What Can Birth Keepers Do About Birth Fear?
Birth fear what can be done about it?
I have been having many conversations of late with various birth professionals and there is a running theme that rises through our conversations that I didn’t experience to this extent even 2-3 years ago. There is a real escalation of fear in birthing women who are progressively more and more frightened to give birth naturally despite wanting to follow this as nature intended pathway. There is an increase of both the use of drugs in labour as well as the proliferation of surgical births.
Many birth professionals are visibly very distressed at these statistics despite the variety of antenatal classes available with different modalities to help reduce fear and give women strength. Still there is a pervading dark cloud that seems to be running the show in this modern day and influencing birth outcomes.
Why? What is behind this global attack on birth, women and babies?
I can definitely say that the saturation of information available on the Internet has had an impact because I feel too much information and contradictory information will play havoc with a woman’s own mindset over time. She will deviate from her inner wisdom and lose touch with it’s calling with her baby because being too fixated and dominated by ones intellectual body as a birth preparation we lose our capacity to connect through heart knowing. There is also an increase of interference in birth for vested interests as well as to mask many unfounded fears that play in the birth field. The idea that a woman’s body is incapable of birthing naturally is also being woven into the fabric of birth psychology because many of the skills midwives used to know are being fragmented and squeezed into a very small parameter where there are less and less skilled midwives and doctors to implement and apply birth wisdom; wisdom that has always been available to us. Riding on the smell of fear that is infiltrating into many birth professionals psyche even by way of these conversations, questioning what’s going on and why also underpins the inherent knowing that birth is not a clinical intellectual process, slowly seeping into our minds then impacting us all in greater and lesser degrees.
As I have always proposed as both a mother and birth educator, it’s very important that we all continue to speak our truth, educate and make our offerings from a clear channel that does not buy into the fear mongering and diminishing view of birth. If we are to carve pathways of hope and normalcy then we need to personally engage in practises that keep our river of knowing flowing. We need to keep cleaning up our own garden through such practices as meditation, mindful speak and the way of the conscious sacred feminine. These are imperative to steer us away from unconsciously engaging in a negative birth view and keeping dignity alive. I know that there is a fine line we walk in understanding and acknowledging the way the birth climate is changing as well as standing with integrity in our advocacy.
Women need us. Babies needs us. Families need us. Humanity needs us. Don’t give up, stay softly focused, keep walking with your heads held high, with compassion in your hearts and awareness in your wombs and as a collective we will restore the balance of birth.
