Ten Moons: The Inner Journey of Pregnancy, Preparation for Natural Birth

business.

CHAPTERS

Invocation

PART ONE

Introduction

The Map

Certain Things You Need To Know

Childbirth Is A Rite Of Passage

Know Thy Self

Connecting With Your Baby Inside You

Connecting With Your Innate Body Wisdom

The Sexuality Of Pregnancy and Birth

Meditation During Pregnancy

Visualisation

Rituals to Honour Pregnancy, Birth and Mothering

Choosing Your Place of Birth and Care Givers

Labour and Birth

So-Called High Risk – VBAC, Breech, Twins

Healing From Previous Difficult Birth Experiences

Tips for Partners and Support People

Magic Potions

The Butterfly Story

PART TWO

Yoga for Pregnancy by Nina Eagle

Birthing with Your Voice by Ganga (Karen) Ashworth

Nutrition Fundamentals for Pregnancy by Nina Eagle

Increasing Protein in a Vegetarian Diet by April Love

Homeopathics for Pregnancy and Labour by Nina Eagle

Essential Oils for Pregnancy and Labour by Nina Eagle

Reading List

INVOCATION

We call the Divine Feminine

The inner knowing within each of us

Feminine wisdom

Courage, strength

We call the women who have gone before us,

mothers, midwives, wise women

be with us.

Remind us to trust our bodies

remind us to trust the birth process

and to surrender our fears and worries,

remind us to simply be with what is

our awesome selves

powerful, creative, yielding and wielding.

We call the ancient Birth Goddesses

that women have called on forever

to guide us, nurture us, protect us and support us

Brigid, Artemis, IxChel, Freya, Yemaya, Changing Woman, Pukkeenegak,

Sri Lakshmi, Kuan Yin, Tauret, Hathor, Gaia, Nungeena-tya

Guardians of the gateway of birth

we give thanks for you answering our call.

We give thanks for peace and love and joy and harmony

We give thanks for healing, for insight,

for happiness and for fun.

We give thanks for our connection with the Earth.

We give thanks for all women to be safe,

protected, guided and nurtured

during their pregnancies and births.

We give thanks for perfect safe births at perfect times

and for the blessed babies joining us Earthside.

We give thanks for mothers, fathers and babies everywhere

to feel honoured, respected and supported.

Blessed Be

PART ONE

INTRODUCTION

I have been a midwife since 1984, in independent practice, mostly attending homebirths, but also accompanying women to hospital as their private midwife.

In 1992 I had the most extraordinary and life changing experience giving birth to Jackson. That experience has been the impetus of my search to understand the path described in this book. Jackson’s was my third birth. My first was Sam, in 1985 by Caesarean section after a twenty-four hour labour, pushing for four hours with no sight of Sam.

My second was Ellie, a vaginal birth after caesarean (VBAC), at home, a six hour labour, a one hour second stage, a beautiful birth on all fours on the bed with Sam watching. Jackson was a waterbirth at home, again a six hour labour, the last two hours to the beat of a drum. I got to transition, the point in labour that usually marks the end of the first stage of labour, and thought I’d never make it, realised I just had to, and in my attempt to survive came up with an idea. I’d had migraines in the past and had used a technique to lessen the pain by focussing with all my thought energy on the place in my head where the pain was most intense. So in order to survive the pain I was experiencing in labour, I did that: focussed on the part of my body that was hurting the most, the source of the pain. It was as if a magical door opened as I focussed on it. I saw with my mind’s eye the shape of a symbol I had met in my pregnancy meditations – a blue green eye, and without thought or question, plunged into it, merged with it.

I entered a realm I’d never known before. I felt no pain. I could feel my contractions, my cervix, my womb, my baby, but I couldn’t tell which was which or who was I. No pain, totally calm, eyes closed, quiet. I was completely aware of everything around me, and also aware enough of what was going on, that I knew not to think too much about it or analyse it as it could have pulled me out of this realm.

I was in that space, that altered state of consciousness, from transition to Jackson’s arrival, for maybe 20 minutes. I had my fingers inside me and felt the last bit of my cervix open, then ‘accompanied’Jackson down my birth canal. It was as if everything was one thing, I couldn’t actually tell if I was me or Jackson. None of my support people realised Jackson was so close to being born.

I spoke to Paul, who I was leaning against in the pool, telling him if he wanted to catch the baby, our previous plan, he’d better get around the front, and I called my other children to come into the room to see the baby being born. Paul said he would stay where he was, not wanting to disturb what was going on, and the children came into the room. All the while I stayed in ‘the zone’.

