Project World Peace logoBirth Obstacles

Home Natural Family Living Big Life Issues Animal-
Human-
Angel
Culture of Love Solar Culture Spirituality Emotion

"The aim of any futuristic birth strategy should be that as many women as possible give birth vaginally, thanks to an undisturbed flow of love hormones. The future of our civilizations is at stake."

(Michel Odent, MD)

Contact Bruce

About PWP

Links

Photo Credits:-

Pregnancy Silhouette
(OpenClipart-
Vectors, Pixabay)


'Fear Becomes
Fact' Cycle
(Positive Birth Movement)

Moss Woman
(kellepics, Pixabay)

Light Woman
(Jills, Pixabay)

Gothic Woman
(darksouls1, Pixabay)


Pregnancy silhouette Birth Obstacles 

Birthing difficulties are so often rooted in emotional discord.

A big one is fear: fear of the unknown and fear from bad birth stories.

Fear Becomes Fact Cycle of Birthing Negativity

The 'Fear Becomes Fact' Cycle of Birthing Negativity
(Positive Birth Movement; also here)


Another is discord arising from disrupting the way nature wants us to birth. Hospital birth is far from Nature's Way and makes woman afraid - and woman instinctively stops labour when afraid. "
Animal studies have shown that when animal mothers are frightened labor stops. This may represent nature’s way to let the laboring female flee a potential danger” (Klaus, Kennel and Klaus, 1993 [cited in Bak, 2003]).

Another is the discord that unconsciously emerges from people at the birth bringing their own interventionist birth history or intellectually-based ideas of how birth should be, or their adrenalised state. The progress of labour is to a great extent dependent on the adrenaline levels of those around the labouring woman.

The primary reason for all this is the removal of birth from the wisdom of women.
Power and control over birth has been usurped by science and medicine.
Birth has been medicalised.

Woman is well-designed for birth - if she can be instinctual, primal.
So,
almost all the time, birth is NOT a medical event.
Worldwide, the biggest cause of maternal death is poor maternal health and diet, and especially poor hygiene. 

So, we need to:
  • Give control of birth back to women. See how here.
  • Watch/Read lots of positive, natural births. This reduces the fear of the unknown. Start here and here
  • Get movies and TV to include natural birth, preferably as the default type. Avoid scenes with terrified woman begging for drugs. Rather, let us witness the positive power of women!! 
  • Mothers need to choose carefully who they want at their birth. This is NOT the time to be polite. Surely you need people around who you feel comfortable with? A doula may be a wise choice. Supporters of the labouring mother could engage in repetitive tasks (e.g. knitting) to reduce anxiety, and maintain a balance between privacy and availability (holding the sacred space).
Moss Woman

