Gentle Birth Choices

Dr. Sarah Buckley, family practitioner in Australia has four children. She birthed all of them at home.  She has become a strong advocate for creating a birth environment where the mother unequivocably feels safe and secure.   The following in an excerpt from her website.  She explains in the text below briefly why’where you birth can influence your birth process.  I follow her text with a how practicing yoga  can influence a women’s experience of birth.

 ”Although a gentle birth can happen anywhere, the chances of a natural, drug-free labour and birth are much, much greater at home.  For example, the 2002  ‘Listening to Mothers ‘ survey found “virtually no natural childbirth” among the 1500-odd US mothers who responded to their detailed questionnaire. In contrast, in homebirth studies, at least 70% of mothers and babies enjoy a natural birth at home.”

“One reason why intervention is less often needed at home is that you feel private, safe and unobserved when in your own space. These are the basic requirements for birth in all mammals, and are associated with low levels of fight-or-flight hormones, giving an efficient and safe birth for you and your baby.”

“Conversely, when fight-or-flight hormone levels are high, labour will slow to some extent, and blood and oxygen will be diverted to the muscles, heart and lungs  — those organs needed for fight or flight — and away from your uterus and baby. This may cause not only a prolonged labour, but can also compromise blood and oxygen supply to your baby, leading to ‘fetal distress’. Prolonged labour and fetal distress are the most common reasons for intervention in hospital birth.”

 Women who attend my yoga classes throughout their pregnancy become more familiar with her own unique experience of pregnancy.  She learns to trust in the inate wisdom and power of her birth body.  The more a mama to be knows who she is as a birthing woman,  the more she will fearlessly ride the waves of her birth process   Practicing yoga prepares the mama to feel and breathe into the sensations that arise as the birth of her baby nears.  Relaxed breathing through the birth process keeps the mama out of the flight-fight mode.   The strong contracting sensations of her birthing uterus are unfamiliar to first time mamas.   When the birth mama is relaxed , at ease with these sensations she will find that she CAN move through the process allowing for the natural release of the birth hormones that elevate her capacity to birth her baby.    The birth mama learns to turn inward and focus her attention in a way that diminishes her awareness of external activity that may disrupt the birth process.   Practicing  yoga and meditation during pregnancy can influence how a woman experiences her birth whether at home, birth center or hospital.

Opps, he was born at home!

 A  reoccurring concern among my prenatal yoga students is having enough time to make it to the hospital for the birth.  In the past decade of my teaching I have had a half a dozen students who had their babies at home, unplanned.   The most recent a mama who attended my prenatal classes weekly and heard the mantra, “your body knows how to birth” was among one of those women.   She sent me an email 3 weeks ago to tell me that she gave birth at home.  She said, “when I realized that the contractions were regular in their coming, I remained surprisingly calm.”  

   Hi Cynthea.   He’s here.   In short, he arrived at home unexpectedly after a relatively short though intense labor.  My husband, doula and I were all surprised at how quickly things progressed and at the fact that his head was crowning when we thought it may just be time to leave for Kaiser.

A former yoga mama wrote this about her unplanned home birth.   Hi My name is Melanie  and I birthed Sage in an unplanned home birth.  I knew before I gave birth that I wanted to have a unmedicated birth because I knew my body was designed perfectly to birth a baby.  During the labor,and without fear devouring my attention I was able to focus on allowing myself to accept the feelings in my body and mind.  I felt my body opening for the baby to be pushed out and I thought “this is right, this is good” and my body was able to continue its job.  It was also import and to me that Sage came into the world the healthiest and safest way possible.  Sage was instantly alert and receptive to bonding and breast-feeding.   After the birth I felt proud of myself.  I felt confident and ready to hold Sage and was excited to give him good love and mothering.

 I offer this as reassurance.  Babies for centuries were born at home, next to warm fires, in bed, and in the fields.  They have also been birthed on boats, on buses and in cars.  I was told the story by a former yoga student of her friend.  She and her husband were driving across the Bay Bridge, and the daddy’s worst fear,  “what if you have the baby on the bridge’….well the mama did have the baby on the bridge and everything worked out fine.       As an R.N. I admitted babies who were born when their mamas were strung-out on crack, and birthed them at home.  These babies illuminated the powerful life force that flows through All of us….

