The Mother's Group

My mother's group 2011. What a beautiful bunch of cleavages babies.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a woman in possession of a baby must be in want of a mother's group. Or so sayeth the nurses at the early childhood centre. However, it is a truth only privately acknowledged that, for some of us, the idea of walking in to a room full of unknown, hormonal, sleep deprived women is a slightly scary daunting prospect.

And yet, those faces will soon become so familiar to you, those girls your tribe. For our mother's group, these were also the women that would help one of our gang weather a storm that no parent should have to.

For those of you unacquainted with the mother's group scene, here's how it goes. A nurse pops in when you get home from hospital, not only to check on you and the baby, but to tell you the date your mother's group starts. It is both recommended and assumed you will join in and, for the most part, I agree with that. The four weeks you spend attending the centre learning about settling your baby, avoiding cracked nipples and what to do when your baby projectile vomits, form an essential manual for how to work the baby when you're at home.

After the four weeks, you can decide as a group whether you'd like to continue meeting at each other's homes, or a local park or cafe. Or not.

My first mother's group, which I joined when Jack was born nearly 10 years ago, was a godsend. We inhaled each other's experiences along with the chocolate biscuits, entire mornings consumed by conversations revolving around dummies, sleep patterns and poo. We shared our children's milestones, delivered meals to those moving house and those welcoming new babies, held hands during tough times. And there was tea and wine and always cake. Strong friendships formed and firmed, or fell away as people returned to full time work or moved away, either physically or philosophically. It was enjoyable and wonderful, but also intense, exhausting and emotional for those first few years.

So for me, the thought of joining another mother's group after I had Francesca made me feel . . . y'know . . . a bit tired.

Although I have to admit I was tempted by all the cake.

I also thought it would be good for Francesca to have some friends her own age. A little mate to step across the threshold of her first classroom at the local primary school with in years to come.

So off I went to my new mother's group meeting and like Mr Bingley, once I got to the ball, I found that all the ladies were entirely agreeable and very much to my taste.

I plunged, once more, into the world of babydom, this time as the elder stateswoman. The forty-something mum who'd been-there-done-that. Unfortunately for the other mums, I have a shocking memory and wasn't much help on the advice front. Fortunately for me, these twenty- and thirty-somethings were all extremely well-informed and willing to share advice with this forgetful old women.

When I had Jack ten years ago, Facebook was merely a glint in Mark Zuckerberg's eye, so my mother's group relied on the telephone and our weekly catch-ups for sharing advice, eating cake and moaning about stuff. But with my new mother's group, we not only had the magic of Facebook, but were all having intense love affairs with our iphones which meant 24/7 access to each other when needed. Sitting on the sofa for that wearying 40 minute feed at 2am? Iphone. Facebook. Instant company! Oh those silent 2am online chats were some of the best. And they sure beat the endless Guthy-Renker infomercials (although I did find the Roto-Curler strangely alluring).

It also helped that the women in my new mother's group were simply lovely. Are lovely. Two and a half years on and we still meet every week, not just for the sake of our children, but because we genuinely enjoy each other's company.

We've also formed a bond. Not just a casual affinity created by the shared experiences of motherhood, but the kind of tight coalition that is formed when a tragedy befalls one in a group and the group surrounds her, turns in to face her, leans in to support her.

Our beautiful K fell pregnant with her second baby at around the same time as nearly every other mum in the group. It was very exciting among our merry band of mamas with so much potential newborn-cuddling action on the horizon. K's baby, in particular, was a heaven sent surprise to them as they'd had some difficulty conceiving their first child and had been on the emotional fertility rollercoaster too many of us are familiar with. To fall pregnant with their second baby naturally was wonderful.

On the 30th May last year, K's baby Jamie was stillborn at 32 weeks. He was perfect. A handsome, soft-skinned, beautiful boy.

The details of Jamie's birth are not mine to share. That is a story for K and her husband to tell. I can only tell you how it was from the outside looking in.

The initial floundering for words, the intense desire to help in some way, the uncertainty of protocol or of K's expectations upon seeing her for the first time afterwards. To hug? To console? To acknowledge? How to make the words come without cliche. How to express what a full heart feels without overwhelming. Too much? Too little?