I pushed Jackson into my own hands and brought him to the surface of the water. I could hardly believe what had happened. I was in awe of the process, filled with gratitude and questions.

Since Jackson’s birth I have explored deeply what happened ‘to me’. I really knew if I could do that, anyone could. So I set about to find the map so I could share it with everyone. I believe Jackson’s birth, eventually without pain and ecstatic (which means beyond the usual level of wakeful consciousness) is a woman’s and a baby’s birthright, the blueprint.

I’ve gathered the evidence and made a map. This map is the foundation of the information that I have to share with you.

THE MAP

Two questions form a basis for the map:

1) what happens to your brain, mind and body when you are pregnant and giving birth?

2) and what is your brain, mind and body anyway....?

Let’s start with what is your brain, mind and body...

You have a body that is an extremely complex miracle, running mostly on autopilot, and your brain, well protected beneath bone, as a central regulator, administrator and interpreter. It has three parts and two hemispheres – the neocortex, the midbrain or mammalian, limbic brain, and the hind, reptilian or old brain. Each part of your brain has different functions. Simply put, the neocortex (shared by dolphins, whales and humans) is the intellectual brain; the mammalian limbic brain is the emotional brain; and the reptilian is the physical brain driving the involuntary, automatic functions of the body. The part of you that uses and animates your brain and your body is your mind. Your mind is everything that goes on in your inner world at both the conscious and unconscious levels. It’s your thoughts, your memories and your feelings. There are your conscious mind, your subconscious mind, and your unconscious mind. We have an individual unconscious and there is a collective unconscious, as if a storehouse of our own history and humankind’s respectively. The activity and focus of your mind is your state of consciousness. And the You that changes your mind and observes your thoughts is called your higher self, god-self, consciousness, spirit, soul; and as it is said - at this level we are all one.

So, what happens to your brain, mind and body when you are pregnant and giving birth?

Birth is an involuntary process of your body, a function of your reptilian brain. It is an event, an experience that happens automatically at a time determined appropriate by a collaboration of both your body and your baby. It’s a process that the female body is built for; every cell of your body knows its role. During pregnancy there are changes in how your body works. Your blood vessels open wider to accommodate the extra blood (50% extra) you make and your blood pressure lowers to handle it. You don’t need to think that to happen, you may not even notice it. What you will notice are the changes in how your mind works.

The hormonal changes that happen to maintain pregnancy alter the way your nervous system works, giving priority to the parasympathetic nervous system and the right hemisphere of the brain¹. This change affects how you think and what you think about. The right hemisphere is the holistic, feeling, creative, ‘big picture’, non-rational, metaphoric, intuitive, feminine side; it holds the memories of our own birth and early imprinting².

So your predilection is not to think logically, rationally or with single focus on ‘out there’ issues and concepts – the style of the masculine, left brain - it is to be soft, inwardly focussed, feeling everything, opening, growing, expanding. During pregnancy there is a gradual abandonment of rational control allowing the emergence of conscious and unconscious emotions3. As this happens you may feel vulnerable and hidden fears may emerge. All this is the practice and preparation for the pathway to birth where the opening process happens - both literally and physically. This internal expose, this becoming aware of and bringing consciousness to our inner fears and insecurities, is an important part of the opportunity that pregnancy and birth offer the Mother. Not only are you growing a baby, you are growing, developing and fine tuning yourself. Your emotions, thoughts and physical symptoms are messages from your subconscious about the issues you need to deal with and the life lessons you need to learn, because that is the way of life, adaptation and evolution. This process is different during each pregnancy and builds on itself. Each pregnancy, as if a gift from the baby inside, holds new personal development for the mother as she learns and grows to be the perfect mother for her children, the one they came for.

As with all normal bodily functions, birth can be influenced by the thoughts, beliefs and fears created by your mind as well as your health – the state of your body.

Pregnancy and birth work best and have the best outcomes for both mother and baby if you trust them as natural processes of your body. You don’t have to think your way through them. If you worry your way through them, concerning yourself about all the what if’s there is no positive benefit at all. Rather, thinking this way will undermine your inner wisdom and end up causing problems, the very problems you are worrying about. Surround yourself with people, including and especially care-givers, who believe in your inner strength and capabilities to be a mother. Fear is catchy, and if it’s your own, rather than someone else’s they are forcing on you, it will come from a past experience that you can be with again and learn from, enabling you to release the fear.

So the map to ecstatic birth, natural birth - is a combination of understanding certain things and then doing certain practices and rituals.

