Hospital Births
Now that you are pregnant one of the things you will need to decide is whether you will birth in hospital, home or Birth Centre (if those are available in your area). No matter what you believe or want, sometimes you are going to birth in a hospital. That’s the reality. Whether you are pleased or terrified (or someplace in between) that will be your birth reality. You might have a choice, so look around. Pick the hospital that gives you the most of what you would like. But hospitals are hospitals and with all their best care practices everyone still knows that hospitals are where we go when we are unwell.
You or your baby might have health issues that make a hospital birth necessary. Yet there is a quality of giving birth even with the most complex health issues that’s about birth, rather than sickness, so let’s consider something that can definitely enrich this experience.
Birth skills for you and your partner are probably the best thing you can learn during pregnancy when you will birth in a hospital. Hospital births might have more medical assessments, monitoring, and procedures but you will be left on your own with your partner for hours on end. This is true when you are in hospital, often because of illness or injury. You’re in hospital but you are left alone, so you have lots of time to do things.
Birth is such an important and big event in Life that you really should be working with your baby’s efforts to be born as a hard-work activity that you’re willing to do using skills to cope and manage. This is where birth skills such as Directed Breathing, the Pelvic Clock or Deep Touch Relaxation really come in handy. These are all skills in Birthing Better online birth classes
Birth skills matter in your hospital birth
Birth is full of excitement, it is a process for both the woman and the baby. The baby is working to come out of the woman’s body and the woman’s body is responding to the baby’s work. This is a wonderful time to use birth skills and work together as a family about to become a larger family. Enjoy the time together. You can use your birth skills and birth coaching skills at every moment of each contraction or during the surgery if you have a cesarean delivery.
Obstetricians, midwives, and staff absolutely love to see women coping with labour and fathers really helping. This will be more true for hospital births that need more medical attention. All birth professionals want families to have a very positive birth experience. By using your birth skills you get to impress in your memory what you have done for yourself in your hospital birth. Do you think you’ll remember being passive to the experience of being involved by doing something for yourself?
The birth memories you create have less to do with what happens to you than what you do for yourself. Using birth skills is your road to a great hospital birth. Start learning them from 24 weeks in pregnancy and you’ll be so glad you did. Then if you have your baby in a taxi or other unusual places, you’ll still have the skills to cope with that experience.
Birthing Better skills were developed by moms and dads in the early 1970s in the US and used by many thousands globally in all types of birth. Birthing Better online birthing classes are housed in Common Knowledge Trust.
