How to Have the Birth of Your Dreams
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Created in response to the Time magazine article, Choosy Mothers Choose Caesareans, by Alice Park. This hub highlights resources to assist any woman in liberating herself from the fear surrounding birth so she can have the birth of her dreams.
The Highlights
Women everywhere choose to become mothers through a process we have termed Birth. Of course it starts with sex, then conception, followed with pregnancy, but the actualization of all of the preceding is Birth.
Not only mother, but father, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and anyone else privileged enough to witness the raw, unadulterated power of a woman through realizing her own personal potential, will be forever changed when that woman is allowed to be fully who she is. An Amazing Creator.
For those who have experienced a birth less than that of you dreams, fear not. It is within. For those who are growing a baby as we speak, may this hub direct you towards information to educate and inform you along your journey. Even if you are no longer having children, you can benefit from knowing that you are still the awesome being who has this strength and amazing ability of birth inside of you.
Face Your Fear: Inform Yourself
Fear can be paralyzing. Or it can be informing. Or both. In the situation of birth, and wanting to have the birth of your dreams, it will benefit you and your baby to become well informed. Gather information from your health care provider and if answers sought there do not suffice, take your asking a step further. Or a few steps.
Regardless of where you plan to birth, with a MD or midwife or unassisted, here are a few really awesome resources worth checking out to empower yourself to have the birth of your dreams:
The Thinking Woman's Guide to A Better Birth - This book provides practical information for a safe, satisfying birth through reviewing current medical research. It discusses any interventions and their pros and cons so you know what is happening with you and your baby and you can make choices from a truly informed place.
Birthing From Within - This book and the classes based upon it ares a comprehensive collection of writings, information, and exercise of all sorts to allow you to work through any fears, issues, concerns, and to clarify what you desire for your birth. An awesome resource!
The Bradley Method - Natural childbirth with the partner involved in the process. Parents are educated on a whole perspective of nutrition, relaxation, and support.
The Compleat Mother - This magazine and website feature support for women throughout pregnancy, birth, and breastfeeding. The birth stories in themselves can share the truth of the experience and inform the reader.
Ina May Gaskin - A midwife who has helped thousands of women deliver with confidence, less pain, and less medical intervention, Ina May has written two phenomenal books: Spiritual Midwifery and Ina May's Guide to Childbirth.
Prenatal Yoga with Gurmukh Kaur Kalsa - Start the journey to find your own inner resource with this powerful yoga video. You can do it in the privacy of your own home and it includes as amazing endurance exercise for upcoming contractions.
The resources are endless. Search them out. We all know ~stuff~ can happen and emergencies arise, the point here is to become your own source of strength in this amazing experience, rather than seek it elsewhere. You can have the birth of your dreams.
Take Care of You
If it hasn't already occured to the pregnant woman, it will definitely, at one point or another, hit home for the mother that it's time to take care of herself. We are multifaceted beings. We're talking about more than just eating right, getting rest, exercising, and drinking plenty of water. Those are all part of the picture, yet it is a lot broader. When we incorporate all aspects of ourselves, we feel more whole and balanced. Birth is certainly one experience that would ideally be entered into with a sense of balance.
One way to look at yourself is with Virginia Satir's Self Mandala. Virginia Satir was an author and psychotherapist who worked with people as a whole, on eight different levels. She categorized them this way: I am, Spiritual, Nutritional, Emotional, Sensual, Physical, Interactional, Contextual, and Intellectual. The point here is that we are more than just a body. And we have the ability to realize that when we take the time to do so.
Allow yourself to really focus on you and what you need to bring your whole self into balance. This in itself will assist you in having the birth of your dreams.
Know You Can Do It
As Hathor the Cow Goddess suggests in her cartoon above, women gave birth for a very long time in the existence of the human species, with no intervention. Is this to say that interventions are not necessary? In some cases, they do preserve life. At the same time, many measures used in modern medicine can and do lead to further interventions, and often c-section. No fault here, just the facts.
Bottom line, a woman's body is created to birth. That's what we do.
A study of the human sexual response cycle gives insight towards the magnificence of the whole reproductive beauty, from beginning to end. We ovulate, our cervix opens, our vaginas lubricate, the sperm has a swimmingly good time in the slippery mucous produced, and wa-la... the creation of a little human.
