Getting Positive for Birth

I recently had an enquiry from a lady to do Daisy classes who was wondering if it was worth coming along because she was doing Hypnobirthing as well.

The answer is a resounding YES!

When you work in birth and empowering women to make their own choices, you quickly begin to realise the amount of negativity and anxiety there is surrounding labour and birth. It begins with the horror stories, perhaps from the woman's own family (stories like, all the women in our family have had to have c-sections so you will too!) or her own birth as a baby. As the woman grows to adulthood she becomes aware of the images put forward by television and films that portray birth as a medicalised, excruciating ordeal. Her friends begin to have babies and the stories come pouring forth of things gone wrong.

Grantly Dick-Read hypothesised that pain in childbirth is caused by tensing the body in response to fear. We work a lot in Daisy classes on relaxing the body and removing the fear from your mind to make birth as comfortable as possible. Dick-Read called this the Fear Tension Pain cycle and unless we remove the fear from the mother's mind before labour begins, the tension and subsequent pain will occur. This will increase the fear again and the cycle continues. This cycle can also occur at any point during labour as changes in location or midwife causes the mother's adrenaline to rise. 

The subtle and sometimes overt brainwashing that women have been subjected to by their own families and the media have created a deep-seated fear of childbirth. If we expect something to be painful we are more likely to experience the sensation as such. Hypnobirthing works a lot with replacing some of the common words associated with birth, such as substituting surges for contractions. Language is powerful and has an effect on the body. In Daisy we talk about 'breathing to the top of the wave' and scatter gentle, positive affirmations throughout class so as mums are breathing deeply in labour their subconscious mind will remember the words associated with this breathing.

The fear many women have of childbirth is sometimes not always alleviated by the end of a course of Daisy or Hypnobirthing. It has built up over years. We need to work hard to replace all these negative perceptions and thoughts with positive ones so that when it comes to labour the mother's body will relax and ease her way instead of tensing up and making it more difficult. We are essentially reprogramming the mum's mind and rewiring her attitude to birth. Regaining that lost confidence in her body.

It's worth bearing in mind that although I love natural birth and believe given the right conditions and support the vast vast majority of women could achieve it, I know this is not a realistic view of the birth world yet. When you send women into that hospital environment, no matter how strong their convictions, there are more challenges they will be up against. As they reach their 'due date' and are pressured to induce. Going to the hospital in labour activates a primitive fight or flight response which affects labour. What else affects labour? A clinical environment, not being able to freely move. Strangers coming and going out of the room. Maybe not having the most supportive birth partner who sides with the medical team over the mum's wishes because they're frightened.

I have also met women who were fully informed about their choices in birth who tell me their considered choice to have the epidural was the best part their labour, the one thing that enabled them to vaginally birth, to relax and welcome their babies with anticipation and joy. Their eyes lighting up as they recount that proud moment when they met their baby after all that effort. How wonderful that this choice was made with complete awareness and control. It is so important to be aware of these choices before labour so you are informed. Whether this is from your own research, classes or a supportive medical team that give evidence-based advice instead of fearmongering. 

A positive birth does NOT mean a natural birth. The term natural birth covers all kinds of ill-advised scenarios, mums on their back being shouted at to push, being given an episiotomy. Perhaps they weren't coping and their pain relief requests were refused. One mother had been told she had been given the pethidine she asked for only to be told after the birth that the midwife had lied, hoping for a placebo effect. This all instils a huge lack of trust between women and care providers.

The Positive Birth Movement defines positive birth as: "a birth in which a woman feels she has freedom of choice, access to accurate information, and that she is in control, powerful and respected. A birth that she approaches, perhaps with some trepidation, but without fear or dread, and that she then goes on to enjoy, and later remember with warmth and pride. "

I believe in informing women and the incredible power of reprogramming the mind, breathing and relaxation. When mums are approaching birth and come to their first class, the realisation that you are sending them to birth with what is essentially words and thoughts can make them incredulous. Do you remember Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets when Dumbledore sends Harry the Sorting Hat to defend himself against the Basilisk?  Voldemort laughs at Harry that he has been sent something so useless. However, we soon find out that within the hat lies the Sword of Gryffindor. Something that seems innocuous actually has incredible power when we find ourselves in the situation of need. By the end of the Daisy term they are aware, in tune with their body, able to breathe and relax and have a bank of positive images and words in their subconscious mind. Now with the knowledge and ability to stick up for themselves and their birth and knowing what helps or hinders their progress.

When you are in labour, deeply connected to your body and your baby, undisturbed and in control, you are powerful. Gentle swaying with the rising of your contractions, using your breath to breathe to the top of the wave. Every wave bringing you closer to your baby. Feeling at one with nature and your innermost self. Doing what countless women have done before you to bring your baby into the world. This can be the experience.

