SlowBirth, or doing it the “Old School” way
I was in a local “lifestyle” store the other week, standing stock still, looking at a phone that reminded me of the lovely, heavy black “old school” phone that we had when I was little. You know, the one with the rotary dial that, when you dialed 911, took such a long time for that 9 to rotate. No wonder North America didn’t stick with the British emergency code of 999 - the emergency would have been over before the dialing was done.
So, there I was, in a trance (yes, I’d been up all night at a birth), thinking about my low-tech childhood in the ’60s and ’70s, how I skipped to elementary school in my skirt and walked through an old door marked “Girls”, and how my parents decided that it was totally unnecessary to have any of the new high-tech things that were starting to come into the stores (they made it through the Manchester blitz in WWII, so they could do just fine without, thank you very much).
I remembered that we shared a party line (Watergate for kids), had no answering machine, no voicemail, no calculators, no computers, no videos or DVDs, no recording devices, dishwasher or washer/dryer. We just had one little black and white TV with rabbit ears, a clothes line, and a hand cranked mangle to make life easier. Our car was so slow that we had to have a police escort whenever we drove through our local tunnel. Mine was truly an “old school” childhood - life was slow, and time was our ally.
I finally realized that people were starting to notice me, staring at the old black phone. But, I didn’t care. I was in my post-SlowBirth zone. I walked out of the store, and started to remember the birth that I’d been at through the night, and the day before, and the day before.
Seeing the phone had triggered a memory-tumble, which ended at some multi-coloured cut-out letters pasted onto a window at Women’s Hospital - “I DO IT OLD SCHOOL - ASK ME HOW”. I had kept those words in my head as I helped a client through an almost 48-hour unmedicated, uncomplicated “SlowBirth”. After 31 hours at home, hours of showers and dancing, walking the dog, giving/getting back rubs and marching the hallway, we had finally headed to the hospital.
At the labouring mum’s request, the tools at hand were our hands and eyes and ears and wisdom (other than me, my client and her husband, “we” also included our nurse and the family docs who had the guts to turn their eyes away from the clocks, and go “old school”). Time, on this day, was our ally, for we needed a lot of it to accomplish this woman’s goal. The high-tech equipment didn’t seem to know how to behave with us. The blood pressure cuff kept pumping itself up even when no one was there, and that brand-fangled-new monitor didn’t work as well as the older doptone, so it was turned off.
Things were kept as simple as possible. We left linear time. The mum was dancing in the shower, rocking and rolling on the birthing ball, just one contraction at a time, one breath at a time, listening to music. To get rid of a puffed-up cervix (kind of like a fat lip) at 9 centimetres, we had her lie on the bed with her feet higher than her head (no epidural necessary) and gave her LOTS of encouragement. We used hip squeezes, hip shakes, swirling and spiraling, visualization, trance-inducing techniques, foot rubs, squatting, kneeling, walking, tears, hands, eyes, and love, liberally (then repeated). Her body’s endorphins helped her to sleep and dream in between contractions.
This amazing labouring woman drew on all her past life experiences (with the aid of a few sherpas), and did what all women have the power to do, climbed the highest mountain ever, and birthed her baby with arms outstretched to touch his body.
And when that baby came, it was pure joy! No exhaustion, just sparkling laughter and smiles and a giggling shout of, “I’m as high as a kite!” (love those endorphins) and an eager, wide-awake little boy who came out with his meaty fist stretched to the sky. Ahaa! That was the culprit! His little hand had slowed things down. By taking it slow, and using time as their ally, this little man and his mum had worked it out.
When the bustling pediatrician came later to say “Hi”, she actually bowed down before the new mum, saying “I am not worthy.” The doctors all agreed that, if any drugs or technology had been used, it would have been a different story. Mum and baby would have been in the OR, having a cesarean. All the nurses on shift that day were in awe, knowing that there’s a new initiative in our local hospital to reduce the intervention and cesarean rates by encouraging low tech/high touch birthing, and wishing that they could have seen how it was done.
I am in awe of the couple at the centre of the whirlwind, this vortex of birth. I thank them for trusting in birth, for trusting in the body, for trusting their baby, and for trusting me to calm their spirits and their wild eyes, whenever I’d say, “It’s fine, it’s normal, you are safe, you can do it, just take it slow.”
On this day, I think all three crossed the portal, the “Old School” way. They had discovered SlowBirth.
Recent posts by this author
- Slow Denial - April 4th, 2009
- Slow Escape - March 19th, 2009
- Slow Medicine - February 22nd, 2009
- My red Staub cocotte (or, Slow Food with intention) - February 15th, 2009
- I'd like to order one epidural in the parking lot, please. - February 13th, 2009
