Pathologising Birth
There is so much distrust in a woman’s ability to give birth.
Birth has been taken out of the hands of women.
It has been given over to western medicine and in the doing so has been pathologised.
Once pregnant you are treated as if you have a medical condition. Pregnancy has been reduced to a diagnosis that is to be managed by medical professionals from discovery to delivery.
Yet women, for the most part, can grow hands, livers, eyelashes without even needing to give thought to the life that is growing inside of them.
The system introduces fear into what is an entirely natural, beautiful, and sacred time. Even research around childbirth, natural childbirth, home births, and doula-led births focus on and highlight immediate negative outcomes, such as perinatal morbidity and ignores the long-term health benefits to mum’s, children, society, and the releasing of burden on health systems. Such studies only encourage a public attitude that childbirth is risky and fraught with complications. But this is not the energetic position that we need to take on as women. It also doesn’t tell the whole picture. Growing research on epigenetics and the microbiome is showing us the long-term and even inter-generational implications of high rates of medical intervention during labour and birth.
Instead each risk and potential for complication is drummed into us so we stand in the stark glare of the hospital lights and are cajoled into making the ‘safer’ choice. It becomes less about what is best for the individual and her growing babe, less about working with the mother and meeting her where she is at, less about support, empowerment, and encouragement to birth the way she was designed to birth, or that is right for her circumstances, but more about ensuring hospitals and health providers stick to policy thresholds.
We end up sitting in patient chairs, watching while the medical professionals scrutinise scans and measurements, and we endure test after test and anxiously wait for verdicts. In this process we hand over our power to hospitals, doctors and midwives, without understanding what they are doing or why, but only that we must for the ‘health of the baby’. We rely on results instead of feeling into our changing bodies or listening into our intuition. There is little guidance on these aspects, few wise elders to turn to, to give us the nudge or the welcoming chest we need to step into our own power.
In this process we bring on more and more stress and anxiety about outcomes and measurements and heart rates, without realising that holding such stress and fear in our bodies is incredibly detrimental to us, and to our babes.
But pregnancy is NOT a diagnosis. Treatment should be kept to if and when something goes seriously wrong. Until then, the pregnant woman should be able to seek the means and way to feel fully supported, her body, mind & spirit provided with loving holistic care.
We live in a patriarchal society that relegates the feminine to the backseat, and disregards the inherent sacredness of women, nad of birth, and the transformation that pregnancy and birth bring. When a woman goes through the rite of passage that is, becoming a mother, she goes through a huge transformational shift that alters her mind, body and soul.
On top of this childbirth trauma is rife. It seems 90% of the women I talk to have experienced obstetrical violence during labour and birth in hospital.
What does OBSTETRICAL violence look like?
Opinions and preferences weren’t listened to
Absence of a professional who provided physical and emotional comfort
Not well informed of procedures undertaken
Experienced fear
Were told to stop screaming
Were given a nickname
Invasive practices such as digital vaginal examination by different people
Use of serum
Use of oxytocin
Delivery in lithotomy position - on your back in stirrips
Incentive to voluntary pull
Amniotomy - birth sac and waters broken
Early cord clamping
Humiliated verbally
Denial of treatment when asked
Refusal of food or water when asked
Disregard of needs and pain levels
Unnecessary or unauthorised use of medication
Forced and coerced into medical interventions such as episiotomy
Denial of a companion
Cesarean section without justification
Being told the sex of the baby before receiving it
Prevented contact with newborns
Women are routinely subject to dehumanizing and rude treatment. Such treatment is paramount to a breach of human rights but it is overlooked. Obstetric violence is often a normalised violence against women.
And women of colour or of social, economic, or other health challenges are the most at risk.
And then we wonder why rates of post-natal depression and anxiety are so high?
Maternity care needs to return to being women-focused not medically-focused. Where each woman has the right to be informed and to access skilled and high quality holistic health care, where her rights to choose are upheld above all else.
Each woman planning a pregnancy has a responsibility to empower herself.
Read widely, talk regularly, get a doula, a trusted midwife, or informed birth companion. Take your time to understand the medical system, understand the patriarchy, understand the potential ramifications of the choices on offer to you.
Then make your choice. There should be no judgement for a woman making a choice different to your own – your choice is yours to make. But make sure that it is. Choose to give birth from an empowered and informed place, with a support network around you, not a place of fear.
What can you do to support yourself in your pregnancy and BIRTH?
Bring more feminine into your life, and start to embrace the true goddess that you are.
Find a genuine and trusted support group to share your fears and concerns with, if that is difficult in your area there are a lot of online communities that can serve beautifully well.
Have a Blessingway to prepare emotionally and spiritually for your birth journey.
Consider taking on a doula, or engaging in beautiful practices and courses such as Hypnobirth or Calm Birth, and absorb as much information and support as you can.
Slow down, take time to be more present with yourself. Nurture yourself and stop the go-go-go. The feminine allows the cycles of rest, rise, engage, fall in a beautiful regenerative pattern. Each phase serves. Particularly the rest!
Ask for help. We’ve been brought up to be strong independent women, but this is not the way, and motherhood will teach you the hard way that you can’t do it all at once. Learn to ask for help early- before you get stressed or overwhelmed, ask and receive with kindness, and communicate your needs clearly. Allow yourself to receive. If this is hard for you, start really, really small.
Trust your judgement. Take some deep breaths, feel into the question or issue at hand. Does your heart expand with a Yes, or does it contract with a No?
Connect with Nature and her inherent wisdom and beauty. Observe her. When you think about it she has a lot to teach us about procreation, nurturing, and birth. Talk walks outside, everyday.
Become cognisant of your thoughts, that negative critic in your head and instead become compassionate, and talk to yourself like you would your best friend.
Connect with your body. Feel her, move her, breath into her in a way that feels good to you.
Engage in the things that make you feel feminine, perhaps its nature, or cooking, or adorning yourself with beautiful clothes, makeup or jewellery, engaging in creative outlets, or moving your body. Whatever makes you alive and full and in love with life.
For the sake of the mother, the child and society, it is important that we take birth back. It is through the bodies of mothers that our survival and wellbeing as humans depends. Maternal health is foundational to society’s health.
If you have been subject to violence, or birth trauma, please seek help. Your story is one of countless stories. The effect of these feelings and experiences can stay seated deep in your body, and bubble up in a myriad of different ways, but they don’t need to be there. Counselling and women’s circles are safe therapeutic environments to start the discussion in. You are not alone.