pain at birth- a point of view

a birth prossisng, thiniking out loud by chaya .v.

paralog

to write about my own birth?

The thing with writing stories about labors is that on one side one wants to write about the most beautiful holy amazing thing and to write it well so that who reads it can get the feeling of the deep meanings and the depth of the moment, but on the other side one wants to keep it sacred and well cept, hidden, deep and modest.

sharing those moments with the whole world or even just putting it out there feels like…

mmm maybe going out from "reshut hprat" that you have with yourself to a public space, it's a bit of a conflict with what birth really is, on my perspective.

On the other side I think that there are amazing birth stories, and that by sharing details and feelings from labor a woman reading the story feels it better and it's mamash "chesed" and as said “תורה היא וצריך אני ללמוד”.

And so, for now I choose not to go in to technical details from the birth but just to take a deep idea or meaning from it and share.

My hart

Even though this was about to be my sixth birth (or seven- depends on what one calls a birth), I was afraid.

well worried about handling with pain of contractions.

‘Till now, each birth of mine was different and had a different journey before it, I had good experience in my labors and during the years I had conversations with pain and about pain and many learning and trying different approaches.

 And yet, somehow I found myself at this pregnancy hearing a voice inside of me saying: “I don't have power or willing to step into the pain”, “I don't want to fool myself that there will not be pain” just for clarification I do believe that there are labors without pain, I was attended at such.

There can be no pain, or less pain, or a diffrent prespective on pain.

but as preparation to this birth, and totally after giving this birth,

 I bring to the conversation about pain a grand question: “should we look at pain as something that we don't want to be a part of a birth? Are labors without pain is our ideal?”

To say “yes, a good labor experience is a labor with as less pain possible” is a very Western way of thinking.

i ask myself why we as natural birthing woman’s try to not feel pain using physical, spiritual and hormonal methods ?

When has that become our wish and our ideal for the labor journey?

that is just a part of a conversation which is very deep that I have with myself as a birthing woman. Maybe it started after my third birth, maybe before, sometimes I have partners for this conversation and sometimes it’s just me…

that third labor was a very painful and somewhat traumatic homebirth, I felt like somebody “fooled” me (that was myself) that a home birth will be magical and maybe painless…

I had to build a new faith for my fourth birth,

At my fourth pregnancy I attended a course for “loving and joyful birth”

I remember that after the birth which was short and wonderful (but not without intervention due to the fact it was at hosspitol) I just told my doula two minutes after I gave birth “it's not fair to tell woman’s that it doesn't hurt” …

a misscarige that Brought with her alot of physical and emotional pain was and is an importent part in my "pain evolution" and this discussion about pain and its place or no place continued

at home after my fifth birth, being already a “spinning babies and equilibrio trainer”, talking with my friend & midwife Leigh about comprehension of pain at labor in different cultures arrowed the world… cu’s it was steel painful to give birth, for me, it was.

at this pregnancy journey, looking at those feelings arousing inside of me I understood there is still a belief inside of me that I “should succeed” giving birth without pain, that the better way to do it (or the better woman can do it?) without pain. And that is quite a bag to drag.

I was planned to stay at home for this birth, it's not my first time, once in a while came this voice saying “I don’t have power for this, maybe I should just go give birth with totally cool epidural filing no pain at hospital??”

I got closer to my due date and of course I decided that I'm supposed to give birth on 38 weeks because that's what I wanted and because it was summer and was hot and I was so heavy I think the heaviest I ever had (the neighbor told me that they thought I have tweens), and I just decided that I'm going to give birth at 38 weeks because it happened to me twice before… the date is getting closer and the baby… well, isn’t.

for bureaucracy reasons I had to go have a u.s checking,

And the US technician at 36 weeks was going something like this: “wow what a big baby, wow what a big head, wow so much water… and his size is for 37 weeks! and did you do diabetic check? oh it's a shame you didn't! do it because maybe you are diabetic now and maybe this baby is very big and maybe you should do the late diabetic now and if you don't give birth in one week so come back here and check again blah blah blah...”

…all the women I had the honor to go with them through their journey, making strong beliefs about our body and about our baby and that we can know and we feel, all my life of putting trust in listening to myself trusting my body…

knowing it's not an accurate check, knowing in mind what she said is not worrying.

And even so… immediately there was voices starting, like she pushed a button

“maybe this baby is too big?” “oh no it's a big baby! it's a big head! it's going to be hard!” “what will I do and if I don't give birth this week or the next and it's going to be one kilo more than now?!”  “how do I do this and I don't without having power for this?!”

 and since than every day I had this dialogue with myself: “I can do it my babies in the best size for me” “go-d knows what is good for me and what is good for my baby, he knows and he's making the best for us”, and other voice that saying “oh my gosh how am I going to do this?! I don't have power to do this what am I doing?? and if the head will be stuck and if go-d forbid he won't get oxygen because the shoulder will be stuck?!”  “I don't have power” “it's so long waiting” and it's not happening and maybe I should just go to hospital and tell them anything cues in this situation they will check out and for sure find something wrong because they always find something worrying or wrong or scary or better to finish with it so I'll just go and have a have zeroz with epidural” ...

