|
Prenatal
Care and Birth by Suzy
Anand |
|
Suzy's Birth Story:
Suzy's Birth Stories:
Tantra is about working with the
energy that naturally courses within each of us and connects us to everything -
conception and pregnancy offer us a unique opportunity to FEEL those
connections. Planned conception gives us the opportunity to realize our connectedness
with another on an entirely new level. My first daughter was conceived so
consciously that I KNEW I had succeeded and I FELT my fertilized egg embed in
my uterus the next day. Almost immediately, I began to dream of my
daughter and of motherhood. I felt her as a unique, individual presence
in my life almost instantly.
On the negative side, while pregnant,
I became incredibly suggestive and sensitive to the energies of others.
Because of how suddenly big I became at one point in my pregnancy and the fact
that several people in one day commented that I must be having twins, I had an
awful nightmare that night that I had two babies and one died. I truly
believe that this dream was created by my fearful reaction to the "twins"
opinions of others. But I was spooked by the dream for quite some time.
Strangers and friends alike have a
tendency to tell pregnant women horror stories, especially of difficult
deliveries. It is really necessary to protect yourself energetically at
this sensitive time. Use visualization techniques to surround yourself
and your baby in a protective shield. Remind yourself often that those
people are sharing their fears and traumas because they have that need, but it
has absolutely nothing to do with you.
I don't believe in accidents and the
synchronicity of life was very apparent in my experiences with my first
pregnancy.
I had been married just over a year
and was 28 years old when my husband's work was to send us to western
The other thing I discovered was the
public library in walking distance from my new apartment. Most days, I
stayed in bed long after my husband left for work because I couldn't bear the
smell of his breakfast and coffee in our tiny apartment. Then I would
force myself to take a walk. The library was the most pleasant
destination. After my walk, I would return home and curl up with a
book. I read every single book on the Pregnancy and Childbirth shelf and
then I started on the Child-Rearing shelf. All these years later when I
think about the happy accident of what was on that shelf, I send up a prayer of
gratitude! The selection I happened to find changed my world.
Below is what I remember of my reading list.
Armed with my new knowledge, but not
an adequate amount of the courage needed to accompany my convictions, I allowed
myself to be intimidated by my fear-driven husband and mother. I
scheduled a traditional hospital birth with an obstetrician who promised to
"try" not to use the all-too-common medical interventions. I
thought she was very progressive (1989), because she encouraged me to make a
wish list that she would attach to my chart, but she kept telling me she could
make no promises. Each time she repeated that caveat, my concerns that I
would not have the birth I wanted increased. On the Friday before the
week of my due date, I received a call from my
This was my very first reading list:
v
Husband-Coached Childbirth by Robert A. Bradley, M.D.
Natural Childbirth The Bradley ® Way by Susan Mc Cutcheon, AAHCC
v
The
Secret Life of the Unborn Child: How You Can Prepare Your Baby for a Happy,
Healthy Life by
Thomas Verny
v
Birth
Without Violence
by Frederick Leboyer
v
Painless Childbirth: The Lamaze Method by Fernand Lamaze
v
Sheila Kitzinger's Birth Book:
A Journal of Your Thoughts and Feelings About Childbirth (Paperback)
v
I believe this book is
currently out of print, but she subsequently published: Homebirth by
Sheila Kitzinger
v
The Home Birth Advantage by Mayer Eisenstein
v
The Continuum Concept by Jean Leidloff
v
The Womanly Art of
Breastfeeding distributed by La Leche League
International
v
I can not remember what was the
first book I read by William Sears, but I highly recommend any of his books and
most especially Attachment Parenting
Nowadays, I recommend starting with
the following websites:
v
www.llli.org (LaLecheLeague
International)
v
www.icea.org (International Childbirth
Education Association, publishers of a 1972!! pamphlet called "The
Cultural Warping of Childbirth")
For my second and third births, I
enjoyed the following book, which was very helpful for preparing the big sisters
even though in the end they did not choose to be present. (Mom naked and
making weird noises was more than they could volunteer for!):
v
Children at Birth by Marjie and Jay Hathaway, AAHCC
I also highly recommend a more recent
book; The Souls of Our Children by Saundra Cortese. I
recently searched "conscious conception" at Amazon and discovered
that there are now several books on the topic. Saundra's is the only one
I have read and I like it very much.
