Apples and Oranges

When my oldest sister heard that I was looking into a natural birth with hypnobirthing she reacted, “You wouldn’t get your tooth pulled without Novocain would you?” This made me laugh because it was the exact phrase that Ricki Lake and her co-author address in Your Best Birth
. And the point they make in the book is that the birth of your baby is not exactly the same situation as getting a tooth pulled. One experience is wholly unpleasant, leaving you with nothing but a gap somewhere in your smile, while the other is life-enriching, leaving you with a little bundle of delicious baby. The fact is, it’s apples and oranges.

But my sister’s reaction is common and understandable. All of the movies, TV, news highlights, and mom to mom stories related to birth always seem to concentrate on two things: pain and risk. Images of sweaty, screaming women in labor and doctors rushing in to delegate important life-saving tasks are ingrained into our conscious as the birth norm. But what I have learned from my research and from my personal experience with hypnobirthing is that birth does not have to be that way—and is certainly not inherently chaotic, painful and risky.

You deserve to have more information before you give birth. So for anyone who is expecting, here are few tips:

1. Discover all types of birthing. No one ever wants to be in pain, so it’s of course a very normal and acceptable option to seek pain medications during labor and birth. But what if you could help create a situation that minimized pain and enhanced your experience without using drugs? There are so many free resources out there that can help you understand the various options you have. A simple Google search will help you find relevant websites that explore birthing options and YouTube has hundreds of birthing videos, so you can see for yourself just how powerful a non-medicated birth can be.

2. Prepare your body. Even if you weren’t a big exerciser before your pregnancy, there are so many ways you can prepare your body for birth. Buying a low-cost DVD like Shiva Ray’s Prenatal Yoga
or Erin O'Brien's Prenatal Fitness Fix can really help you connect with your body, help avoid some of the common pregnancy aches and ultimately make you more prepared for the physical task of giving birth. Going for regular walks will even help or incorporating squatting into your everyday routine. (I always squatted while applying makeup and blow-drying my hair, for instance).

3. Talk to friends and family. Yes, chances are you will know a few people who had negative birth experiences. And most of the books I have read recommend staying away from that negative energy if you’re planning a peaceful, hypnobirthing experience. However, if you haven’t quite made up your mind yet about the route you want to go, listening to the not so nice experiences can be a motivator to seek out other options and take charge of the kind of experience you would like to have.

4. Know your area. Maybe you want to have a water birth but the hospital closest to you doesn’t offer them. What is the c-section rate of your local hospital or birthing center versus one a little further away? Is there a midwife program in your area? Even if you have given birth at a particular hospital before, there’s no reason you have to return there. There may be a better option for you, even if it means driving an extra twenty minutes. Do some research about the birthing philosophy of each area establishment, as well as their statistics and services offered.

Choosing a Supportive Healthcare provider: My Decision to Switch to a Midwife

“It’s possible for a first time mom to give birth naturally.” This was the reaction my OBGYN gave me when I expressed my interest in having a non-medicated birth. She really emphasized the fact that it was possible but not likely to happen, which spoke volumes to me.

Just from the small bit of reading I had done up to that point, it was clear to me that birthing was the most natural thing my body could do, so I was quite shocked to see that it was generally accepted as an impossible feat without the help of modern technology. How did we get to a place where a trained medical professional had no confidence in the human body’s ability to give birth?

She added that if I was serious about attaining a non-medicated birth that I would need to do my research and take a class—really prepare for it physically and mentally. While I do agree with that need for preparation, I think what is most important for pregnant women in general is that they prepare themselves in that same, in-depth way before deciding what kind of birth they would like to have and what kind of healthcare provider they want to work with.

Prior to this particular visit, I had been questioning whether or not to switch to midwife care because I really liked my OBGYN. She was young, friendly, and obviously knowledgeable and professional. But her statement and apparent doubt in my body’s and my baby’s ability to give birth naturally revealed her own birth philosophy—she saw it as a medical event versus a natural one. I knew that I would never “be able to do it” if my caregiver didn’t believe in it. So with only two and a half months left in my pregnancy, I switched to the Midwives of Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts where they saw birth as a natural event, one that should be free of medical interventions unless absolutely necessary. While the prenatal appointments ended up being very similar to those at my OBGYN's office, it seemed the midwife team just had more time for my questions.

I did, however, take my OBGYN’s advice and signed up for a Hypnobirthing class immediately. Because the class was not starting for another month, I bought the course book HypnoBirthing: The Mongan Method. Just like Your Best Birth did, this book opened my eyes. Simply by practicing the relaxing basic sleep breathing (inhaling to the count of four and exhaling to the count of eight) I saw and felt the potential of where I could go and what I could accomplish with hypnobirthing. I was determined, and was going to have a positive birthing experience after all.

We’re Pregnant! Now What?

I found out I was pregnant in March 2009. Of course, after several weeks when I finally shared the news with friends and family, I was given the pregnancy standard What to Expect When You’re Expecting. This book gave me a general sense of what was “normal” from week to week, information I suddenly craved. Although I’d seen my sisters and close friends go through pregnancy, all of the little details and changes in my own body became a lot more interesting. But what the book failed to do was get me thinking about the kind of birth experience I wanted to have when the time came. In fact, I went through the entire first trimester barely thinking about the birth at all.

Because most everyone I knew went to an OBGYN during their pregnancies and had an epidural for the births of their babies, I just assumed that’s the way I would go—it really didn’t matter to me, as long as the baby came out healthy. I’ll admit, it even crossed my mind that having a scheduled c-section might be the easiest way to go, as labor and pushing out a baby didn’t sound all that enticing to me. And just a few months earlier, I had read the book It Sucked and Then I Cried by one of my favorite bloggers, Heather Armstrong of Dooce.com. She shares details of her first pregnancy, the fairly traumatic birth experience she had, and her ensuing post partum depression. From what I gathered from those words, a medicated birth was the way I would go one day.

But my perspective started to completely change when I was five months pregnant and read Heather’s blog post about the birth of her second daughter. She ended up having a completely natural childbirth and a “sacred and spiritual” experience, to which I thought, “SACRED AND SPIRITUAL? I WANT THAT TOO!” She recommended a few books geared toward helping women educate themselves about the various birthing options and the history of how birthing became so medicalized in the first place. Although I was a little skeptical about this alternative path I could take to having my baby, I immediately bought two of the books she suggested: Your Best Birth and Birthing from Within. Opening this door and starting to make myself more aware of the birthing industry—yes it seems it’s an industry of sorts—was the best move I could have made. It ultimately led me to discovering the option of hypnobirthing, which was the key to creating not only a positive birthing experience but indeed my own sacred and spiritual one.