Growing a skilled birthing population
What is a Skills-based childbirth trend and why do we absolutely need one?
Since the 1970s/80s there has been a Choice-based childbirth trend.
To investigate the comparison between these two approaches to pregnancy and birth answer these two questions:
- From 0-100% what responsibility do birthing women have to gather information, make choices, give informed consent, create a Birth Plan of what they want and don’t want at their birth?
- From 0-100% what responsibility do birthing women have to behave, cope, manage, work through, deal with their birthing experience?
These questions are profound and should be approached with deep thought and consideration. Until we do so we will never really change the societal message expectant families get from books, media, care providers and each other.
The first question is all about ‘want’. The second is all about ‘do’.
The first question is the everyday conversation about childbirth known and repeated: Birth is a natural part of women’s lives. Pregnancy and childbirth are not a disease and should not be treated as such. The medical profession treats pregnancy as a ‘problem waiting to happen’ which means interventions are too often imposed on women against their will nor are necessary. To become empowered women must create a Birth Plan of what they want and don’t want, give informed consent, have their choices respected by birth professionals who are led by ‘evidence based’ maternity care and be trusted to give birth because women know what is best for themselves and baby and how to give birth. Ancillary is integrating a midwifery model of care and availability to home births.
Birth advocates despair that many women seem to lack the responsibility to do even these simple things. Both birth advocates and birth stories support the implication that the medical maternity model is responsible for the increase in interventions. If only all these solutions were put in place then the goal would be reached and birth would be that wonderful, orgasmic experience that is the highlight of everywoman’s life. Women who achieve this are held up as perfect examples of the solution and goal. While women who don’t … well.
In reality, the unintended results of a Choice-based childbirth trend have evolved into an oppositional approach to childbirth … home vs hospital, midwives vs doctors, medical vs natural. Far too many women are left out (much less men) of any possibility for having an empowered birth experience left instead with shame, blame, guilt and disappointment.
Nowhere in any childbirth message is there a societal expectation that families learn, practice and use birth and coaching skills in whatever type of birth they have.
The present conversation actually disabuses any concept of skills.
We often hear this message: ‘Cows or cats aren’t taught to birth, women don’t need to be. Birth is natural, trust birth, tap into instinct, let go of thinking mind and above all don’t fear birth’.
This needs to be said again. There is a strong societal expectation that women think their way forward to the birth they want. There is no societal expectation that women learn skills to do the birth they have.
In other words we do not hear this message: ‘It’s essential to prepare your pregnant body to become a birthing body then learn, practice and use birth and coaching skills no matter how your baby’s birth unfolds because giving birth is always an activity that you will do’.
How many times does any woman get pregnant? Yet 100% of pregnant women will give birth one way or another. How can we NOT elevate giving birth to the highest level of skills for all women who share the same body and once pregnant join an exclusive group?
There is no way to know how any birth will unfold. We have too many women choosing or not and choices changing or unavailable. We have far too few women knowing how-to give birth and using skills to birth their babies.
No matter the ‘type’ of birth experienced, birth and coaching skills are what women and men/other ‘do’ to fill the time, manage the pain or discomfort, cope with the internal sensations, fears and anxieties of giving birth while working together during their baby’s birth journey. Every family can birth better. In fact the more challenging the birth the greater benefit for using skills.
We’re at a crossroads in childbirth. We can continue to hammer away at ‘the system’ or we can become skilled. The latter is much easier to achieve one birth at a time.
Midwives can lead the way. A self-learning skilled birthing population strengthens YOUR partnership!