The Power of Birthing: How Giving Birth Transformed My Perspective

So of course when you have a baby, in the preparation and in the physical experience you learn an awful lot about your body and how it works. Practical things. Stuff you weren't really informed about until you sought out the information yourself to prepare for the day you go into labour. These are the things that you can read about in books. There's lots I can talk about here, and have done.

But there's more to it than that. Recently I was preparing a birth team to meet their baby and they made a really interesting observation of how they would like their birth to be. They spoke about how they would like their birth to be 'enlightening'. What a word to describe momentous experience of bringing a baby into the world.

Enlightening. I love it. 

This made me reflect on my own births. You don't become a hypnobirthing teacher without having had a life-changing experience with bringing your own babies into the world. An experience that means that you want to help others prepare. But had I thought about the ways in which I was enlightened my own birth? No.

I challenged myself to think about three ways I felt my own birth provided me with some form of enlightenment here's what I came up with.

1. Letting go - there is a wild power in being able to let go. There are so many ways that you can influence your birth experience and I spend my time teaching these to my hypnobirthing clients, and they spend a lot of time practising. One of the main parts of my ethos is helping birth teams understand that they can control a lot more than they think when it comes to their birth. As a control freak, and a perfectionist I enjoy this, and I need to hear this. BUT. During the birth of my little boy I experienced a very important moment - that taught me something I still carry with me almost four years later. 

Floating in the water, after a good length of time at the 'pushy' stage of labour I found that yet again my offspring struggled to make it the final distance earth side (maybe I'm a funny shape!). After an assisted delivery with my first I could feel the similar sensations of a baby that just couldn't quite make it the final stage to meet us. I have no idea how long this period of time was but I had to dig very deep indeed to try something different. I had to completely let go, completely release and let my body take over - I didn't realise quite how much tension I was holding - how my participation in the birth was working against my own body. It's hard to explain but it was a scary thing to do, to completely release, let go of 'trying', to succumb to the intensity and trust my body. But it worked! 

After many hours of feeling like I was 'letting go' and relaxing as much as I could, there was a whole other level to access that I didn't know was there. I learnt that letting go was my super power in that moment - something that's been very useful to build on since.

2. I am not my body - bare with me! Often we grow up feeling that we are both our inner selves (soul/consciousness whatever you'd like to call it) and our bodies all as one. Birth taught me that my body is a vessel that I have found myself in. I can care for it, give it the best chance to hold me for as long as I need and enable me to have the life that I want. As soon as I became pregnant I realised how little control I have over the inner workings of my body - to the extent it can make an entire life whilst I effectively do nothing to influence it! 

Conversely I learnt so much about the mind-body connection. Tonnes that I cover in my courses all about how your mind can have a huge impact upon your health and experience in your body.  But in learning about this, and demonstrating to myself that all parts of my mind impact upon my body I learnt how there is so much value in understanding the separation. And that sometimes how my body behaves/reacts/performs, is not a reflection upon myself and my self worth.

Birth is powerful but so am I

3. The power that I have within me, and within other birthing people is beyond my comprehension - (yes this one made me teary as I articulated it). This one applies both physically and mentally. This 'enlightnment' led me to walking around the world for a long while completely gobsmacked that we continue our day to day lives in complete ignorance to the fact that mountains have been moved by the power of women who have created lives with their bodies, who have brought them earthside. Roaring, mooing, in silence, in mess and chaos, in beauty and in warzones. The babies that were lost, those that were unplanned, those that have been yearned for for what seems like an eternity. The same power since the very beginning and that will continue. We have all been made by the same power. I have been surrounded by hundreds of women who have conducted actual miracles - and I hadn't batted an eyelid.

It is a devastating privilege to experience it.  

Birth has made me look at life in an entirely different way and I am all the better off for it. Much like people who go on great expeditions - they are invited to corporate events and to schools to talk about their experiences and what it taught them about resilience. What about all of those millions of women we are surrounded by who have their own story of resilience to tell?

I have no doubt that preparing for birth gave me the space and capacity to be able to reflect in this way on my experiences - the good and the ugly. I'd encourage every pregnant person to do the same, to take the time to prepare and to give yourself the solace to transform.

Check out my hypnobirthing courses in Weston-Super-Mare and online in the links above.