These things are difficult to navigate alone, but with a group used to sharing the minutiae of everyday life, it became easier. In our huddle, we threw our thoughts and feelings and ideas into the middle and came out with a plan. Along with attending the funeral, planning a two week meals roster and the gift of a pendant inscribed with her two sons' names, we opened our arms and our ears, ready for her to enter when she felt ready.

K's calm bravery and generosity of heart throughout the entire ordeal was incredible, and continues to be. At our first meeting together after the funeral, we put our toes gently in the water. There was unspoken consent to cocoon her but also give her room to breathe. To speak. Did she want to talk? She did. K let us in to her world with heartbreaking honesty.

Over the past awful year, surrounded by swollen bellies and newborn babies, she has continued with that same candid courage and we have been guided and inspired by it. There have been tears and fear, enormous pain and the constant ache of what-ifs, but she has turned up, leaned in, kept moving forwards, for her two year old son, her husband and herself. I am in awe of her.

Two weeks ago marked the anniversary of Jamie's birth and death. We decided to celebrate his day. Jamie's Day. There was champagne, sunshine and, of course, cake. A birthday cake, irresistible to little fingers.

 

 

Brave mama

At day's end, the text messages went round. Drinks? Girls night? Let's do it. We washed down guacamole with champagne, toasted our brave buddy and her angel and then got lost in the meandering lanes and byways of lady-chat. Kids, husbands, holidays, Brazilian waxes, books, movies, school days, drunk days, good and bad days. The big dirty martini of life.

This mother's group - a posse, cleaved together for better or worse.

If you have experienced a stillbirth or know someone who has, you're not alone.
The Stillbirth Foundation - http://www.stillbirthfoundation.org.au/
SANDS has excellent fact sheets for friends and families as well as parents - http://www.sands.org.au/resources/

The Birth Story (or How A Tummy Ache Became A Baby Before Tea Time)

Right then, so where was I? Oh yes, the birth story. Good Lord, has it really been three weeks since Francesca bungee-jumped into the world on her umbilical cord?

But wait, I'm rushing to the end when I'm sure what you really want to know is stuff like how excruciating the labour was, whether my obstetrician made it on time, which bodily functions did I embarrass myself with and how many stitches I needed.

No? You don't want to know all those things? Rubbish. We all want to know those things. We just don't want to admit that we want to know those things. (Answers: Fairly. No. All of them. None)

I should probably state right now that this is a 'warts and all' account of childbirth. No punches will be pulled. Any queasy gents who would prefer the fully-clothed, lights-off, sanitised version of childbirth (particularly if I'm your sister or daughter or step-mother) I believe there's a very good horse called Blissful Ignorance running in the fifth at Randwick today so go get your form guide and we'll see you back here for the flowers and chocolates bit at the end of the story.

It all started on the Thursday night, which I spent sleeping on the sofa due to some supersonic snoring coming from the marital bed and a handsome, muscle-bound 20 year old lad in the spare bed (because that's where I like to keep them, along with my Manolo collection and fridge full of Bollinger).

I woke up half a dozen times with mild tummy cramps. In my half-asleep state it felt suspiciously like indigestion and the resultant, shall we say, 'passing of wind' (if my husband tells you they are whopping great thundering farts, please ignore him) through the night corroborated this suspicion. When I woke up, I thought perhaps they might have been Braxton Hicks contractions as they weren't regular or painful. In fact, they stopped altogether in the early morning and I didn't even bother mentioning it to John.

Throughout the morning, I felt them again - a painless tightening similar to period cramps, but still irregular, perhaps once every half hour, and not lasting any regular length of time.

At about 9.30 I walked around to the local coffee shop and, sitting there with my mate Rachel, I continued to feel these 'tightenings' which, being women, we began to over-analyse. It MIGHT be the start of labour, but COULD just be Braxton Hicks which could go on for days. I had 'loose motions' which MIGHT be a sign of going into labour, but I'd had that on and off for days alternating with constipation, so it COULD have just been something I ate or a symptom of late pregnancy.

I walked home at 11.00am and sat down to do some work at the computer, still not convinced I was in labour due to the infrequency of the contractions. I also had the distraction of the handsome, muscle-bound 20 year old (oh alright, it was my stepson Ryan - fantasy's over ladies, move along) who had stayed the night due to being unwell with migraines. I had been planning to take him to his MRI appointment at midday. We were very worried about him.

