Off your tits in the birth room? Is it possible without drugs?

When I set up this blog I vaguely remember promising to talk about doula and birth stuff and since this here blog was never meant to be a straight up show-and-tell of our home ed journey, I hope you don't mind me straying into that part of my life for this post.

If you'd rather read about my other stuff or are offended by birth talk, you may want to skip this post. I promise there'll be a return to my other home ed stuff soon. Don't go away!

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The longer I study, listen, watch and learn about the process of birth, the more mysterious it becomes. I am in awe of this amazing process. Births are a science unto themselves, so it would seem! I have read so many books this last year, watched endless documentaries and birth films, and friends around me have been having babies too. I want to talk a little about some of the conclusions I have drawn so far.

You might want to make a cuppa. I bang on a bit.

Birthing truth number 1:

I think that perhaps the most useful preparation leading up to the birth is *clearing the air* or in other words, getting shit off your chest. Riding the waves of labour are hurdle enough without extra baggage weighing you down. Talking out all your fears, expressing your angers, frustrations, and so on with your partner. Being clear and open with each other about what pisses you off about each other, and trying to get into a peaceful space with them. Birthing energy moves better when two partners are mentally making love, even just on an emotional level, throughout the birth. When both partners are getting psychic with each other, are not fighting each other, the birth energy flows well. When there is antagonism, bitterness, unspoken shit between them, it seems to flow all over the place. Touching, massaging and kissing are all good. But it all has to be done with heart, not perfunctorily, otherwise it's not going to help but will in fact hinder and annoy the birthing mother! If you can't get high off the synergy between you and your partner, you may want some other people at your birth who you feel completely at ease with, who make you laugh, who will help the energy flow well. Sometimes your partner is great but you want the extra company and reassurance of females - in some cultures, birth is a right old party!

Birthing truth number 2:

The more painful you expect birth to be, the more painful it is. You would be totally forgiven for thinking all births are an emergency waiting to happen, painfully screamy dramas, as that's all we ever see on TV and since hospitals make birth so damn hard to do well, a lot of women end up having that kind of birth. And they don't really need to. When a woman is surrounded by other women who have a positive, empowering, gentle experience of birth, they tend to think less in terms of risk. Risk is all when birth is discussed by medical professionals. They view birth solely in these terms and it scares the shit out of women ("Cos they're profesionals, right, so they know best? Don't they?) Women have become so scared of their own bodies, so afraid of their own capabilities, of their strength, of the chemical reactions our amazing bodies are capable of.

Birthing truth number 3:

If we submit to medical protocol, policy, and dictat, often we talk ourselves out of what might have been a beautiful birth. It's just a case of having the right professionals on your side, who have a can-do approach to births outside the ridiculous tick list of 'norms' which they have devised. Any woman who is a deviation from the norm list is basically seen as a nuisance, so if you are in any way different from the norm, you will have to fight for the birth you would like. If you are overdue by their dates (even when you know their dates are bullshit), if you are presenting in a breech position, if you are carrying more than one baby, oh a whole list of conditions which they freak over. And none of these are really *that* freaky. They've just forgotten how to care for idiosyncrasies in the spectrum of women because it's inconvenient to treat women as individuals when they don't fit neatly into their boxes and timescales. They're too busy, too overcrowded, to respect and revere each individual labour as something magic, as having a rhythm and timing that more often than not, is perfectly normal. So many women go under the knife un-necessarily just to keep that conveyor belt labour ward moving along at a pace that suits them. It's not the birthing mother or the midwives fault, they're caught up in it all with an arsenal of drugs and interventions for every slight deviation. If I were birthing on my back whilst sapped to monitors for endless hours I too would be begging for the knife.

How many births could have gone differently if a wise doctor had said "no problem"? If midwives were able to spend more time on the relationship they have with the woman they're helping, time to build up trust, a connection, heart-to-heart, woman-to-woman? Instead of counting birth exclusively in centimeters, numbers, heart rates - birth can also be monitored in emotional terms, by recognising changes in her body and voice to feel her in an intuitive sense rather than with rubber gloves, up the fanny. (Relaxing, huh?)  It is perhaps wiser to notice the effect on the mother when certain people enter the birth space (negatively or positively), what positions she finds comfortable or uncomfortable, allowing her to eat/sleep/move about as freely as possible. Allowing gravity to do its magic instead of insisting that she lay on her back * THE WORST BIRTHING POSITION EVER* for fuck's sake?

