Choosing Waterbirth: Reclaiming the Sacred Power of Birth (2 page)

For the first ten years of my family medical practice I included obstetrics. I loved assisting women to have their babies, and began to use the LeBoyer bathing method, immersing infants in a warm tub of water soon after they were born. I witnessed the joy of these babies' relaxation, as they stretched their cramped limbs with obvious relief and delight.

I had been conventionally trained, where all the women were lying on their backs, feet up in stirrup, the attending doctors joking about other things, treating the birthing mothers as if they had no feelings, and were simply there to be attended to, like dumb animals, or even, considering the humanity of many veterinarians, much worse.

Most of the obstetricians were men, with little sympathy and no apparent empathy for what their patients were experiencing. Would
you
want to have even a bowel movement (to say nothing of a baby) lying on your back with your feet up in the air?

My first home delivery completely changed my perspective on birthing's possibilities. Close friends had asked me to help Page xv

them create a peaceful and natural childbirth. What a wondrous difference, to see the ease and comfort possible when the mother stayed at home, in a cozy setting, delivering in her own bed, in a semisitting, semisquatting position as the process was allowed to unfold at its own pace. I was hooked. The contrast with conventional care was so stunning I became an active homebirth advocate, and offered that option for many of my patients.

We come into this life "trailing clouds of glory," as the poet Wordsworth put it. I believe that we are, at our essence, spiritual beings. We take on a body to learn lessons, and keeping this in mind helps us come through any challenges we may face. At one extraordinary home birth, the electricity in the house went out just as the child's head was crowning, so I had to deliver the baby entirely by feel, in pitch darkness! That particular soul seemed to have wanted to come into this world in the most natural way possible; the lights, which we had placed on a dim setting, came gently back on just a few moments after it was born.

The most urgent question is, of course—about both home births and waterbirthing—are they really safe? Evidence from countries that have organized backup for home births, such as the Netherlands, indicates that this option can be even more safe in routine births than a hospital delivery, which increases risk for complications and infections. Waterbirthing has thus far also shown itself to be both very safe and effective.

Many hospitals are now offering a more homelike, natural setting for birthing and tubs for labor and delivery. Another feature is birthing centers, which are specialized facilities where only birthing takes place, insuring adequate emergency availability but less risk for infection than in conventional hospitals.

A child's first experiences after birth may affect its entire life framework. Much research has supported the importance of motherinfant bonding, which influences later childrearing, I.Q., and both physical and emotional health of mother and baby.

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The physical and mental comfort of both mother and baby is crucial. We must act to reduce the current oneinfour cesarean section rate in the U.S., which translates to a mother suffering discomfort from the aftereffects of surgery for oneinfour newborn babies. Research supports opposition to routine episiotomies and circumcisions—again to reduce unneeded pain.

Lakshmi's book provides inspiration and support for women to learn to turn away from excess interventions, to return to the innate wisdom of the body and its natural resources. Waterbirthing, either in hospital or elsewhere, can provide important comfort and relaxation, reduce the necessity of drugs, and, when necessary, be combined with conventional medicine for the best of both worlds.

You should consider each birthing choice on an individual basis in consultation with your doctor. Lakshmi's instructive and inspiring book can help you create a context in which to make those choices more knowledgeably, to help provide the most protected and at the same time gentle welcome for each new soul on our planet—for the physical, emotional, and spiritual health of us all.

—SANDRA AMRITA MCLANAHAN, M.D.

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PART I—

THE THEORY

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Chapter 1—

Soul Searching

Every woman, when she finds out she is carrying a new life, asks herself a number of difficult and soulsearching questions. "Am I ready for this? Will I be a good mother? Will I be able to do all that will be demanded of me in the years to come?" We all face the same fears and doubts about our ability to create a new life, bring it safely into the world, and raise it successfully.

Probably the most difficult of these questions, and the one most agonized over, concerns the actual birth. "Will I be able to do it? Will I be able to make it through the labor and delivery?" Fears about the intensity of the contractions and of being unable to push the baby out are utmost in the mother's mind, causing anxiety in some and a crippling fear in others.

In today's society, it is no wonder so many women fear birth. Who hasn't seen a birth on film or television where a wailing baby is pulled from a mother who is writhing and screaming in pain and swearing she will never have a baby again? Who hasn't heard the birth horror stories told by women who have gone through the process?

Today, birth is commonly viewed as overwhelming and frightening and, because of this, many women no longer see it as a natural occurrence that they have the ability to get through.

For thousands of years, women have been giving birth. As women, our bodies and minds are uniquely adapted to it. When we were created inside the wombs of our mothers, our bodies were already at work giving us this unique ability. Birth

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is a natural, healthy process that if left up to nature can be one of the greatest and most joyful experiences of our lives.

We trust in nature for so many things: respiration, assimilation, digestion, the beating of our hearts. Without nature, we would immediately die, no oxygen would enter our lungs, no blood would carry this oxygen to the necessary places and all cells would cease to function. Our very ability to exist depends on nature. Yet, somehow we have come to believe that in this one particular area of childbearing, nature has failed and we women no longer have the ability to give birth!

In fact, as many dismayed husbands, taxi drivers, and rescue personnel will tell you, no matter where they are or what is going on around them, when a baby is ready to be born, it is usually born. It may be in the hospital, the taxi, a shopping mall, an elevator, in a tree, as I recently heard on the news of a woman who did this, or it may be at home. When the moment of birth arrives, nature waits for no one. Most births do not actually require doctors or hospitals or fetal monitors or forceps or episiotomies or drugs. Once babies are ready, they arrive and the only other person needed is the mother.

