Addressing our Culture of Fear

Thanks to the folks who posted comments recently. I LOVE and NEED feedback from all of you so that I can pull from your ideas and address relevant topics in the field. I would still love to hear what challenges that you are facing or what topics you want see discussed from a Creative Birth perspective, so don't hold back!

One of the last comments (Thanks Lyndsay) stated:

Something I have been thinking about these past 8.5 months is how fear corrupts a gentle birth. We cannot be present, loving of our bodies and our unborn babes if we are overcome with fear of the birth process and our bodies. Fear creates a negative chemical environment in our bodies for both mom and unborn babe...

I couldn't have said that better and I wanted to come back to that point to discuss a number of ways that fear corrupts our health and well-being and also that of our babies. Our culture is rife with messages that instill fear and anxiety into our hearts and minds. Women's bodies sell millions of products for companies capitalizing on the fact that sex sells. Women are told in one form or another to be thin, to be curvy, to be motherly and nurturing yet also sexy and seductive, that we need to buy "things" to be happy and whole, that our bodies are imperfect, that we are this, that...

Basically people will tell us anything if it will make them money.

In the book, Selling Anxiety, by Caryl Rivers (2007), Rivers points out that "The news media sell anxiety to women the way advertising sells insecurity about their faces, bodies and sex appeal...Today, not only is the news embedded with images created by advertisers to sell products, but, increasingly, the news itself is becoming infected with the values, attitudes, and requirements of infotainment" (2-3).

This is relevant because we need to first realize that our culture's fear and anxiety, particularly about women's bodies, is pervasive. It is everywhere- not just in ads anymore, but even in the nightly news reported as fact. It is SOLD to us! And, we buy it.

Bring this back to pregnancy and birth and what does this translate as?

A culture of childbearing women who have been sold fear for much of their lives. And when we become pregnant, those messages don't suddenly *POOF* and disappear. Instead, for many, they are the platform from which we begin our life as mothers.

Women are then brought into a medical culture that tends to look for what's wrong rather than discuss what's right and, voila, this is a recipe for keeping women scared of their bodies, their babies, pregnancy and birth. After all, companies (including medical companies) need to sell and pregnancy, birth, and motherhood are new opportunities to market toward.

I think some level of fear is completely normal and natural and healthy. After all, fear has developed evolutionarily as a protective mechanism and can still function as such. And, let's face it- birth is always an unknown. For those who have given birth before, you get the idea, but each birth is different and we have no conscious control over it, which is, yah, pretty scary.

But, it's what we do with our fear and our underlying belief structure that affects the context of fear. Imagine that same fear in a different context- say one of reassurance.

For example, a woman who is told

• her body is normal, healthy, and whole
• birth is a normal life event
• that all she has to do to have an optimally healthy pregnancy is eat well and take care of herself
• the baby is an active and wise participant in birth
• that she is beautiful and sexy at every stage
• that birth is also sexual
  
• that many women have fun, or even orgasm in labor
• that even if birth is hard and painful, her body will know exactly what to do and she can do it
• that she doesn't need to buy or have anything to be "ready" to be a mother
• that motherhood, like birth, is hard, but she can do it
• that "we," (as some collective of people) trust in her body...

Well, I think you get the idea that fear in this context can be acknowledged, but not validated as ultimate truth. Anxiety would be much easier to ultimately let go of if these were the pervasive messages we heard all our lives.

This is why doulas are important. Because a good doula will be sending these positive, affirming messages explicitly and by example and therefore, mitigating some of our cultures messages of fear and anxiety. This, though in no way replaces a women-positive culture, acts as a small but vital piece of creating a healthy environment for a woman's experience of fear in pregnancy, birth and postpartum. This is also what the midwifery model aims to hold as basic tenants of their philosophy and culture. If only the midwifery model was the norm around here!

I would love to write even more and expound upon my ideas further, but I will save this for what will be inevitably more conversations on the topic.

PLEASE SHARE~ I want to know your stories of your own fear in pregnancy, birth and postpartum. How did you deal with it? What were some ways you worked to affirm trust in your body and baby? Did you have someone to support you in this process? How did they help?