Why a Gentle Birth?

My partner Matt is a video-guy/video producer wonderman and together we are trying to enter a video contest for Birth Matters Virginia to be judged by some of the most recognized names in birth, like Sarah Buckley, MD, and video, Ricki Lake and Abby Epstein (makers of The Business of Being Born).

The basic premise of our video is to promote the idea of Gentle Birth. What is Gentle Birth? I thought I might organize some of my thoughts here.

The basic premise of Gentle Birth is to respect the mother and baby in the birth process. This respect translates many different ways. Here are some:

• Respecting the mother's birth choices
• Honoring the birthing mother's right to move, act, birth as she pleases in whatever way she pleases
• Access to food and drink in labor and birth.
• Trusting a women's body and its intuitive knowledge of how to give birth.
• Trusting and Respecting the baby and the baby's active role in the birth process.
• Little to no intervention unless medically necessary (as opposed to routine)
• Acknowledgment of the affects of drugs on mom and baby, and the benefits of being drug-free
  
• Access to non-pharmocological pain relief (ie- water, movement, making noise, massage, etc...)
• Mother-led pushing or "breathing down"
• Honoring an un-broken mother baby diad and keeping the baby and mother together in the postpartum with skin-to-skin contact and early breastfeeding.
  
• Honoring the baby as a sentient being who also has their own experience of birth and can feel a range of physical and emotional sensations.
  

These ideas are ideas that are part of the Midwifery Model of Care, a model based on the fact that pregnancy and birth are normal life experiences and not considered medical events unless there is a complication or situation that necessitates medical attention. Midwives practice in hospitals, birth centers and attend home births and some doctors practice in the midwifery model. But because hospitals are required to have protocol, it's often difficult to opt out of routine procedures and escape the medicalized views that those protocols enforce. I have attended many beautiful births at hospitals and I have also attended many beautiful births at birth centers and home.

I am a strong advocate for home birth for the reason that with the right Certified Professional Midwife (CPM), the basic tenants of the miwifery model are upheld in the prenatal, birth and postpartum care of women and their babies. Home birth is a wonderful setting to set the stage for a truly gentle birth because a woman is free to listen to her body, trust herself and her baby, birth in awareness without pain medicaion, and to have the space to freely bond with her baby postpartum. Recent studies have shown that for low-risk, healthy women and babies, home birth is as safe and associated with lower levels of intervention than hospital births.

I will post a link to our finished video when it's complete along with some more resources to support the idea of gentle birth. In the meantime, here are some websites with more information on the ideas discussed above:

www.gentlebirth.org
www.sarahjbuckley.com
www.mana.org
mothersnaturally.org

Please send me your comments and ideas about gentle birth and any other resources you might have to share about this topic!