What is Natural Parenting: Preparing for Birth

This is one in a series of posts about what Natural Parenting looks like in our family. See the rest of the series here.

This was an easy one for me. I have been interested in birth, both personally and professionally, for several years now. I was working as a health researcher on topics related to maternal and perinatal health at the time I became pregnant and had read various clinical guidelines regarding intrapartum care. Now, these weren’t particularly “natural”, nor would I put it on my list of recommended reading for a newly pregnant woman, but it did give me a good understanding of how birth “works” in the English medical system. Since we have midwifery-led care for the majority of women here, there is generally a good emphasis on physiological birth and woman-centred care. It also flagged up a few things, such as routine managed third stage of labour (i.e. shot of Pitocin to help deliver the placenta), that I knew I would want to research more and think about in greater depth.

St Gerard Majella
patron of expectant mothers

On the personal side, I had been following various blogs on natural birthing topics for several years. Favourites include Stand and Deliver, First the Egg, Talk Birth, and Birthing Beautiful Ideas. (I was actually reading Rixa’s dissertation on Unattended Childbirth in North America when I became pregnant. A really fascinating read if you are interested in birth culture and sociology sort of things.) My mind was made up even before I was pregnant that I would strive for a natural birth. A big part of this, for me, was to plan for a low-intervention birth, doing as much preparation that I could. I wanted to know what experiences of natural birth were like, both physically and mentally, as told by women who had already done it. I assumed that my experience, while unique, would in some ways be similar to the experiences of other women, and therefore things wouldn't be as much of a surprise during the event. 

While I was planning my low-intervention birth, I was also mentally preparing for needing to change these plans during labour. I came to realise that the most important thing for me to have a positive labour and delivery was to be able to be an agent in my own birth. I didn’t want other people to make decisions for me (unless in a very severe emergency!). I knew that I might not be able to use my rational brain as much as normal during labour, so if I wanted to be able to make my own decisions, I would have to go into labour with a lot of knowledge.  If a midwife or doctor was going to tell me that X was happening during my labour, I wanted to already know what that meant and what some of the courses of action might be. I obviously would trust my care providers to have my best interests at heart, and I didn't feel the need--or like it was possible!--to become an expert on all things birth-related. At the same time, I wanted any informed consent to be truly informed, and I felt that I could better get that information over the course of many months from many sources, rather than during the intensity of labour. 

 

So I read. A lot. I drastically increased the number of birthing blogs that I read during my pregnancy. I read several books, but made sure that the books I chose had a philosophy that was encouraging of a low-intervention birth (I didn't want a book to set out to scare me!). Some books that I found useful were

• Blooming Birth by Lucy Atkins and Julia Guderian—I remember this having a very realistic and approachable tone, with lots of practical tips for birth preparation
• Birth Reborn by Michel Odent—this was more for philosophy and getting into a positive mindset about birth than for practical tips, although his ideas (found here and elsewhere) about having a safe, relaxed space for birthing definitely influenced / increased my desire for a homebirth
• Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering by Dr Sarah Buckley—this book uses medical science to look at some common interventions in child birth, to help parents come to the decisions that are right for their family. It is definitely pro-natural birth (some might say biased), but has good information. Sceptical me did have to take some of the anecdotes on more mystical elements of childbirth with a grain of salt, though. 

Jon and I also attended an antenatal class run by the NCT, a national charity. This was a 16-hour class (spread over several sessions!) on various aspects of labour, birth, and parenting a newborn. There were 5 other couples expecting their first baby as well. The NCT generally has a very pro-natural childbirth stance (some say too much so), but our class had a really good approach of discussing the pros and cons of various interventions without pushing an agenda. For example, the leader did a very useful role-play activity to show who all the people in an operating room at a Caesarean birth are. One of the fathers laid down on the (operating) table, and the rest of us stood around him, acting as doctors, nurses, and midwives. The goal was to help lessen a parent’s anxiety if they needed an emergency Caesarean and all of a sudden had a load of people running into the room. On the other hand, we also talked extensively about homebirths. It was this class, more than anything, that helped Jon become comfortable with the idea of a homebirth.

Our Lady of Guadalupe

In preparation for what I knew would be a physically strenuous labour and delivery, I tried to keep active throughout pregnancy. I am not really an exerciser, but I do like to walk (and since I don’t have a car, I need to walk a lot, too!). I tried to continue walking as much as possible without wearing myself out. I was blessed with a fairly easy pregnancy and, once I got the iron situation sorted out, more energy than I expected. Although, when I went on maternity leave at 36 weeks, I may have taken a bit too much advantage of the possibility of lie-ins and lazy afternoons on the couch, and probably could have kept going a bit more. (I also blame this lazing about for Gus’s posterior positioning—I should have been scrubbing the floors to keep him in position like old-time midwives used to say!) While I think keeping active is one thing that I’d be more conscious of in a next pregnancy, I have a feeling it wouldn’t be too difficult with a toddler/pre-schooler to look after!


