Today we’re going to talk about one very particular skill connected to a very specific birth situation, how to go into labour rested when you have a slow, niggling pre-labour. The best way for me to do this is to share the story of how this skill developed in the late 1970’s.
The couple was having their first baby, the woman was terrified at even thinking about the labour pains because her monthly period’s were so bad, I talked about the internal work in talk nine and they had done it but with a struggle. Her husband had to be very, very, very gentle and give her lots of time to adjust, she didn’t think that doing the internal work was important because she thought her baby would have a head the size of a golf ball and it would squeeze out of her like toothpaste from a tube, she knew this wasn’t realistic but it was the only mental image that she could cope with.
Contractions started late one evening but she slept and in the morning they were more regular and a little painful. She became restless so her husband asked her, ‘what do you want to do now?’ This one sentence has become of the greatest of BirthingBetter skills. She said, ‘I don’t know’. He said, ’I don’t know isn’t an answer’.
Those two statements became other great BirthingBetter skills. He realised if she didn’t make a decision, she would remain unsettled. So he said, ‘take a moment and think about what you want to do’. Well they went for a walk, after that he asked the same question, ‘now what do you want to do?’ He required her to consciously choose.
Her contractions continued all day and eventually she decided she wanted to go to the hospital. She was given a very rough internal she hated and told her cervix was one centimetre and tight. The hospital sent her home. She was angry. Her husband said, ‘don’t waste time on anger; what do you want to do now?’
He worked hard to keep her settled. Through the afternoon and evening they made plans and did them. At night he made her do relaxing things even though the contractions continued every five minutes lasting thirty seconds and was quite painful. She slept well.
The next morning there was a change in the contractions. Her husband continued with, ‘what do you want to do now?’ They washed the dishes, read magazines, took a walk, had a shower. They did everything consciously with a plan to keep her focused on doing that task and not on the contractions. At 3pm she decided to go back to the hospital, this time she wanted her doctor to check her.
The doctor examined her and she was still one centimetre. The doctor wanted her to go home. Well, she lost the plot and cried, ‘what have I been doing for two days?’ Her husband said, ‘what do you want to do now?’ Well, it took her an hour to calm down and her labour contractions actually changed during that time so she stayed, her labour progressed very rapidly. In three hours she was beginning to lose the plot.
Her husband continued to work with every contraction and every rest period. He recognised her behaviour was now becoming more like when she had bad cramps with her menstrual period, she got very, very tense, very tight but he told her she couldn’t go down that path right now and to keep breathing with him.
Seeing labour from the outside he could tell it was moving along and soon she began to push. The internal work paid off; a few contractions later the baby’s head was almost born. The doctor told her, ‘just one or two contractions’. She looked up at her husband and doctor and said, ‘is this all there is to it?’ Everyone laughed. Her imagined nightmare had in fact become a very conscious birth thanks to a man who realised the best way to keep her conscious was to require her to consciously make decisions at every moment.
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