I sent John a Skype message and our exchange went as follows:

M: Ryan has woken up feeling very unwell with a headache again so I've just been feeding him, given him a cold pack for his forehead and making sure he keeps his fluids up.
 
J: Thanks Darling - I'll do the doctor run / I will be home at midday to take him to MRI
 
M: Probably a good idea if you take him as I have been having mild contraction thingies for 12 hours now
 
J: And when were you going to share that with me?????????
 
M: I thought I was just constipated through the night but went to loo twice this morn and am still getting them. But they are very mild, inconsistent and short - possibly just Braxton Hicks - and could therefore go on for days. Trust me, I will tell you when they get serious xx


J: Ta xx

(Note the use of the technical term 'contraction thingies' - I still didn't think it was serious)

Rachel called me at about 1pm and, as we chatted on the phone for about 45 minutes, we decided to time the contractions, which were starting to feel less like 'thingies' and more like fair dinkum labour. At the start of our chat they were coming every 15 minutes and by the end of the call they were about 5 minutes apart. "I think you're in labour," said Rachel. "Mmmmmbblllllmmlllbbbssssaaabbbmmm . . ." I replied, suddenly unable to speak during them.

My next call was to John. He was due home at 2pm. I told him it was really happening and we would probably need to go to hospital. When I called the hospital and told them contractions were every 5 minutes, this was my second baby and I was at least 40 minutes drive away, they told me to come in pronto.

During the next 80 minutes, I parked myself on the birth ball in the bedroom, my head resting forward on the edge of the bed, and went into my calmbirth bubble. This is it, I thought calmly. It starts now, I thought calmly. Here we go, I thought calmly.

Then "Bloody hell, this is it!! It's starting!! Here we go!! What do I do again??!!" in a slightly less-than-calm manner, but that moment only lasted a millisecond. Oh yes, breathing, I thought. In for four, out for six for between contractions oops, I mean 'waves', then in for four and out for four during the 'waves' just like I'd been been practicing nearly every day for the last four weeks.

So far so good. As I rocked from side to side on my ball, focusing on the breathing, I began to visualise my cervix softening and opening. I smiled as I remembered John, Jack and I sitting around at the end of dinner one night a few weeks back, making donuts out of pink play doh, moulding them into ever-widening circles. (Hopefully Jack will never discover that we were making replicas of Mummy's cervix that night. Hello therapy couch!)

I remembered to keep smiling as I thought about welcoming our new baby into the world, and to keep my jaw loose because a relaxed jaw equals a relaxed uterus, a fact you should bear in mind if your uterus ever gets upset and throws a tantrum.

I tried my best to block out the sounds of John racing around the house packing a bag for himself and making phone calls to organise Jack and Ryan in our absence.

And then I threw a spanner in the works. I decided that it was suddenly vitally important for me to see Jack. It was an intense motherly urge to see my first born, to kiss him, to reassure him. I don't know what drove it (perhaps  I was acting upon some primal instinct about child birth being potentially life-threatening to mothers) but I did not want to leave without seeing him. So John raced up the hill to the school and eventually brought my boy home for a quick cuddle with me.

By this stage the waves were becoming more intense and coming every 3 minutes. When John pulled out of our street and asked me whether we should go via the beaches or the forest, I could only shake my head and murmur something that hopefully resembled the words "I don't mind darling, whatever you think best" and not "Dontfuckingcarejustdrive".

I kept my head down and focused on the clock on the dashboard, ignoring red lights and anything else that had the potential to distract me from my breathing. For by now the pain during those waves had become my whole world. The waves were coming every 2 minutes and I just wanted to get to the hospital and sit on a toilet. I'm sure these urges to wee and poo and vomit all at the same time are not uncommon to labouring women, but when you're trapped in a car, sitting on a flimsy folded beach towel with several litres of amniotic fluid being kept at bay by the equivalent of an elastic band with a bit of clingfilm across it, the need to 'go' is almost overwhelming. At that stage I would have been happy with a good sized bowel movement and a decent chuck, forget about the 8 pound human I'd been lovingly waiting on for the best part of a year!

