One thing not mentioned in the two previous ‘preparation’ posts is the fact that if a woman is in a relationship, she wants her partner to be equally involved in preparing for The Birth. There are many single moms-to-be who have family or friends who can truly help in childbirth preparation … as long as we see all pregnancies as the Time to prepare the pregnant body to become a birthing body and a Time to learn both birth and coaching skills. Anyone can be that other person. And if there truly is no other person to help, then pregnant women have a greater imperative to become skilled. In reality, it is only us who is giving birth and we are the only one who can truly prepare for The Birth and use skills effectively. Having another person help builds a larger family yet all women know they have to do it themselves. This knowledge is the place of power and fear.
Since The Choice-based childbirth trend became the norm in the mid1970s every hospital will permit one or more ‘support’ people. Please go further and make certain that the person/people are skilled ‘coaches’ … able to both help and support you. Women want someone else to care, be involved, help them prepare and be with them during The Birth.
Now that’s said. So what do women want in their birth? This is what’s important to understand.
- We are all one humanity and share the same ‘wants’
- 100% of pregnant women will give birth and face the same challenge of giving birth.
- Women in every culture have given birth throughout Time so we are hard-wired to understand that giving birth sits on the razor edge of Life and Death.
- The medical profession is very new … only a few generations … and has changed birth profoundly in both a good way and a not so good way.
- Our commonality as human beings is much bigger than our individuality when it comes down to the bottom line associated to The Birth.
Above all else, all women first and foremost want a healthy baby and for themselves to come through The Birth also healthy. This is the primal urge for all women throughout Time, in every place, in all cultures and throughout the world. That is first and foremost. Women want a healthy birth for themselves and baby. And that does not just mean the ‘act of giving birth’, it also includes the very delicate newborn stage. Many cultures did not name a baby until he/she smiled because so many died. In many cultures women were secluded for weeks or months because post birth infections were so common. The image of women giving birth by the side of the rice paddy and immediately going back to work can occur but that is neither the norm or how cultures treated The Birth. That image represents the Power and the other images of women and babies at risk or having problems represents the Fear. The Birth is always both … safe and unsafe and remains so today.
The next thing women want is not to suffer during The Birth.
All other ‘I want’ is frosting on the cake. And there is a long, long individualized list of ‘I want’. This list can shadow the primal other two and try to reduce their primacy yet they remain.
Because of the present rift in childbirth, we have been led to believe that all these other wants around birth take primacy. Given that the natural birth advocates are so pissed off at the medical profession for seeing all births as risky, their reaction is to see all births as safe (unless otherwise). Women are pulled apart. They are either terrified there will be a ‘problem’ or they are blinded by their own ideology that nothing will happen to them. They can be blinded by their fear of losing control and suffering thus led into being numbed by modern pain relief and disconnected from this primal experience.
Once we recognize that to have a safe birth that results in a healthy baby, a healthy us and not to suffer is our primal desires, then we can create a deeper understanding of The Birth experience, the role of skills and how to give the experience deeper components. While all women have these two primal wants, every woman wants something more and that is legitimate.
A healthy mother and baby is not guaranteed nor is a birth free of suffering.
Women mostly suffer because they lack birth skills and have not prepared their pregnant body to become a birthing body. When confronted by the natural occurring pain of contractions, their lack of skills become apparent and they perceive of their experience as ‘suffering’ or ‘terrible, horrible, the worst experience in my life, I’ll never do this again’. Women can perceive of The Birth as ‘suffering’ yet come out of the experience healthy and with a healthy baby. Conversely, a woman can cope very well with The Birth and end up with terrible and unexpected health problems for herself and/or her baby. These two aspects of childbirth are NOT related, never have been and never will be.
There are people who are going to scream at this. Doesn’t eating well, exercising, learning heaps, making decisions, planning well, being fit and healthy during pregnancy lead toward a healthy birth? In reality, not necessarily and there are many women out there who know they did everything to not suffer and have a great experience, to be healthy with a healthy baby and that not happen. And there are many, many women out there who live with many challenges yet breeze through The Birth and come away from The Birth with both the mother and baby very healthy. There is NO way to know what your birth will be like and while it’s always preferable to take responsibility to be healthy and fit, this does not guarantee experience or outcome. This is frustrating to many. If we only do this and that then this and that will occur. Around The Birth is less knowable. This reality activates the tension between Power and Fear.
So, if women want to birth and be healthy with a healthy baby and not suffer, is this all we should ‘want’ in our birth? This is what the medical profession would have us believe and that’s not accurate. Women want more subjective qualities about their birth. For some women where they birth is significant … not just a home birth. Some women want a home birth because they express fear of hospitals, some because they believe home is where a baby should be born, others because being at home gives them access to a midwife or 20 people at the birth or the ability to smoke a cigarette right afterwards.
