Three Makes Five

Sunday, July 03, 2005

24 weeks 5 days...Homebirth

Birth is not an Emergency
It's an Emergence, See?

This is my new motto for birth. Someone mentioned it on Laura Shanley's website for unassisted childbirth. I'm adding it to my affirmations. Thus far, they are:


My body is strong and made for giving birth.
My baby is healthy and will be born healthy.
My baby will be head down for birth.
My birth will go well and my baby will be born.

I will now add the following:

Birth is not an emergency. It's an emergence, see?
My pelvis is soft and flexible and moves to allow my baby through.
I will stay centered and balanced in labor, surrendering to each contraction to bring my baby into the world, within the perfect length of time.
My baby will grow to the perfect size for my body to birth naturally.
My cervix will open fully, like a flower to the sun, to allow my baby through.
I now choose to have a loving, gentle birth at home.
My baby is safe and nutred and instinctively knows what to do.
My body was made for giving birth and knows instinctively what to do.
Through pain I will find strength, through birth I will find healing.


I'll add others as I think of them. I believe strongly in the power of the mind. With my first daughter's birth, I was induced. I started having contractions right when I thought they put the Pitocin in my IV bag--a good five hours before they actually did. So I know how belief affects reality. I'll ask the baby to come at a good time, and I'll be s/he will. We'll see.

In fact, I'll pick a birth date now and whisper it to the baby. My "official" EDD is 19th October 2005. Pretty good, since not very many cousins are born in October. My brother was born 16th September, so that's tempting. But I'd like to go to at least 37 weeks. So let's aim for 30th September. I just really don't want an October baby; my mother was born in October.

Baby...come 30th September.

That part is to be continued...

***
I used to watch "A Baby Story" all the time. I can't do it anymore. Birth...Birth should not be violent.

I was looking for photos I could use as a basis for some pregnancy graphics I want to make. So I did a Google Image search on "homebirth." Then I did one on just "birth." The latter gives lots of hospital birth photos.

And you know, the difference is distinct. I've seen lots of photos from hospital births. The women in them never look truly happy. Some look drugged, some look pained. None look happy, much less ecstatic. But the homebirth mamas...even the ones in obvious pain, they look HAPPY. Not just happy, HAPPY. Ecstatic. When was the last time you heard of a woman having an orgasmic birth in the hospital? I never have. It's just not the right venue. Home is. Which of course is not to say that every home birth is orgasmic. Just that it's more likely to happen at home than anywhere else.

"I had been told to expect a 'dogging pain,' but was unprepared for the sensation of sexual ecstasy, the voluptuous feeling of penetration....Crouched on my knees on the little afghan, I caught the infant who rushed from my vagina into the small world between my legs, in the midst of an extraordinary orgasm from the inside out."
-From They Don't Call it a Peak Experience for Nothing, by Ruth Claire(Mothering, Fall 1989)


That's from Laura Shanley's website. That's the sort of thing I aim for. Not the frightening, helpless births of my first two. A happy birth. A fulfilled one. An active birth. I want my baby to have that sleepy happiness I only see in photos of homebirthed babies, not the fright and neediness of hospital-birthed babies.

(The next time you watch "A Baby Story", look at it objectively and see how they terrorize the mother and child, especially that poor newborn. I've always thought "newborn care" was more torment than anything. Certainly not the welcome a new human deserves!)

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