So every day I had this dialogue, and was recording to myself different meditations, and answering this voices again and again… and what did happen in the end??

I waited, and every day that I thought it's a nice date and I'm going to give birth I didn't,

And I waited some more (isn’t the ninth month going by like a year for every pregnant lady?)  and then a day after rosh chodesh elul, (which was another nice date that I thought maybe I'll give birth at) so a day after that nice date…

it was Friday and I went inside this swimming pool with the kids, just a swimming pool in the yard and just floated and swam with them and we got crazy together and then Shabbat came in and after the first Seuda the birth started, I did whatever I always give you girls to do, sisters of balance, and breathing, and whatever I teach and something that a birthing woman just does without learning or teaching…and then came the moment that I felt “that's it this is the moment I was afraid of…” “this is the moment that it is so strong that it is just unpreceptible, unbelievable, beyond whatever I can deal with and I can just lose it! I have to decide now if I we'll suffer this or If I can release this fight,  I am just willing to let it win me but I'm not losing I am merging with the pain, then I remembered to put myself in connection with the tzdikim, and with the Shabbat and with all the things that I have thought about during pregnancy and at the deep meaning that I wanted for this birth, and wow it was very very strong, I don’t have words to share the feelings of the body there or of the soul,  the hole birth was not very long but it became intense very fast and the “second part” of birth, the part where baby is already at the birth cannel was not short, there was a phase that I really felt, more than in any other birth that I had until now that my body is going through one thing and my soul is in a very different place in a high, safe and good place , and I'm not connecting  this feeling with who I am or how great I am, I am connecting it with the dissension to “dive” into the moment, even if this moment is fiscally painful, and not trying to fight it or overcome it, I believe I was able to choose so thanks to prayers and to "zechut hashabat", and with great mercies of g-od (the meaning I chose for this journey was mercy and I had songs and paintings of verses about mercy, And they certainly were a lot of them at this birth) I was whiling to let go of what I thought is rite or best or should be… I remember one second that I thought to myself “no way go-d wants me to suffer on Shabbat, there is no way that this is not mercy and I said to myself: oneg Shabbat, oneg Shabbat.” And it is so weird to write this but it was, even though there was grate fiscal pain there was a greater big oneg of feeling not connected to earth and body, feeling beside him, close.

it was intense but quiet which is new for me (and for my husband that for a minute there was worried about the quietness with sometimes smiling or laughing), I was in consciousness that I'm working with my baby and that baby has his time and he's way and he can do it.

I don't want to scare you all pregnant woman that are waiting for your birth because for me this is an amazing birth experience but truly afterwards I told my friend Karen that was with me “ in my body I felt that its tearing apart to pieces like being calmed with Rabbi Akiva’s combs of steel”  But myself, my spirit was in a really safe place and in a really high place, I was not sure about sharing this because it can sound a bit not realistic crazy and as I wrote at the “paralog” about putting a very sacred and secret place on the table where everybody can see…

The reason why I did write well it’s also a kind of birth processing for myself, but letting it out here “online” is because when a woman is at her journey for birth, at her pregnancy, we try to learn how to breathe and different methods to deal with labor, whatever we can do so the birth will be what we call easy and what we call quick and what we call flowing…

but birth can bring many things.

and even if we do a lot of physiological work that can really help us and save a lot of time or Complications, there are many possibilities for birth and when one understands or believes or makes it a part of herself that even when body has pain it is not bad or less, it is not forbidden or is not meaning that I'm not doing well or that I'm not succeeding or even that I cannot enjoy and thrive- then it can really give power and hope and change for empowering labors. what one is willing to accept when something happens differently than the way she plans or wished, or if we can change the way we interpret our birth experience, this is why I'm sharing.

 I cannot say that when I think about another pregnancy or birth I'm not afraid or worried about the pain which maybe will be a part of this grate thing, or that I don't have any weakening voices anymore.

Shure I think I would like to have a cute baby without walking throw anything hard for it. but I do feel that I learned something about accepting pain, about having that second to choose to dive head in to it.  and that makes me pray right now that I will be more willing to accept pain when it is a part of birth or of life because everything that we learn in birth is really a lesson for life, if it is about letting Go or about that we cannot plan and decide everything, if it is about to lose control or any other lesson I can think about in birth it's for life. and I say this in my courses of birth education “birth is really a microcosm of life”   

Learning here with myself and writing this at three a.m. Friday, ummmm I am thinking maybe if we would know really what is yisurim, and really how close god is to us all the time and specially when we are sick or when we are needy or when we have yisurim, like we know it and feel it at birth when the worlds kiss each other,

 maybe if we would know that but not only know it, if we would connect with this knowing at body and hart maybe we could just be in the pain, maybe depart a bit from feeling the body and at that time feel hashem.

 so this is my sharing for tonight and my prayer.

and if you fill you would like to have someone to share with your own journey you can just share with me for publish without name or not for publish at all, you can send me an email, or if you feel you need a non-judgmental and quite place to share your story and re-look at it we can meet at the clinic.

 thinking together with you how to give more of it to the world

. 

Chaya.