Finally we were there. John dropped me at the entrance to the hospital where I had (oh stuff it) not just a wave but a BLOODY GREAT CONTRACTION in the foyer, another in the lift and another at the entrance to the delivery ward. I greeted the midwife Ronnie with another contraction and fell in love with her immediately when she said "Well done. Lovely control. Keep going that way and you'll be fine." I mumbled thanks and hello and made my way as fast as my quivering legs would take me to the loo.

When I came out, I felt much better and the contractions slowed a little to a more manageable 3 minutes apart. Ronnie performed all the usual checks. The foetal heart monitor indicated the baby was fine and after giving me an internal she told me I was 4cm dilated. This was good news as it meant that I was now in the active stage of labour, either a big dash or long marathon to 10cm. Now that I was in the safe environment of the hospital where I was supported and comfortable, I felt more in control. I was even able to talk to Ronnie about our calmbirth preferences between waves, relieved to hear that she was familiar with the techniques and would assist in any way she could to facilitate our wishes.

It was about 4.30pm by this time. I asked Ronnie what time her shift ended. She told me 9.30pm and that she thought I would probably have the baby just before then. I wondered briefly if I should mentally prepare myself for another 4 or 5 hours of labour, but I decided not to think in terms of time, and instead just let my body set the pace. I knew from my calmbirth lessons that if I wanted to get through this stage of labour more quickly, it was important to remain as relaxed as possible to enable my uterus to contract naturally, unhindered by the tension that can prolong a labour. This meant continuing my breathing exercises at all costs so that the oxygen and oxytocin and endorphins (our natural painkillers) would continue to flow.

Now this all sounds great in theory, but continuing to breathe through those contractions was quite possibly the most intense and mentally taxing thing I have ever done. Almost as bad as having a Brazillian wax (something I will NEVER do again - all the pain of childbirth but no sweet little baby at the end of it - eeekk!)

John asked me if I wanted to get in the bath and I thought I would try it. I probably stayed in there for about 20 minutes. In the beginning it felt quite good but it wasn't a huge bath and I eventually felt a bit cold and uncomfortable so got out.

There were times during the next hour when the temptation to clench my teeth and hold my breath at the peak of those contractions was almost overwhelming, but I just kept forcing those breaths in and out, in and out. I remember at least twice giving a little gasp of surprise at just how intense it was. At some point, I started making a noise on the 'out' breaths. Not a groan or a wail I hasten to add (well not to my ears anyway) but more of a low drone. The first time it came out, it was completely involuntary but because it helped make the pain more manageable, I continued making the noise through the contractions.

The other thing that helped was having a mantra that I could repeat in my head at the height of the contractions. I didn't know what that would be until I needed it. Louise, the calmbirth teacher, had given us around 30 ideas for affirmations but in the weeks leading up to the birth nothing really jumped out at me. When the words came to me, they meant everything I needed at that moment. Release and surrender. I suddenly knew with absolute clarity that they were the two things I needed to do to progress the labour. Release all tension. Release all control. Surrender to the process. Surrender to my body. By the end of my labour, I was whispering these two words over and over into the pillow.

Throughout the whole time, I stayed on my feet. A week before giving birth I'd had a chat to my aunt Andrea who is a midwife. We discussed the whole calmbirth thing and I remember her saying, no matter what happens, keep moving. What great advice! I am convinced that continuing to move and stay upright made the whole thing move along so much faster.

Mid-contraction and standing on a towel because I'd just got out of the bath. I'd parked my thongs under the bed in case a fast getaway was needed!

 At 5.30pm, about 90 minutes after getting to the hospital, I found myself alone in the room. John had just stepped out to talk to Ronnie the midwife. I was mid-contraction exactly as in the above picture when I heard a loud pop and a flood of amniotic fluid whooshed onto the floor. I remember saying "Oh!" It was all just so surprising.

I had no idea where the call button was and couldn't move anyway because it felt like a bowling ball had just landed on my pelvic floor and all I wanted to do was push. I called out "Help!" but much to my surprise it came out as a quivery whisper. I'd lost my voice?! In hindsight, I think I was in a little bit of shock. I hadn't expected my waters to break, despite the fact that I was in labour, a condition in which waters have been known to break!

The urge to push was overwhelming and it was the thought of delivering my precious baby daughter onto a small hand towel and a pair of thongs that prompted me to find my voice and yell "Help! Hello?? Can someone please come!"