 I offer this writing as a way to assuage fears about the statement,  ”I’m afraid I won’t have enough time to make it to the hospital.”     

 Einstein says:  ”Imagination is more important than education.”  Goethe says, “If you can imagine it, dream it,  you can make it so.”     If you could create the perfect ‘birth place’ for your baby.  What would you create? What would it look like,  who would be there,  what sounds and aromas would surround you?    I leave these questions for you.

Who have you chosen to be in your Birth Field?

 I recently quiried one of my former prenatal yoga students why she chose me to be at the birth of her son. This is her reply:  
“You have strong, direct energy and you accept whatever the situation is (and could help make decisions if needed) and overall I felt like if you were present I would feel more confident in myself. You reflect that small, small place inside me that knows I would be ok….the rest is filled with bull shit and fear, but I do have a little knowing…..
Thank you for letting  Love be your guide.”

Another mama wrote:  “I chose you to be at my daughter’s birth because I felt you had a clear vision of birth, and in the event that anything should arise that I would trust you to guide me in a way that was right for myself and the baby.”

 The silent  contract that I was anchored in but did not speak about to either of these mamas was,  “I agree to be at your birth, as long as you anchor in your body’s knowing.”    Both of these mamas (First birth), gave birth to healthy babies in less than 12 hours, no medication, except the biochemical soup produced in their own birthing bodies!  What was most amazing for me was to witness the sweet joy of release and strong sense of accomplishment that followed the birth of their babies.

 In the past decade that I’ve been teaching three students have asked me to be present at their births.  I do not advertise myself as a doula or birth attendant.  I see my primary role as a pre-natal yoga teacher who reflects to her students what she is capable of being during the birth of her child.  Inherent Birth Wisdom is our birth-rite as women.

The birth mama does consciously (or unconsciously) make choices in who she allows into the Birth Field.    In her book:   Primal Mothering,  Hygeia Halfmoon tells the story of her 3 births.  She illustrates beautifully how what was held in her unconscious played itself out in her first and second birth experiences.   Instead of falling into despair, she took the path of deep contemplation and forgiveness.  Her third birth was experienced in her home on Maui, ocean waves crashing as a backdrop, her first two children present as assistants.   

I do not agree with these words,  “good birth, bad birth.”  I feel each birth that a woman experiences is an opportunity to expand into the fullness and glory of her Being as a Woman.   How she chooses or even if she chooses the path of contemplation and self-examination is indeed her choice.   The question I ask of myself as I guide the beautiful mamas who share of themselves in my yoga classes is this:   How would love choose?

Birth: In nature’s time.

In my neighborhood the green spiky leaves of the paper whites have emerged from the soil, some of the flowers have blossomed while others have yet to bloom.  These flowers as with all growing things in nature have a relationship to their environment and bloom according to their innate cycle. (When left mostly, if not completely alone to do so).

This past week in my prenatal class, one of my yoga students (first pregnancy), excitedly announced to me after class that she was check and was found to be “2cm dilated”  (the words of her Ob/gyn).   She went on to tell me that she was checked that day and was concerned that, “it hurt when she examined me”.  I asked if the Dr. had “stripped her membranes.”  to which the student replied,  “I don’t know but it hurt.”    (Why was this mama to be not left alone to progress on her own?)

What came up for me later that evening was this.  If the mother is doing well and the baby is doing well, all systems are moving in the direction of birth,  what does the OB/gyn need to believe to “strip the membranes” of a healthy mama?   ~Does the Ob/gyn have the right to “strip the membranes” without telling the birth mama?  I’m curious what is going on in the mind (conscious/unconscious thought processes) of an Ob/gyn or midwife who makes a choice(decision) to influence birth outcome when it may well not be necessary.    What happens when the birth attendant allows  birth to unfold and responds to what is arising in the moment. (Instead of making choices and decisions rooted in the past?)

Consider this: The fertilization of the ovum(MamaEgg) is all about timing and conditions. (I think this is true even when performed in the petri dish).  After fertilization, the embryological process continues into fetal development.  The human gestates for 10 lunar cycles. (yes there can be variability, but typically it is 10 lunar cycles.)  All the while the mother carries on her activities of daily living while the little being inside her grows and shape shifts according to natures design.   The baby births itself from the cocoon of the womb.  (Again, this is the natural process, and yes we do meddle sometime, even when it is not necessary.)

