So I am in post recovery from a birth yesterday as a Doula. This entire last weekend I have been pondering the birthing process and the journey it is. How we treat it in our world. So here is a the story of the birth....
I had a client begin laboring on Feb 11th and on the 12th was 3cm 60% effaced... She lost her mucous plug and so we all thought soon... I told her to rest, hydrate and eat. She took walks with her mate and looked forward to the day... Well time passed and she would have periods of regular contractions that by bedtime when she was tired would just slide away... By the 22nd after losing two mucous plugs and having bloody show off and on for a week. she began contracting at 1am (Friday) 5 min apart, she rested, ate drank and just hung through them.... This continued through the weekend... intensity building...(baby reactive and doing well through it all)
Monday the 25th 5:30 am I get a phone call that they are pretty intense 2 min. apart... so it's time to go to her home.... We labor at home till I see the dilated pupils and wild look in her eyes, her water had broken 30 minutes before... time to go Transition has arrived... At the hospital she is 7 cm and goes to 10 within 30 minutes... Beautiful chubby baby born 90 min. later... With a thick healthy placenta... Oh and her caregivers honored her plans (push in whatever position, late cord clamping, mother/baby/daddy bare skin contact without time limits, no Vacc or interventions etc...) This in a 90% epidural rate hospital....
OK so my client knows that without me to sound her out and reassure her she would have gone to her caregiver and would have been in the hospital many days before this one... She was being seen by two CNM's and a OB in practice together. She knows she most likely would have ended up on Pitocin and much more had they known about her pattern of labor... I find this sad that "I" was their saving grace from that process.
None of the books that most people read really talk about labor and birth looking like this... So how are mothers to know that what their body is doing is perfectly normal. This woman happened to be highly attuned to her body and baby. More so than most woman, I truly believe that is part of what let her slowly labor her baby out. She labored for hours and hours over the weekend and would sleep when she needed it, her body and adapting to those needs...
She did so much of the work of labor calmly, relaxed, smiling... The intense part was very intense, but also very short in comparison to the whole process... In all this woman and her mate had an experience full of respect and beauty without fear and manipulation.
This is a pattern we need our caregivers and ourselves to honor, that we need to write about and teach... I believe even midwives need to really look at this, and learn to trust and honor the birth process. I see many who fear the process that is not "normal". So what is normal? That is not a simple answer, normal is as different as each individual person is.
This journey I shared in was natural and very normal, not maladaptive... Instead of seeing the normal pattern, most see problems and look for reasons why the baby isn't popping out in the 14 hr medical time plan...Of course back in the 60's normal labor was thought to last as long as 36-38 hrs... In the 80's it was knocked down to 24hrs, we now expect it to last 14 hrs... Have our bodies changed so much?
Tia Rich
AAMI Student Midwife #1940
www.inner-serenity.org
PS... Any who are not registered for the Trust Birth Conference... Rethink whether you can miss this experience. I know even more after this birth that I NEED this conference, I have so much more to learn, and honestly I need the recharge to sit in a room with others who trust and believe in birth....
I had a client begin laboring on Feb 11th and on the 12th was 3cm 60% effaced... She lost her mucous plug and so we all thought soon... I told her to rest, hydrate and eat. She took walks with her mate and looked forward to the day... Well time passed and she would have periods of regular contractions that by bedtime when she was tired would just slide away... By the 22nd after losing two mucous plugs and having bloody show off and on for a week. she began contracting at 1am (Friday) 5 min apart, she rested, ate drank and just hung through them.... This continued through the weekend... intensity building...(baby reactive and doing well through it all)
Monday the 25th 5:30 am I get a phone call that they are pretty intense 2 min. apart... so it's time to go to her home.... We labor at home till I see the dilated pupils and wild look in her eyes, her water had broken 30 minutes before... time to go Transition has arrived... At the hospital she is 7 cm and goes to 10 within 30 minutes... Beautiful chubby baby born 90 min. later... With a thick healthy placenta... Oh and her caregivers honored her plans (push in whatever position, late cord clamping, mother/baby/daddy bare skin contact without time limits, no Vacc or interventions etc...) This in a 90% epidural rate hospital....
OK so my client knows that without me to sound her out and reassure her she would have gone to her caregiver and would have been in the hospital many days before this one... She was being seen by two CNM's and a OB in practice together. She knows she most likely would have ended up on Pitocin and much more had they known about her pattern of labor... I find this sad that "I" was their saving grace from that process.
None of the books that most people read really talk about labor and birth looking like this... So how are mothers to know that what their body is doing is perfectly normal. This woman happened to be highly attuned to her body and baby. More so than most woman, I truly believe that is part of what let her slowly labor her baby out. She labored for hours and hours over the weekend and would sleep when she needed it, her body and adapting to those needs...
She did so much of the work of labor calmly, relaxed, smiling... The intense part was very intense, but also very short in comparison to the whole process... In all this woman and her mate had an experience full of respect and beauty without fear and manipulation.
This is a pattern we need our caregivers and ourselves to honor, that we need to write about and teach... I believe even midwives need to really look at this, and learn to trust and honor the birth process. I see many who fear the process that is not "normal". So what is normal? That is not a simple answer, normal is as different as each individual person is.
This journey I shared in was natural and very normal, not maladaptive... Instead of seeing the normal pattern, most see problems and look for reasons why the baby isn't popping out in the 14 hr medical time plan...Of course back in the 60's normal labor was thought to last as long as 36-38 hrs... In the 80's it was knocked down to 24hrs, we now expect it to last 14 hrs... Have our bodies changed so much?
Tia Rich
AAMI Student Midwife #1940
www.inner-serenity.org
PS... Any who are not registered for the Trust Birth Conference... Rethink whether you can miss this experience. I know even more after this birth that I NEED this conference, I have so much more to learn, and honestly I need the recharge to sit in a room with others who trust and believe in birth....
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Portland
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Re: Trusting the Process
Tue, February 26, 2008 - 6:00 PMthank you. thank you. thank you.
i am so appreciative that you wrote about this.
i am contemplating an unassisted home birth (though may go with a midwife if we can afford it). part of what catches me in my own process of learning to trust birth is the fear that i won't know the difference between normal and danger, between bleeding and bleeding to death, between my pain and my baby suffering....
it is good there are midwives to help women. and it is so important for us all to have a clearer picture of what the *range* of experiences looks like.
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Re: Trusting the Process
Tue, February 26, 2008 - 9:33 PMI highly recommend Sarah J Buckleys book "Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering" . -
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Re: Trusting the Process
Wed, February 27, 2008 - 5:35 AMthanks, Fire Dakini. i wish i was in portland already. seems like a much better place to bear a child than here in nyc, though i'm sure there are some resources here too.
one question about what you wrote. i guess i don't totally understand mucus plugs. i thought there was one. so there can be more than one? (yes, amazing the things we grow up not knowing in this culture!) -
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Re: Trusting the Process
Wed, February 27, 2008 - 8:55 AMAs your cervix dilates the mucous plug can be released, if your cervix does not continue to dilate, in a couple days a new plug can be regenerated. So when dilation changes occur again, there goes another mucous plug :) As you saw it can happen several times. Some womans cervix's slowly change for the first 4 sometimes 5 cm... Some woman begin to dilate and then just keep going...
Our bodies are such beautiful mysteries, when we honor that mystery we can usually catch a glimpse of understanding... it is an awesome process..
Oregon does have many incredible practitioners, but then we also have support for that legally...
In regards to New York, you have an incredible midwife Cara Muhlhahn www.cmmidwifery.com/ you can actually see her in Ricki Lakes movie "Business of Being Born"
Tia
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