It’s an old map, ancient in fact.

A treasure map for a land that is barely recognisable.

It’s as if the land that this map is about has changed so much,

as if it was once wilderness and is now a huge subdivision.

But the map still works, still speaks to the land, the terrain.

You just need to look underneath all the new matching houses and see the Earth.

Then the map will guide you.

CERTAIN THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW

Birth is a sacred act,

a process, the details and effects of which stay with you for life.

Your experience of labour and birth choreographs your mothering.

Labour and birth unleash the Goddess within.

We see a woman in her power.

Unmasked, raw, real.

She turns within to access her wisdom and strength

to perform a miracle.

That’s if we get out of the way and let her.

This magical, powerful process has attracted a lot of interest.

People, in fact entire systems, are feeding off making women feel like they can’t perform a miracle;

after all, only God can do that.

You know in the Roman Catholic religion they canonize people who perform miracles, make them Saints!

Imagine that.

Imagine a society where the women are respected and acknowledged for their everyday miracles every day.

Let me tell you this story...

It’s about cats.

"Everyone knows that cats need to give birth undisturbed in a dark, secluded place – perhaps preparing a softly lined box in the darkest corner of the furthest room underneath the bed. And everyone who knows about cats understands that you must never disturb a cat in labour or a newly delivered cat and her litter of kittens, otherwise the cat’s labour will stop or she may reject her kittens. Everyone who knows cats knows this.

But just imagine that one day, quite a long time ago, a group of well meaning scientists decided that they wanted to study how cats give birth. So they asked anyone who had a cat, that when she went into labour to bring them to their laboratory – a brightly lit, noisy, modern scientific laboratory where scientists could study them, by attaching lots of monitors and probes, surrounding them by strange technicians constantly coming in and out with clipboards... In the laboratory, the labouring cats could hear the sound of other cats in distress, and there were no private dark corners for them to retreat to, but only rows of brightly lit cages under constant scrutiny of the scientists.

The scientists studied the labouring cats in their brightly lit cages for many years, and saw that their labours were erratic, how they slowed down and even stopped, and how heartbreakingly distressed the cats were. Their mews and cries were terrible. They saw how many of the kittens were deprived of oxygen and were born shocked and needing resuscitation. And, after many years the scientists concluded ‘well, it seems that cats do not labour very well.’

Then, because the scientists were caring people and wanted to help the poor cats, they invented lots of clever machines to improve the cats labours, to monitor the oxygen levels in the kittens; they invented pain–killing drugs and tranquillisers to ease the poor cats’ distress, and drugs to make labour become regular and stop it slowing down. They even developed clever emergency operations to save the distressed kittens’ lives.

The scientists wrote scientific papers which told everyone about the difficulties they had observed and how cats do not give birth very well, and all about the clever feline birth technology they had invented. The newspapers and television spread the word, and soon everyone started bringing their cats to the laboratory in labour, because of all their clever feline technology and of how many kittens’ lives they had saved. Looking round at all the complicated technology, people were heard to say:

This must be the safest place in the world for cats to give birth in.

Years passed, and the workload at the scientists’ laboratories grew busier and busier. They had to take on new staff and train them in their feline labour techniques, and slowly the original scientists grew old and retired. But sadly the new up and coming technicians didn’t know about the original experiment; they didn’t even know it was an experiment. They had never seen cats giving birth in softly lined boxes in the furthest, darkest corner of the furthest room of the house – why what a dangerous idea! They were absolutely convinced that cats do not give birth very well without a lot of technical assistance – why think of all the years of scientific evidence they had collected – and they would go home at night feeling very pleased with themselves for all their clever and good work in saving cats’ and kittens’ lives.

Sadly most midwives and doctors working today have trained and worked most of their lives in that laboratory: and in that laboratory – which of course is the modern consultant maternity unit – childbirth is in a mess. In this day and age of evidence based practice, we talk so much of the importance of evaluating every intervention, and yet no one is saying that we desperately need to evaluate the biggest intervention of them all – asking women in labour to get into their cars and drive to a large hospital where they are cared for by strangers."⁴

Mmmm.

So every good map has a good legend, the information that explains how to use the map.

In the case of this situation, the information following serves as a reality check, just like the cat story.

Some background information and startling facts:

In our modern western world probably fewer than 5% of women give birth without medical interference, as almost all women are given an injection of a synthetic hormone, Syntocinon, to speed up the birth of the placenta, and many don’t even know they have a choice. In 2004 in the state of New South Wales, Australia,