and you have no ability to put in those individual brush strokes because you lack skills then you’re more likely to feel lost and that leaves unpleasant or unsatisfying memories. If you can keep making one action after another based on the skills you’ve learned you’ll always feel better about yourself and the experience.