There are many women who want a very medical hospital birth because they feel doing so will prevent the suffering and increase the wellness of themselves and baby. For some women working with a midwife or a female obstetrician is incredibly important.
For other women having certain people present or NOT present are important or having this test, assessment, monitoring or procedures all become part of the ‘want’ or ‘don’t want’ list. We can go on and on. Women want to decorate their birth experience like they want to decorate their home. If you don’t like that analogy then pick your own. Birth is SO vital, SO significant, SO important, SO infrequent, SO powerful, SO transformational that women want to do something to create The Birth in their image. Letting go is not option A, B or C for women. Just being blown on the winds stimulates the fear.
Women know in their cells and in their most primal space that there is no way to plan The Birth. No matter how many details we think we can plan, we deeply know that how our birth unfolds may be very different from what we want. Letting go in some form becomes part of our birth experience. But what does ‘letting go’ actually mean?
Sadly, it’s come to mean not being skilled. We hear all the time women talking about ‘letting go’ instead of trying to ‘control’ their birth. ‘Letting go’ is a continuum. Letting go can mean making a Birth Plan and it not unfolding as wanted.
There are many women who ‘let go’ yet in reality they ‘lose control’ and therefore they ‘suffer’. Other women ‘let go’ and what that really means is that start using skills … sometimes figured out while in the experience. They figure out how important it is to relax inside their body. They figure out how important it is to use good breathing patterns. They figure out how to read the messages their baby is giving them and do their best not hinder their baby’s birthing process.
In other words, women are using skills. So why are we going on and on about growing a skilled birthing population for all pregnancies and every birth if women can find those skills within themselves and then let go? It’s simple, we need to replicate these skills again and again so they are accessible to the broadest reach of Women and their ‘coaching partners’ and that is NOT being done at all. The sad assumptions being made are two fold:
- That women are using their instinct and intuition rather than acknowledging they are using skills.
- That every woman is different and birth skills cannot be replicated.
By growing a skilled birthing population, much fewer women will suffer because they will have prepared their body to open up for their baby’s birth passage. They will learn, practice and use their birth (and the coaching skills their husband, partner, friend or relative have … or do it alone) no matter how their birth journey unfolds. Skilled women will recognize … ‘I have to do this’. Skilled women will also recognize … ‘This is my baby’s birth and I’m going to do it as skillfully as possible. That is my Power no matter whether I have Fears or not’. On the bottom line, skilled women do not suffer even when they are faced with monumental challenges that causing the pain of grief, anguish or facing the undesirable. Unskilled birthing women are much more likely to choose or be encouraged to be numbed during The Birth as a way of reducing the concept of ‘suffering’. If we want something different we must grow a skilled birthing population. Women will have less fear of pain when they know they can manage it even if they hate it. With skills most women find the natural pain of contractions is very manageable yet still hard ‘work’.
Can birth and coaching skills prevent or reduce any health ‘problems’? Of course. There are some ‘problems’ that cannot be prevented by skills however no matter the problem/s all pregnant women can become skilled and that helps them cope with the challenges resulting from ‘problems’.
Also, the problems that result from women tensing up and fighting the birthing process can be tremendously reduced by simple skills. Fighting birth is a reflection of women’s efforts to stay on top of and in control of something totally out of their control. For too many women in modern societies these tension problems lead to more medical intervention.
Please join us. Together we can grow The Movement for a Skills-based approach to all pregnancies and every birth. We are all one humanity. We only breath 4 ways. We can all soften inside our Pelvic Clock. We can learn to keep our birthing body open. We can all create more space side-to-side and front to back as well as mobilize our sacrum. We can all learn to read whether our baby likes a specific position or not and choose positions that create a bell shape curve to each contraction. We can also learn to effectively work with our birthing partner. Birth partners can learn the skills to effectively see and hear how we respond to the internal sensations and help right away to help us stay on top of them. Birth partners can use deep touch relaxation to cue us to soften inside. Birth partners can work with our non-verbal communication and become our mirror for effective birthing.
And if we are giving birth by a surgical process, we can still use many of those skills as a way we stay involved and connected to our baby’s birth journey. No birth experience need to empty of our own skills or keep us passive or disengaged.
Women want to feel empowered by giving birth. Women want to feel engaged in the process. Women want the person/people with them to know how-to help them. Women want to talk, talk and talk about their births with dignity and not be loaded with the shame, blame, guilt, disappointment, defensiveness that is too often experienced today.
What do women want in The Birth?
NEXT POST: What do women want mothering newborn?