EMPOWERMENT FOR ECSTASY

Women MUST be empowered to optimize the birth experience and safety for themselves and their babies.  What can they do?

  • Take responsibility for your health and healing throughout your life
  • Choose a continuity model of midwifery care that will enhance the chance of a normal and undisturbed birth
  • Find a doula, someone that you can trust, and will keep your birthing space undisturbed and sacred
  • Ensure an atmosphere where the birthing woman feels, safe, unobserved and free to follow her own instincts
  • Reduce neocortical stimulation by keeping lighting soft and reducing words to a minimum
  • Avoid drugs, unless absolutely necessary
  • Avoid procedures, unless absolutely necessary
  • Avoid Caesarean Section, unless absolutely necessary
  • Do Not separate mother and baby, unless absolutely necessary
  • Breastfeed and enjoy it

Giving birth is an act of love, and each birth is unique.  All women share the same physiology, have the same blueprint and release the same cascade of hormones, given the right set of circumstances.  Our capacity for ecstasy in birth is hard wired into our brains, but that requires that we each trust, honour and protect the act of giving birth and follow our own instincts.

A Dutch Professor of Obstetrics, G. Kloosterman offers a poignant summary.

“Spontaneous labour in a normal woman is an event marked by a number of processes so complicated and so perfectly attuned to each other that any interference will only detract from the optimal character.  The only thing required from the bystanders is that they show respect for this awe-inspiring process by complying with the first rule of medicine – nil nocere (do no harm).”  Unfortunately, in today’s litigious obstetric world, Obstetricians have lost sight of this.(48)

References:

