Why provide childbirth courses?
Message from Ann...

While I believe that the majority of women can birth vaginally, and do not need to be taught how to birth, it is a sad reflection on our society that due to our personal isolation and lack of communal village living we have no idea of what is normal. I also have no idea of what is in your mind, how you perceive things, what has been said to you. Or what is culturally normal for you.

Take, for example, a chair. If I asked fifty people of different cultures, ages and personalities to draw one, I would not be at all surprised to find that very few drew exactly the same kind of chair. If you lived in a jungle, far from civilisation, you may not even know what I was talking about, as you may always have squatted, or sat on a rock or tree stump, where as a Duchess from the a very rich and affluent society may draw a luxurious leather winged back chair which would he very different to the straight backed wooden chair the farmer may have drawn. We all interpret differently what some one tells us according to our unique frame of reference.

With childbirth, it is not just about the mother but also the baby, their lifestyle, their values, knowledge and medical assistance. With the media, TV, radio, papers and magazines portraying such different and sensational stories, all competing with the variety of conflicting information from family, friends and caregivers, and making birthing a very frightening situation. Bad news travels fast, wonderful normal news hardly rates a mention. Everyone has an opinion, a theory that they think is right, but that does not make it right for you.

You need to negotiate the minefield of information and trust your body to steer you in the right direction. How did we manage before there was such a wealth of information? What would we do if we were on a desert Island? How would we have known how to fall in love and what is pregnancy, what would we have had to compare ourselves to? At birth time not even knowing what was happening to our body, we would have done anything to make our selves comfortable, using any diversion to take our mind off what was happening to us. Just by listening to our bodies we would have found we were soon holding our baby in our arms, and not knowing what to do, we would have instinctively held our baby in our arms at the right angle and our baby would have taught us how to feed it and how to do it right. We quickly learn by our mistakes, and between us and our baby we would learn how to parent. Instinctively.

While some hospital childbirth courses may err on the side of hospital and doctor protocols and procedures, and some courses may err on the side of a vaginal birth at all costs. I try to give you the information that is a little more rounded, showing you what is normal, how you can help yourself, when assistance is needed, and how you can make decisions with your caregivers for the best outcome for you and your baby.

Yes, I truly believe that a woman is designed to get pregnant, grow a baby, birth a baby, and breastfeed a baby, but we often forget that there are two people in this equation - mother and baby and we need to listen to both.

I hope that you will bring all your questions, fears and worries to the course so that we can work on what concerns you. Hopefully to help you make choices.

I have a large amount of information resources available for you to look at, and if time runs out I will be having an afternoon session available where you can attend to sit, read and ask questions.