What exactly is a medical birth? Having your baby in hospital? Having an obstetrician as your birth provider? Having staff obstetrical nurses or nurse midwives attend you? Having medical assessments, monitoring or procedures done during your pregnancy and birth of your baby? Is that what a medical birth is?
Ok … that’s pretty much true. So where does a Skills-based approach to your pregnancy and baby’s birth come into this? Simple. You’re pregnant and you are going to be the giving birth. This means you can prepare your pregnant body to become a birthing body then learn, practice and use birth and coaching skills alongside the health care you receive.
What complicates the issue of ‘medical birth’ is simple. You might choose one, require extended health care or be pressured. Because there is no societal expectation that you become skilled and all types of medical care have been lumped into one word … interventions … it’s really easy to see how women having a medical birth do not always see their experience as empowered or natural.
For 40+ years the literature around childbirth has created a rift between ‘natural vs medical’ births. And that’s just wrong. Every birth is natural because birth is the natural conclusion of pregnancy. Every birth is natural even when it includes modern medical care. If the word ‘intervention’ was not used for every assessment, monitoring and procedure then we’d have a different conversation.
All over the Internet are websites decrying medical care during birth, always implying that the care is usually unnecessary and potentially harmful. It’s the use of the word ‘intervention’ that implies that modern medical care is fundamentally harming women and babies. If women could simply determine if the standards of care are what they want or need without the trigger of this one word … intervention.
If you don’t want medical care don’t go to a doctor or hospital. If you do then you have to work with and around the standards of care that surrounds that practice. That’s why birth and coaching skills are SO essential. No health provider will stop you from behaving in a skilled manner. They’d like you to. Health care shouldn’t create passivity. Giving birth is an activity you are going to do so be skilled. It’s simple. Every birthing woman can be a skilled birthing woman. Every father/other can be a skilled coaching dad. It’s simple. Use health care when you want and be skilled to work with and around the health standards of care.
Here’s a link. This link will be put on all the posts. Kristen has 6 kids, the last 3 are PK babies. She KNOWS about birth and is one of our affiliates. That means if you purchase The Pink Kit through her she gets a commission. Her husband Scott’s first baby was her first Pink Kit experience. He’ll explain how The Pink Kit made certain he was able to become a skilled birth coach to a woman who had previously had three great births! You can find their interviews on our YouTube channel.
Kristen’s written a time-line calendar for use of The Pink Kit. You just need to sign up to her mail list (we don’t keep a mail list) and she’ll send you the Time Line. She’s worked through both Edition #2 and #3 of The PInk Kit so she knows all it’s imperfections and la-dee-dahs past them to the skills she wants to improve for each birth. Can women and men have better births each time? Sure can! The more skilled, the more we master the experience.
http://blog.naturalbirthandbabycare.com/pink-kit-timeline-from-natural-birth-and-baby-care-com/
Please join the Movement to grow a Skills-based childbirth trend. Don’t’ let another birth go by without that family being skilled.