For a while now I am reading a great book about childbirth entitled 'Birth Guide', of the midwife Ina May Gaskin (I will talk about him when I finish it, because it seems to me that it is very worthwhile), in which the birth is explained from a normal vision, without considering it a pathology as until now it has been done in many hospitals, and explaining how women can (and should) be protagonists of the process if they believe in their possibilities and are accompanied by people who also believe in them.
That is why, because childbirth is a physiological process that requires the connection of the body with the mind, that many midwives no longer speak of 'contractions' when these happen, but they call them 'waves' or gusts'.
Contractions indicate pain
A contraction is the reduction of something to a smaller size. When we talk about muscles we define contraction at the moment when the muscles contract, they tighten, and when it happens in a painful way we call it contracture. We all know what a contracture is and what it can hurt (or we imagine it if it has never happened to us), and all we want is for someone to relieve us in some way with a massage or similar, because it bothers us durable and negative that has no benefit.
However, contractions of the uterus, which also produce pain (usually), do have a purpose and a benefit: arrive before one of the best moments in a woman's life, the one in which your baby is born.
It follows that just as muscle contractures generate rejection, labor contractions could be accepted and somehow "hugged." Because it is a discomfort that has a reason and that happens with a clear intention, to open the birth canal for the baby to leave.
How language can change the expectation of pain
So, with all the intention of turning language into a turn also to the expectation of women's pain, many midwives no longer call the contraction process, as if the muscle shrinks painfully, but waves or bursts, like each of them will bring the baby a little closer to the shoreat birth
It is the difference between talking about pain and contracture and talking about expansion. Because in a birth the uterus does not have to contract, but quite the opposite: it must open, as the vagina must also be opened to adapt to the size of the baby that, with each bid, will progress in its arrival in the world.
Open and not contract, dilate and not shrink, waves and no contractions. A change for women to visualize a very different way of giving birth, which also hurts, but with the peace of mind of knowing that it is a pain that has a happy ending. That it is not a pain from which they must flee (because of the pain we all flee), but a pain to which they must surrender and embrace so that the endorphins do their job and the delivery flows.
And it is that that woman who is confident in her possibilities, is well accompanied, feels capable and feels safe, is much more likely to have a normal delivery than the one who arrives with fear, which makes strength to fight against the pain of contractions, you are not sure that you are able to do it and that you expect someone to help you move forward because you believe, or have been led to believe, that you cannot achieve it.
Bursts; waves; on a beach, in the sea, bringing the baby closer to the world.
Photos | iStock
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