John and Ronnie both raced in and I told Ronnie I needed to push. She helped me onto the bed where, in some subconscious throwback to my neanderthal forebears (or maybe I'd just been watching too many David Attenborough documentaries), I immediately assumed the all-fours position. I heard Ronnie call in another midwife and tell her to call the doctor. "Quickly," she ordered "She wants to push!"

As the next contraction came on, I felt the baby's head bear down. "Can you stop pushing?" asked Ronnie. I'm not sure why. I immediately thought the cord might be caught around the baby's neck and stopped pushing. I think it was just that she was unprepared and needed to get her gloves on!

A minute later, the next contraction came and I said "The baby's comiiiiiiiiiiing!" as the most unearthly moan escaped my lips. I felt an enormous wellspring of pressure on my perineum and whole lower half. I had no option but to push. Then I felt a slippery slither between my legs and she was out, caught by John and the midwife behind me. I heard the breaking emotion in John's voice as he said "Oh darling . . . oh . . . " and a gulpy noise that was a cross between a sob and a laugh.

I looked behind me. The little purple bundle attached to the end of a long milky cord was my baby girl, Francesca, our little Cesca-Luna and I couldn't believe she was here already. My first emotion was one of utter relief. Relief that labour was over. Relief that she was safely out and breathing. Ronnie carefully passed her back between my legs as I swung over onto my back and felt Francesca's warm soggy body as she was placed onto my chest.

The poor little thing had come out so fast she'd swallowed some amniotic fluid and it was catching in her throat. She coughed and cried and made little choking sounds but I knew she was alright. Ronnie brought over a little suction machine to clear the mucous out of her mouth and passed a little oxygen over her face. John and I grinned at each other. He had grabbed the camera and was already filming the whole thing, standing there with his shirt drenched in the rest of the amniotic fluid that had gushed out with Francesca.

Five minutes old and having her first wee on Mum (so proud)

So around 90 minutes after arriving at the hospital, I had a tiny pink body on my chest and was feeling the warm trickle of baby urine seeping over my stomach. Heaven!

She lay on my chest for about 20 minutes before she began bobbing her head and stepping her legs up and down looking for milk. We gave her a little help finding the nipple and she latched on beautifully, helping herself to her first meal of colustrum.

At some point, the obstetrician turned up. My ob was on holidays so I had a replacement. He seemed pleasant enough but there was nothing for him to do apart from a quick inspection of my lady-garden and the placenta, both of which were 'intact' I'm relieved to say. No stitches and frozen condoms in the knickers for me thank goodness! The midwives had handled everything beautifully.

After an hour and a half, Francesca was weighed and measured (8lb1oz and 52.5cm long), then while I got up to have a shower, John stripped off his shirt and Francesca had some skin time with Dad, curling her fingers into his prolific chest hair and sucking on another tuft. The look on John's face says it all. He was besotted from the first minute and this special time alone with his new daughter was a fitting reward for his amazing support throughout the birth. Not only did he help catch Francesca in the slips as she shot out, but his gentle suggestions and encouragement throughout the process made it all so much better for me. I can't emphasise enough how important it was to feel supported unconditionally.

And THAT'S why he will never visit the laser clinic

So that's it folks. The story of Francesca's entry to the big scary world we live in. I can't even begin to tell you how grateful I feel at being able to experience this amazing birth.

It wasn't a walk in the park that's for sure, and to be honest, I can't even be confident that I would have been able to continue labouring at that level of intensity for too much longer. That being said, the intensity was obviously due to progressing from 4cm to 10cm in only 90 minutes! I don't know. They say second babies often come more quickly, but even so, I wasn't prepared to have such a short active phase of labour and I do believe that the breathing and visualisations, and the subsequent releasing of fear and tension, resulted in a birth experience that was calmer, faster and easier than I ever could have imagined. Soooo very different from Jack's birth, but that's a whole other story - one involving drugs and a catheter and a frozen condom in my knickers!

I would love to hear your birth story and, with your permission, publish it here on Bump. I think it's important to share our stories honestly with others, even though every experience is so different. Or perhaps because of that. Calmbirth, epidurals, caesarians (planned or unplanned), what surprised you, what got you through, was the food in the hospital any good, the good, the bad, the downright messy - we want to hear it all.

