YOUR BIRTH IS OVER! You feel totally empowered because you used birth skills to work through your baby’s birth journey no matter where you birthed, with whom or what happened to or around you. You can now look back and see that your birth would have been so different if you had not had your skills. All that work, even your resistance and skepticism yet eventually your willingness to become skilled are now all part of this journey you have taken. You thank yourself for being willing to take this Heroine’s Journey through personal transformation as you became a skilled birthing woman.

If you did not learn and use birth skills you still might feel empowered and successful. That is WONDERFUL! Birthing Better families honor every single birth. Yes, we want every family to be skilled because skills overcome all the challenges so many women face during pregnancy and birth. Is an unskilled birthing woman ‘lucky’? Yup!

However, there’s another group of women who believed they trusted their instincts. These women actually use heaps of skills but don’t define their behaviors as being ‘skilled’. Instead, they believe they behaved with instinct. If you’ve been at such a birth you know that woman is intentionally using skills!

Characteristics Step #12

  • You have now achieved Mastery
  • You’ve achieved success
  • You exist in the ordinary world

Even right after birth, as a skilled woman, you absolutely KNOW next time you will refine the use of your skills because each of us sees the small or big gaps that we want to fill next time with greater and deeper use of our skills.

Birth is over

Birth is over … Some women feel very satisfied whether you consciously used skills or not. You could just feel relieved! Whether you had a non-laboring Caesarean, an unplanned/unexpected Caesarean, labor and vaginal birth with or without lots of medical care and whether you loved or hated the whole experience. You can still feel very satisfied and incredibly successful! You feel ready to be with your newborn and be a great mother. BTW … if you think birth is hard (for all you first-time mothers) just wait until you have to mother every day! As one Birthing Better first-time mom said: ‘If I knew how time-consuming and hard taking care of my newborn would be, I would have thought my 15-hour hard labor was a piece of cake!’

Birth is over ... You feel devastated, perplexed, angry, bewildered, blame, shame and disappointment. Birth did not unfold as you planned and/or you didn’t have the skills to rely on. Instead birth happened to you. You wanted this experience to be a highlight and it wasn’t that way at all. Hopefully you and baby are safe and well so you can be thankful for that. On the other hand, if you or your baby need added medical attention, you need to focus on this and be grateful you live in a modern country with such medical care.  You might not even understand how skills could have had a positive impact even on a very challenging birth or you might realize now how skills could have helped you cope better even if there has been a lot of medical care and unexpected challenges. If you lacked skills, hopefully, next birth you will choose to become skilled because hindsight is always 20/20.

Hello to the NEW YOU! No matter how you took these 12 Steps of your Heroine’s Journey, you are a Heroine. Never forget that. Ultimately our children do NOT care how they were born, they care how you mother! The activity of giving birth is BIG yet it’s one day in your life from your child’s viewpoint. Every day you get to be your child’s heroine.

Birthing Better online birthing classes are housed in Common Knowledge Trust