Here’s another skills-based Birth Story. They are SO different from the Birth Stories you are reading or hearing. It’s important to recognize the difference and ask yourself … ‘what did I learn?’ You should be able to learn something from every birth … enough to take into your coming birth or pass on some of the skills to those you love who are pregnant.
If you’re a birth professional you’ll be oh so tempted to believe you should be the one to teach or do the Pink Kit skills on your clients. NO is the most direct response to that. While midwives and doulas are advertising all the skills they bring to their clients, they do two things: 1) Create increased dependence 2) Do not give any responsibility to families. If you believe that making ‘choices’ and a Birth Plan is sufficient responsibility you are mistaken. You know too many Birth Plans do not unfold as wanted. You absolutely must want to work with skilled families and all expectant families are grown ups quite capable of learning, practicing and using their birth and coaching skills in whatever birth they have.
This Skills-based Birth Story like the last one mentions absolutely nothing about their birth provider nor does this story, like all other Pink Kit Birth Stories, ever really talk about what medical assessments, monitoring and procedures were part of the birthing experience because those things ended up not being the focus. Instead the focus was on the personal accomplishments of being a skilled birthing woman and coaching dad/other.
‘The Pink Kit is truly a fantastic resource for pregnant women and their partner who want to take control of their birthing experience … and this does not mean having a home birth or anything like that. The skills gave me the confidence to have our beautiful baby girl without the anxiety and uncertainty that I had previously felt. For my husband the skills were life changing! The resources helped us to understand my body completely and the internal work we did made absolutely certain I had no ring of fire nor was our baby’s birth delayed. I required absolutely no sutures after sustaining a massive 2nd degree tear with lots of remaining scar tissue with my first birth. I took notes of the skills and positions and we took that crib sheet with us. My husband put it on the table in the hospital room and periodically read it out loud to me. This kept me focused and in charge. I had a job to do and I did it beautifully and so did my husband. What a stark difference between this birth and our first. I performed the sacral rock to help with the back pain and the pelvic clock exercises between contractions. My husband assisted me with the sitbone spread when the contractions became more intense and when I had a moment at the beginning of 2nd stage when I felt my baby was sort of stuck. I found doing this really beneficial. Throughout the labour I also found the directed breathing so beneficial in coping with the pain that I relied less on my husband than the hand-gripping stuff I had submitted him to the first time round. He worked with me but could see I was totally in control! The Pink Kit has made my birthing experience a fantastic one and empowered us to take charge of our birth and to progress from 1st stage through 3rd stage in 5 hours total compared to the lingering 14 hours of ‘active’ labour with my first baby. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I am a true believer in birth skills and so is my husband’.
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.