Write your story and email it to me at mbarraclough68 [at] gmail [dot] com. And don't forget pictures if you have any!

Okay gents, it's safe to come back but sorry there aren't any chocolates. When you have a girl, it's a sea of pink and frills and not a chocolate in sight. But you're more than welcome to eat my jelly cup from last night's dinner tray.

Merry Christmas everyone! xx

PS. If you're interested in why I decided to use calmbirth techniques for this birth, all is revealed in this post - Calm Birth. Are You Crazy?

Welcome bella Francesca

So two Fridays ago exactly, I washed my hair, walked to the local coffee shop to catch up with a girlfriend, wrote a few work emails, put on a load of washing and generally waddled about in my 39 weeks pregnant body.

In every respect it was just another day and, apart from a few random tummy pains (which could have been Braxton Hicks contractions or just a result of eating a Butterfinger, a round of sour cherry toast, several prunes and an unripe pear!) I had no inkling that by 5.35pm I would be holding a baby girl in my arms.

It was that fast. I got my calm birth. Sort of. Calmly chaotic was more like it.

I am brewing the birth story and I promise to pour it out soon, but life with a newborn has me on the hop. Then there's the matter of all that tinsel-wrangling, turkey-stuffing and gift-wrapping that's going on around me. Something else going on is there? Hmmmm?

Seriously, what could be more important than gazing into the milky, slow-blinking eyes of a 2 week old baby, holding a tiny warm bundle in a close cuddle, watching teensy rosebud lips make a soft round 'o' and feeling the flutter of tiny fingers on my breast as she feeds?

Unspeakable acts of un-Christmas-like behaviour have been happening since Friday fortnight ago. We don't even have a tree yet and there's only EIGHT DAYS TO GO!! At least there won't be any chance of it shedding dead brown pine needles as we slowly neglect it to death as in Christmases of yore!

But we have our little bundle of joy. The latest addition. The newest apple of our eye. Wot the stork dropped off. Our bella Francesca Elizabeth. And everything else is on the back-burner.

Back soon to regular programming . . . . x

Calm Birth. Are You Crazy?

Calm. Birth.

No, that is not an oxymoron. Or a myth. Or a method of giving birth where everyone in the room gets high on drugs and stands around saying 'peace man' to the melodic backdrop of a few Simon & Garfunkel tunes.

It's a method of giving birth naturally. Without pain relief. Are you hearing me right? PAIN RELIEF FREE.

You already know I've gone to the kooky side (with all that communing-with-the-universe and secret baby t-shirt business) so really, it shouldn't come as any surprise that I'm throwing the anaesthetist out with the epidural and going all alternative when it comes to giving birth this time around.

Except that it's not really 'going alternative', it's more like 'going native'. We all know that millions of women give birth in huts and paddy fields as a perfectly normal part of their day to day lives, without medical intervention or pain relief. So why not us? After all, we have the best of both worlds - the ability to birth naturally AND the back up of medical intervention should it be required.

The difference is that we are so used to relying on medical help, we often bypass the natural bit, where our bodies know what to do.

For my first birth, I think it was fear that sent me scuttling to the hospital so early. Fear of the unknown mostly. When my contractions started at midnight one Saturday, I felt slightly panicked. I also had an awful and unremitting bout of diarrhea for hours and was worried about dehydrating. I laboured intermittently through the night at the hospital, but by 8am nothing was progressing. Which led to having my waters broken. Which led to being induced on a syntocin drip. Which led to immediate fast, hard contractions. Which, combined with the intense back pain of a posterior baby, led to an epidural.

Yours truly, mid-contraction, unable to move, holding my breath,
willing the aneasthetist to come NOW!!!

                                        
Don't get me wrong, the birth was wonderful. They turned down the epidural just enough for me to push effectively and John and I pulled Jack out of my body together in what was the most intensely emotional moment of my life. But in hindsight, I can see that my fear and lack of trust in my body led to a domino effect of medical intervention.

Now I'm curious about what it would be like to do it another way. With knowledge and faith and courage, instead of fear and doubt and ignorance.

