18/06/2023
Greetings from Holland 🇳🇱 🚲 Seeing and listening to legendary Michel Odent and Liliana Lammers provoked a lot of thoughts for me, especially about "preparing for birth" and a socialised birth, with people surrounding a birthing person. A lot has been said about the natural birth, importance of guarding the space and things that I do agree with, and a lot of statements with which I do not agree or I cannot apply to my environment and people who seek support from me. For example an undisturbed free birth, without presence of any other person, being superior than any other form of birth. From my own experience of two births behind me (hospital and home birth in the water), a calming presence of my midwife, my family around me, gave me strength and a motivation to push through the storm, to surrender to the process and trust my body. I know many women who seek the presence of their loved ones during the transition from maiden to mother, and it feels primal and deeply imprinted in their soul. This does not mean that the "disturbed" birth has to be difficult or complicated. There is no rule like that, so I am cautious about overgeneralising own experiences to the absolute truths.
I think that we can really calm down, or even switch off successfully, our smart neocortex, and allow the lizard brain to take over and release our primal ancestral birthing capabilities, in other ways than just to leave the birthing person alone, and take away the preparation phase. I have heard a lot of subjective opinions on many things different from what the mentors were speaking about and I felt a deep disagreement with it (for example a claim that if you had a nice birth there is no way to have a postpartum depression, or a current "fashion" for waterbirth that does not being anything good in active labor and can increase the risk of a hemorrhage).
I guess I need all these thoughts of these wise people to sink in, and process through my own lens. For that, I am grateful that I've been a part of this opportunity.
