Ride the waves Baby!
Written for The Natural Parent Magazine, 2/05/20.
Ride the waves Baby!©
How do we prepare for our babies to be born?
The waves roll in,
Gentle waves
Small waves
The waves pick up
They grow
They come closer together
Ride the waves baby
Ride the waves
The waves grow bigger still
The waves last longer
They’re close now
Ride the waves baby
Ride the waves
The waves are massive
Tumultuous mountains
They are hard and fast
Ride the waves baby
Ride the waves
You got this!
Jump on your surfboard
You can surf this power
You are this power
Let it surge through you
The board is your breath
The long slow out breath
You got this baby!
Enjoy this wide ride.
The outbreath can be like the little key that unlocks the door of getting through birth. Just like a surfer jumping in on a wave in the exact moment, When we welcome our surges/waves /contractions with the out-breath we are like surfers jumping on our board in the exact moment. Surfing our waves, surfing our labour.
When we greet a wave/surge/contraction with a tight body, with a held breath just like a wave, the contraction can dunk us on the beach. Just like when we get dunked it can be hard to keep up and catch your breath. This can happen in labour. Your partner, care providers, friends and family can love and support you from the edges but ultimately it is the birthing woman that must take the power to use her breath. To decide to surf the waves.
Panic in labour is like swimming in the ocean next to a rip. The rip is strong and it wants to draw you in (just like panic), your focus needs to stay with the waves, one breath, next breath. The ebb and the flow. The thing with panic, just like a rip, is that once you enter in, it’s really hard to get out – it can take you. The discipline is to keep yourself out of the rip. Everyone can love you from the outside but ultimately it is your choice, your discipline to stay out of the rip. {a good surfer can see the rip in the ocean, and knows that when you get caught its best to relax, don’t fight it and use up all your energy, go with it even though it feels scary and the ocean will release you back to calm water and safety}
If it’s easier, or if you prefer the analogy, think of riding a horse. The surge/ waves/ contractions are like the horse you are riding, a gentle walk at first, then a trot, canter, suddenly the horse can break into a wild gallop, it can be scary, you can feel like you’ve lost control. Your deep out breath in labour, the out breath that greets a contraction is like the reins on the horse. The reins help you to not only to hang on they also help guide the horse where you want it to go.
In 2020, I would say that most pregnant people and their support team read books, some may do pregnancy yoga, and many may go to antenatal classes to prepare for their birth. Having taught traditional antenatal classes for many years I am aware that what books offer is a way to understand birth through our intellect, our mind, which helps us to comprehend and anticipate the birth process. However our babies don’t leave our bodies via our brains, our intellects or our third eye, they move through our pelvis, our bellies, our vaginas. Our babies move out after we take a poo, they move out with a gush of fluid, followed by blood and placenta. We give birth with our bodies, our wonderful, messy, earthly fluid bodies, the more we can learn to get in touch with, listen, and feel our bodies
We live in a culture that deeply values intellectual knowledge. The movement forward of western culture is based on our intellect. Katy Bowman is an amazing author who writes about how as a culture we are movement starved. It is our lack of movement that is contributing to our individual and collective lack unwellness. We can mostly live in a space where we can remain somewhat separate from our bodies. For some pregnant people, pregnancy is the first time that their bodies start to be driving the show. When we are pregnant we may need to eat exactly when our body needs to eat, when need to pee -we need to pee now! We may experience aches and pain and feel our pelvis like we have never felt it before. The gift that pregnancy, birth and motherhood offers us is an opportunity to connect or connect more deeply with our animal selves our mammalian, even amphibian ways. It offers us the opportunity to connect with our fluid selves, with our amniotic fluid, our blood, our breastmilk, our tears. Pregnancy and birth preparation offers a beautiful invitation to connect or re-connect with our bodies. If our birth preparation is only done via our intellect we miss this beautiful opportunity/ invitation to get reacquainted with our earthly selves. What sits in our bodies is our power and our pleasure. And our pleasure is powerful!
Many women have experienced transgressions of their boundaries, of their bodies. A lot of us dissociate and seperate from our bodies with an intention of keeping ourselves ‘safe’. Shame is a pervasive cultural and personal inhibitor from our own pleasure and our own power. Many women may have a relationship with their bodies where they feel their bodies have betrayed them or they have betrayed their bodies. For many of us the thought or process of reconnecting with our bodies can be terrifying.
To be able to connect and be ‘in’ our bodies we need to feel safe. Our nervous systems need to be settled out of the flight or fright or adrenalized response. To birth well, for our birthing hormones to work beautifully we need to be oxytocin (our love hormone) and oxytocin doesn’t so much like hanging out with adrenaline. If we are considering how to prepare for birth we need to consider how to support our nervous systems to be settled. What environment and who is in our birthing environment, will support us to truly feel safe? Safe enough to let loose, to let go, scream, wail, safe enough to poo.
Our bodies are sustained by the earth, by the air we breathe, water we drink, and food we eat. Just like the earth are our bodies are cyclic in nature . In connecting with our bodies we also have a deeper opportunity to connect with the earth, as the earth can be felt and experienced through our bodies. Our bodies are of the earth.
To prepare for birth can be a yes to an invitation to become more connect and in juicy relationship with our bodies our power and our pleasure. Some practical ways you might like to try this are :
Practicing the long slow out breathe. Try it when you’re walking, if you are grumpy, stuck in traffic, making love , taking a poo.
Explore how much you can allow your body to soften, how much can you really sink in and let go? ( use your outbreath) when you’re grumpy, making love, taking a poo. I have another article of yielding that may be useful for you to read also.
Often during the day take your breathe down into your feet, and down into your womb. Take your breath down into the earth.
Practice the ‘birth breath’ Breath in through your nose or mouth and breath out though your vagina - seeing how soft and open you can allow yourself to feel.
Explore being in your body, dance , walk , move.
Circle your hips ( belly dance) often throughout the day , as you prepare dinner, wash up, chat on the phone.
If it feel right for you explore making love integrating using a slow slow out-breath. Explore how much pleasure you can allow into your body and then see if you can allow al little more. ( If you’re not into making love be assured you can still birth with ease).
Eat nourishing food, take in clean water with an awareness of gratitude of the earths nourishment .
Move –frequently and often in any way shape or form. The more kooky and less linear the better. Crawl, roll, bend, wriggle , just like a little baby would.
Practice taking a poo with ease, can you ‘let go’ rather than use force?
Engage in body care practices, touch yourself lovingly, get supporting body work as needed. Get support for your nervous system.
Rest and sleep as needed.
Check out Spinning Babies® to promote comfort in pregnancy and ease in birth. https://spinningbabies.com/
My prayer is that all women may experience the pleasure and power of their own bodies. There is a revolution that can occur if we are all to take up the gifts that can be found in our bodies. My prayer is that all birth givers, their babies and their whanau (family) come through the experience of birth with intact sovereignty , that they experience gentle and kind care.
‘There is more wisdom in your body than there is in the deepest philosophy’ Friedrich Nietzsche.