A
Personal Experience:
Do It Yourself
Childbirth
by
Laura Kaplan Shanley
Childbirth — the word alone makes most people cringe.
Instantly, one imagines a frightened, tearful woman lying in a hospital bed surrounded by
masked men and women and perhaps a family member. Monitors are beeping and people are
yelling "PUSH! PUSH!" as the poor woman struggles with all her might to
expel her baby. Her forehead is sweating and periodically she cries, "I can't do
this anymore!" Medical personnel assure her that she can — but if she can't,
they will be more than happy to assist her with drugs, forceps, scissors, and a knife, if
necessary. Thank God for modern medicine. How did we ever survive without it? "I'm moving out of the way
and allowing my body to give birth."
The truth is, we did survive and can continue to survive, quite well in most cases,
especially when it comes to giving birth. First, however, we must rid ourselves of the
belief that childbirth is a painful, dangerous ordeal that must always be supervised and
assisted by "skilled professionals". I chose to believe otherwise, and this is
my story.
I first became interested in childbirth when I was about six years old. After listening
to my mother's explanation of what actually happens in birth, however, my interest was
short lived. "After they shave you, the doctor makes a little cut to make more
room for the baby," she said. That's all I needed to hear. If there were to be
any children in my future, someone else was going to have to give birth to them.
Changing Perceptions
As I grew older, movies and television helped fill in all the gory details. Obviously,
I reasoned, pregnancy was a disease complete with vomiting, backaches, swollen ankles and
strange cravings. If you survived it, you could look forward to hours or maybe days of
excruciating labor pains, followed by weeks in the hospital. Motherhood was becoming
increasingly unappealing.
My perception of childbirth changed, however, when at the age of 18 my husband-to-be,
David, presented me with a copy of Grantly Dick-Read's Childbirth Without Fear.
Dick-Read was an English physician who used chloroform to ease labor pains, as was the
custom in the first half of this century. But one night, something happened that forever
changed his perception of birth.
He went to the house of a poor country woman who was about to have a child. When he
felt the birth was near, he offered her the chloroform, but the woman refused to take it.
This was the first time he had ever seen a woman refuse it, and yet the woman remained
perfectly calm and the baby was born easily. As he was leaving, he asked her why she had
chosen to give birth without an anesthetic and she replied, "It didn't hurt. It
wasn't meant to, was it, doctor?"
Over the next few years, Dick-Read encountered other women who appeared to have little
or no pain in childbirth. What, he wondered, could explain why some women suffered and
others did not. He went on to study it extensively.
Continued
in Part II:
*
The Link between Fear and Pain;
* My Personal Experiences;
* Giving Birth Alone
* A Relaxed Birth
|
Laura Kaplan Shanley is the author of the book, "Unassisted
Childbirth" (Bergin and Garvey, ©1994), and co-editor of "Letters From Home: A
Newsletter Supporting Unassisted Homebirth". The above was excerpted from her
original article. For more information contact Laura at: 760 36th St., Boulder,
CO,
80303. The book Unassisted Childbirth is also
available from the author at a discounted
price. She can be contacted through her website 