And every mother can give birth naturally. If allowed to follow your natural inclinations, you can labor and birth your baby in your own unique way, relying on your own strength, tuning into an inner knowledge that only you possess.

We all have this ability; it's built into our systems. With the onset of labor, your consciousness will shift and you will become more subconscious in your thinking patterns, dropping back from reason into instinct, from thinking into feeling. In this highly intuitive state, you will know exactly what you want and need to be able to birth your baby. If respected, and given what you instinctually desire, you will very likely be able to give birth without interference, just as you were designed to do. If your instinctual preferences are ignored, however, as they often are in the typical hospital setting, that is when you could need "help" from outside.

Hospitals, while wellintentioned, typically do not allow for this natural process. It was for this reason that I chose to give Page 5

birth at home. Hospitals, in their narrow, clinical view, tend to expect babies to be born on time, following the averages, and according to a predetermined schedule.

They appear to overlook that birth is unpredictable, changing, and flowing like everything else in nature. And that, while there are certain processes that must occur for the baby to be born, there are many variations on how these processes come about and that most of these variations are normal. Because of this view, labor and birth are "managed" and often chemically altered with drugs to ensure that they meet the hospital criteria.

In contrast to the gentleness and consideration I believe childbirth deserves is the typical hospital birth where a laboring woman entering the hospital to deliver her baby is faced with a situation so inconsiderate of her needs, that it can inspire fear and embarrassment in even the most stouthearted.

My first awareness of this inspired an absolute certainty in me that I did not want to have a hospital birth. I wanted freedom of movement and choice. I wanted to be able to do whatever I needed to feel the most comfortable while birthing my baby. I had heard other women's stories of their hospital births, I knew what they had gone through, and the experiences they had had were not the ones I wanted for myself while I birthed my babies.

If I birthed in the hospital, most likely during labor, I would be strapped immobile to a bed, an IV line in my arm, a monitor around my abdomen. My freedom to move taken from me, I would not be able to walk around to enlist the help of gravity, not be able to squat to shorten the birth canal, not be allowed to stretch, bend, or do any movement at all that would help ease or shorten my labor. I would not be allowed to eat or drink after the onset of labor. Which made me wonder: where would I get energy for the labor and pushing the baby out? During this time when in a natural labor a woman feels a powerful urge to bear down, in the hospital scenario, I was likely to feel exhausted and disheartened.

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If I had painreducing drugs administered during labor, my pushing ability could be diminished even further, which meant I could also expect to spend hours trying to get my baby out. I would almost certainly be given an episiotomy, which is a surgical cut in the wall of the perineum to make the birth canal bigger. There was a good chance if I went beyond a set time limit, a vacuum or forceps would be used to try to pull the baby out. And I would have a twentyfive percent chance of having a Csection in which my baby would be "born" by being pulled out of me through a surgical incision in my abdomen.

In addition to this, by having to cater to the hospital setup and the birthing personnel—doctors, nurses, anesthesiologists—this most natural, private, and intimate of moments would become a public affair. Like many women, with so many people around, watching and scrutinizing me, I knew I would feel an incredible pressure to perform, to be "good" at this birthing thing, as if there were a wrong way for me to birth my baby.

The twentyhour, extremely painful labor brings about just as real a baby as the very quick, twohour labor does. Both births are equal in the fact that the final result is the same, yet it is often the twohour birthing woman who is considered the "good birthing" mother and the twentyhour mother who is deemed deficient. This seemed to be an unfair misconception to me. Obviously the woman who labors longer and harder deserves at least a little more commendation for all her effort. What she usually gets is condemnation.

I did not want this commonly accepted belief that birth should be a certain way to tarnish my experiences of giving birth. Whether I labored for two hours or twenty, I wanted total acceptance and support from all the people around me.

Once my baby was born, there would be a whole new set of concerns. After nine months of waiting and counting the days, once the baby was finally here, I did not want it immediately whisked away. I wanted a chance to get to know the baby I had carried, time to lovingly welcome it to the world, Page 7

while I held against my breast this whole, new person that I had created. I knew it was common practice in the hospital for the baby to be taken soon after the birth to be checked over, cleaned up, and weighed. To me, all this seemed secondary to taking the time to get to know my baby.

When viewed as a whole, a hospital birth seemed to offer so little. In exchange for ''safety," I would be sacrificing consideration and respect. In exchange for a doctor's knowledge, I would be giving up my own inner guidance. In exchange for painreduction, I would be giving up freedom and power.

I knew birth was natural and did not need to be feared. I knew as a woman I was capable of giving birth.

I was right.

Into this careful consideration, water labor and delivery were introduced. Keeping with the empowerment and freedom of a natural birth, it brought the added benefit of making labor shorter and less painful. Being safe for the mother because there are no drugs in her system and safe for the baby because a baby will not breathe until its face hits the air, waterbirth was also effective and had no negative side effects. Through waterbirth, I could have painreduction while retaining intuitive freedom.

Nothing had to be exchanged for the benefits; none of my ideals had to be sacrificed.

Five births later, I can honestly say that all of my experiences were wonderful and fulfilling. Five births later, I can tell you that your birth experiences can be, too.