I first heard about calm birthing (or hypno birthing as it is sometimes called) a couple of years ago when one of the girls in my mother's group used the technique to deliver her subsequent babies. At the time, it sort of drifted in one ear and out the other, because at that stage I had made the mental and emotional adjustment of living with unexplained infertility and confirmed myself as a one-baby woman. I was still interested in all things baby, but kept myself detached. As you do when everyone around you is having babies and you can't.

Then last year when we were contemplating IVF, another friend told me about her experience using the calm birth technique to deliver her first child. Not only did she give birth calmly and naturally, her little boy is, quite possibly, the calmest, most contented baby ever produced. This is another by-product of having an unmedicated birth - seriously chilled out babies. When I met this little dude, he sat on my lap, staring up at me as if to say "Hey there nice lady, wassup? Feel like chillaxing to a few Simon & Garfunkel tunes?" It was all I could do not to plonk him in my handbag and make a fast getaway!

I was fascinated. Pain-free? Drug free? How??!!

I jumped on e-bay, found a second hand copy of Marie Mongan's Hypnobirthing and started reading.

In a nutshell, the whole idea is that we Western women are conditioned to think that childbirth is horrifically painful, a trial to be feared, and that the only way we can possibly manage is via the use of pain relieving drugs and/or having a Caesarian section and avoiding the whole thing altogether. Of course, in many cases, these options are necessary and potentially life-saving for both mothers and babies so I'm all for having those options. But as just that. Options. Not de rigueur.

However, the combination of our education, our recent Western history, the childbirth hell stories we insist on relaying to each other and the portrayal of childbirth in fictional media (the cliched pushing, panting, screaming, husband-blaming labouring women of so many movies) have given us a picture of child birth that isn't pretty and is, in fact, bloody repellent.

All that gruesomeness has engendered a great fear in we women. We fear the pain. We fear any tearing. We even fear the fact that we might do 'number twos' when pushing! (For those who haven't yet had children, be warned, you probably WILL do number twos when pushing. It's no big deal and perfectly normal. Doctors and midwives have seen much worse. Your husband, on the other hand, may need to suck on some of that gas . . . )

All that fear leads to an enormous amount of tension. Tension causes us to stop breathing properly and our blood pressure to rise. We fight against the body's natural ability to bring the baby down. Our body stops producing the natural pain-relievers we need like oxytocin and endorphins, and starts producing adrenalin which sends all the good stuff to our limbs (to flee or fight) instead of our uterus. The result? Pain. Lots of pain.

Put simply, you get scared, you tense up, and it hurts.

So how are the hundreds of thousands of women all over the world who are giving birth calmly and naturally doing it? (Oooh, I'm sounding a bit like an infomercial aren't I?! All I can say is I have the zeal of the converted! Jeez Louise, I hope this stuff works.)

Firstly, we have to let go of all our fear surrounding child birth and completely trust that our bodies know what do to. That child birth is something that our bodies are made to do.

Then we have to learn how we can best facilitate that process, mainly through the use of breathing, which allows all those good hormones to flow, and visualisations, which help us to focus. The result is not only a calm, unmedicated birth, but a calm, unmedicated baby. It sounds easy huh? Would you like a set of steak knives with that?

The internet is full of calm birth stories so if you're interested, read one here . . .

John and I have completed the calm birth course with the beautiful, knowledgeable and yes SUPER CALM, Louise Luscri. You can find details about her and her accredited course here.

She's a proper, real-life midwife too which was quite comforting considering the course was in a room full of pregnant women picturing their cervixes opening and anything could have happened! As if that wasn't enough to recommend her, she also serves Tim Tams and homemade brownies for afternoon tea. We love you Louise :)

So . . . . here we are . . . . 38 weeks pregnant, armed with my calm music, calm candles, calm husband and this youtube clip loaded onto my iPhone (if you watch this clip, you'll understand why I will have the sound turned off - a bunch of Russian folk dancers aren't really part of my whole cervix-opening visualisation scene).

What was your birth experience like? Have you tried calm birth? Would you? What most scares you about child birth? I'd love it if you'd share your story in the comments below.

Wish me luck ladies!

Mx

Disclaimer: If the writer succumbs to an epidural, an excellent excuse will be fabricated to justify its use under the guise of creative license!

Image courtesy of cafepress. You can buy this t-shirt here.