Here are some longer quotes about all this by Colleen Bak excerpted from her article The Role of Fear in the U.S. Birthing Process (Midwifery Today, Issue 67):
  • Birth is inherently a female activity. The choice, the ability, the power to give birth is innately female. Historically women were the sole possessors of birthing knowledge and technique, and in certain cultures and time periods men feared them as a result of this (Arms 1996 [cited in Bak, 2003]). In some places and times it was thought that women’s control over life also enabled them a certain control over death, and in others, female birth attendants were murdered as witches due to their ability to magically aid in the birthing process. As a result of their pivotal roles in birth and death, female healers “began to be shunned, persecuted, and often even put to death…women healers everywhere were driven underground by those who feared their powers” (Mauger 2000: 126 [cited in Bak, 2003]).
  • Whereas once men were the primary candidates to experience fear of women and birth, today women are the primary candidates to experience fear of and during birth. This shift was caused by numerous changes in the environment of birth as well as in the attitudes and techniques of those attending it, which was largely brought on through the medicalization of childbirth. The fear can partially be attributed to external stressors, such as the unnatural setting in which birth normally takes place in current society, the inadequate level of support women are often provided with and the current lack of understanding and familiarity women have of the process.
  • The emotional state of fear, on the part of the birthing woman, can have a negative impact on the progress of her labor and her overall experience of birth. The negative response to fear is often manifested through the slowing down or arrest of labor. This physiological phenomenon is observable in animals whose bodies have been shown to instinctively cease labor when a threat is perceived. “Animal studies have shown that when animal mothers are frightened labor stops. This may represent nature’s way to let the laboring female flee a potential danger” (Klaus, Kennel and Klaus 1993: 144 [cited in Bak, 2003]). The same occurrence has also often been noted in women upon arrival to the hospital or the appearance of the obstetrician. The hospital, as well as the obstetrician, can elicit nervous reactions that can trigger an instinctive response toward potential danger (Odent 2002 [cited in Bak, 2003]). To some women, they may personify their personal lack of power or decision-making and thus evoke fear and subsequently anxiety and stress via feelings of powerlessness.
Light Woman
  • Tangential to the environment or atmosphere that a woman labors in is the human support system that occupies it with her. This support group can comprise the birthing woman’s partner, friends and family. It may also include professional labor support from nurses, midwives, obstetricians and doulas. The efficiency of a birthing woman’s support system is one of the factors directly related to the amount of fear and anxiety from influences outside of labor that she experiences. It has been documented that “the most important factor in alleviating the anxiety that most women feel upon arrival at the hospital is the attitude of the people helping her” (Klaus, Kennel and Klaus 1993: 144 [cited in Bak, 2003]). The effectiveness of support people in alleviating outside stress, fear and anxiety is reliant on their relationship to the birthing woman, as well as the type and/or quality of support they provide. The initial qualifier of a support person is that she or he maintains a presence with the birthing woman. This minimal requirement is frequently impossible for busy nurses, midwives and obstetricians practicing in hospitals. However, it becomes more of an option for providers practicing in homes or independent birth centers, where the client-to-provider ratios are significantly reduced. 
  • The use of touch in birth is altered when birth is located within the social space of the hospital. In modern hospitals the “reliance on technology for enhancing and monitoring labour, may restrict and alter the way in which we use touch to comfort, support and encourage women through labour” (Page 2000: 116 [cited in Bak, 2003]). The reliance on technology may also negatively affect the amount of overall interaction busy hospital staff members have with women. Often the vital signs of a birthing woman and her fetus can be monitored from the nursing station, which is advantageous and attractive to staff members as it allows them to watch more clients at a time (Arms 1996 [cited in Bak, 2003]). In addition, U.S. research comparing the level and kind of support provided by first-time fathers and that of doulas indicates that “women touch the mother 95 percent of the time, but men only 20 percent of the time that they are present, and also that men choose to be there for shorter periods” (Kitzinger 2000: 123 [cited in Bak, 2003]). Each of these findings increases the importance of adequate support provided for the birthing woman by outside trained women. However most women in the U.S. today do not employ doulas, nor do they compensate for this with other sources of adequate labor support. This lack of sufficient support during the birthing process often leads to increased fear and anxiety levels.
  • Most women in current U.S. society are not exposed to the birthing process, as was general practice in most traditional cultures (Arms 1996; Gaskin 2003; [both cited in Bak, 2003]). Rather, in the U.S., birth happens behind closed doors and the majority of women do not witness births before they themselves give birth. Kitzinger (2000 [cited in Bak, 2003]) observes that if a woman “is having her first baby she has only the vaguest idea of how birth really feels and how other women cope. Birth is set apart from the rest of women’s lives and accepted as a matter of specialist knowledge”... Whereas once women possessed this “specialist knowledge,” the medicalization of childbirth polarized the birthing process, transforming it into a specific medical event and limiting legitimate birthing knowledge to medical professionals. Birth became something that was performed on women, rather than something that women performed, and along with this transformation the knowledge and experience of birthing was relegated to the confines of physicians and hospitals. Birth has been removed from its place in the realm of natural female experiences, and this removal has effectively denied generations of women the right to observe, participate in and fully understand the birthing process before they themselves experience it. It is a naturally occurring factor of the human psyche to fear the unknown, and through the scientific veiling of the birthing process, birth has been transformed into the unknown for the majority of U.S. primiparas.
Gothic Woman

Sources
Other Quotes

"While many lessons can be learned here on how to minimize or avoid complications, some are truly unavoidable. We should do our best to enter labor with a willing body and open heart, knowing we have done our best. Fifteen percent of births really do need medical help of some kind. The other 85% will come out just fine if we live a healthy lifestyle, and relax, being confident to let nature take its course, while being vigilant for signs that help of some kind may be indeed needed."
(Marlene Waechter
, Midwifery Today, dated 2018, accessed 13 September 2018)

Resources
Also see:-

Birth Easily

Birth Obstacles - Sexual Abuse

Natural Birth

Home Birth

Suffering & Birth

Pain & Birth

Violence & Birth

Midwifery

Demedicalise!

Culture of Touch

Preparing for Conception

Top of Page Contact Bruce
© Bruce Mitchell 2017-Now. All rights reserved.
Page last updated: 16 May 2022.