Birthing truth number 4:

Did you know that undisturbed birth is generally the safest model? You wouldn't think so huh? The way your doc and the media go on about it. But to be able to do that means either living in an indigenous culture where birth is not feared or talked about exclusively in risk terms, using risk language and risk terminology every step of the way.....or....if you live in western society you will instead need to invest some time boning up on the chemical powerhouse that is actually going on in your body whilst you labour. In undisturbed birth our bodies actually sequence the drugs we need by dispensing them naturally to us, at the right dosage. They are in fact more powerful than any synthetics if we're talking pain relief. But no-one makes a buck out of that, right? So that's why they don't talk too much about that one at your check-ups (what a rude term anyway, who invented that- makes you feel on edge doesn't it, to think you are being "checked up' on?) Ditto it's not exactly promoted at ante natal classes either. Natural birthers are seen as some hardcore freaks, but in fact it is possible for most of us if we open our minds. And because we are scared out of our wits by all the scary tv programmes and negative messages we've been told about birth, we clam up. We clench and feel on edge. And then we really do need the drugs because we are handled in such environments that are too NOISY for all our senses to allow our own drugs to flow. The bright lights, the uniforms, the bleepy machines, being strapped up to monitors, the string of different people, the language used, the intrusion on so many levels, the decor, the food, the feel and smell of hospital - generally are pretty anathema to getting down and dirty and pushing out our babies in a sweaty grunty primal and actually pretty sexual way.

I wonder why we are so prudish about this inevitable fact of birth? We are pushing a baby out of our *vagina* for goodness sake! Good birth is like good sex. The same hormones. It's seen as weird to enjoy the grunting, primal, sensations or relate them to the orgasm that got the baby there in the first place but the sooner we get over this basic animal fact, the sooner we can have more enjoyable births. Birthing your baby in a glorious quiver is not very British though eh? The hospital set up (with the exception of birth pools) is as frigid as it gets, so generally they are a bad place to have a beautiful birth. Unless you fight tooth and nail and lay out a list of demands to guarantee low levels of light, noise, disturbance etc etc.

Birthing truth number 4:

Once you read up, and get some friends on board who also don't fear birth and think its the most awful thing ever, surrounding yourself with positive images, affirmations and so on, you need to leave your brains behind to birth a baby. You need to get into primal monkey 'ug' mode. Cave woman panting, groaning and so on are all part of the deal. You can't be using the rational part of your brain whilst you are birthing or worrying about anyone else. You need to get into your zone, which is pretty powerful actually, and doing this will help you to get "out of it" in a sense. It's amazing how trippy a natural birth at home can feel. You don't need gas and air to be off your tits in the birth arena. You don't need any morphine based drugs, your body produces its own opiates!

This link is great if you are looking to have a natural birth next time round and want to understand what your body is capable of: http://www.childbirthconnection.org/article.asp?ck=10184

If you want to find out more about a woman's body can really do, here's a great reading list for you.

Ina May's Guide to Childbirth
Dr Amali Lokugamange: In the heart of the womb
Sarah Buckley's: Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering
Sheila Kitzinger: Rediscovering birth
Janet Balaskas: New Active Birth
Dr. Grantly Dick-Read: Birth Without Fear
Tina Cassidy: Birth; a History

Women's bodies are generally not broken and they still work. We are just forgetting because we have been subject to so much fear-mongering and hysteria that we have perpetuated and not questioned for too long. It's about time we reclaimed our body's truths and tapped into what really is and isn't possible.
There are actually only a very small number of women who cannot give birth naturally, safely, and without all the circus of hospital protocol, and for those women, modern technology is in place to help. Technology is not bad in and of itself. The machines that go ping, can be lifesavers, no two ways about it. It just needn't *always* take centre stage. The mother should be at centre stage, generally. Even when birth takes an unexpected turn, there is still room for as many natural elements as possible to be preserved, it doesn't have to be all-out technology central, all the way. It's easy to see the machines as our saviour, and buy into every last techie solution to problems, when sometimes nature is better.

It's time to stop fearing our bodies as we have been taught to, and enjoy them and what they can do!

How do you feel about your birth/s?
Are you a natural birther?
Or maybe you are a midwife or doula and have something to add.
Do you disagree with anything here?
I love to debate this kind of stuff!

Xx MF xX