These are childbirth skills that originated from ordinary women and men and are being passed onto you through Common Knowledge Trust.
Today’s talk is for men/other. Like the last talk it’s best to pass on some of these skills through a story. Well, this father had two children from a previous marriage. He and his first wife had attended childbirth classes and felt prepared with lots of information and a birth plan. He sat at the head of the bed wiping her brow, rubbing her back when she wanted him to, he actually knew he wasn’t much help; often she’d push his hand away, turned from him or growl for him to shut up. He tried but he felt useless and helpless.
The staff left them alone but everyone complimented the woman on how well she handled labour because she was so quiet. The woman was quite angry with him and why hadn’t he helped her more. They buried those feelings for years and had another child.
Again they attended classes and this time had a midwife. Although it was a bit better the man knew that his wife didn’t trust him to be there for her. The midwife sat back and left them alone. Eventually they did get divorced.
Years later he remarried a woman who had a son. Her birth had been a horrible, out of control experience, although only ten hours long. They got pregnant and got BirthingBetter. Their new midwife required them to work through the resources.
They were both reluctant because they had taken childbirth preparation classes before that hadn’t helped. With the first section they knew BirthingBetter had something different. They became fascinated and totally involved in learning the skills although still uncertain about how the skills would work in labour.
She niggled all night, he used what do you want to do now skill and had to be very strong with her, she was already beginning to have fears about the pain, he wasn’t certain he was doing the right thing but didn’t have a better plan. Early in the morning labour picked up and they called their midwife.
As labour got more painful, he wasn’t certain whether the midwife should be helping his wife and the woman wanted the midwife to help her, the midwife said they were doing fine and turned away but their desire for the professional to step in created an uncertainty between them, thankfully the birth occurred shortly afterwards to a great deal of praise from their midwife about how they had worked together.
When they privately discussed the birth they realised they had stopped working together. Their previous experiences had made them uncertain but they were a tight couple and forgave themselves.
Two years later, very unexpectedly they became pregnant again. What a blessing. They went back over the skills more diligently. They had a goal. They wanted this experience to be as intimate as their most intimate moments.
The midwife told them after the birth that she sees more and more BirthingBetter couples be able to accomplish this both at home or hospital births even with lots of medical care. The man said more couples can do this. He said he’d come to see the pain of childbirth as an initiation for women.
They have to walk through the pain but he realised that father’s have to walk through the pain step by tiny step with the woman. He said BirthingBetter skills were the tools that he could apply in order to take those steps. He knew his wife absolutely trusted him. They said their focus together and their atunement to each other was like being part of a slow motion fall of a leaf from a tree.
They said the birth was the ultimate in a conscious experience rather than merely trying to rely on being intuitive or instinctive. Thank you very much for listening to these classes for the past sixteen weeks.
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