How dilated is she? No, the real question is where is the baby?

A couple of weeks ago I got an invitation to attend the Premiere Screening of Birth Time – a ground-breaking documentary that uncovers the hidden truth of how broken our maternity system is.

Epidemic proportions of postnatal depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder and the most heart wrenching of all – suicide, the leading cause of maternal death in the developed world.

As the filmmakers of Birth Time found – Birth Trauma is rampant. In the last 100 years or so, obstetric involvement and medical intervention has evolved into the most common model of care for childbirth. This expertise plays a critical role in saving lives when complications arise in pregnancy and labour, but research shows that a medicalised approach to normal physiological birth is not leading to better outcomes for mothers and babies.

Instead of being a specialised form of care, medical interventions are becoming a standard practice. In straightforward, healthy and low risk pregnancies women are being subjected to intravenous infusions of oxytocin to artificially induce labour, encouraged to have electronic fetal monitoring, epidurals, lay down on their backs when delivering baby. Assisted delivery rates and major surgery are also becoming more widespread – in fact Australia’s caesarean rate is three times the rate recommended by the WHO. 

Okay enough of the doom and gloom, I’ll get to the inspiring stuff. Not long after the Birth Time screening, I was lucky enough to participate in a Spinning Babies workshop hosted by Fiona Hallinan a very well-known midwife and birth worker in Melbourne who is one of the few accredited Spinning Babies Approved Trainer in Australia.

I will tell you what, I have been on a journey for advocating for women’s birth rights (and rites) now for a fair while… but the penny truly dropped when Fiona said to us (a room full of pregnant mamas, midwives, doulas, physios, chiro’s and only 1 doctor!). I paraphrase here but these were her messages: 

“Put your big girl and big boy undies on folks and start making a change… there is no other organ that has intervention on its performance than a uterus. A brain surgeon doesn’t fiddle with the brain if ain’t broken, a cardiologist won’t touch the heart if it is healthy and well…

Why is there such a lack of faith that this organ in a healthy, normal pregnancy and labour won’t do its job? Women need to start understanding their goods and be proud of them, because they’re sacred and they are powerful! So much money is spent on preparing for a wedding, don’t you think we need to reshift our priorities and invest a little more in preparing for birth… Childbirth is too big a life event to leave it by chance, especially when we are birthing in the system that we have today”.

Fi was saying this in the context of women empowering themselves with knowledge and then preparing their body and mind for their big event. This was obviously relating to the  Spinning Babies approach to childbirth, a technique that I incorporate and refer my clients to in my Hypnobirthing Australia™ Positive Birth classes.

Spinning Babies, along with Hypnobirthing Australia™, and the many other independent childbirth education programs – are all on a similar mission to improve women’s experience of birth. The Spinning Babies approach is particularly paradigm shifting as it focuses on ‘physiology before force’ – it advocates for a new paradigm that stops asking “how far dilated is she”, but “where is her baby”?

We have to remember that mother and baby are working as team. Mum’s job is to dilate, baby’s is to rotate. So, what do we focus on? Creating space for baby to rotate!  

In Hypnobirthing Australia™ classes, we focus on optimising baby’s position. I teach you some daily exercises that build strength but also allow your body to release. We also show you smart birth positions and body balancing techniques that can help prepare your uterus, pelvis and legs for their big job!

Childbirth is the most transformative, powerful and primal experiences of our lives – it is a rite of passage. A women’s experience of childbirth will shape the way she experiences motherhood and her whole world moving forward. 

A marathon runner does not run a marathon without training for it. As Fi says, don’t leave it by chance. Prepare your body and mind and empower yourself with the knowledge. Birth like an athlete.