I'd like to see lots of change to the protocols we have in place for mamas and babies to give birth together. We seem, as a culture, to be missing the point of how soft-bellied mammals need to be supported in order to give birth successfully, blissfully, and safely. We have lost so much along the way from hunter-gatherers to agrarian cultures to where we find ourselves now: in a technocracy where we bar the door to keep Nature from entering. The most important part we lost was the trust we should have in Mother Nature. She knows that mammals need to feel safe in order to give birth. All mammals, including humans, will stop labor when they do not feel safe. Our systems secrete catecholamines (stress hormones) that counteract the oxytocin that stimulates contractions. What happens to many women in labor when they enter the hospital is that the stress of entering an unfamiliar space sends stress hormones into the blood stream which slows down or stops labor. Again, mammals have the capacity to stop labor when they do not feel safe. It is pro-survival to give birth in a safe, comfortable environment. We know how to stop contractions. Asking our care providers to follow the hormone-aware protocols can go a long way toward letting Nature dictate the timing of all support during labor and delivery.*
Sometimes the birthing couple or birthing triad, if the mother’s partner is there, need privacy and to be left alone to regroup, support one another, steel their resolve to let Nature dictate the pacing, rather than strict hospital protocols, as long as everything is going well. This means minimizing tests, exams, and giving plenty of space and time for contractions to do their job. Women’s bodies are designed to work well.
When the baby begins her journey out, she has the capacity and is hard-wired to USE her legs to help the process, by pushing her feet against the top of the uterus (fundus) so as to propel herself toward the outlet.
When not given anesthetic, mom has more sensation and can participate more fully in helping her baby find her way out. If she is schooled in how normal it is to have big sensation during contractions, she will do much better than if she tenses up with every rush. Tension causes pain. Pain causes tension. It becomes a vicious circle of escalating pain and escalating tension. Understanding that the largest and strongest muscle in the human body is the uterus. These muscles combine strength, endurance, dynamic strength, and absolute strength. (The only other muscle that comes close to pounds of pressure per square inch is the massater muscle which yields more pressure per square inch every time we bite down on something than any other muscle in the human body. [55 pounds on the incisors or 200 pounds on the molars!])
I was fortunate to have been a dancer and to know how those large leg and gluteal muscles feel when they’re working hard. HARD is how they feel! As muscle fibers contract, the entire muscle gets more dense and it feels hard to the touch.
A birth educator may be able to help her students understand in their body that it’s the job of the uterus to get hard in order to shorten and to push the baby towards the outlet. A good birth educator will also clue-in mom and dad that the baby has a job too. Ideally, baby is the one initiating labor… the powerful signal is given by the BABY’S release of a hormone that says: I’m ready for my entrance now. Please help me to get out.
When contractions begin, and the fundus (the top of the uterus) gets hard, it is to the baby as the side of a swimming pool is to a swimmer. She can push off and it helps her to swim herself down toward the outlet. “Down” here is a relative word. When standing, mom’s cervix and vaginal opening are definitely down, below her navel. With gravity’s support, it’s a lot easier for babies to push themselves down toward the outlet rather than in an upward direction. When mom is lying down in classic hospital lithotomy position, flat on her back, (usually, with her feet in stirrups) baby is necessarily pushing uphill against gravity, and so is mom.
Breathing and focus can work well for mitigating pain. Surrender is another big idea during birth. Surrendering to the powerful rushes that WILL bring that baby down the canal, is a useful and tricky trick.
Not saying it's easy for everyone. Just saying it's optimal to surrender to the flow of the rushes. Our bodies have been preparing to give birth since we were an egg inside our mother when she was a baby floating in the dark and quiet of HER mother. The process is meant to work well. Women's bodies were designed to carry and deliver babies. Learning as much as we can about how the process works is a good start. Unfamiliarity leads to surprise which leads to bracing which leads to pain. The unknown can make all of us cringe.
While classic lithotomy position is easier for birth attendants to feel and see what is happening, it is harder on the birthing couple and often slows down the birth, thereby increasing the likelihood that the hospital will resort to other interventions, like forceps, suction bonnets and ultimately, Caesarean section, also called surgical delivery, or belly birth, which then increases recovery time and impedes the bonding process.
Staying loose is a practice that can be cultivated. A good birth educator can help us to understand the process, learn to differentiate muscles, so only the uterus needs to work until it is time to push. She can also help us learn the benefits of relaxation and HOW to relax. Further, the role of the birth educator is to normalize many things that may come up during the birth or directly after. Few are worrisome. Most are not.
We are fortunate to live in an age when appropriate medical interventions are available. We can demand of our support staff that they do not use any of those spiffy interventions without good cause.
Every intervention disrupts the birth dance; the threshold dance of a human child entering into the world. Every intervention has consequence that may lead to more interventions until the cascade separates mothers and babies from their own unique two-step. That separation itself is disempowering and perceived as life-threatening for the emerging being.
Ideally, s/he ought to be able to initiate labor, ought to be allowed to help push herself out (no anesthetic). Optimally, the birthing couple ought to be left to the rhythms of their singular dance music so they may complete it in their own time.
* A free download of a seventeen page booklet called (Pathway to a Healthy Birth may be found here:
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