The Big Event is closer. You are around 30-32 weeks of pregnancy. At this point, you’ll have monthly appointments with your midwife or obstetrician. You might hire a doula or not. You are deciding where you want to birth and create your Birth Plan. At the same time, you are sorting out your baby’s room, whether you quit work now or later, figuring out what to do with your older kids. In other words, there are a lot of things happening and heaps on your plate.
Characteristics Step #8
- You are deep into the ‘special world’
- You are attempting a ‘big change’
- You are staring at a future ‘ordeal’
If you have NOT learned birth and birth-coaching skills at this point you are either feeling ‘I don’t need skills’ or ‘I’m feeling anxious and there are gaps I can’t put my finger on’. There is still time to learn skills. The bottom line is simple: Any skill you have for use in birth is better than none. 30-32 weeks of pregnancy is the time when you’re really focused on the coming birth as is your partner, family, friends and birth provider.
Big change
Let’s remind you what all Women face … the Truth … ‘There’s no way to know what your birth will be like’. This Truth puts you right in the midst of a big change.
The sentence that follows this Truth is actually an Untruth … ‘therefore there’s nothing you can do to prepare for it’. That is just BS! But this sentence is complex. For example, there are many people who believe the only legitimate goal to any preparation must be a natural birth, easy, perhaps pain-free or at home, with no problems and a great experience. Therefore, if these goals are not achieved it just shows there is nothing you can do to prepare for birth. To prepare for your birth can’t only have a goal for ‘outcomes’.
You have to focus on your capability and ability to cope and manage the journey you take through the birth of your baby. Therefore preparing for birth works brilliantly because you can become a highly skilled birthing woman. Skills that prepare your body to birth and birth and birth-coaching skills, so you can work through birth as it unfolds are real and essential.
Yes, you can also reduce or prevent many of the reasons more medical care is often part of birth today … such as:
- your ability to cope with the natural occurring pain instead of needing pain relief
- delay in 1st or 2nd stage of birth
- trauma to your body
The active verb of giving birth is just one BIG next moment after the next moment after the next moment experience. In Step #8, you are ‘attempting a big change’ as you face an ‘ordeal’. You will do the ordeal better with a great set of skills.
If you’ve learned skills then you are beginning to feel more confident and even eager to test them. Birthing Better families practice their skills to Braxton-Hicks contractions as well as use their skills when they feel anxious, wait to have lab tests. Skilled families also imagine (future trip) their coming birth and imagine themselves using skills in a variety of birth scenarios.
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