While we may never know where our birth journey will take us, it is impossible to have too much positivity surrounding your birth. It will all build up in your system, flowing through you slowly and surely. When you begin to think positively, your actions will shape your beliefs. You will unconsciously begin to make decisions and choices that will fulfil your belief. We cannot say with absolute certainty how things will be but with the power of knowledge and the ability to relax your body you can make choices with a clear head and from a place of awareness instead of fear.

Whatever helps you to absorb this positivity - reading birth affirmations, positive birth stories, meditation, talking with other women on your local positive birth group, getting a doula, attending Daisy classes, hypnobirthing, it will all add up and be immeasurably helpful on your birthing day. 

Why I'm Still Breastfeeding My Two Year Old

I'm just going to preface this with my truly honest opinion:
I love breastfeeding. It fascinates me and fulfils me. I didn't know I would feel this way about it until I started - I guess that oxytocin gets addictive! Just like it's really important to some mothers to find a good school or to feed an organic diet (neither of those are me by the way), breastfeeding is important to me. It's the choice I made and would make every time. But please believe me - I don't care how you choose to feed your baby. If you didn't want to breastfeed, or couldn't. I believe everybody should have access to good information and feeding support but ultimately we are all trying to do the best for our babes in a society that does not support breastfeeding. However you feed your little one, I know you love them just as much as I love Judah and that's wonderful. You have my full admiration and support.

Now Judah has turned two, our feeding relationship has changed slightly. I am now breastfeeding a child that can walk, talk, a fully-fledged toddler and all that that entails. I recently engaged upon a misguided nightweaning project that ended with us both in tears. I've always tried to be child-led in my relationship with my son, because he knows what he needs better than I do a lot of the time. I've been getting it wrong for the past few weeks and I still feel guilty.

A combination of factors led to this - I've been really tired lately and strung out and mistakenly believed and was assured nightweaning would get us all more sleep. Judah doesn't feed during the day, only for his nap and for bed. He goes to sleep and settles so well for my husband without milk on the few nights I am not there to put him to sleep. It seemed logical that he would now be able to abstain from milk in the night entirely and get by with just a few cuddles. We bedshare so it wasn't like I was leaving him on his own to cry - he would have my full presence.

The first night he went back to sleep in the night with not much fuss. I was pleasantly surprised. For the rest of the week it was tears and screaming every hour. He was previously a fairly good sleeper, waking maybe twice and settling back down with a feed. My boy had changed personality in the day as well - less confident, more clingy, pretending to be sleepy so I would put him for a 'nap' and he could sneak in an extra feed. Crying and whining for milk as I left for work. He was telling me he wasn't ready and I was not listening, so sure I was right.

 I didn't take his feelings into account. It still surprises me to admit this. He's such a confident little boy, with never a backward glance for his mother. I thought he would be fine. I knew he would feel wronged and outraged, just like he does when he's denied chocolate and crisps. I am so used to not 'giving in' to his random demands on a daily basis this idea somehow transmitted itself to breastfeeding too. How wrong I was. My poor little soul cried out for milk in the night and I was only hushing and soothing him. In the daytime he clung to me like a little limpet asking for 'mummy's milk', something he's not done for months.

As busy and as strung out as I have been, I have also been more absent than I have ever been before in his life. I have not been the best mother than I could be lately. I have taken advantage of his confidence and trust at a time when I need to be building it up. What if the night feedings were what helped him feel secure and connected to his mother again? After a hellish week I'm glad to say I packed it in and we spent last night curled up together in a mutually restful sleep. He's not ready and neither am I.

When people hear that I'm still feeding Judah sometimes they react strangely. They remember feeding their demanding newborn and assume he's the same. Breastfeeding actually gets so much easier as your baby gets older the months just add up! They think that I need a break, or that I'm babying him. That I need my body back. That I'm a weak mother. That once he can ask for it he's too old. That's not how breastfeeding works. The strangest thing about feeding a toddler is people who were your staunchest breastfeeding allies start backtracking and that hurts.

What I find incredible is that the same people who compliment me on my son's confidence, assertiveness and happy nature condemn my parenting choices in the same breath. Has it occurred to them that these choices might actually contribute to the child that they delight in? I believe they absolutely do.

Why do I still breastfeed?

Feeding Judah to sleep is my 'me' time. As soon as he starts to drift off I can sneak out my phone and start to catch up on a few articles and message some friends while he suckles himself to sleep. It's useful too. When he got his finger caught in my bike crank and we finally managed to get it out, he was in pain and I put him to the breast immediately. It was instinctive - that comfort and analgesic for his woes. It's good  for tantrums. Nothing calms an out of control toddler quite like milk.

Feeding Judah at night ensures I get rest. I am lazy and would prefer to stay in bed (especially at 6am). Although it's not as easy to drift back off with a toddler as with a newborn - newborns don't tend to kick you in the face, ask for their favourite story or demand a specific breast. However, sleeping together curled up means I don't have to get up and tend to a child and I suspect even though I'm tired, I may not be as tired as other mothers of nightwaking toddlers are due to this magic fix.

