Dear Elizabeth,
I still have two well used copies of Childbirth with Insight in my library.
It is one of the first books I read that alerted me to anything other than
the same old line about childbirth. Best wishes, Mary Murphy
----- Original Message -----
From: Elizabeth Noble <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: Carey and Gaye Riebau <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>;
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, August 23, 1999 10:50 AM
Subject: Re: teaching breathing in antenatal classes
> I tackled the issue of controlled breathing when I arrived in the USA in
> 1973 from Australia and found childbirth preparation to be a Lamaze
> dominated huff and puff program for the very last few weeks of pregnancy.
> Unfortunately, well-meaning experts want to rescue their
> clients/patients with techniques which often end up disempowering the
> woman's instrinsic resources. I feel very strongly that women should
> understand that birth is as safe as life can every be (quote from
> Harriette Hartigan, midwife in Michigan), that women have to find their
> own power. One good way to start is to ENTERTAIN the idea of giving birth
> ALONE (I am NOT advocating unattended birth...but dwelling on the
> possibility, which becomes a reality for some during earthquakes,
> hurricanes, snowstorms etc) is very empowering.) Specifically to address
> such controversies, I wrote Childbirth with Insight in the late
> seventies, which has not a single exercise or technique, but ways of
> looking at the power of birth as privilege, not a threat.
> Physiologically and pyschologically, controlled breathing
> are exhausting and raise anxiety levels.
> Women being autonomous in birth has never been popular with the
> establishment, so the book has been out of print for a long time, despite
> midwives often buying copies in bulk! There are some copies in Sydney
> with Julia Sundin. (02 9417 6467). (There may be some still with
> Specialist Publications in Mortlake, NSW, who distribute Essential
> Exercises for the Childbirth Year)
>
> The other important work that needs to be done is for the couple to
> access as much as possible their OWN birth experiences > pioneered by the
late Melbourne psychiatrist Graham Farrant. This is now
> being carried on by pediatrician John Spensley in Melbourne, and Philip
> Hall, a gynecologist in Ballarat, while not doing obstetrics anymore, is
> a good resource as to the value of this work in his own life.
> I gave up teaching antenatal "classes" over a decade ago. Instead I
> prefer to hold "Pregnancy Playshops" for 5 couples over a weekend ( 16
> hours) with lunch together on each day. Entirely different dynamics
> emerge. Before the weekend, each partner has to complete a questionnaire
> that includes family health history, birth order, and what they know
> about their own conception, gestation and birth. In addition they list
> their major life crises and attach a one-page autobiography. During the
> weekend, they each write a Birth Story, of the birth as if it had already
> happened and read it to the group. (This is all described in another out
> of print book, Primal Connections: How Our Experience from Conception to
> Birth Influences are Emotions, Behavior and Health...JuJu Sundin has some
> copies of that.). Obstetrician Leo Leader and pediatrician George
> Williams are good resources for this material in Sydney > workshop there
this year on these very topics. (Unfortunately
> psychiatrists were the dominant group in the audience, not maternity care
> providers!)
> In my opinion, our time is better spent NOT training women to pattern
> their respiration, but to honor the body's natural responses to labor.
> More important is for women to "stand on their own two feet", to "stand
> up for what they want" to "stand up to those around them who are
> disempowering" and to "Stand and Deliver"! The body works as a pump, and
> the feet play a role as well as the thoracic and pelvic diaphragms. That
> is the subject of my forthcoming book...
> For 30 years I have heard mothers, midwives and others say, as did Gaye
> Riebau, that the breathing "doesn't seem to work". Those who swear that
> it does usually have shorter and easier labors...
> Yet often these same people will think it is because they didn't
> "practise" enough or they missed Class IV etc. and then they get a guilt
> trip! In the States, what has happened that people modifty the breathing
> techniques but I believe, and have said so for 2 decades, that it really
> is something to let go of. The body that knows how to grow the baby,
> knows how to birth the baby! We just have to TRUST!
> Of course the breathing is done for "control" (the nature of birth means
> NO control but surrender) and for pain relief. But pain results from the
> resistance to the process of opening up > spiritual, emotional etc. So
the issues to address prenatally are the
> conscious and unconscious aspects of that resistance and this requires a
> small group and a personalized agenda to explore and affirm personal
> realities.
> I think one big problem is that most of us were schooled, and we still
> think along classroom lines and rote learning. Having homeschooled my
> kids, on and off, I know it can be hard to trust that individuals can
> learn without having to be taught, and that as organisms they can
> function in their own best interests, despite other views by "experts".
> Women should be encouraged to keeping breathing in labor, however, since
> anxiety often results in breath-holding. And they should be encouraged to
> let out their own sounds during second stage, otherwise they will do the
> Valsalva maneuver, which is most unphysiological (extensively researched
> and published in monograph in the early 80s by the late R.
> Caldeyro-Barcia who was then president of FIGO, but no one listened to
> him either!). The word "PERSON" comes from the L. p
> "per sonare" to sound through...so primal sounds are normal, universal
> and OK in birth.
>
> Elizabeth Noble, PT
> OB-GYN Courses, New Life Images, Women's Health Resources
> 448 Pleasant Lake Avenue, Harwich, MA 02645
> Ph: (508) 432-8040 Fx: (508) 432-9685
> www.capecod.net/newlife
>
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