  1. Odent, The Scientification of Love (London: Free Association Press, 1999)
  2. Odent, “The Foetus Ejection Reflex”, in The Nature of Birth and Breastfeeding (Westport CT: Bergin and Garvey, 1992)
  3. Uvnas Moberg, quoted in report of Australian Lactation Consultant’s Conference, Gold Coast, Australia 1998, published in Australian Doctor (July 8, 1998): 38
  4. Y. Dawood et al., “Oxytocin in Human Pregnancy and Parturition, “Obstetrics and Gynaecology 51 (1978): 138-143
  5. Nissen et al., “Elevation of Oxytocin Levels Early Post-partum in Women,” Acta Obstetricia et Gynecologica Scandanavica 74, no. 7 (1998): 530-533
  6. Chard et al., “Release of Oxytocin and Vasopressin by the Human Foetus during Labour, “Nature 234 (1971: 352-354
  7. Odent, “Don’t Manage the Third Stage of Labour!” Practising Midwife 1, no. 9, (1998): 31-33
  8. Brinsmead et al., “Peripartum Concentrations of Beta Endorphin and Cortisol and Maternal Mood States, “Australian and New Zealand Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology 25 (1985) 194-197
  9. S. Goland et al., “Biologically Active Corticotrophin-releasing Hormone in Maternal and Foetal Plasma during Pregnancy, “American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology 159 (1984: 884-890
  10. Laatikainen, “Corticotrophin Releasing Hormone and Opioid Peptides in Reproduction and Stress, “Annals of Medicine 23, no. 5 (1991): 489-496
  11. Jowitt, “Beta-endorphin and Stress in Pregnancy and Labour, “Midwifery Matters 56 (1993) 3-4
  12. River et al., “Stimulation in Vivo of the Secretion of Prolactin and Growth Hormone by Beta-endorphin, “Endocrinology 100 (1976): 238-241
  13. R. Mendelsen, “Prolactin May Be Stimulus In Foetal Lung Development, “Ob-Gyn. News, July 1, 1978
  14. Franceschini et al., “Plasma Beta-endorphin Concentrations during Suckling in Lactating Women, “British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology 96, no. 6 (1989): 711-713
  15. Zanardo et al., “Beta Endorphin Concentrations in Human Milk, “Journal of Paediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition 33, no. 2 (2001) 160-164
  16. Lederman, E. Lederman et al., “Anxiety and Epinephrine in Multiparous Women in Labour: Relationship to Duration of Labour and Foetal Hear Rate Patterns, “American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology 153, no. 8 (1985) 870-877
  17. Manabu Saito et al., “Plasma Catecholamines and Microvibration as Labour Progresses, “Shinshin-Igaku 31, no. 3 (1991): 81-89 (abstract in English).
  18. Lagercrantz and H. Bistoletti, “Catecholamine Release in the Newborn Infant and Birth,” Paediatric Research 11, no.8 (1977):  889-893
  19. Odent, The Nature of Birth and Breastfeeding (Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey, 1992)
  20. A. Thomas et al., “Influence of Medication, Pain and Progress in Labour on Plasma Beta-endorphin like Immunoreactivity, “British Journal of Anaesthesia 54 (1982): 401-408
  21. M. Thomson, “A Re-evaluation of the Effect of Pethidine on the Length of Labour, “Journal of Advanced Nursing 19, no.3 (1994): 448-456
  22. D. Kimball, “Do Endorphin Residues of Beta Lipotrophin in Hormones Reinforce Reproductive Functions?”, American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology 134, no.2
  23. Jacobsen et al., “Opiate Addiction in Adult Offspring through Possible Imprinting after Obstetric Treatment, “British Medical Journal 301 (1990): 1067-1070
  24. Nyberg et al., “Perinatal Medication as a Potential Risk Factor for Adult Drug Abuse in a North American Cohort, “Epidemiology 11, no. 6 (2000): 715-716
  25. See (15)
  26. F. Goodfellow et al., “Oxytocin Deficiency at Delivery with Epidural Analgesia,” British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology 90 (1983): 214-219
  27. E. McRae-Bergeron et al., “The Effect of Epidural Analgesia on the Second Stage of Labour, “Journal of the American Association of Anaesthetic Nurses 66, no. 2 (1998): 177-182
  28. Behrens et al., “Effects of Lumbar Epidural Analgesia on Prostaglandin F2 Alpha Release and Oxytocin Secretion during Labour,” Prostaglandins 45, no. 3 (1993): 285-296
  29. Fernando and E. Bonello “Placental and Maternal Plasma Concentrations of Fentanyl and Bupivacaine after Ambulatory Combined Spinal Epidural (CSE) Analgesia During Labour,” International Journal of Obstetric Anaesthesia 4 (1995): 178-179
  30. Brinsmead, “Foetal and Neonatal Effects of Drugs Administered in Labour,” Medical Journal of Australia 146 (1987): 481-486
  31. T. Hale, “The Effects on Breastfeeding Women of Anaesthetic Medications Used during Labour,” paper presented at Passage to Motherhood Conference, Brisbane, Australia, 1998.  (Contact Capers for abstracts or tapes – www.capersbookstore.com.au
  32. Belfrage et al., “Lumbar Epidural Analgwesia with Bupivacaine in Labour,” American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology 123 (1975): 839-844
  33. P. Krehbiel et al., “Peridural Anaesthesia Disturbs Maternal Behaviour in Primiparous and Multiparous Parturient Ewes,” Physiology and Behaviour 40 (1987): 463-472
  34. B. Sepkoski et al., “Effects of Maternal Epidural Anaesthesia on Neonatal Behaviour during the First Month,” Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology 34 (1992): 1072-1180
  35. D. Murray et al., “Effects of Epidural Anaesthesia on Newborns and Their Mothers,” Child Development 52 (1981): 71-82
  36. Riordan et al., “Effect of Labour Pain Relief Medication on Neonatal Suckling and Breastfeeding Duration,”Journal of Human Lactation 16, no. 1 (2000): 7-12
  37. B. Ransjo-Arvidson et al., “Maternal Analgesia during Labour Disturbs Newborn Behaviour: Effects on Breastfeeding, Temperature and Crying,” Birth 28, no.1 (2001) 20-21
  38. Enkin et al., A Guide to Effective Care in Pregnancy and Childbirth, 3rd Ed. (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2000)
  39. Hemminki and J. Merilainen, “Long-term Effects of Caesarean Sections: Ectopic Pregnancies and Placental Problems,” American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology 174, no. 5 (1996) 1569-1574
  40. Fisher et al., “Adverse Psychological Impact of Operative Obstetric Interventions: A Prospective Longitudinal Study, “Australia and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 31 (1997): 728-738
  41. Nissen et al., “Different Patterns of Oxytocin, Prolactin but Not Cortisol Release during Breastfeeding in Women Delivered by Caesarean Section or by the Vaginal Routd,” Early Human Development 45 (1996): 103-118
  42. See (42)
  43. C. Pearce, Evolution’s End: Reclaiming the Potential of Our Intelligence (San Francisco:  Harper San Francisco, 1995:  178-179
  44. Ibid
  45. A. Russell et al., “Brain Preparations for Maternity – Adaptive Changes in Behavioural and Neuroendocrine Systems During Pregnancy and Lactation,” Progressive Brain Research 133 (2001): 1-38
  46. See (44)
  47. J. Kloosterman, “Universal Aspects of Birth: Human Birth as a Socio-psychosomatic Paradigm,” Journal of Psychosomatic Obstetrics and Gynaecology 1, no. 1 (1982)  35-41