Angela from Yogamum with her son
By Angela from Yogamum.
About ten years ago, I used to work with a woman who, if she was in a really difficult and stressful situation would always say ‘oooh it’s like giving birth to Martin’. Martin was her second child. She never said Oooh its like giving birth to Ella, her first child. At that time, I remember thinking how awful it must be for Martin to have his bad birth recounted so frequently (he was at least twelve years old by this point!) but also, how the effects of this experience had obviously deeply impacted on the mother too.
Nowadays, I am lucky enough to spend my time teaching pregnant and post natal yoga and my ex-colleagues catchphrase has come back to my mind. For so many women, the birth of their baby can be a very traumatic and painful experience and the effect of this experience can sometimes last way longer than it takes for the stitches to heal. For others, they sail through the pregnancy and birth and find it to have been a really transformative and empowering experience. The reasons for such differing experiences are as varied as the women. But it is a very sensitive issue, particularly for those who have suffered a bad birth.
I want to share with you, why I feel that Yoga can really be a support during pregnancy, labour and birth. However I want to be clear from the start, I am not selling a pipe dream here, that doing a bit of yoga will act as an insurance policy against pain or that it will guarantee you a birth free of complications.
What I am suggesting is that through the use of YOGA you can dramatically improve your chances of a positive birthing experience, whatever direction your birth takes. So if you have the birth of your dreams, or if you need unanticipated help to deliver your baby, you will feel more empowered.
Fear and Pain and Tension
From the biblical stories of Eve’s curse, to the awful, yet addictive, One Born Every Minute: we are constantly bombarded with negative images of birth. We rarely hear of birth as a positive experience.
With One Born Every Minute it would be really nice, if even one birth per episode showed a woman who was using alternative birthing positions and breathing deeply and actually having a good birth. If you take this programme at its word, you would think that a good birth was a preposterous idea!
Why is this important? A doctor called Grantly Dick-Read in the 1920s was the first to set out the theory of Fear-Tension-Pain syndrome. He believed that the three went together, and all three inhibit the contractions and progression of labour and reduce the likelihood of a natural birth. The phenomenon of a more natural or active birth really grew in the 1970s with pioneering women such as Ina May Gaskin who wrote a book called Spiritual Midwifery , and Marie Mongan who started the Hypnobirthing Movement.
The magic of Yoga
I believe passionately that we need to embrace birth as a positive experience. After all, childbirth is the most amazing physical, emotional and spiritual act that we could ever experience. It transforms us into mothers and gives life to a new being. Practising yoga whilst pregnant brings many practical benefits – for example, the physical postures ease the body in pregnancy and labour, helping you to get more comfortable and helping to get your baby into an optimal position for birth. The breathing techniques calm and soothe the mind which can be useful in pregnancy and invaluable in labour.
However, I think the most important thing that yoga can do is to provide tools which can help you to go within and connect deeply with your baby. When we are pregnant we are far more intuitive than at other times of our lives. When you practice yoga in pregnancy, you learn to work with this instinct. This will help enormously in labour as it will enable you to pause the rational/thinking mind and trust the body to do its job.
Reclaiming birth as a sacred act
In order to give birth, our body has to yield and open. In order to do this, one must feel safe and secure at a very deep level. Simple things like lowering the lights, playing familiar calming music and getting rid of all reference to time, will help to create a feeling of familiarity and sanctuary. This will allow you to go inwards and relax the body.
And what if you need a planned or emergency caesarean? With one in four births in the UK a caesarean birth, you really ought to think about it as a serious possibility now. For many women it is the best outcome, for others it can be traumatic. The same yoga tools of deep breathing, relaxation and inner connectedness with your baby will heighten a caesarean birth experience just as much as a vaginal birth.
So, instead of watching other people give birth on the telly each Monday evening, I would highly recommend running a warm bath, listening to relaxing music, breathing deeply and connecting with your unborn child. One way or another you will ride the birth together and come out the other side.
Yogamum classes
Angela runs pregnancy yoga and mum and baby yoga classes in Otley, Menston and Ilkley. For more information visit: www.yogamum.co.uk
