you can always show this page to your midwives ahead of time to ask whether they might be game for some way-out ways of helping labour progress.
For example, what our German friends call die äpfel schüttelm or ‘shaking the apples’ is a technique whereby the buttocks or thighs are jostled rhythmically as a way of softening up a mother’s tension in the legs.
Alternatively, you could try to ‘Chung’, a practice favoured in rural China. The labouring mother stands up, surrounded by her midwives, who then proceed to shake her vigorously. Despite the fact that it looks painful to the onlooker, one American midwife who observed Chunging in action said that the woman swore afterwards that it felt great.
Another firm favourite, which is a little less offbeam, is the salsa dance. This I witnessed in action on the Discovery Health Channel when a series called Portland Babies ran in March 2004. There was a lovely moment during one birth when the midwives Fiona and Liz wanted to get labour going for a mother who seemed resigned to lie on her back. They showed her how to do the ‘salsa dance’ by standing with her feet a hip-width apart and rocking her hips from side to side. The midwives did it with her and within minutes the atmosphere in the room had changed from a downbeat to an upbeat one as everyone started giggling. The dancing really did get things going, and the mother still got to lie down, on her side, to birth her baby soon after.
Bottom Jokes
While we are firmly into our bodies, it is time to have a brief word about bottoms. Bottoms are useful things, because their workings can help us understand about what happens in labour. I was told by a friend who had an epidural birth that delivering a baby was like ‘pushing a basketball out of your bum’. Certainly true if you are anaesthetized from the waist down and left guessing at how to get the baby out (not so if you are endorphined up to the eyeballs and your body is doing it for you).
Bottoms are particularly useful for teaching you about some of the reactions that you might experience during birth – a subject called ‘Sphincter Law’, and described by Ina May Gaskin in her Guide to Childbirth (Random House, 2003). All sphincters, including the cervix and vagina, obey certain rules. In a nutshell, they are as follows:
a) sphincters function best in an atmosphere of familiarity and privacy
b) sphincters do not obey orders, such as ‘Push!’ or ‘Just Relax!’
c) a person’s sphincter in the process of opening may suddenly close down if that person becomes upset, frightened, humiliated or self-conscious
d) a relaxed mouth and jaw (laughing, singing, speaking loving words, telling bottom jokes or mooing are particularly recommended) is directly correlated to the ability of the cervix, vagina or anus to open to full capacity.
This last tenet of the law could be practised in the bathroom when next sitting on the pot home alone.
You only have to remember the last time you clamped up in the office loo when the boss walked in, or the last bout of constipation brought on by travelling through foreign towns with restrooms that you didn’t want to visit, to know that Gaskin is right. ‘According to Sphincter Law, labours that don’t result in a normal birth after a “reasonable” amount of time are often slowed or stalled because of lack of privacy, fear and stimulation of the wrong part of the labouring woman’s brain,’ she writes. If you fear that Sphincter Law will not be respected in your chosen place of birth, perhaps it is wise investing in a Do-not-disturb sign or a bouncer at the door. Finally, when in labour, midwife Mary Cronk advises that you remember the Four Fs: Feel Free to Fart Freely.
CHAPTER 4 Free Your Mind (and Your Ass Will Follow)
Working on your body is a lot easier than working on your mind. Having your foot massaged by a reflexologist or long fine needles put into your back are preferable to the worst sticky silence with a shrink. I spent three years on the couch in therapy (two and a half years more than I needed to, but it was just so great to get out of the house on my own for an hour) and I still approached the blue door every week with a sense of dread. The dread was fear of the unknown (what can of worms will I open today?) despite the fact that whenever I left, I came out feeling lighter, as though I had cleaned out my mental handbag.
Looking at your ‘stuff’ is not easy, and most of you probably equate psychotherapy with mild lunacy, so I am not about to advocate my particular (expensive, but cheap at the price) approach. The hardest part about starting therapy is, well, starting it. The second hardest part is finding a good recommended shrink, and stopping it is nigh on impossible. I cannot count how many sessions I had just talking about when I was going to stop. At least I got out before suffering the fate of one friend, however, who knew her time was up when she caught her shrink nodding off as she bared her heart.
If you are in therapy when you fall pregnant, you are in luck. You have a guaranteed space to process the huge change you are going through to become a mother. If you are not, and think shrinks are for mad people, then pregnancy is probably not the time to start anyway. Wait until you feel like murdering your husband, then you are ready.
Meditation and Visualization
One discipline that you can start while pregnant, that won’t cost you anything and is perfectly safe, is a little meditation. It doesn’t have to be done every day, just when you remember, and it may feel a little strange to do if you haven’t done it before. The difficulty is in ‘making your mind still’ and not sitting there with your eyes closed distracted by the traffic outside or your things-to-do-list that keeps popping into your head. One friend, Isabella, who has just finished a course in Transcendental Meditation, said that she noticed in the first week how she hadn’t shouted once at the children. ‘Meditation gives you some control over your feelings, enabling you to deal with whatever is thrown at you,’ she commented.
Sue Hollins, who teaches meditation courses in Brighton, recommends practising being still for 5 minutes every day while pregnant. ‘Light a candle,’ says Sue, ‘which is a symbol of spiritual practice and has been used in church ceremonies in the West and the East down the ages, and place your feet on the ground. Pregnancy is such a special, sacred time, when you are bringing into the world new life that it is important to hold that and to be present in your body.’
Sue recommended to one of her pregnant students to visualize her baby in the womb, with the womb being the most beautiful place to be. Her student visualized her baby lying on pillows made of angel wings, with blossom falling all around. Towards the end of her pregnancy, when she had problems sleeping, she went on to visualize herself in the same place, and her sleeping improved.
Visualization and affirmations are also used in labour to help women stay calm and focused. Some prefer to use a mantra that they have practised in meditation, while others find a single word or phrase such as ‘release’, ‘open up’ or ‘let go’ to be useful.
In the book Healthy Body, Better Birthing (Newleaf, 2001), the authors Francesca Naish and Janette Roberts suggest imagining your cervix as a flower opening up in time-lapse photography, or surfing waves as an analogy for contractions. They recommend some of the following mantras for the last stages of pregnancy and during the birth: ‘I embrace the intensity of birth’; ‘the birth of my baby is a miracle of life’; ‘I will make my needs clear to others’; ‘I am open to the best possible birth’; ‘I trust in my strength.’
If repeating the above is just going to make you giggle, or start talking in an American accent, try nothing more than just listening to your breath as you sit still for 5 minutes. ‘The passage of oxygen into your body is like new life pouring in,’ says Sue Hollins. ‘As you exhale, breathe out the carbon dioxide, tiredness and worry that your body no longer wants to hold.’ Ahhhhh.
Control Freaks
Talking