The Pink Kit {NOW KNOWN AS BIRTHINGBETTER} won The Reader’s Choice Award for The Best Pregnancy Product 2012. Why would that happen when there are so many great pregnancy products of all sorts? It’s simple. What’s been missing in the pregnancy and childbirth conversation has finally been recognized after 40+years and the Internet … birth and birth coaching skills for all pregnancies and every birth. In other words, this award helps us elevate The Art of Giving Birth.
You can either read this article about how vitality important it is for you to be become a skilled birthing family or you can skip to the end and read what skills are unique to The Pink Kit. Changing childbirth comes from raising this Life transformative experience from something that ‘happens’ to you to something you ‘do’ skillfully.
We all know there are heaps of books and websites loaded with ‘information’. It’s overwhelming really. Since the 1970s pregnant women have been encouraged to gather this ‘information’ and make ‘choices’. This then becomes your Birth Plan … what you want and don’t want during your baby’s birth. It’s an absolutely wonderful change from the ‘follow your doctor’s orders’ trend that existed before and where there were no choices.
But you can’t ‘choose’ the birth you have! However, we can always bring The Art of Giving Birth as our baby’s birth unfolds.
Choice is ify-ify but don’t throw it out
Having ‘choices’ is important in fact ideal only when coupled with ‘skills’. Obviously having no ‘choice’ and no ‘skills’ is the worst. But having ‘skills’ even when you lack ‘choice’ is better than having all the ‘choices’ in the world yet lack ‘skills’ because you cannot ‘chose’ the birth you’ll have. However you can always skillfully work through the birth you have.
How did we get to the present Choice-based approach to pregnancy and childbirth? This trend has been with us since the late 1970s. Mostly women followed their doctor’s orders and women wanted more control. The Natural Birth Movement brought together a common voice … demanding change, choices and identifying pregnancy and childbirth as ‘normal’ life events therefore women didn’t need to learn how to birth.
And here’s where this explanation has had terrible unintended negative consequences.
The word ‘normal’ inaccurately became identified with words like: easy, good outcome, safe, instinctive. Yet none of these are synonymous with ‘normal’. If only the phrase ‘naturally occurring’ had replaced that one word.
Pregnancy and childbirth are ‘naturally occurring (one definition of ‘normal’) life events.******
Expectant mothers and fathers-to-be absolutely must know how to prepare their unique pregnant body to give birth and self-learn the skills to work through this activity. Why?
There are four Reasons:
- It’s fun! How many times will you be pregnant? It’s a unique time and you should thoroughly enjoy and get the most out of it.
- Your pregnant body has to become a birthing body. If you’re going to labour and give birth vaginally a very large object is coming out of your body so learn to open up, soften inside and create mobility and you’ll make your baby’s birth journey easier. If you’re going to have a non-labouring surgical birth you want the skills to use on way to hospital (your labour), while being prepped (transition) and during the birth. After all we get pregnant to have a baby not a type of birth so all of us can work through our baby’s birth journey feel totally involved.
- To cope with the ‘naturally’ occurring pain of labour contractions. Childbirth pain can really hurt and our human instincts are to tense up. With skills you’ll know how to open up, let go, soften and create space inside your body. Managing birth pains is where your true Empowerment will come from.
- You want your husband/partner, friend or relative to know how to help you. All men have been born through a woman’s body so they make phenomenal birth coaches. Of course if you have a woman friend or relative helping they also want the skills to be effective birth support/coach. Sharing a common set of skills matters!
Instead of just making ‘choices’ and hoping they will actualize … and most don’t! Choices change, the unexpected happens, choices aren’t available or you’re making choices you wish you didn’t have to make AND there’s no way to know what your birth will be like … let’s grow a skilled birthing population.
A perfect marriage
Ideally if you have ‘choice’ and ‘skills’, that’s terrific. And if you lack ‘choices’ and lack ‘skills’ that’s the most challenging. However if you have ‘skills’ even when you have no choice, they change or the unexpected happens then you’ll still manage because of your skills. Your skills matter and that’s been the gap. No one has told us we need to prepare our pregnant body to shift its roll to give birth. No one has told us we need the skills to cope, manage, deal with and work with the natural occurring pain of labour. No one has told us that we can be skilled birthing women if our baby is born through a non-labouring surgical birth. No one has told fathers they can be excellent birth coaches …men who can support and truly help us cope.
