"One cannot actively help a woman give birth. The goal is to avoid disturbing her unnecessarily". Michel Odent
Evolutionary time is slow. We are mammals who have evolved over millions of years. Yet the way we live as well as the way we approach birth has changed dramatically over the last century or so. Despite these changes, our mammalian body expects the conditions for birth that we evolved over this slower, longer time period. We ignore this at our peril! And unfortunately, most of us are carrying the impact of a lack of understanding and respect for the finely balanced system that our bodies use during the birth process.
As we saw last week when we give birth we are utilising the hpa axis , endocrine and hormonal systems and the older parts of our brain. As these parts of our system also regulate the parasympathetic nervous system that regulates our response to threats and danger, we need peace calm and safety both to go into labour and to give birth (and for bonding afterwards which we will look at in more detail in future weeks.)
Stages of Labour
Of course this is a little bit arbitrary and there is not necessarily a distinct moment when you move from one stage to another but it is useful to be aware that once labour has started it varies in pace and rhythm as different things are happening inside. I describe all stages here and in our live call we will be focusing on stages 1 and 2 concerning the birth of the baby.
Stage 1 Cervical Dilation- Divided into three stages plus one possible extra stage for some.
- 1. Latent: The longest phase; contractions may be irregular, and the cervix begins to soften and open.
- 2. Active: Contractions become stronger, more regular, and usually more painful. Energetically you are opening your body and your field to welcome your baby and you are going deeper into yourself and your world. Time starts to move differently.
- 3. Transition: The final phase of the first stage; contractions are very strong, and the cervix reaches full dilation. This phase can involve intense pressure. It is when many women feel they cannot go on and beg for death or a caesarean. This is a threshold moment, no turning back. It is the final letting go of who you were to become who you are becoming, for both mother and baby. It is brief in ordinary time but profound energetically.
- 4. The pause. I am adding this in as there is often a pause when contractions stop before the pushing stage. Not always but sometimes there is a period of respite when you can rest before the next stage.
Stage 2: Baby's Birth
This begins once the cervix is fully dilated to about 10 centimetres and the mother’s body will begin to push the baby out. During this stage the foetus makes a series of movements through the birth canal. They will rotate, descend, flex, go through crowning where the (usually) head emerges, extension and then expulsion of the shoulders and body. In other words, the baby is not a passive passenger at the whim of the contractions, they are an active partner who journeys together with the mother’s body through the birth canal to the outside world. The nature of the contractions and the energy changes to a downward flow rather than up and opening. The mother is now bearing down and is fully in her own world
Stage 3: Birth of the placenta
The uterus continues to contract to separate the placenta from the uterine wall. The placenta needs the same conditions that facilitate an undisturbed birth and is usually born between 10 minutes and 45 minutes after the baby though it can take longer.
Flow state and delta waves
In an undisturbed birth, the mother and therefore also the baby enters an altered state of reality. This has been described as a type of flow state where time slows and the woman will feel like she is in her own world even if there are other people around. Her brain waves will resemble those in deep sleep in the delta range and she shows decreased frontal lobe activity. This is a state where the neo cortex is mostly off line, and your older limbic brain takes over. You don’t need to plan and self reflect, you need to go deep into your instinctive brain and move with the energy. The mother will show more instinctive and primal behaviours with a reduced conscious sense of pain, and decreased inhibition. The moaning and swaying actions that occur resemble those seen in many other mammals.
"Undisturbed birth represents the smoothest hormonal orchestration of the birth process and therefore the easiest transition possible, physiologically hormonally psychologically and emotionally from pregnancy and birth to new mother hood and lactation for each woman When a mother’s hormonal orchestration is undisturbed her baby’s safety is also enhanced not only during labor and delivery but also in the critical postnatal transition from womb to world."
Sarah J. Buckley MD- Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering
Cat and Elephant birth styles
Humans are mammals. All mammals have many similarities in their needs for birth. They also have both similarities and variations in how they meet those needs which we can see by comparing the different birth style of a cat and elephant birth.
Cat Birth Style
You are likely more familiar with cat style birth. It is fascinating to me that it is part of general cultural knowledge that cats (along with most mammals) chose a secluded place to give birth in privacy and dark and yet we do not make the same connections for our own needs.
Cats, like most mammals, will usually pick the quietest time and the time least likely to be disturbed or in danger in relation to their ordinary everyday life. For most animals this is in the dead of night – though rats who are nocturnal often give birth in the day. In both cases they ensure safety, and privacy with the least chance of physiology being disturbed. In this quiet and calm, magic happens.
This secluded private birth fits with the nature of a cat's lifestyle as they are solitary animals rather than pack animals.
Elephant Birth Style
In contrast, in their natural state in the wild, elephants live in a multigeneration herd with strong social bonds and the female elephants learn about birth as they grow within this natural structure. These elephants give birth, as they live, with the company of other elephants. Older more experienced female elephants surround the birthing mother surround the birthing mother to provide protection from predators during the birth creating an essential sense of security.
Zoos understand this need for support and privacy and will maintain those conditions, with zookeepers keeping their distance for a while after a birth. There has been research to show that there were higher rates of maternal rejection with captive elephants in the past when this was less understood.
Where this relates to humans is that we likely need both the privacy and dark of cat birth and that if we choose to have support at any stage, the support we need is with familiar experienced female caregivers in our home environment where we feel safe.
An Empowering Sacred Journey and relationship with support and sovereignty
It seems what is known by zookeepers, veterinarians, and the general population when it comes to mammals has been forgotten or ignored by our modern doctors and obstetricians when it comes to our own birth experience. Interference in the name of support is rife. What were once life saving interventions reserved for emergencies are now routine. The modern way of birth is full of risk and litigation averse practices that often have no basis in evidence or better outcomes overall. The very methods used to help are all too often the very measures that interrupt the physiological process, reactivating the mother’s neo cortex and disrupting the fine hormonal balance. One intervention leads to another in the classic 'cascade of interventions' and they have become so common that this level of intervention has become completely normalised. (For your information, I have added a list of the main modern interventions that you may have experienced to the glossary which you can access here.)
We seem to have forgotten we are mammals and need the same support, security, and privacy as any other mammal to birth smoothly and successfully. We have eroded mother's and society's confidence in a physiological process.
When we do get this though, birth is magical and sacred. Although it is intense and often very tiring, mother and baby go on a powerful journey and emerge changed. A mother is born as well as the baby. Women discover they can do hard things during labour. They break through barriers and transition to a new stage of their life, each and every time. This is also an important transition for the baby who experiences this breakthrough from their perspective and their own learning that they can do hard things.
On our next live call we will explore the gap between what you expected on an evolutionary level and what you actually went through.
Here are some reflective questions to consider before then.
Reflection questions:
- 1. What kind of outside interventions/help did you experience during your birth?
- 2. How did you experience this support/intervention? What was it like for you?
- 3. How much did your inner and outer experience differ from your evolutionary expectation of an undisturbed birth?
- 4. What is your relationship to being supported by others in life?
- 5. How does this map to the kind of support or interventions you had during birth?