I thought about hypnobirthing or hiring a doula, but I decided against both of them. There were no local hypnobirthing classes at the time, and I didn't think I would have the discipline to listen to the tapes every day. (Plus, I think Jon would be very skeptical about hypnobirthing. While that wouldn't stop me if it was an idea I was committed to, having Jon's full support during the labour and delivery was more important to me).   We didn't get a doula because I wasn't sure if I would like another person there during the labour. I think I would seriously consider getting one for a next birth, though. I think the whole day was quite draining for Jon, so it would be good to have some support for him. He was an amazing support person for me, but there were times when I knew what I needed to do, but I needed to hear it from someone else in order to get up the energy. The midwives weren't the right support at the time, and Jon didn't have enough knowledge about birth to know specifically what to say, so I think I would like a doula to fill that gap.

What is Natural Parenting: Preparing for Pregnancy

Finally getting into my Natural Parenting series. The first practice of Natural Parenting is "Prepare for pregnancy, birth, and parenting." I have a lot of thoughts on these (so much so that I am splitting this into 3 parts, rather than one mega-post), but I'm not sure how much of it is "natural". This is partially because I didn't really know what Attachment or Natural Parenting were before Gus was born, so I didn't prepare with this concept specifically in mind, although I did instinctively lean that way. Also, I feel like we did the same thing that most families preparing for a new baby do (or at least most families with a similar cultural, academic, and socioeconomic background to me), so it feels strange to write some of it down as something noteworthy. Nonetheless, this is my story, and here is a part of it. 

Preparing for pregnancy

Our pregnancy with Gus was very much a “planned” pregnancy in as much as one can plan these things. That being said, I didn't actually do much to prepare myself for it. I started taking folic acid supplements months in advance, because I had read reports of a study showing benefit from taking folic acid up to a year before conception, and that’s about it.

I didn't do any preparation with regards to diet or exercise before my pregnancy. I was already eating a fairly healthy, mostly whole foods diet. And to be honest, I don't know if I even thought about physical fitness. Since moving to the UK, I have always walked a lot (funny how not having a car will do that to you!), so I have a pretty good level of fitness anyway. But I certainly didn't think to do any more than that. And emotional preparation was not even on my radar. I just knew I had been wanting a baby for some time, so I figured I was mentally ready!

One thing that we did do to prepare for pregnancy, in a way, was to use Natural Family Planning (NFP) to first avoid and then achieve pregnancy. It was important to me to use NFP, not only for religious reasons, but because I don't like the idea of putting artificial or unnecessary chemicals or hormones into my body. I am quite hesitant to take medications casually anyway (for instance, I would much rather just wait for a headache to go away on its own, if it doesn’t prevent me from going about my day, than take a tablet for it), so I would not like to take a daily medication unless really necessary. Plus, when we were ready to become pregnant, using NFP meant that my body didn't have to “detox” and we understood my fertility cycle. So it was really a win-win choice for us.

My current status is again one of preparing for pregnancy, although we don't have any immediate plans. Not that it would matter if we did—I am still breastfeeding Gus enough that my cycle has yet to return since his birth. So at the moment we are on God's time, neither trying to conceive nor trying to avoid pregnancy. And I kind of like it. If I had the choice right now—pregnant or not?—I don't really know what I would choose. Three of my friends who have toddlers Gus's age are pregnant, and there is a significant part of me that is quite envious. On the other hand, we are so happy as a family of three, and I love being able to focus on Gus, that I wouldn't want to rock the boat with changes. 

One thing I am keen to do before becoming pregnant again is to learn to squat.  That sounds a bit silly, but there is a rationale behind it. Squatting has numerous benefits, including being a great position for birth (it can give you vital extra millimetres in the size of the pelvic opening compared to some other positions!) and strengthening your pelvic floor muscles. Much better than doing Kegels, according to the squatting expert Katy Bowman. So at the moment I am stretching and strengthening the necessary muscles in my legs and glutes to be able to hold a proper squatting position. I just have to remember to do the exercises every day!

While I had a blessedly easy pregnancy with Gus, one issue I did run into was low iron. (Melissa at Vibrant Wanderings has a great summary about iron deficiency anemia in pregnancy, if that sort of thing piques your interest.) This led to real lack of energy (more than just normal pregnancy-related lack of energy) in the first half of my pregnancy until I started on iron supplements. I'd therefore like to increase my current intake of dietary iron, with the hope that having high iron stores at the start of a pregnancy will mean that any natural decrease during pregnancy won't lead to deficiency and the related exhaustion--something I certainly won't need when chasing after an active toddler! My only problem with this is, like doing the exercises above, I am great at making plans and less good at remembering to put them into action. It's worth a go, though!