CLARIFICATION:
Bradley Method v. Lamaze – in my opinion
Just as there are differences in
"styles" of yoga, including some that I do not consider yogic, there
are ideas about "natural" childbirth that I do not consider to be
natural. The basic concepts of Lamaze childbirth education are quite good.
But the manner in which it is routinely taught in hospitals is not. My
primary concern is that Lamaze training includes all the things that typical
western, intervention-oriented doctors want you to be told so that you won't
challenge them if they tell you the interventions are needed. Secondly,
it is my opinion that the breathing techniques that are taught in Lamaze
classes are often unnatural, unnecessary and can be
counter-productive.
In contrast, the Bradley method
teaches parents to be advocates for the non-interventionist, natural birth of
their preference and the breathing techniques are far more natural. But
don't just take my word for it- do the reading and see what resonates as right
for you!
(will be added, just as soon as I
find the magazine article that was published and check on permission rights.)
(I
originally wrote this in 1995. How sad it was for me to realize that over
a dozen years later every word still rings true.)
For my
third baby, I planned the homebirth I had always wished for and got it!
It was a great adventure (and a blessing), but not quite the one I had
pictured!
On the
evening of November 10, 1994 I had been feeling gentle labor on and off for
days and now it wasn't getting stronger, but it wasn't subsiding. After
dinner, I decided to take a bath with my daughters and wash everyone's hair, so
we would all be clean for the newcomer, just in case! Five year old
Claire and two year old Joelle and I were all in the tub together finishing
rinsing our hair when I felt a surge below that was unlike anything I had ever
felt. (My water had not broken naturally before the previous deliveries.)
Abruptly, I lifted myself out of the tub and sat straight down on the pile of 3
waiting towels. Then I studied the moisture on them. This was very
serious business. The midwife had warned that if my water broke before
she was on her way, a third baby might appear before she could travel the 30
minutes to our home. I hesitated because I couldn't be sure. It
looked and smelled and felt just like tub water and I sure didn't want to drag
her out unnecessarily.
After
getting the girls out of the tub and sending them off for pajamas with daddy, I
reached my arms up to brush and braid my hair. The motion of lifting my
arms shifted the baby up and out came the flood of fluids that confirmed my
water had broken. A hurried call was made to the midwife and the
babysitters. Now, labor started in earnest and I took to my already
prepared bed. Between contractions I attempted to give my (then) husband
instructions. He kept insisting that the midwife would arrive in time and
basically refused to do anything I needed him to do.
I
labored alone while he frantically tried to reach a friend of mine who is a
dentist and had planned to participate. The only company I had during the
labor was my beloved first child, my tabby cat, Tiger. He was very
concerned and curious and was rubbing me for comfort until I chased him away in
the cranky late stage. Claire and Joelle also came in once or twice to check on
things, but went back to coloring "welcome" pictures in the
kitchen.
Afterwards,
Claire began the birth story like this, "Mommy said to daddy PUT DOWN THE
PHONE the baby is coming out." And that is exactly what
happened. First he told me not to push because the midwife hadn't
arrived. Then I told him the baby wasn't waiting for a push and could he
please move my leg. As soon as he moved my leg, the baby crowned and
spurted right out. In addition to the two previous births, she had the
route softened by the tub I had been soaking in just 35 minutes
before.
Moments
later, the midwife arrived and all was well.
For me,
the greater surprise was in the aftermath, which led me to write the following:
Having
my third daughter in the comfort of my own king sized bed with Egyptian cotton
sheets did not seem extraordinary to me. It felt exactly right and
natural. What did surprise me were the reactions we received to our
home-made birth announcements.
My
childhood girlfriend who is now a
I felt
joyful, triumphant, spiritual, proud, humbled, overwhelmed, elated, grateful
and quite modern. I most certainly did not feel like a throwback to
another time. I believe that the future of medicine will involve fewer
interventions by professionals and more empowerment of the individual. As
Thomas Edison said, "The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but
will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, in diet and in the
cause and prevention of disease." What would he think if he were
alive today to see how much further western medicine has traveled away from this
goal, and the frequency of arrests and harassment of those who attempt to
change the tide? The commercialization and medicalization of areas of our
lives where businesses and physicians are not needed has placed immeasurable
emotional and financial burdens on family life in
What a
climate we could create for healthy families if we began with the following
basic assumptions:
v
childbirth
is not pathological
v
most
women can and should give birth without drugs and medical procedures
v
nature
has equipped women to feed their babies everything they need for the first
year.
