Top Ten Tips to a Fearless ChildbirthBirth’s nastiest four-letter word.
The nastiest four-letter word surrounding childbirth? Tell me more. It’s spelled p.a.i.n. Don’t use it, and don’t allow it around you. The term “labor pains” is a misnomer. They are contractions. Think of them as your body exercising. They’re good things. As soon as you fear them, that’s when you feel pain. Your body knows what it’s doing. Really. Believe it, let it, and welcome the contractions as what they are: positive, good exercises your body is doing to prepare your muscles to push out your baby into waiting arms. A contraction is simply a muscle contraction, similar to flexing your biceps, or any other muscle for that matter. Think about it. If you squeeze your bicep, for example, hard enough, you can “feel the burn” but it shouldn’t hurt. In the same way, your uteran muscles don’t need to hurt.
“Wait a minute here,” you may be thinking. Even the Bible states, “…in pain the woman shall give birth…” Some women fight for their right to have pain. In that case, I say sadly, “knock yourself out,” but it doesn’t have to be that way. I actually looked deeper into this scripture in Genesis, the first chapter of the Bible. This word “pain” actually translates in the Greek as also meaning “suffering” or “sadness”. In several other occurrences of the same Greek word in Scripture, it is translated as these other words in the English. I’m not saying that the Bible is wrong or even mistranslated, just misinterpreted in most cases in our modern language.
The “suffering” or “sadness” is written in this particular Scripture because it’s after Eve and Adam bit into the forbidden fruit, and sin entered the world. From that unfortunate bite until today, according to Scripture, it could be said that women are “saddened” because our children are born into a world of sin. Who can deny that after watching the evening news? Call it a stretch, if you will. But I choose to look to the positive as far as birth is concerned. Also, I can attest firsthand to not experiencing that writhing pain as most seem to assume in childbirth. Why? Because I prepared my mind and body to look at birth positively and painlessly. I focused on it. I meditated on that fact. And it worked – twice. And countless other women I’ve met and who have responded to this site say the same thing.
Bottom line: Fear creates tension, which creates pain. The unfortunately named Dr. Grantly Dick-Reid, an OB in the 50’s, wrote much on this topic.
Side note: I included in my birth plan: Do not use the word “pain” as in “labor pains”. I prefer “contraction”. And my husband was on-board with me. He kindly extracted the word from his vocabulary for the entire nine months.
Cheers and Blessings,
Jennifer
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