Today I want to have a discuss with you on why we don’t hear more about amazing births. Here’s the deal, whilst there are a lot of women out there who have incredibly crappy births for numerous reasons, which we’re not going to explore today, there are a growing number of women who are having fear-free, empowered, calm and confident birth experiences. Whether they are intervention-free, or births that do need some intervention, they’re still having great birth experiences.
Here is why I think we don’t hear more about them.
Mainly it’s because it’s not the status quo, and there is a real need and yearning from us as individuals to fit in with the rest of the crowd. Nobody wants to be that woman whose child sleeps through the night from four weeks old, or that woman whose child eats anything they’re given, or that woman who had the most amazing birth experience. And you know what? It really fucks me off.
I feel that when we have had a good birth we shouldn’t be made to feel uncomfortable talking about how great it was.
Because the more we hear of women who look like us, sound like us and have jobs like us, talking about how they were able to consciously prepare and enjoy a really positive birth, (again whether that is intervention-free or not) the more it inspires others. It gets people asking ‘how’? ‘How did you do that? Why is it possible that you were able to create that, and that lady over there was talking about something absolutely horrific that happened during her birth?’
You sow the seed of inspiration.
You open the doorway just a little bit. You create a little sliver of light when you share your birth and talk about what a goddess you are, and how empowered you felt during that time. This plants the idea of doubt in the stereotypical ‘One Born Every Minute’ portrayal of birth as something that has to be traumatic, and that’s where I would say 85% of women who come and work with us at the Calm Birth School start from – that spark of optimism that maybe it doesn’t need to be awful. Then we enable that spark to grow by talking people through the tools, the techniques and the various methods that all come underneath the Calm Birth School umbrella.
I want to invite you to seek out positive stories; we have a whole raft of them on the Calm Birth School blog. I want you to have a look at the assorted birth stories that we post on our Facebook page, where we invite people to share their positive experiences and you’ll see that although they all differ, they all come from a place of empowerment. We don’t want to be hearing about the negative ones, but when you hear a woman who has got something positive to say about her birth, get curious. Start asking her and really revel in that because if it’s possible for one person, it is possible for all people to enjoy calm and positive birth experiences regardless of the way that babies end up entering into the world.
Let’s get on the vibe!
Encourage women rather than shaming them or making them feel that they’re not part of the gang. Encourage them to share their stories. Seek them out, my lovelies. It’s a really important part of your birth preparation journey.
I hope that you found this useful, and if you haven’t yet sampled the free hypnobirthing videos that we have, please check out https://www.thecalmbirthschool.com/freehypnobirthing.
