Preparing for Birth

After a really enjoyable prenatal visit with a lovely client, I got this message: 

“A question came up for me afterwards. In your experience at different births, are there any common qualities, attitudes, beliefs, or actions you've seen among birthing people and their partners that have made the biggest difference between an empowering/calm/joyful/[insert positive adjective] birth vs. a more challenging birth?”

I’ve been sitting with this question for a while because there are so many ways I could answer it. Sometimes putting on a little music will give me the start of an answer. I don’t often listen to music on my own because it makes me feel things more deeply. Something I’m trying to do more of this year.  So, since I’ve got some Bon Iver on in my headphones, and the tears are creeping into my eyeballs, I’m going to give you the longish answer to start. 

Qualities, Attitudes, Beliefs, Actions…

When the core of a family is love, and unconditional at that, this seems to be the most magical (and maybe obvious) ingredient to moving through whatever birth presents. Maybe this sounds too simple, or cheesy, but the families I work with who are willing to move through the shit that comes up in navigating the challenges of a healthy relationship to each other and to themselves…I think this communicative practice finds its way into birth and there’s something to this. 

Folks who treat pregnancy like a grace period tend to miss out on a pretty spiritual piece of the journey- the prenatal bonding, the noticing and meeting of very real and raw emotions as they arrive, the imagining, the preparing the mind to trust the body. There’s something to this combination, too. 

In HypnoBirthing® class, I share with families that there are three major pieces that contribute greatly to the outcome of a birth experience:
1) the birther's brain
2) baby's position in utero
3) chosen care providers/ support team

Even with attention and energy to all of these pieces, sometimes shit totally goes sideways because physiology can go wrong. However, it seems that families are more at peace with the outcome if they’ve put energy into these different elements in a way that feels right to them, and so maybe the questions really are…

What do we value?
How are we going to find these values in the experience that lies ahead?
Are there actually key qualities or attitudes that families bring into birth with them, or is it just really about surrendering to the experience as it unfolds? Or a combination of these two? 

How can we surrender and deeply trust simultaneously?
Maybe that’s it.  How do we learn to do this? 
It's more than just fierce belief, but it's also incredibly fierce belief. Fierce trust in the process and the self and the cosmic being we’re about to meet.

I often cry at births, but honestly it depends. It happens mostly when working with people who are willing to see the whole thing as a portal that will take them to some sort of mysterious and deeper level of consciousness. When you attend births regularly, I think you begin to see the evolution of a person in its vastness. All that birth can swallow up at once and all that it can spit out anew without much warning. However a family gets to that moment, there’s something about witnessing surrender and openness to all that's evolving in one snap of a moment. It's so big.
Something about observing people feeling bigness. It’s pretty immense to witness. 

I guess this, too. How will you make sure you take up the bigness and the space that you need?
Women are working against a lot of bodily shame and often are not used to the autonomous experience that birth can hold when your brain feels fully safe. How will you find inner fire? How will you find a way to say fuck all the noise, I’m going in deep? How will you make sure not to apologize for the mess?  

Are there keys to achieving a kind of experience you desire to have? Maybe. 
Movement. 
Hearing everyone but listening to ourselves. 
Trusting your gut. Intuitive ways forward. 
Trusting in the timing. In the time distortion.
In the arrival. 
Drawing on strength of other birthing folks who have come before us…like really energetically.

I vividly remember getting an unexpected text from a dear friend last September. She messaged me after her second child was born on Ferris’s 2nd birthday . She said, “I was thinking about you 2 years ago on the same day and feeling your power.” Whoa. I still get full body chills when I think about this. This might be one of my greatest heart moments over the last few years. To know that my fire from two years ago showed up in her mind. I remembered, in the moment I read that message, who I became through Birth because we truly do forget even if we’ve done it before. I think often of the women whose power I drew on during labor. They were clarity- the most clear visual I had through the process.

Draw on the power of other women who have come before us. Birth is communal, or at least it used to be. The ‘used to be’ of birth, before much of the power was taken from us, still lives within our cells- kinda cool to think about it that way.

And…if birth takes a twist and turn, will the birther’s voice remain at the center? 
To meet their baby. 
With their arms free.
In their own clothes or naked.
With their partner and their doula by their side.
With delayed cord clamping. 
With soft, quiet observers.  
With their baby immediately skin-to-skin and in her arms. 

Are there actions we can take to get here? 
Is it more about the person you hire to manage labor and how they manage it? 
To what extent do you believe that bodily autonomy is an essential human right? 
Will the medical care you receive feel positive, transformative, empowering? Spiritual? 
Who will guide you through that darn, eventual abyss, the wall…? Only yourself. 
Who will manage all the things happening outside your body so you can be the one to guide yourself? 
This team you choose matters so much but not as much as the belief in yourself. 

Pregnancy AND birth are sacred. 
To what extent are you feeling educated about the physiology of labor & birth? Of your options?  
Have you taken radical responsibility as you approach birth? What does this look like during birth?  
What will you do to ensure you don’t hand over your experience?
How will you ensure birth doesn't happen to you but that it happens within you? 
How will agency make its way into your experience? 
What will make you feel safest? 
What will make you feel celebrated? 
I didn’t mention too much about the partner because you may forget they’re there at times. Presence is all they need to be. Presence and witness. Fiercely believing in you, too.

If there was another short answer, I’d say it’s maybe in a poem somewhere written by anyone but a white male.
Until we find it, we'll wait to meet this baby and then we'll know in one snap of a moment how to answer all of these questions. 

And, if I’m being honest, we’ll have even more questions after your sweet baby is here. 

What does it take? 
What else can I do to prepare? 

Here’s the short answer: 
Love & Reflection. Love. Reflection. Love. I'm in it now.
No more time to reflect. Breathe. Move. Repeat. Repeat. Find Rhythm. 
Become ritual. Breathe. Move. Love. Breathe. Move. Love.
Power. Cry. Strength. Flow. I’m not sure I can do this. I’m losing something.
I breathe. I can breathe. I move. I can move. I can do this. I am made to do this.
I am safe. My baby is safe. What will it be like when we meet? I can see it. Move. Breathe.
Breathe. On hands. Knees. Down and out. Down and out. Grip midwife’s knee. Primal scream. Breathe. Breathe.
Picture it all. She’s Birth. She’s love. She’s power. 

She’s the fucking middle of the mess. 

He’s here.