I’m curious about our relationship with day/night cycles, tides rising and falling, growth cycles, seasons, etc.   I’m curious about my own ability to listen to and trust my own internal rhythms and wonder how they are externally influenced.

To all you mamas to be who are ‘thinking women’, on the go women, movers and shakers,  I say a big yes to you…And, I ask, can you pause long enough, become still and listen with care to the deep instinctual rhythms of your mama body, the birthing body?  Can you hear that soft, quiet (sometime loud and rumbling) knowing voice of the Wise Birthing Woman, who has birthed her young for millenniums.  Can we hear Her?  Can we trust Her?

In closing I would say that I consciously chose Her, to be congruent with Shakti, as We, women, Female mammals are still blessed with the wonder holding life within our  wombs.

Dr.Christiane Northrup

I am taking part in the Ecstatic-Birth telesummit.  This week Dr.Christiane spoke and shared her experience and deep woman wisdom.  This was a quote from her talk:

”The places where our most incredible power resides are the places that we have been taught to be afraid of, and labor is one of those places. When a woman emerges from a natural birth, when she has been encouraged to sink deep down into her birth wisdom, she emerges from that birthing bed so much more powerful, so much stronger, with so much more trust in her body, that she really can’t be talked into things that are outside of her inner wisdom anymore. She has tapped into something that is transcendent. And that is, not only power of pleasure, but it the power of transformation.”" __Dr. Christiane Northrup

I have witnessed this over and over again with my prenatal/postnatal yoga students. This transformation into her power with advent of the birth of her baby. For example, Cadie said to me, “Cynthea, I had no idea how strong I would feel after the birth of my second baby.  I chose to birth him without an epidural, because of your encouragement. I was so amazed at how elated I felt and how much more alert and present he was immediately after emerging from my belly.  I am so happy you informed me how the outside anesthesia effects the baby.  It was true,  my second son was more alert and active than my first.”

The Gospel of Birth prt. one

Last night I had the great good fortune of being an active listener in the Ecstatic-Birth tele-summit organized by Sheila Kamara Hay.

 Dr. Christiane Northrup shared her experience and wisdom of birth.  She reviewed the history of birth in the last 40-50 years.  She talked about how women who entered the hospitals in the ’50′s and 60′s were put into a “twilight sleep” using scopolamine and Seconal just prior to giving birth.   Imagine, having a mother rendered unconscious just prior to birthing her baby. My mother received this dosing just prior to my birth.    Now, imagine how a mother mammal in the wild would deal with this interference.   Yes, Dr. Northrup said there were plenty women who fought this dosing because their Indigenous-core wisdom knew it was a violation.   

While we have come away from rendering a mother unconscious, women are still receiving anesthesia to block the sensation of birth.  Women still believe because of the cultural conditioning (Dr. Northrup’s words were,  “women have been brain-washed into believing birth is the most traumatic event she is likely to go through”) that they will experience pain and so they need to receive a drug to mitigate the pain, they’ve been told they will have during birth.   I’ve heard it said, “Birth is pain with a purpose” and if that’s the case, why would a woman want to numb herself to this sensation that is bringing forth her child?  Why are we afraid to feel and experience birth fully?

What did the medical establishment have to believe to treat birth as though it were a disease? That a woman’s body needs assistance, help, saved from birth.  The evolution of humanity was going along fine prior to these interventions.  Yes, women and babies died in birth.  They still do.  Check out. World Health Organization and see what countries are leading the way in 2009 in Maternal/Infant Mortality.  Yep, the U.S. is right up there at the top.  And yes, sometimes we do need a jump start.  I wish someone would look at why a woman’s body fail’s to commence to contracting to birth her child?  Instead we just keep saying…oh, your late, we need to induce.  Is anyone looking into what environmental factors influence the onset of birth?  What about un-resolved emotional psychological issues?  Research, studies anyone?   I have a few ideas of my own.  Mother is exhausted and deeply fatigued and her body is too tired to get going on its own.  Another idea is that a woman is somewhat dis-associated from her sensual nature,  might this delay the onset of birth? Those are two intuitive thoughts of hundreds others intuitive thoughts that I’ve received while teaching prenatal yoga.