Intuition?

A lot of talk around pregnancy seems to be about intuition and body knowledge.  Natural birth advocates are often saying that a woman’s body knows what to do during labour and birth, you just need to listen to your body and follow what it is telling you.   And to an extent, I do agree: our bodies have been designed to give birth.  It is fascinating to me the differences between human birth and births among other mammals (not that I have witnessed either) and the way that the differences in our bodies (namely, that we walk on two legs but also have big brains compared to other mammals) affects how we can give birth.  Even though human babies are less mature than other primates, for example, when they are born, their relatively huge heads compared to the mother’s pelvis means that our babies have to do special turns and manoeuvres to get through the birth canal.  And no one has to teach the mom or baby how to do these.

But my real question about intuition is this: how do I know that the feeling I am having is intuition and not want I want or hope?  For instance, we did not find out via ultrasound whether this little one is a boy or a girl.  So people always ask me which I think the baby is.  And some people really have strong feelings that their little baby is one or the other, like their body knows.  Off and on during the course of the pregnancy, I have had some inklings that this baby is a girl (although most people seem to think it is a boy).  But do I think that because there is just a part of me that knows that it is a girl, or is it because part of me hopes that it is a girl? (I have this image in my mind that I will have lots of kids—good!—but all boys—scary!!!  I think my wanting a girl this time around is not so much about this particular child, but to ensure that whatever I might have in the future, at least I’ll have one little lady in the house.)   

I went to bed last night really thinking, down to my toes, that labour wasn’t far off now.  Not that it would necessarily be the next day (and it hasn’t started yet!), but that there wouldn’t be too many baby-free days left in our lives.  But OF COURSE this is true!  I have passed my due date—there will only be two weeks, at the most, left with this baby not out in the world.  This isn’t intuition, it is statistics (something I can rely on :) ).

I think this is what scares me about labour—although not really in a bad way, in an exciting way.  I want to be able to “listen to my body” and let it do its thing.  But when have I ever in my life had a chance to “practice” using my intuition and my body’s knowledge?   I feel like I should have been preparing for it in some way—can you teach yourself to listen to your body?  Some probably would say that you could. 

But really, I am probably just over-thinking all of this; which is, of course, the exact opposite of listening to your body and following your gut!  I have quite a mathematical, researcher-y type brain, and I want a simple equation: if x, then y.  Y is that I know that I really would like an unmedicated, intervention-free birth, and I want there to be an X to guarantee that I will be able to achieve that.  If my body and my baby know what to do, then it seems the solution would be just to let the process unfold by itself, not try to insert my rational mind into the equation.  If only it were that simple!

I am really excited about labour, though.  Intrigued about how it will pan out, what will happen.  Will it be anything like my expectations?  (I am pretty sure that answer will be no!)   I think, whether I can follow this intuition thing or not, I am preparing to have a good time with birthing my baby.  And good preparation leads to good results, right?  (Right?!?!)

7 Quick Takes (volume 1)

Check out more bloggers' Quick Takes over at Conversion Diary.

-1-

Due date today!  No signs of Baby being ready to join us yet, but it is really hard to not expect it to come in the next few days.  No matter how many times I tell myself that first-time mothers typically give birth 10 days after the due date, I can’t help but think baby will be here in the next few days.  Jon has asked baby to not start labour until Sunday afternoon, at the earliest, so he can get two more days of sleeping late this weekend!  No induction would be scheduled for at least two more weeks, so it’s not necessarily quite the end yet.

-2-

Jon, bump and I had a photo shoot last weekend.  It was really fun!  I felt that we didn’t have many good pictures from the pregnancy—we never seem to take any pictures—so this would be a good way to get a few photos.  We go back tomorrow to view all the photos.  The sitting fee was only £10, and we get a free 8x6 print with that; unfortunately, that means that they charge quite a lot for electronic copies of the photos (I think the prints are pretty average in price), so I won’t be sharing any here.  If (probably when—see above comment about never taking any good pictures) we get pictures done of the baby, we might find somewhere that at least has an online gallery so we can share them a bit more and family can pick out their own pictures, but this was a really good last minute decision, I think.

-3-

Tonight is Bonfire Night, also known as Guy Fawkes’ Night.  We celebrate the failure of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605, in which Fawkes and a group of Catholic rebels (freedom fighters, I am sure!) tried to blow up Parliament and kill the Protestant King.  Mostly it is celebrated with fireworks displays, and some towns still have big bonfires, apparently.  Traditionally, towns would burn effigies of Guy Fawkes and/or the Pope as well, but that doesn’t happen in too many places nowadays.  It always seems a bit weird to me, being Catholic, celebrating an event that has a definite anti-Catholic history, although I do think that it is good they were prevented from killing the entire Parliament and the King, regardless of their reasons.