Birth skills are the missing link and The Pink Kit is the self-learning resource that finally fills that gap.
Aren’t all childbirth preparation systems the same? Some of you know there are other skills-based resources: Lamaze, Bradley, Active Birth, Hypnobirthing, Hypnobabies. This should not be a surprise. Within any system there is an evolutionary process and there’s also a philosophical shift. Given the fact that there is no way to know what your birth will be like has unfortunately been attached to ‘therefore there is really nothing you can do to prepare or alter your experience’. The best we’ve been able to do is open up more ‘choices’. And that’s been so important. But what if there are few ‘choices’ available, situations change, the unexpected happens or you want all the medical care available. Really the philosophy behind ‘choice’ and Birth Plans comes from those seeking ‘natural’ childbirth and want to say “NO” to medical ‘interventions’.
Birth skills not only complement your ‘choices’ they work when you have none and work when you ‘choose’ a very medical birth. What happens to you or around you is not the same as what you ‘do’. Giving birth no matter how that happens is an activity you are going to do just because you are pregnant!
What we share is more fundamental than our individuality
While we are unique we share a common human body and its this human body we can learn to prepare using Birthing Better with The Pink Kit Method®. At the end of this article is the list of the skills you’ll learn in our multi-media resource.
We need to talk about one more thing. Men! Should our husband/partner/father of our children be involved with birth? Think about this as you respond. All men have been born through a woman’s body. Every man has been inside a woman’s body. Men are hard-wired to understand birth. And men share essentially the same human body. The Pink Kits are simple to learn together because we share the same body. What men learn is that while having a baby is quite miraculous and the birthing process is every bit mysterious, the activity of giving birth does not have to be mystifying.
Giving birth the ultimate activity
Giving birth is very much an exercise in plumbing. A big object has to open up a diaphragm (your cervix), come through a tube (your pelvis) then move down a soft tube and out an aperture (your vagina). Preparing your pregnant body to be a birthing body is not rocket science. The Pink Kit skills are practical and awaken us to our wonderful birthing body.
When your baby takes its birth journey you will have the skills to fill the time it takes, cope with the natural occurring pain of contractions or to stay connected while going to hospital for surgery. Working together as a family feels so much better than just letting birth happen to you. We may not be able to control how intense the contraction pain is but we can control how we respond to that pain with great birthing and birth coaching skills.
In fact we might have little control over most of what ‘happens’ to us as our baby is being born but we will always have the ‘choice’ to use breathing, relaxation, communication, touch, body position skills.
Now is the Time to bring forward a NEW and exciting philosophy around pregnancy and childbirth … growing a skilled birthing population for all pregnancies and every birth.
How exciting to know that a complete skills-based, self-learning resource has now been recognized after 40+ years and because of the Internet. The Pink Kit is the evolution of birth and birth coaching skills that embraces all of us whether we birth in hospital or at home, with a midwife or doctor, whether our baby’s birth is surrounded by a great deal of medical care or spontaneous. We can always birth better now because we are skilled.
You’re part of this wonderful change
The Pink Kit has both a website affiliate program and we recommend to all birth providers to help grow a skilled birthing population. You’ll feel more supported in your dedicated efforts if you require your clients to self-learn birth skills. The Pink Kit is one of those systems. Supply a number of skills-based resources.
When clients first see you let them know that you’ll work through their conventional Birth Plan at each appointment and you want them to ‘choose’ one or more skills-based resources and self learn. Then at each appointment work through the many aspects of the Birth Plan and learn which skills your clients have learned and keep those skills in your notes. At each appointment as the Birth Plan takes shape, the Skills-based Birth Plan should also take shape. Then during their baby’s birth journey you can encourage the family to use their skills as their birth unfolds and hopefully their Birth Plan will unfolds as they had hoped. Either way … they have their skills! Won’t you rather your clients use skills even if their ‘choices’ change? Or would you rather them feel disappointed, disempowered, guilty, angry, shamed and perhaps blaming because their choices changed and they had no skills to empower themselves?