The decision to have your baby in a Birth Center is always a big decision if you are fortunate to have one available in your area.In countries where there is a comprehensive modern medical maternity model, Birth Centers may be legal and supported or frowned on. Birth Center births are almost always a political issue whether that is right, wrong, good or bad this is the reality.
Birth Centers always have a long list of criteria for acceptance or rejection just to be approved. In labour there are also many criteria for transfer to hospital. For most families planning a Birth Center birth in modern countries are aware that transfer might be necessary whether they like it or not.
All births can be made safer and better when you have good birth and coaching skills. This is particularly true for those families seeking to accomplish a birth in a Birth Center. If at all possible, you don’t want to transfer. If you do transfer your birth skills adapt leaving you with the same self-empowered birth experience.
When your husband, partner, friends or relatives have coaching skills they are more likely to help you cope with this very dynamic experience and prevent transferring for failure to progress.
Before you react to the word ‘coach’ let’s think about that role. A support person is there to give you support but little guidance. Coaching is not telling you what to do, rather it’s a person who can give both support and guidance as you need it. Use whatever term you want as long as people know how to help you if and when you need some help. This help should primarily come from those who are part of your family rather than just the wonderful midwives.
Birth is the ultimate in physiological processes probably because it’s so infrequent and involves two people (mother and baby). Other naturally occurring physiological processes such as hunger, sexual drive, monthly period, getting sick or going to the toilet don’t involve a second person to the level of letting a baby out of your body. It’s important to make this journey as safe and easy for both.
Birth in any place at any time can be the most physically intense experience of a woman’s life. All over the world women are giving birth in the exact same way … one contraction following another. This will occur whether the woman is surrounded by loved ones in a safe environment or in the middle of a famine, war or tsunami.
A Birth Center is a place but having skills such as Directed Breathing, relaxing inside The Pelvic Clock or having your partner use Deep Touch Relaxation improves the dynamics of childbirth. Learning birth and coaching skills based on our common human body can change the birth experience from something that happens to us into a conscious experience … a dance between the mother and baby as they work together. Working with your partner, friends or relatives during the process of labour and delivery increases huge intimacy in your family.
Working with your baby’s efforts to be born in a conscious manner will increase the great satisfaction you feel about your Birth Center experience.
There is another reason to learn good birth and coaching skills. There are some times when it becomes important to seek medical care in hospital during a birth. When you have birth skills you can move into a medical environment still using these skills. This means you are much less likely to feel disappointed or that your Birth Center has failed. Instead when you recognize a need to have increased medical care yet you can continue to work with your baby’s efforts to be born anywhere.
Where you have your baby may be important. However, being able to work with the process of birth where ever you birth or with whom becomes much less important to the memories you’ll live with than by what you have been able to do for yourself. Using birth skills throughout labour and delivery is probably the most significant thing you can do for yourself and baby.
You will never regret being a skilled birthing woman or having your loved ones work with you. This is the true intimacy of childbirth and building your family’s intimacy. This experience is enhanced when having a Birth Center birth because you have consciously made a decision to have an experience that is much more like a home birth than a hospital birth.