The female human body is made to grow, give birth to, and nourish a human baby. Each of these is a completely natural function. In the presence of normality*, a woman’s body will accomplish each of these things without difficulty.
There is no need for special procedures or interventions. For millennia, women have been getting pregnant, birthing their babies, and feeding them milk, all without help from doctors, expensive machines, drugs, or a full-fledged industry to provide special food for the baby.
Women today can do all of these things. We are no different from our ancestors. What we have lost, is the community link to other women. We no longer see women giving birth or breastfeeding their babies. Since we’ve lost the community, and the everyday experience of seeing women carry a baby, give birth, and breastfeed – we need to be trained. This is where childbirth classes come in. We have all the instincts women have evolved over history, but none of the experience that helps us use those instincts. Childbirth education helps us access them. We learn to trust our bodies, to understand that contractions are the natural work of a muscle, and not something to fear.
Childbirth is a physical event, like a marathon. If you were running a marathon in a few months, you would prepare. You would eat right, exercise, practice running everyday. You would get the rest you need. You would spend months on this preparation – not one weekend class learning what the procedures are. You wouldn’t expect to show up at the starting line, to have a doctor give you drugs and carry you to the finish line.
Why would you have a baby that way?
*Normality is the absence of extenuating medical conditions. There ARE unusual or emergency conditions in pregnancy and birth. But the point is, they are unusual. They occur rarely. It’s not necessary to treat all pregnancies as if an unusual medical condition exists.
Marlene Dotterer 