Читать книгу Stand and Deliver!: And other Brilliant Ways to Give Birth - Emma Mahony - Страница 39

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 to the American midwife Elizabeth Gilmore in New Mexico, I learned one professional’s view about how an older mother differs from a younger mother: ‘It’s much easier to have a baby when a woman is young – not because of her body age, but because an older woman is used to being in control. Once you are 30 and you’ve been an executive and you’ve run your own household, and you’re used to people doing what you say when you say, you have control. Then, at birth, you have to be prepared to give it all up,’ says Gilmore. ‘Young girls when they give birth are not used to control,’ she continued, ‘they are used to not being able to control anything and give it up quicker. But an older woman who is used to having things her way, and takes an aspirin when she has a headache, now has to go into a new space that she is not used to. That she left behind in childhood.’

Mmmm, loss of control. Tough one for us stiff-upper-lip Brits. Gilmore is not talking about losing control over how you want the birth to go here, she’s talking about the very visceral side of giving birth, the last contractions when the body wants to do its job and needs its owner to just let go and let it. Not unlike the orgasm analogy again. Or as the New Zealanders at the Common Knowledge Trust say, ‘birth is learning to control surrender’.

It’s a grey area, letting go of our feelings and exploring what it is we really want. There is always plenty of talk by politicians about ‘women being given enough information to make “informed choices”’ in maternity matters, but there are thousands of women who want someone else to make up their minds for them. Many of us would prefer to be good little girls, approved of by those around us, not making a noise or a fuss, and are socially conditioned to do what the midwives and doctors tell us. All others want is safe delivery of a healthy baby, and some almost give up on their own good health to achieve it. Once you have had a baby, however, you realize how instrumental your own wellbeing is for caring for that demanding little terrorist, sorry, adorable little newborn.

Who Am I, and Do I Exist?

With freedom of choice comes responsibility, and responsibility is a big one. There is a big payoff, however. Exploring the matter of your birth is all about preparation for motherhood, and what you learn about yourself on the way will have a much greater impact on your mothering than any amount of NCT classes.

Don’t rely on your husband, doctor or midwife to make the decisions for you, or give up by announcing ‘We’ll see what happens on the day’ Make a pact with yourself and the baby to do it for the both of you. As Eminem says, ‘You only get one chance!’ You were looking after your unborn baby long before you had even met the midwife and obstetrician, and you will be in it together long after their names slip your mind. In our baby-centred culture, where mothers are seen as little more than vessels for bringing forth the all-important child, you may have to refuse to be cajoled into something you don’t want or, God forbid, go elsewhere if you don’t feel you’re being listened to. The strength you gain from speaking your truth now, however shy and timid you normally are, will help you be a more confident mother. You may even suffer disapproval from others with your choices. Unpopular? Me? But I get along with everybody and am so easy to please! Just wait until you board an aircraft with your fractious baby – then you will know about unpopularity. Indeed, learning to weather occasional unpopularity is an extremely useful parenting skill in this country.