Today we bring you a special guest post from one of our favourite birthing educators, Rhea Dempsey.
I love this video clip of Yuki and her husband Connell talking about the birth of their son at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Yuki’s “birth dancing”.
This video encapsulates a number of key concepts that I have been speaking and writing about over many years—normal physiological birth, functional pain, working with pain, a willing woman, partner’s role, midwife’s philosophy and birth dancing—all conveyed in 1.32 minutes!
The willing woman – a woman who still has a yearning for normal physiological birth. A woman like Yuki, who is motivated to work with her body, her baby, her labour and her pain. Yuki speaks movingly about her motivation and then we see her in action as “willing woman”, actively embracing the intensity, working with the functional pain and dancing out her precious baby.
The partner – a partner, like Connell, who can “witness” and normalise the challenge of the functional pain of birthing, who can support it and can encourage engagement with it, who feels the importance of normal physiological birth, can use humour to keep things light and can celebrate Yuki as a powerful birthing woman.
The midwife – a guardian of normal birth and working with pain midwife. At a “stalling” time in Yuki’s labour when, in the more usual circumstance, intervention (augmentation) could have been suggested, this midwife encouraged Yuki into what she herself felt she might do to change her situation—dance and dance she did—lucky baby.
So from now on at my couples workshops I’ll be adding the tootsie roll to my list of birth dances.
Rhea Dempsey is an independent birth educator and attendant, birth counsellor and author.
Rhea is the author of Birth with Confidence – Savvy Choices For Normal Birth.
Her website is: www.birthingwisdom.com.au
Follow her on Facebook: www.facebook.com/birthingwisdom