Month six

Labour: a sacred life event

“THERE’S A RICHNESS and magic in birth,” says Robyn Sheldon, Stellenbosch midwife and author of the renowned birth preparation book, The Mama Bamba Way – The Power and Pleasure of Natural Childbirth. “Birth is a sacred life event.” But, because we’re afraid of the pain, many of us choose to strip it from feeling and turn it into a sterilised, sanitised medical event. Yet, birth can transform us – and our babies as well. “Being fully present at birth is the most important gift we can give our children – if we don’t fear birth, they have no reason to fear life; we bestow on them the ability to immerse themselves fully in its wonders and richness,” says Robyn. Loving birth is parallel to loving life – no life is without painful experiences, yet pain often contains the key to unlock our life’s full potential. Birth can indeed become “ecstatic and pleasurable” when we love and embrace all of it. The Mama Bamba Way offers advice, processes and tools to help women cope during labour and birth so that no matter how it unfolds, it will be a satisfying experience, filled with meaning. Robyn believes our body’s inherent ability to love is the only tool we need to embrace birth. From her own birthing experiences and through her work as a midwife, she knows the difference between trusting the body’s natural ability and fighting against it. For her, fighting the pain caused waves of fear, nausea, and excruciation. Staying open to the process was also physically intense – maybe even more so, but the experience was entirely different. The different ways of experiencing childbirth reminds Robyn of how different women can experience sex as the most extreme pleasure or the most intense pain. Many contextual factors contribute to your experience of sex: how your current partner treats you, previous encounters, childhood abuse, fear, social context, upbringing, engrained belief and many more. That which impacts most on whether we enjoy sex or regard it as painful, is whether we emotionally resist it or are ready to receive it. “Sex that we have no desire for or resist, is usually a painful, traumatic encounter; childbirth that is feared and resisted can be equally harrowing. The difference is that childbirth doesn’t need to be so disturbing; the fear that has built up around giving birth naturally arises out of a misconception in the collective unconscious that grew out of thousands of years of believing birth to be dirty, impure, dangerous and primitive.” Robyn maintains we’re enriched when we reclaim the wholeness of birth and go with the proverbial flow. Pregnant women and their babies are interdependent, whether they’re aware of it or not. It has been scientifically proven that unborn children react to their mother’s emotional state. “Connecting to the soul of the unborn child is one of the most valuable tools of a sacred birth experience.” The birth process becomes less complicated and clearer when we can visualise our baby starting his descent into the birth canal. If we try to connect with the needs of our baby that is about to be born, and maintain that connection, our bodies will respond to our own physiological needs in order to clear the path for our baby to be born. Robyn believes that as much as the parents can prepare and influence the birth, so too the baby is an active participant in the birth process. Babies’ needs are most frequently of an emotional nature: a baby is better prepared to attempt the birthing process, when the mother is calm and less anxious; when the baby feels loved; and when both parents are emotionally present during the labour. Expectant parents need to ensure that their birth choices (home birth, water birth, hospital birth, midwife care, doctor care, birth at a birth clinic, etc.) are aligned with their birth wishes to get the birth that they want. Beyond that, they need to connect to their own resources and experiences for how to deal with the unknown. Although birth has the potential to be an ecstatic and pleasurable experience, Robyn reminds us that it is important not to have set goals and expectations of achieving a pain-free birth, because people can feel like a failure when they do not achieve that. “The pleasure of birth instead refers to the magnificence of birth, the intensity of birth, the hugeness of birth and then learning how to work with the power of birth rather than against it.” Following the birth there is also the pleasure of bonding. Bonding can best take place when the conditions for it have been created, such as delayed cord camping, skin-to-skin contact, baby-lead breastfeeding, having the baby close to you afterwards. The bond of love is a buffer against stress and a traumatic birth experience for the baby. The first six weeks of life, when the baby’s brain is still very plastic as neuronal pathways are still fairly unformed, is an optimal time for bonding and laying the foundations for resilience. “Give us enough love – give us adults enough love! – and we can overcome anything and be as resilient as we can be.”

CONNECTING TO THE SOUL OF THE UNBORN CHILD IS ONE OF THE MOST VALUABLE TOOLS OF A SACRED BIRTH EXPERIENCE “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.” - Marianne Williamson