If a woman becomes pregnant and already has an under-lying belief she will not be able to handle birth, is she not setting herself up a less than pleasant experience?

I’ve enjoyed hearing the stories of my prenatal  yoga students who after several classes with me during their prenatal period entered with an open mind/open heart and as birth progressed opted to give it ago with-out the pharmaceuticals.  To the delightful surprise of many of my students, they have happily reported that they were able to birth and experience states described by them as,  “elation, euphoria, so happy, ecstatic, joyfull”…..by staying with their own breath moment by moment they remained calm and present and birthed  their babies.

Yes, this is the ideal and each woman enters birth with her own “Reality”  beliefs, emotional ecology, physical challenges that all play a role in birth outcome.  Awoman is not a failure or less than if she chooses an epidural or has a C-section.  However, we must as a people wake up to expanding ourselves to shift how we can experience our birth.  Many many women have awakened (remembered)  and more will get on board the Ecstatic-birth, Embodied -birth train.

Prenatal yoga, Pleasure and Self-care

Elisabeth Gilbert, author of Eat Pray Love journeys to Italy, India and Bali.  During her escapades in Italy, one of her newly made Italian friends comments,  “you Americans don’t know how to have pleasure…”   I was reminded of his comment upon seeing the movie this past weekend.  

Webster defines pleasure as:   desire, inclination. a state of gratification. a sensual gratification. a source of delight and joy.   The origin is Anglo-French from Plaisir; to please.

The yoga practice that is popular in this country currently is the asana practice.  A series of poses sometimes linked together as a sequence flowing one into the other, sometime postures held for longer periods of time.  There are as many styles as there are people.  No matter what style one practices I have not observed many modern yogi’s experiencing pleasure in the yoga room.    There was a shift in my own practice when I began asking myself,  am I experiencing pleasure in my practice.  Some would say,  “yoga is not meant to be pleasurable”, and I would ask,  “why not”.

I teach prenatal yoga.  Some women come to the yoga room and it’s easy for me to discern that they are at ease in their body, they are delighted to be pregnant and feel at home in the yoga room.   Other women come and it seems that they are there because the pregnancy has called them home to their body.  They want to feel better.    After many years of teaching, it is obvious to me that when we come together to move, to breathe, to laugh and to express what ever needs to be expressed there is a felt sense of pleasure.   

 Pleasure involves all the senses.    My greatest sense of pleasure comes through my mouth and my skin.  It comes when I am with friends enjoying a meal, fully embodied in the moment.  Pleasure comes when I’m driving or walking down my street and the sun-light hits a huge Bougainvillea spray of magenta flower at a moment that floods my sense of being with delight or when I see a few small finches frolicking in the dirt beneath a rose-bush.   Pleasure comes when I take out the trash and the new crescent moon catches the corner of my perception to say hi, how are you, I am here. I love the feeling of movement of my breath flowing easily in and out of my body as a practice yoga asana, swim or dance…and a myriad of other ways!

I am learning that to feel pleasure, to give pleasure, I must be open for it.   A willingness to take it in.   I am learning that I don’t have to actively seek it.  My senses and my consciousness need but be willing to notice.

I think many women have been conditioned to believe that pregnancy is uncomfortable,  some will even say during class I feel great now, but later when I’m bigger I won’t.  There is a pre-conceived notion, an expectation that they will be uncomfortable.     What about this pre-conceived notion.  We’ve been told by our mother, our sister or our co-worker,  “just wait till you get bigger.”     I’m curious about all the notions we have about pregnancy.  I am especially curious about what keeps a woman from experiencing it as anything less than pleasing.  I’m not saying that we need to feel ecstatically high 24/7.   I am asking that we explore what keeps us from experiencing a deeply felt sense of pleasure during pregnancy.

The path to Self-care includes experiencing pleasure.  I do not feel this is the same as self-indulgence.    For eg. A women recently came to my class and during the circle time she said,  “this feels really self-indulgent, taking out 90 minutes to focus on my-self.”   I don’t know, why she made that statement.  I wonder what she has to believe in order for her to make such a comment.    I do know that many women  are  waking up to the possibility of movement and breathing and coming together to celebrate pregnancy as a means to experience more pleasure in our life; And perhaps then a greater sense of well-being and ease in life.