In the
United States where more than 90% of births are obstetrically managed, we have
a far greater infant mortality rate than in countries where professional midwives
are actively promoting prenatal care and breast feeding and delivering all but
the under 10% of deliveries where medical assistance is deemed necessary.
Unfortunately, American obstetricians and baby food companies lobby with
hostility against midwives and convince women that they need constant
intervention by so-called experts. Women who try to help their own gender
have historically been burned as witches and otherwise undermined by male
dominated societies. Midwives’ practices are constantly in jeopardy of
losing their insurance coverage even when they have never had a patient make a
claim against them.
What
are we teaching our children if we relinquish control of the most important
event of our lives and willingly allow ourselves to be drugged to dull the
discomfort? Can we then expect our children to become adults who take
responsibility for their own lives and reject the temptation of recreational
drugs? And what of the unknown side effects of those supposedly safe
drugs on the innocent newborns whose systems they do reach? Aren't we
teaching them from birth to numb themselves from life?
Why
don't we begin a study right now to compare the rates of drug abuse, child
abuse, neglect and abandonment by mothers who have experienced birthing situations
that instilled confidence and were empowering rather than denying their
rights. What would the statistics show if we could compare the outcomes
regarding drug abuse, drop out rates and pregnancy rates for those teens who
were birthed and nourished naturally by their mothers and not by the current
system? What would the comparison look like, if we could measure the post
partum depression rates between mothers who have and have not had truly natural
childbirth; those who have and have not been mostly separated from their
newborns by hospital policies; and those who have and have not been taught and
encouraged to succeed at nursing?
Births
that are oriented toward the comfort and needs of the mother and child and not the
convenience of physicians and hospital procedures inspire women with confidence
in themselves and love for their children; a foundation is laid for quality
parenting. Women need to be empowered, not violated, by the system in
order to be more likely to succeed as mothers.
Our
then two year old, Joelle, went to pre-school and said matter-of-factly,
"Daddy took the baby out of mommy's tushy." Our then five year
old, Claire, went to kindergarten and told even more graphic details. One
by one, their classmates' disbelieving moms called. Natalie's father's
friends started teasing him by calling him a doctor or worrying over a lawsuit
for "impersonating an obstetrician." Someone asked if this made
him a "midhusband," however, the original German meaning is
"with wife" so a midwife is a midwife regardless of gender.
Some of
our friends were envious as we exuberantly told our story; most were
horrified. Our culture encourages a birthing system that violates the
rights of women to control their own bodies by promising them freedom from
pain. Many women say things like, "I beg for the epidural from the
first contraction." The statistics on planned surgical births in
this country are scandalous. It may be true that you can have a painless
delivery, but then your recovery is more difficult as you detoxify from the
drugs and deal with stitches in your crotch or abdomen while trying to nurse
and bond with a drugged infant.
Studies
have proven that the pain of childbirth is mostly a function of tension and that
education and training reduce that tension. Normal labor does not have to
be painful. I have delivered three children without anesthesia,
episiotomy or any other medical interventions. I equate the experience to
any other athletic feat involving months of training and hard work. If
you were a marathon runner having trained for many months for your first full
length marathon of 26.2 miles, would you consider, after the 26th mile marker,
saying, "my legs are tired can you bring me a stretcher to carry me over
the finish line?" Of course not. And the reward for finishing
a marathon is not nearly as extraordinary as the reward for delivering an
alert, healthy newborn.
It is
easy to see why we have the highest health care expenditures per capita in the
world, if we compare the rates of Caesarean births in American hospitals
(20-50%) with the rates both here and abroad of midwives and obstetrics
practices where non-interventionist methods are promoted (5%). It is also
clear why insured, upper income women have more C-sections than women below the
poverty line despite the inferior prenatal care received by the poor. The
difference in fees averages over $2,000. And don't get me started on the
economics behind the lack of support for breast feeding.
Education
programs that inspire women to investigate holistic choices would be so much
cheaper than maintaining the status quo. Why don't we empower women with
the knowledge and the insight to trust themselves to give birth to and nurture
their babies as nature intended?
These
days, Natalie is 13 and she loves the shock value of telling her own birth
story to her friends. She never meets anyone who was also born at home
and that breaks my heart. I would love for her to be less of an anomaly,
and the benefits to society are incalculable.