Debunking 5 Childbirth Fears
Fears based on vague concepts can feel impossible to change. These can lead to a sense of helplessness that many people have around birth.
Understanding the physiology of childbirth gives us tools to mitigate the risk of emergencies. Remember: Giving birth is a normal physiological function of the healthy female body. It is not a disease or an injury.
Pregnancy, a manifestation of the deep wisdom of the body.
Here’s an overview of the five fears before we deconstruct them:
1. Bleeding out during delivery
2. Tearing during birth
3. Inability to handle the pain
4. Something wrong with the baby
5. Dying during labor
These fears are non-specific scenarios founded in the myths society perpetuates around childbirth, especially in Hollywood movies and TV shows. Knowledge is power, so that’s why I focus on de-mystifying these fears in my Childbirth Education course.
Here’s how you can take the first steps to empowering your perspective.
“Bleeding Out” During Labor and Delivery
This colloquial term for postpartum hemorrhage is so descriptive! Postpartum hemorrhage is a big deal when it happens, but it does not have to happen to you.
You have three lines of defense:
Prevention through excellent nutrition during pregnancy. Remember the saying, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”? Well, when it comes to pregnancy and childbirth, it’s more like “An ounce of prevention is worth a ton of cure.”
The first class in my Childbirth Education series is Nurturing and Nourishment. In this class, we delve into the metabolism of pregnancy and learn how excellent nutrition fortifies the body against postpartum hemorrhage. This will empower you to eat in a way that will prevent you from “bleeding out” or having a postpartum hemorrhage.
Prevention by supporting the undisturbed normal physiological processes during labor. When we work together, this is my top priority. Nature has embedded many lines of defense against hemorrhage into the normal physiological process. Overmanagement and manipulation (coupled with malnutrition) interfere with this perfect design.
In the second class in the Childbirth Education series, Holistic Stages of Labor, we learn about the birth process from beginning to end. This includes all the failsafes against hemorrhage naturally built in so you and your birth team can make sure your wishes are not undermined. You can also learn more about this line of defense in the Movement and Upright Birth class.
There are many fast and effective ways to treat hemorrhage if it does happen. A birthing person is not just a body. Remember to nurture her body, mind, spirit, soul, and relationships. Her hormones will do the rest.
For more information, check out the Bonding and Birth Plan and Holistic Stages of Labor classes. For midwives, my Plant Medicine Midwife class teaches you how to work with antihemorrhagic herbs.
Nurture and nourishment as protection of our body's normal physiological function.
Tearing During Birth
I have heard nurses in the hospital tell birthing people that “everyone tears on their first one." No wonder people are terrified!
This is not what I have seen at all in over 20 years of attending mostly out-of-hospital births. So in Movement and Upright Birth, the fourth class in my Childbirth Education course, we talk about why they see so many tears in the hospital and why we see so few at home (hint: it has to do with the fact that the overwhelming majority of people giving birth in the hospital are lying on their back when they so do).
It’s also important to recognize that tearing looms so large in the terrified psyches of our collective consciousness because of episiotomies. These were routinely performed on several generations of our foremothers. Episiotomies are harder for the body to heal, and I suspect they’re more traumatic for those who receive them.
Giving episiotomies routinely also means that everyone who gave birth had a perineal injury to heal as well as a baby to take care of (including breastfeeding and normal rest and recovery). This is why we as a culture are so focused on this aspect of birth when, in reality, many won’t experience it with normal physiological birth. Episiotomies should never be given routinely anymore.
In the fifth class of our Childbirth Education series, Bonding and Birth Plan, we’ll empower you to choose which procedures you receive and have the advocacy you need.
Physiology of birth, understanding the normal stages of development.
Inability to Handle the Pain
Let me tell you a secret: pain alone cannot destroy you. Pain is just pain, and people don’t die from pain. Someone who’s been shot dies from the bullet wound, not the pain. Someone with cancer may be in pain, but it is the damage to their system that kills them, not the pain.
Childbirth is normal. Our bodies were designed to do it. The pain and intensity are totally manageable, especially if you have access to the tools and hormones you need. These can be different for every individual, which is why in our Fear-Pain-Tension Tools class, number three in the series, we delve into a personal journey of discovery. I’ll guide you to cultivate your practice for navigating birth to make sure when the day comes, you have access to what you need and a team that will support you.
Note
Regarding these last two, it’s important to acknowledge that anything can happen during birth. No one can promise that death won’t become part of any particular birth story at some point. Just like we can’t know what will happen whenever we drive in a car, fly in an airplane, or go for a swim. Unfortunately, in these times we’re living in, when we go to church, school, or the grocery store.
More often than not, birth happens without death. However, there's a lot we can do to support nature's plan for that. Doesn't that make more sense than spending our pregnancy in a state of anxiety focused on what we don’t want to happen?
Now, let’s continue.
Something Wrong with the Baby
There are many ways to detect fetal anomalies during pregnancy. Usually, if this is part of your picture, you will know it already before you give birth. Usually, not always.
In my heart, I don’t believe this fear is really about anomalies. The essence of this myth may be that the baby will asphyxiate during birth or won't breathe after it is born. Like hemorrhage, this is something that we safeguard carefully. And like hemorrhage, there are many skills, techniques, and protocols that care providers have ready in order to do so. You can learn exactly what these are and how they work in the fifth class in my series: Bonding and Birth Plan.
In the Nurturing & Nourishment, Holistic Stages of Labor and Movement & Upright Birth classes, you’ll also learn what you can do in pregnancy and during the childbirth process to optimize oxygen flow to your baby and increase the likelihood that they will breathe spontaneously as soon as they are born, including why delayed cord clamping is an important practice for this.
Collaborative and patient-centered care connects us to our nature.
Dying During Labor
How many movies have we seen that start with a woman in labor where she's in pain? There's dramatic music, and then… she just dies. There's no explanation of why or how, and we’re already in tears. We forget to question the validity of this assertion that someone would just die in the middle of a perfectly normal process.
When the entire plot of the movie is predicated upon this dramatic emotional scene, it’s easy for us to get swept away with it. The truth behind this myth is that people don’t die just because they gave birth. There are real reasons—physiological explanations—that cause this loss of life.
Two of the biggest culprits in maternal mortality are preeclampsia and postpartum hemorrhage. Excellent nutrition is the best way to make sure that neither of them happen to you.
Nurturing & Nourishment is the first class in my course because I want you to have access to this valuable information so you can start protecting yourself early in your pregnancy.
5 childbirth fears now de-mystified!
Thank you for taking the time to educate yourself about the origins of the fears surrounding childbirth as well as what to do to empower your journey.
When you take the entire Childbirth Education course or any individual class, you’ll not only learn more in-depth information, but you can ask any question you have about birth.
See you in the next class!