So, what skills are essential if we’re going to have a Skills-based childbirth trend?
There is no doubt that people rightly believe that gathering ‘information’ and making ‘choices’ is a Skill. We now live in such a mental culture that we attribute most of our skills to what we do in our mind, how we think, process and solve problems. Of course, all these are skills but pregnancy and childbirth are not configurations of the Mind, they are the most primal of all Body experiences.
Living in a Choice-based childbirth trend has put more pressure on families to try to figure out what type of birth they ‘want’. That’s simple. Every expectant family wants a good birth experience that ends with a happy and healthy mother and baby. Would you ‘choose’ something different? The Choice-based trend isn’t so much about the outcome of a birth as to what things you want or don’t want during that process. Definitely the Choice-based approach was set up for women to choose more natural births but to be fair if ‘choice’ is the key word then we have to accept all types of ‘choices’ … including a society that is headed to a 50% surgical delivery rate. The Choice-based childbirth trend elevates the individual without any guarantee that the choices they make/want will be given to them. This is why so many individual women leave their birth experience incredibly perplexed … what went wrong?
A Skills-based childbirth trend fundamentally looks at pregnancy and childbirth differently … very differently. A Skills-based approach focuses on our commonality … 100% of pregnant women will give birth. 100% of pregnant women can prepare their pregnant body to become a birthing body … regardless of what type of birth they want or will have. Why? Because it’s enjoyable to be involved in the growth and birth of your baby! For goodness sakes, we get pregnant so infrequently why can’t we just enjoy preparing for the birth of our baby? We can! We should! We must!
The pregnant body is unique in our commonality. We can learn to open it up to let this big object come out one way or another. This is true for all pregnant women. Why shouldn’t every pregnant woman be encouraged, motived and know how-to prepare her pregnant body to become a birthing body. After all this is part of the journey through ‘becoming’ to ‘being’ a mother.
And who better to help her prepare her pregnant body then the baby’s father or a family member or friend. And if none are available then women can just plan do it themselves as they take care of their other bodily functions … no big deal. Women just lack the skills.
These are some of the body preparation skills every pregnant woman (and partner/other) should know and do:
- Map your pelvis … know the shape of your pelvic outlet. That will give you insight into what position your baby chooses in later pregnancy and what positions will keep you open during the birth.
- Pelvic Clock … learn how to soften around the inside of the bones that make up your bony pelvis. This helps the cervix dilate more effectively, helps you relax, gives you a focus and keeps your bony pelvis mobile.
- Hip Lift … learn how to create more side-to-side space if your baby needs you to such as non-progressing dilation.
- Sacral Manoeuvre … learn how to create more front-to-back space if you need to such as reducing anterior lip of the cervix.
- Kate’s Cat … learn how to keep your sacrum mobile throughout the birth.
- Sit Bone Spread … learn how to open up the muscles inside your perineum that might delay 2nd stage
- Internal Work … learn how to prepare all the soft tissue inside your baby’s birth canal
- Positions … you need to know what positions your baby likes rather than assume that the positions being promoted are right for your baby.
Start with these and you’re on your way to becoming a skilled birthing woman and coaching dad/other because all humans can feel how the difference between openness and internal tension once you experience these skills.
Here’s a link. This link will be put on all the posts. Kristen has 6 kids, the last 3 are PK babies. She KNOWS about birth and is one of our affiliates. That means if you purchase The Pink Kit through her she gets a commission. Her husband Scott’s first baby was a Pink Kit experience. He’ll explain how The Pink Kit made certain he was able to become a skilled birth coach to a woman who had previously had three great births.!
Kristen’s written a time-line calendar for use of The Pink Kit. You just need to sign up to her mail list (we don’t keep a mail list) and she’ll send you the Time Line. She’s worked through both Edition #2 and #3 of The PInk Kit so she knows all it’s imperfections and la-dee-dahs past them to the skills she wants to improve for each birth. Can women and men have better births each time? Sure can! The more skilled, the more we master the experience.
http://blog.naturalbirthandbabycare.com/pink-kit-timeline-from-natural-birth-and-baby-care-com/
Please join the Movement to grow a Skills-based childbirth trend. Don’t’ let another birth go by without that family being skilled.