This is a talk for Mum’s and Dad’s who are about 26 weeks pregnant, give or take a few weeks.
So today we’re going to approach how a man knows when he can help his birthing partner from the understanding of a father’s role in childbirth.
Now in your family a relative, partner or friend may be helping you, so don’t get stuck on the term that I’ll be using today, a Dad’s role is your role.
Most of us really begin to think about birth at about 24 weeks of pregnancy, each day now brings us closer to that big and unavoidable event.
Getting your childbirth skills ready now means that both of you going into labour feeling confident.
You wouldn’t think of running a marathon without training and no one denies what a big experience and effort giving birth is, preparing is much more important than preparing for a marathon.
Knowing when to help a woman in labour requires some type of job description, for example, your doctor and midwife is there to help the woman if there’s a problem but they’re not there to help her relax, that’s your job, your job is to help her relax even when contractions are painful.
Once your job has a title, then you’ll know what your role is and you’ll know what skills you need. With your own role and skills you won’t confuse it with other people’s roles.
For years people have been confusing the words coaching and supporting.
Part of the reason Dad’s don’t know when to help is because they are uncertain about whether they are coaching or supporting. When I gave birth in 1970, the word birth coach was used.
By the 1980’s, when I had my son the word birth support was being used and it still is. Now why did the job title and description change?
Well people often felt that to coach a woman is labour implied that someone was on the sideline telling a woman what to do, in fact that’s what directing means.
Directing means giving a woman lots of direction but giving her little or no support but that isn’t what a coach does, coaching means giving the woman both high direction and high support, having a skilled birth coach is about working together as an equal team. Because people confuse the terms directing and coaching they began to use the word birth support, however supporting only offers a woman high support with little or no direction.
This is the two frequent image of zillions of supporting Dad’s who didn’t have a clue how to really help but was hung on throughout labour.
It’s great to have support but it’s much better for both of you to share a common set of skills so that the woman can use those skills and her partner can really help her when she needs assistance and this is birth coaching.
Many women giving birth need a good birth coach who knows how to help her and when, and the best person to be a birth coach is someone who really knows you intimately, when a coaching Dad can really work with a coaching woman the couple will share a huge intimacy that doesn’t always occur when Dad’s just support.
Whether you use the word birth coach, birth support, birth helper, birth assistant, just remember that the goal is to have someone who knows you really well be able to help you, give you high direction and high support.