Judah was a fat baby! He packed on the pounds. He's a skinny toddler. He's dropped 25 centiles. I am not a worrying mother, I never have been. What does concern me is the thought of taking away this extra nourishment. We have an active lifestyle and I am not willing to compromise my son's health at this point in time for no valid reason.

It's worth bearing in mind that the world average age for weaning is 4, coincidentally the time that children start to lose their milk teeth. The more I learn about our bodies and nature the less I believe in coincidence. We are a perfect design. Breastfeeding is good for me as well. It keeps me eating cake and significantly reduces the risk of breast cancer. It's a part of how I mother. Some nights I want to lose my temper and stop altogether, but then I see that sweet innocent face asking for his favourite thing in the world and my thoughts immediately seem petty and trivial. 

The people who are perhaps critical of our choice to keep going are the same people who would think nothing of him drinking cow's milk. They are the people who guzzle on their pints of steaming hot milk from Starbucks. I used to make those drinks and the smell of sour milk would linger on my clothing. Milk has always turned my stomach slightly and my work with little babies has given me plenty of evidence that our systems don't easily tolerate dairy (even breastfed babies who can't tolerate it in mum's diet). Breastmilk is the perfect food for human young.

Judah struggled to feed at first. He was very jaundiced and sleepy and I didn't know enough to get him to latch without drifting off. I thought he was feeding - he wasn't. I had to hand express colostrum and feed it to him in a cup as he had lost a lot of weight. The amazement I felt as we cracked it and began our beautiful feeding relationship is still here. We came so close to losing it. We've fed in castles, on beaches, in strange places. On the sofa watching cartoons, at a relative's house for an impromptu nap. Through injuries and boredom.

Breastfeeding forces us to slow down, to stop and savour the moment. No feed is the same. I still marvel at the difference between that tiny head that was dwarfed by my breast when he was a newborn and the fully grown toddler lying next to me. He traces my tattoos with his hands and stops to tell me what he sees. He inspects my face and counts out how many eyes and mouths that I have. It's our way of reconnecting after a tough day, after maybe too long apart. 

He is growing up so quickly and I know one day soon I will be looking up into his eyes instead of holding him in my arms. He is so articulate and funny, already losing so much of what made him a baby. When we decide to finish feeding I know I will be heartbroken. These memories I will cherish all my life - when he loved me with the innocence of a child, when he needed me for the sweetest reason of all. He has so much time to be grown up and only so little time to be a child. These two years have already gone so fast, I never dreamed I would be feeding a big toddler but it has come around so quickly. I know the rest of his life will too.

If he doesn't remember feeding, I want him to remember how it made him feel. Safe, loved, fulfilled and accepted. Unconditionally loved, by a mother who makes mistakes but tries her best.   

On The Shelf

When I was pregnant with Judah, I really resented the idea that women became 'boring' once they were mothers. That you had to live a life of complete sacrifice to your child, giving up your self-esteem and your dreams. All you would be able to talk about was nappies and weaning. The adverts and magazine articles about getting your body BACK, as if the way it was now was somehow unacceptable and women are desperate to return to their pre-lifegiving state. The way the word MILF was bandied around as something exceptional - the idea that no man could find a postbaby body sexual.

A mother who would cut off all her hair to stop the baby pulling, put her party clothes away, get down to the serious work of childrearing. All those hopes and dreams put up on some distant shelf along with self-image. That a mother's job was now to sit quietly in the corner and no longer show an interest in their lives or development. The only reprieve a 'night out' or escape from your children to re-enact past glories. I won't deny that most days I went around with a whiff of baby vomit. Motherhood is not glamorous. It is hard, unrelenting work but do you know what? It is freeing too.

I soon found that I didn't want my pre-baby body. Those pale white breasts that to me had no purpose, just hung there like random bits of flesh. The fact that my body before had looked static, almost too maidenly, uncomfortable. It had never felt like a true home, more like a costume that I was trying on. I'd wear too much makeup and sweat it off my face, always scared of being caught without it. I obsessed over every bite I put in my mouth, mentally calorie counting and sometimes going through weeks of personal deprivation to achieve some dreamy ideal I thought I had to be. I consumed women's magazines with the free beauty samples with a fervour, hoping to buy into whatever this 'woman' thing was and become it.

I was sometimes too skinny, sometimes too overweight. I spent a fortune on bottles of liquid goo to try and make me feel beautiful. I smoked and drank and tried to create a buzz in my body to quell the anxieties in my mind. I went to work like it was a stage and I was the main character who had to be flawless. I'd buy clothes to try and change myself, but everything just looked too wrong and too hateful. I'd judge myself based on how many men found me attractive. I'd be terrified of being caught first thing in the morning.