Birth is the same. We nurture our babies inside, when birth begins, our cervix begins to stretch, dilate, and release the plug that has so kindly kept bacteria from endangering our little one all of the months of gestation. What happens next is an increase in the intensity of the opening until the mother finally surrenders and her body expels the being from within.
Believe it or not, the whole process can absolutely be the most liberating, joyful experience a woman ever has. To feel that way, she must reclaim her personal power. The power innate within her at her own birth as a little baby. The power she has now, only waiting to be discovered.
Amy Bush Bradley (aka Rainbow Recognizer) is a Life Coach and Energy Pracitioner who combines practical parenting and life coaching skills with energy awareness and healing to assist parents in simply making the most of parenting, now. Free email support as well as private sessions and group coaching are available through Amy's offerings below...
Post Natal Yoga with Gurmukh Kaur Kalsa
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Comments
Rainbow, great topic and hub! I know many women choose c-sections and it is mind boggling! Sometimes it is entirely unavoidable, but to choose it? I had an emergency c with my third (and cried through the entire process). I would choose all natural / no pain meds / water birth any day. Like you said, it is empowering, better for your body and the recovery is a walk in the park compared to a c-section.
Love the cartoons too :)
Thank you both for the comments :o) I feel passionately that women ought have the opportunity to experience birth the way they want it. C-sections have their place, in an emergency! Still, to each her own - it's just that if it's about fear, that's something to look at...
I work at a Women's Hospital that delivers 260+ babies a month and luckily there are policies there that deny an "elective" c-section. However, we all know there are ways to bend the rules--I'm sure some Dr's try to accomodate their patients a little too much sometimes. Thankfully, most of our scheduled c-section patients are usually post-dates, breech, twins, or other special circumstances.
That being said, I have heard many pregnant women say that they would prefer to have a c-section and just "get it over with." I think that's ridiculous! Why deny yourself the process (physically, emotionally, mentally, etc) AND have longer/more painful healing time?
Great hub! :)
Thanks! I think the process of pregnancy and birth also can really prepare the mother for parenting if she lets it. Baby moves and kicks when he/she wants to. Birth unfolds in its own way and the mother who takes it upon herself to find ways to be with birth, rather than avoid it, is serving herself and her ability to live life, instead of resisting it.
Yeah, I'm a bit biased here, obviously, and I'm not trying to point fingers because I really think women have just been distracted from their own power and ability. It saddens me a bit, but I know it's all good. Have to have choices to be able to choose! Sigh.
Well put.
It should be a woman's choice. Great article - thanks.
I love your hub. My fiance is wanting to have a water birth when we decide to have kids and from what I have heard about it, it seems to be a very nice option. Keep up the good work. I love the cartoons.
Congrats on the upcoming union :o) Water during labor and birth can definitely be relieving, as well as helpful in allowing birth to unfold naturally! Thank you for the comment. :o)
When people today think about birth, they picture doctors, machines, and screaming mothers. Most consider drugs, cesarean sections, and other interventions as normal. Women have been giving birth forever, before all of this was even an option. Why has so much changed over the years?
Hospitals are businesses. Many care more about filling beds than about what is right for the patient. That is why doctors are so quick to induce labor. They want to get you in and out so they can fill your bed with someone new. Many doctors make decisions about the patient according to what is most convenient for them and most lucrative for the hospital. The more drugs and procedures they convince the patient is necessary, the more money the hospital makes. It is also interesting to note that the peak time for C-sections is four to ten pm. The doctors are tired and hungry and just want to go home. A lot of women do not realize that obstetricians are surgical specialists. They view labor as a medical emergency because that is how they were trained to think. It is important to realize that they were not trained in normal, natural childbirth. Therefore, having a natural childbirth experience in a hospital is near impossible.
Despite what most obstetricians believe, giving birth at home or in a free standing birth center is extremely safe. In most cases, it is better for both mother and baby. As women, we need to realize that we have many options. We should not just assume that we will be most safe in the hands of a doctor. All women are capable of making a well thought out, informed decision about the birth of their child.
Awesome hub Rainbow =)
Thank you for the comment - informed, empowered birth is what I'm aiming for.
There are so many facets to this picture that it's difficult to explain all of them in a short article but a really good book to read that is quite objective is The Farmer and the Obstetrician by Michel Odent.
Thanks! I'll check it out.
MoralsEthics1960 says:
2 years ago
wow
Rock on