Preparedness refers to the state of being prepared for specific or unpredictable events or situations. Preparedness is an important quality in achieving goals and in avoiding and mitigating negative outcomes.
While working on a mural I am painting for my daughter’s room this week, I was thinking about how I am in the “nesting” phase of pregnancy. I am actually preparing a new space for my older daughter and the new baby will move into the current nursery after a period of co-sleeping with my husband and I.
This got me thinking about how women prepare for birth. Do many pregnant women feel they are prepared for labor? Do women enter labor in a calm state of mind and feel confident that they know what to do, their partner knows what to do, and they have full trust in their care providers?
We prepare everything else for a new baby. We buy mass amounts of baby gear after doing hours upon hours of research about the “safest” and the most functional brands. We gather tons of baby clothes and blankets and wash them before hand. We buy an infant seat and put it in our car weeks before our due dates AND we prepare the baby’s nursery.
But do many American women feel prepared for labor? How about the ability to labor naturally, without intervention?
The answer is no. American women are scared of birth. Fear has been set into us at an early age. Pitocin, epidurals, and C-sections are part of our culture. Why would we try to birth naturally when we don’t have to be prepared? We go to the hospital and they take care of things for us. The job is out of our hands once the heavy contractions start. And we aren’t allowed to make decisions when we are “in that state” anyway.
What if we made child birthing classes mandatory? What if we showed all those wonderful natural birthing videos that birthing advocate mommas and caregivers have seen? What if women left feeling empowered to have the strength and courage to labor naturally? There may be less medical interventions and c-sections! There may be less premature babies and babies may be born in a less traumatic way! Breastfeeding may be easier! Why, it may just turn the healthcare industry upside down!!
Fear and helplessness is running our birthing community. Shout it from the rooftops, and educate women that they are strong, birth is empowering, and most importantly, that they have a choice. Tell them it is a good idea to prepare your mind and body for birth, just like you prepare the baby clothing and a place for the baby to sleep.
Preparedness refers to the state of being prepared for specific or unpredictable events or situations. Preparedness is an important quality in achieving goals and in avoiding and mitigating negative outcomes.
My daughter's mural
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while i agree that it would be wonderful if women were more prepared for birth i have to disagree with the idea of making birthing classes mandatory. every woman goes about birth in her own and individual way, to try and insist that there is one particular “right” way to navigate through labor by making classes mandatory, would actualy be taking the power away from the women. For me, i never went to any birthing classes. i had a natural trust in the process and learned lots simply from joining mothering forums, and talking to my midwife. I realize that this is not everyone’s experience but i do know that i would have found it demeaning to my own intuition to be forced into a birthing class. with my second birth the woman who assisted me began instructing me on my breathing. i had already been through my son’s birth in which i was allowed to scream, cry, or do whatever i needed to do. i found being told how to handle the pain and how to breath a little hurtful because it felt like my friend was telling me i wasn’t birthing right. I think that the big thing that needs to happen is that doctors and even sometimes midwives and doulas need to learn to communicate with their patients a little better. if i had relied on my backup OBs info durring my first birth i would know nothing about birth. He ran through my check ups like a sprint to get out of there, mummbling or not talking to me at all when he did things like listen to the heartbeat or even durring the ultrasound. With my friend who was at my second birth, I had asked her to be there because my midwife was unable and all i wanted was a second set of slightly trained eyes to make sure that everything went ok. I communicated this to her but she had an idea of how a woman should handle pain based on her own training in birthing classes and her own experience, if she had listened to what i had really needed from her things would have been different.
I agree with you 100% that women ought to know more before they go into labor but i think a lot of that has to do with the communication practices of their practitioner. classes should always be made an option but never mandatory.
Perhaps not mandatory, but if they were expected it would go a long way. If it were typical for a woman to pursue an independent childbirth course instead of atypical. If women immediately began to look for a class to register for when they get the BFP, the same way they start browsing through nursery room furniture. If we had a culture in which it was the norm instead of the exception…
dumb question, but where did you get the pattern for the mural?
i think that birthing classes ought to be covered by health care so that it can even be an option for most women. By making it a health care covered thing women are more likely to sign up. I also think that home birth should be covered by health care
still, i don’t think there should be pressure on women to make one choice over another.
I agree with you in theory, that women should have options for birth preparation. But I have seen discussions around the web where calls for more childbirth education and preparedness are a little too close to “victim blaming.”
As you said, “Preparedness is an important quality in achieving goals and in avoiding and mitigating negative outcomes.”
If we believe that too strongly, women who plan a natural or low intervention birth but wind up with many interventions, c-section, etc. get blamed because they “must not have educated themselves enough.” We know this is not true, but I’ve heard it enough to know victim blaming is a problem. How do we balance the need to prepare for birth with the need for care providers we can trust to honor our choices and look out for our best interests- not their liability, or their finances, or their vacation schedules? It’s a difficult question.
I agree with you 100% …