I understand why motherhood can be a difficult transition - going from a body that is purely decorative to a body that works is hard. Abandoning the tight controls we have exerted over our bodies. Although I was used to long shifts working on my feet it was nothing compared to the functions my body was now performing to sustain this little being. Surviving on little sleep, converting energy to breastmilk, constant vigilance for his every need. I still found the time to do my makeup and put a pretty dress on, but it felt different now. Clothes clung and fell away in different places than they did before. I evaluated outfits on their ability to produce a breast as quickly as possible. No longer the little girl able to wear a sweet tea dress, it was time to give it up.

With this disconcerting change in my body came a new fervour for self-growth. I have written before about my birth being a spiritual experience, an emotional purging. The high I had from my son's birth and all that I had achieved sustained me for many months postpartum. It seemed incredible to me that it had even happened at all. By not worrying about Judah's sleeping and feeding patterns, I allowed myself to drift through early motherhood relatively unscathed. I was lucky in that sense. There were days when I cried, a lot. There were days when I would catch sight of myself in the mirror and recoil. But, slowly, I began to feel beautiful again.

What amazed me the most was how my face had changed. I had spent years wanting to look more mature. After the birth of my son my face's aspect had changed. Less round, maybe. More knowing. I loved this new face and the things that it had seen. I am getting smile lines around my eyes and all I can say it - thank goodness. I am on my way to true womanhood. Although our society makes a fetish out of young girls, to me there was no appeal to being like that. The worry, the self-doubt. The enormous pressures to be like a perfect doll. I have adjusted my eyes to what my inner heart knows to be true - there is beauty in experience and knowledge. In the lines by somebody's eyes, the odd freckles or scars on their skin. As I grow older I only feel more beautiful, more myself. 

In my new confidence my Self began to emerge. The woman I always wanted to be. Free from the bondage of body, expanding my narrow thinking, I used the energy from my birth to explore what it was I truly loved. It turns out that this is birth itself, and womanhood. Freed from calorie counting with my breastfeeding appetite, finally loving my body for the magic it was performing before my very eyes. Finding a new sensuality, a new way to express my innermost self. Instinctive, attachment parenting that finally let me listen to my instincts that had been clamouring for me to hear them all my life. I found I didn't want to escape my child to pretend he didn't exist because he was the reason for all that I had become. That overwhelming sense of... trust. Trust in myself now. I had given birth! Nothing could ever possibly stop me now. 

Free to create.

Motherhood has given me the freedom and the perspective to just... be.

What am I?

I am a mother, creating a home with my bare hands. Weaving the web of family for those surrounding me and sustaining their life and emotions. Making a safe haven for all. Without me, none of this exists.

I am a woman, no longer maidenly and perfect. A woman of substance and integrity. A woman of conviction and confidence. The ability to speak my mind and approach my relationships as a true partner and not just an unfulfilled need.

I am wild, most days covered in mud or hair full of rain or the sea breeze. Turning my bare face to the wind and jumping over puddles with a child. Free of the trappings that used to hold me. 

I am a writer, words as delicious to me as chocolate. Picking, choosing, threading into works of my soul. This outlet that is so incredibly healing and relieving. Being able to read a sentence and knowing exactly how it should be. Giving voice to that which was previously unheard, or had no name.

I am a dancer, hips moving to an eternal rhythm. Feeling the heartbeat of life deep within my body. Delicately balancing every role I am required to play. Working with the subconscious and using it to spread joy.

I am a birth worker, creating a safe space for women to express their thoughts and fears. Teaching confidence and removing self-doubt and encouraging women to have trust in their powerful bodies. Giving them the tools they need for the battle ahead.

I am a sister, to the incredible women I have met along the way, who have touched my life with their glowing presence and helped me on this path.

I am a witch, in tune with the seasons and the moon. Creating my own reality and being in tune with the natural cycles of the earth. 

I am not on the shelf and I will not go away and become a silent member of the community now that I have a child. I refuse to give my life up just because I have created one. Women need to be supported to follow their own calling and adjust to their new identity as mothers and this new phase in their lives because it's not easy. The two separate factions warring in our brains, the beautiful woman versus the desexualised mother.

Instead of viewing motherhood as keeping you from doing what you want to do, finding and realising the ways that it is empowering you to become better. The daily giving, the relentlessness, not unlike most spiritual paths. The character-building as you learn to put aside and prioritise and change all your assumptions.

We as women and mothers are so powerful - we are growing and loving a group of people who may one day be able to effect change. I know how I want my children to remember me, and it's not as a woman who lost herself when she gave birth to them. I want them to remember me for what I loved and how I never gave up, even on myself. The fact that I didn't have to escape them to pursue my dreams, just carried them along with me.

Who are you? Who has your child enabled you to be?