By now you’re about 30 weeks pregnant and hopefully you’ve been able to listen to the last 6 talks of the 16 week childbirth preparation series.
Women quickly discover that labour and delivery require our utmost attention, although childbirth may not appear to be a multi-task inexperience, for those of us with the BirthingBetter skills we have acquired good positive breathing, communicating and relaxation skills. With these skills we are actually able to reduce or prevent long non-progressive labours and work with our baby’s effort to be born.
Each week you are learning another skill. This will increase your confidence and as your due date approaches, you’ll be able to look back and ask yourself how would I feel if I didn’t have these skills? and as a woman you’ll be able to turn to your partner and tell them how grateful you are that they will really be able to help and as a father to be, a friend, partner or relative you’ll be able to turn to the woman and assure her that you will work with her through every contraction, you’re building your skill tame.
Today’s talk will start to introduce you to preparing your body for childbirth. We discussed breathing in the second talk. Learning about breathing in labour was a good place to start because breathing techniques have been taught in childbirth classes since the 1970’s.
Learning about our birthing body is less familiar. Because BirthingBetter is best learned in the privacy of one’s home, then there’s less shyness. Shyness is a funny thing about pregnancy and birth.
There are many women who birth under a full skirt, however there are also many more who find themselves completely naked and not caring one hoot at the time, therefore we can learn about our body in the privacy of our own home.
The lower part of our body is where so many different functions occur that separating childbirth from our monthly period, how we feel about sex, our bowels, voiding etc. can be challenging.
What the common voice of thousands upon thousands of women would like me to tell you is this, keep childbirth preparation separate from any other issue t you might have down there. When childbirth takes over that’s all that’s happening.
As one woman said ‘I have the rest of my life to sort out my issues, right now I have to get on with it’ so approach the birth of your child with interest and how to prepare your body which is after all a three-dimensional container.
Childbirth is a mystery, however it doesn’t have to be mystifying. In order for our baby to be born, he or she must pass through a hole in our tube, that’s our pelvis. Start to pay attention to that hole.
The best way is to sit on a hard chair without armrests. Sit like you would when you’re in a bus, in a car or at your doctor’s office.
Pay attention to the space between the bones you sit on, that’s your side-to-side space, then you pay attention to where your virgina is in the back to where your tail bone is, that’s your back-to-back space.
Now compare the space with a size of a baby’s head, that’s easy. Place your thumbs together and your index fingers together and make a circle, that’s about the size of a baby’s head.
Regardless of whether your hole is relatively big or relatively small, there are ways to create more space if needed. Try creating more side-to-side space now by standing up and sitting down while you consciously open those bones you sit on as far as possible.
You can learn more about creating space when you visit birthingbetter.com and learn more about BirthingBetter and about your pregnant body.