Birthing Better

It's a heck of a lot easier to be frank with fathers-to-be than with mothers-to-be ... for several reasons:

• Pregnant women will be 'doing' the birth.
• Fathers-to-be really want to help and haven't found out how-to.
• Pregnant women wanting a vbac often have a strong ideological belief that 'vaginal birth' is best.
  

Listen to this audio and learn more:

So here's your bottom line:

• You need birth coaching skills.

You've been taught that the role of a father-to-be is to 'support' your partner. This means dads are standing around, being hung on, rubbing a back or wiping a brow but both you and your partner KNOW that is not enough.

You must learn the skills to be a Birth Coach. In other words, you need to support and be able to help her navigate the natural occurring pain of labor pains. vbac is the wrong phrase. To get to a vaginal birth your pregnant partner must do the labor first and that's where women have trouble. The pain hurts, she tenses up, can't cope, gets tired (and so does your baby) and eventually one thing leads to another.

So here's another bottom line:

• Birth Coaching skills are learned in pregnancy

Men and women have the same body. We all blink, cough and can tighten up our rectum. This similarity brings us together under a common set of skills that should (yes ... should) be learned by all expectant parents. 

So here's what you need to do:

1. Help your pregnant partner to prepare her pregnant body to become a birthing body ... she needs to learn to open her body and let your baby come down, through and out her body. Your baby has a head about the size of a grapefruit. Get real and put the time into doing this.
2. Together you need to learn a simple set of skills. She'll use the skills to 'do' the birth. You'll use the same skills to help her ... by learning to observe and listen to how she is responding to the messages your baby is giving her throughout your baby's birthing process.
3. Together you must use those skills as pregnancy transforms into the labor activity ... DO NOT WAIT UNTIL SHE IS HAVING TROUBLE COPING.
   
4. Together you must use these skills ... because you are parents and that's your role ... to use these skills in whatever birth your baby experiences.

Here's your third and final bottom line:

• You and your partner got pregnant to have a baby not a 'birth'. Birth is how your baby is born. You can always work with your baby's efforts to be born so always enjoy preparing for your baby's birth and work with your baby's journey no matter how your baby comes into the world.

Your pregnant partner really wants to feel connected to the birthing process and she feels that was denied her by having a Cesarean. This tells you ... neither of you had the skills to continue to work with your baby's birth journey. Once you become skilled and use them both of you will feel engaged and empowered.