Riding the Wave the surge of power...
From both my experience as a mother and from my time as a midwife, supporting other mothers. With the frame of mind and support it is possible to have a wonderful orgasmic birthing experience that is out of this world with joy and its intensity of bringing that new life into this world. I have never had fear of birthing as my mother was the one that taught me from her experience of birthing me and my brother. She had the pattern sorted in her mind and was able to focus on the resting phase between each surge of power. This I learnt from our talks on birthing. She also was someone that listened to her body and would walk and stay upright as this made the surges easier to work with rather than fight against. So when I had my labours I would do the same... be like a surfer riding each wave - a surge of power and look forward to the rest in between. Each wave being one less and one nearer to meeting and holding my baby.
Labour pain? “So what is it like?” ask those of you that have not experienced it before. But have you have experienced some of its facets before in your life and so has your man! Yes I did say man, especially those that are sport minded.
“Come on Marj – how can you say that men have an idea of what it is like?”
Ok! well then if I tell you it is like the cramp you can get in your leg at night or during in some exercise then you can see we have one charactertisic of muscular cramp.
So now you are booking the anaesthetist before you even make a baby… lol..
Well the most important thing is that is gradually crescendos to that maximum hit. Whereas the leg cramp launches you immediately into the maximum hit of pain.
Alongside this is the feeling of a bony ache – a little like toothache or and arthritic pain.
There can be a feeling of pressure.
“Marjorie are you saying this can be fun and orgasmic…?”
Well it can be if you gain control over it and look at these considerations.
v Fear
v Time
v Characteristic
v Why?
The worst enemy in the camp is fear. Fear makes you imagine things worse than what they are? It creates illusion and with that illusion comes an exaggeration of the experience. It can in fact augment the pain by creating tension in all your muscles. So the whole of you becomes tense, stressed and full of pain. It creates a body battle too with resistance to the flow of the journey of birthing. The messages it brings is confusing the biological birthing process as fear suggests it is not safe to deliver so your oxytocin is inhibited and contractions can reduce so make the labour longer... Fear can biologically put the labour on hold to create time to get you out of the falsely perceived danger you and your baby are in.
Your body knows exactly what to do ...so allow it do it..!
The Tension creates Resistance.Resistance creates more pain, which creates more fear in you. Resistance leads to a laboured labour and asynchrony of waves of power surges..so lengthens the process.
This causes havoc physiologically. Any athelete will tell you that your breathing pattern needs to be addressed in order to discharge the increased carbon dioxide waste in your body from the extra exercise demands on muscles. You need to release this excess in calm controlled outward breathes. Long outward breathes and if you have the courage to exhale long to almost empty your lungs, then air will automatically enter the lungs and supply your body and most of all the uterine muscle with fresh oxygen. The inward breath without any effort helps to calm your very being. Oxygenation of your body is important at any time but more so when undergoing exercise or a lot of bodily activity. In order to maximize your energy you need oxygen. With a deficit then you will have a build up of a metabolic product lactic acid and this is what causes cramp pain in any muscle.
Birthing cramp is happening because of another reason too… with each contraction the uterus/womb is getting smaller so unwanted muscle fibres are degenerating. With this comes cramp pains. Thinking on this baby has to come at some point as the house he or she is in is like shrinking.. so baby is being powered out of house and home.. evicted!
I am going to get us to look at time frame with the characteristic of the cramps and bony aches.
A contraction is like a wave gradually building up... then melting and disappearing. So a contraction is in fact:
A passing moment and a melting moment.
Lets add a scientific measure and look at this with a pain scale.
So if we have a scale of 0 = No pain to 10 being the worst pain that you feel is possible in you.
That last point is important has pain is personal to you. Only you can measure it and only you knows what it is like to experience.
Then lets see how we can define the contraction as a wave.
During a contraction there is a gradual build up from 0 no pain or 1 mild discomfort to 8 or 9 and sometimes 10 then there is a reduction to 2 or 0 pain.
During a contraction there is a gradual build up from 0 no pain or 1 mild discomfort to 8 or 9 and sometimes 10 then there is a reduction to 2 or 0 pain.
A contraction lasts less than a minute! For a muscle to contract longer becomes a difficult feat and can cause muscle fatigue and anoxia – that is lack of oxygen in the muscle. This point has a biological significance in the biological logic of labour. The fetus is receiving less oxygen during a contraction then in the resting phase, so it makes sense to yes have the power of the contraction but not to make it last long as there is a passenger on board that needs oxygen. The future generation that the baby represents to the species , so of paramount biological importance to survive.
So the design of this is magical.
It is also mother friendly too… ! Yes, lets look.
If a contraction lasts less than a minute then the peak of the wave of contraction where you are experiencing your maximum hit of pain is only lasting seconds...
So each contraction gives you only seconds of maximum pain hits…
Considering you need say 4 in every 10 minutes for active labour then you have only have 6 x 4 = 24 peaks in every hour.
Now this challenge is looking more manageable eh..!
Labour is not constant pain – that would be abnormal and a major worry to all of us.
But labour is waves of contraction- surges of power. Gradually building up and then melting to a resting phase where there is no pain or a mild background pain, that is manageable.
Do you have period pains?
Well it can be like that along with a mild lower back pain and some ache in your hips and pubic bone.
This bony ache is that the pelvic girdle is giving a little – all the ligament joints in the pelvis are giving to maximise capacity for the baby to make its descent through the pelvis.
