So, I’m 37+ weeks pregnant now.  I can’t have the baby until after next Tuesday as I’m co-facilitating an antenatal course with an antenatal teacher friend over the weekend and on Tuesday evening so can’t really enjoy what I experienced this evening…my first run of contractions

All my births have had no warning signs at all - no nesting, no show, no nothing - except for a week or two of pre-labour contraction runs.  Not painful, and also not in a labour-type pattern.  They come close together and are very different to braxton hicks.  Normally they make me smile and think how exciting it is that it’s the beginning of the end - unfortunately, until I’ve got this weekend out of the way, I can’t stop thinking ‘please don’t be real labour!!!’.  With Flopsy, of course, and also with Mopsy actually, I spent every single little ‘run’ hoping it was ‘it’.  With Cotton-tail I was wise to it and just let them happen and enjoyed knowing that it meant my time would come within the next couple of weeks and that my body was preparing itself.  This time…well, I just can’t wait until next Tuesday when I can start doing the same. 

I’m up at stupid-o’clock (2.15am!!!) because I had a lovely meal out with friends in the evening and, thanks to eating a big meal far too late in the day, I am now unable to sleep for reflux and indigestion.  I need to be upright for an hour or so, but can’t sleep upright at all, so have given in and come downstairs to play on the computer.  Hope there are lots of newly-updated blogs to keep me amused…or maybe something to watch on iplayer…hmm - the possibilities are endless!  Internet surfing time without being disturbed - should be heaven if my eyes didn’t keep wanting to close

Birthing your baby. 

Childbirth shouldn’t hurt as much as it does.  Women who are lucky enough to be undisturbed during labour naturally shut off the part of their brain which deals with conscious thought and which also registers pain.  If this is allowed to happen, the massive cramps that the uterus makes still hurt, but you don’t care about it - it doesn’t bother you as much.  You’re high and spaced out. 

In our culture we don’t leave labouring women alone - we talk to them; make them labour in brightly lit rooms; interrupt their labour to examine them or move them into hospital.  Every time a labouring woman is spoken to, she has to re-awaken her conscious brain to respond and it starts hurting again.  She gets frightened which interrupts her normal hormonal cascade and makes it hurt more and take longer.  The longer it takes and the more anxious the mother is, the more dangerous birth becomes.  This makes it more likely the mother will need medical intervention…and so on and so forth. 

If we just left labouring women well alone and let them tell us when something wasn’t right (which they’d know because they would be listening to their instincts) way more babies would be born naturally and way less women would find labour as painful as most western women find it.  That’s why IMO women who have ‘natural’ births are seen as such martyrs - it really, really hurts if you do natural (ie. medication-free) birthing and your conscious brain is switched on.  If you’re in that much pain, you get frightened.  It’s a very unpleasant experience and not nearly as positive as natural birth is purported to be. 

Those women who have good natural birth experiences were probably lucky enough to be enabled to get to ‘labourland’ - to switch their subconscious brain off.  This is why freebirthing is becoming more popular (birthing without a midwife in attendance) - you don’t get disturbed.  I’d be scared of freebirthing because sometimes things do go wrong and you need someone who knows what they’re doing.  The ideal would be to have a traditional midwife - someone who just sits on their hands in the next room and only helps when asked to. 

This is why I (who has had one birth with no pain relief whatsoever - a purely ‘natural’ birth) would recommend to a mother hoping for a natural birth with the presence of a midwife to consider using entonox if they are finding it difficult to switch off her conscious brain.  Some mothers will be able to get there themselves but if you can’t, labour is such agony.  If gas and air helps you space out, then go for it - you’ll end up less frightened, less ‘pushy’ and hopefully with a birth much closer to what it’s meant to be like naturally.