Unassisted Birth

In her book, “Unassisted Childbirth”,  Laura Kaplan Stanley boldly makes this statement, “Like their  animal sisters, women will someday deliver (I prefer birth), their own babies peacefully and painlessly at home ( I say, or where they desire).  Women will understand that birth is only dangerous and painful for those who believe it is”….

Over the past decade of teaching I have had several women in my class who unequivocably agree with the above and say very matter-of- factly say,” yes, that is how I birthed my baby.  My ‘animal’ nature (body) birthed the baby and my mid-wife, partner, ob/gyn simply caught the baby.”

Alleingeburt / unassisted childbirth on you tube.   It’s a beautiful example of What is possible.

The Birth Expert

Several years ago I took an infant massage course.  I was excited to go and learn about : How to massage babies.  I was working in an Intensive Care Nursery as an R.N.  and I thought, massage would be a good thing to add to the standard of care for the babies.   The course was a 4 day, 8 hour a day class.  Upon gathering, the instructor Kalena introduced herself, then shortly there after announced,  “I’m not the expert here.  you will learn that it is the mother (or primary care giver) of the child.  At first, I thought to myself, “well what am I doing here to learn from her if she is not the expert?”   Over the next 4 days the idea of “who is appointed expert” unraveled inside of me.  The first day we practiced the strokes on our baby doll models that Kalena had taught us.  On day 2 and 3 we gathered in a circle with mothers and babies.   I learned to quietly observe how the mother interacted with her baby.   The massage instruction was offered to the mother through modeling,  I (and the other students) demonstrated the strokes on our baby model all the while encouraging the mother and supporting her in her desire to touch, nurture, comfort and bond with her child.  We simply reflected to the mother that she already knew how to lovingly be with and touch her baby.

Recently another thought about “the expert” occurred to me.  “What if the Birthing Woman is the Expert?”   What happens when the mama to be knows and trusts her body to carry out the process of birthing her baby the same way she trust that her body will digest, assimilate and eliminate after a nourishing meal?  

I’ve been teaching prenatal yoga for a decade and it has been my observation that women who enter the birth process with a complete sense of knowing and trust that what ever arises she is equiped to move through the experience and gain insight into her strength and power as a women.    

There is a wonderful dvd :  Birth As We Know It.  It is filmed in Russia in the mid to late 80′s that show women birthing their babies in water.    A portion of the dvd show a camp that was set up in the summer that documents the birth of several babies in the Black Sea.  It shows toddler and pre-school age children swimming in the sea,  free and content with the dolphins.   I have watched this dvd many times and each time something deep inside my soul is stirred by the palpable beauty and love that surrounds the birth mama (hence the baby at birth).    

What do the people in this dvd hold to be true that allows them to have these beautiful births?  What must they know.  Are these births a reflection of what they hold in the consciousness of their beings?  Clearly the women in this dvd were held and supported as ‘the birth expert’ and the midwife attending  each women reflected this back to the birth mama.  

My hope is that those of us who attend to women during their pregnancy and beyond remember to honor and reflect back to the birth mama that her body knows how to birth her baby.  We as mammals have been doing so for millenium.

Dark of the moon, solar eclipse

Pay attention to what arises in your psyche, in your body, in your relationships today.  Make space to feel, to move, to nourish yourself.   Cancer is the sign concerned with Mother.  The principal of the mother is the one who nourishes.   How do you nourish yourself? Do you resist nourishment when it is offered?  Is this about not trusting what is offered?   How do you honor and appreciate the mother inside of you?   I’ve grown up.  I’ve dropped layers and layers of anger once held against my own mom.   Something about becoming a mama that prompted deep forgiveness and now I love  her uncondtionally.   This much I know is true, that by coming to a place of forgiveness and by giving her appreciation for all of her work in offering what she could as a mom,  I have made space in my own body to receive nourishment.  Nourishment generated by my-self, and nourishment offered from others.   

May the Mother-principal of Earth continue to offer us nourishment, and may we know that she desires to be nourished by each one of us.