Has your baby is released from the open cervix into the birth canal -the vagina the characteristic of the discomfort changes to a deep pressure that you feel you want to push with to ease. Your legs can tremble and go goose-pimpled to put a less glamorous picture to it is can feel like a full bowel and bursting to go to the loo. But this feeling in childbirth can feel exciting as you are about to see your baby. It can be exhilarating and can feel orgasmic as the G-spot and clitorial structures are stretched and you relax to fall into the sensation of the release. You can have heightened awareness from the vagina and introitus as when making love.. in orgasm when making love you can feel the pulsations of ejaculation from your partners penis and this intensifies your orgasm as you come in unison to your climax.. So the feeling can be so intense that you can actually feel the facial features of your baby as you release into the outside world. I am speaking from experience this may have only taken a moment but is clearly defined by your whole being and etched into your mind forever. This can be such a wonderful experience and some women get addicted to the feeling and simply love having babies. The full orgasmic rush stimulates endorphins and a goddess like glow of a mother delivered of her baby... and with this is a bonding to her baby and the need to put her baby to the breast to nurture.
Has your baby is released from the open cervix into the birth canal -the vagina the characteristic of the discomfort changes to a deep pressure that you feel you want to push with to ease. Your legs can tremble and go goose-pimpled to put a less glamorous picture to it is can feel like a full bowel and bursting to go to the loo. But this feeling in childbirth can feel exciting as you are about to see your baby. It can be exhilarating and can feel orgasmic as the G-spot and clitorial structures are stretched and you relax to fall into the sensation of the release. You can have heightened awareness from the vagina and introitus as when making love.. in orgasm when making love you can feel the pulsations of ejaculation from your partners penis and this intensifies your orgasm as you come in unison to your climax.. So the feeling can be so intense that you can actually feel the facial features of your baby as you release into the outside world. I am speaking from experience this may have only taken a moment but is clearly defined by your whole being and etched into your mind forever. This can be such a wonderful experience and some women get addicted to the feeling and simply love having babies. The full orgasmic rush stimulates endorphins and a goddess like glow of a mother delivered of her baby... and with this is a bonding to her baby and the need to put her baby to the breast to nurture.
So all that you experiencing has a logic to it.
Now you must not feel inadequate if this has never been felt by you mothers that read this... never negate any aspect of your motherhood... for birth is only the transition into a wider role of being a mother and to have your baby safe in your arms and for the rest of your life is the important point.
Now you must not feel inadequate if this has never been felt by you mothers that read this... never negate any aspect of your motherhood... for birth is only the transition into a wider role of being a mother and to have your baby safe in your arms and for the rest of your life is the important point.
However first time mothers awaiting your birth - You can do this – I did it all the mothers of the past have done this ..you are perfectly designed for birthing and have the birth goddesses of the past to help you. All I am describing is from memory of my labours and birthing. I may be 63yrs old at the time of writing this page. But I do still remember the sensations. But in a way that I knew it was my role as a woman to do this. I think we are all influenced by the imprints from our own mothers. My mother would narrate a good experience of labouring with me and my brother. But my mother was born in the early 1900s and I have to analyse and say that the working class mothers came from a life that was everyday a pain. Hard work in mills and factories keeping up a pace to gain your bonus and pay. The pain of labour was a happier challenge you went through knowing it was going to end and you would have at the end of it your baby. So the women of the day perhaps rose to the challenge in a different way as now... sometimes it is so easy to say yes to epidural..... but having said this sometimes epidurals are necessary and is your right to informed choice. It does involve more monitoring of baby and more clinical support input, so can feel more restrictive on positioning and mobility. I have had one case where the epidural wore off of the second stage pushing and she did go into a rocking kneeling position and confessed that the return of the sensations where .... yes orgasmic.... I could tell she had experienced this.....
Mum would always narrate the wonderful feeling of when I was born, released from her and the instant relief of the active pain. She would always tell me you will have a cup of tea that the midwife will offer you and it will be the best cup of tea you have ever had after all that hard work.
It was true after birthing Debbie and Nicola in the early 70s I remember that tea being like nectar.
You need to mentally and physically prepare for the challenge that labour surges of power can give you and I have on this blog but in some useful links to sites.
Such as
Active Birthing – http://www.activebirthcentre.com
Birthing from within – http://www.birthingfromwithin.com/
Gentle Birthing – http://www.gentlebirthmethod.com/index.php
SitaRam – http://www.sitaram.org/
Hypnobirthing – http://www.hypnobirthing.co.uk/
Learning through Stories:
I have a some birthing stories The stories are fictional pieces based on fact for a light but meaningful read to follow some characters through their experiences.
From my growing collection I have one that looks at riding the wave of a contraction. In fact I have entitled it Riding the Wave.
The piece follows a lovely couple, Eva & James that are quite a sexy, loving couple who opt for a home birth because there is fear of hospitals by Eva as she has memories of her mother dying of cancer in the hospital. Eva is more confident, comfortable and in control in home environment. It is her space where both James and her can feel free to express themselves. So we will look at Evas birth in this short story.
Another story is one where an older career woman Kelly finds her man and becomes pregnant, she visits her grandmother, Ada in a nursing home to tell her the news and her birth expectations. Ada goes on to tell her about birth in her day and what other family members have experienced it becomes a challenge to Kellys modern day thoughts on how birth should be. This story is called Time of Birth and will have an historical perspective to birthing through generations.
Contact me to book me for a talk: marjoriebahhaj@gmail.com
Booking fees will be a donation to my Family Link Up project where I am befriending a Syrian refugee family..... Plus I would need travel expenses to talk to groups outside London.