-4-

Anyway, there were some fireworks going off in the park near our house last night, and I could see them from our back yard.  I wondered how the baby might react to all the banging, but s/he didn’t seem to mind at all, really, and they were pretty loud.  I thought I might get a lot of jumping around, but no.  I saw in the paper that a zoo is doing displays of “bang-less” fireworks, good for both the animals and children that are afraid of the noise.  I do not really understand how they can make fireworks that don’t make noise.

-5-

P.S. re fireworks: who wants to go stand outside to watch fireworks in November?  Don’t they know that it is cold out there?  Although, it does mean that you can set them off at about 6 and then go back home to your cozy house and a nice cup of tea or hot chocolate.

-6-

I bought a little storage unit to put in the bathroom the other week.  It arrived last week, I took all the pieces out of the box, with its 8 different types of screws and dowels and such and 12 different panels to put together, and realised that the assembly instructions were missing.  And there was no way I was going to be able to figure out how to put it together without the instructions.  So I contacted the seller (on ebay) to ask to if he could send me a copy of the instructions, and I am still waiting.  While all the pieces sit on my living room floor.  To be fair, I ordered a second, bigger unit as well, from a different seller, and it is only half-way put together, so maybe I can’t put the entire blame on the seller.  But it would be nice to be able to have this stuff in place before the baby arrives!  Oh well, baby won’t care if we have storage space in the bathroom.  If anything, baby will be more concerned about the completely unfinished nursery (hey Dad, I might have a job for you when you get here!)—luckily baby will be sleeping in our room to begin with, and the crib is put together. See, we do get around to finishing the important things!

-7-

Photo of me on my due date: 

Awaiting the wee 'un

I have really enjoyed being pregnant.  It is a funny state of being: an anticipation of an event, but also an experience in and of itself.  It can be hard sometimes to live in the moment during pregnancy, with all the preparations that need to go on for the little one’s arrival.  On the other hand, it is such a momentous thing in and of itself that you feel like you should be acutely aware of the baby growing inside of you at every moment of the day.  Not so much in the third trimester, but earlier in the pregnancy there would be days where I would see myself in the mirror as I got into the shower (for some odd reason the previous owners put a huge mirror covering the wall over the bathtub—a bit disconcerting to see oneself in that way first thing every morning, but luckily the steam from the shower fogs it up quickly enough!) and be surprised to see my growing bump.  Or go a couple of hours without even thinking about the baby, when it is so intimately connected to me.  I would say, “Oh, hello baby!  I haven’t forgotten about you, I promise!”  Luckily I am not too much of a worrier, but the thought would pop into my head: what kind of a mother am I, forgetting about this little one, even for a moment?!

Of course, there are also the moments in the day where baby starts to squirm around (do its exercises, I like to call it, taking after its da and working out those muscles!), and I just feel such overwhelming love for the little thing.  This is my baby, a complete little person growing inside of me! At those times, part of me wants to stay pregnant forever, not let the little one out into the world, not have to share these special moments with anyone—even Jon!  It is just so amazing to be a player in the creation of a person, someone with a little soul that will live forever.  This little life will never end, but its beginning was right here inside of me!  What an overwhelming thought.  At those times, I just feel so close to God and seem to have a little inkling of the love that He must feel for every one of us, His creations, and I pray so fervently for my little child.

Obviously, I can’t wait to actually meet my little one, face to face.  I think that human gestation is probably just the right length, because at 38 weeks, I definitely wasn’t ready, psychologically, for the baby to be born.  That may have been related to the fact that I didn’t feel that all the preparations were in place at home for the baby to come, and now those things are (more or less) completed.  But in the past few days, as my “due date” approaches (tomorrow!), the baby has been getting heavier, my whole body has been aching more and more, and those lovely little squirms are turning into painful jabs in the ribs and hips more often!  Physically, I am getting ready to be done with pregnancy itself, which definitely aides in the psychological and emotional preparation.

There is so much to look forward to in the next few weeks: the labour and birth itself (I am so excited and intrigued to see what it will be like and how my body will do its thing!); those first moments with the baby, which everyone says are so lovely; getting to know our little child and what s/he is like; watching Jon be a new father.  But I am definitely trying, in these last few days (weeks?) of pregnancy, to really savour these moments and not wish them all away.  God willing, we will have more children and similar moments will come, but I’ll never hold this baby in my womb again. (Plus, I don’t know that you get as much time to “savour the moment” for subsequent children—the toddlers I know don’t seem to appreciate quiet time the way adults do!)  How lucky I am to be able to take this time out for my baby and me!