The next day Zeeba and I returned to Jogi Moor. This Pink Kit presentation lasted 4 hours after everyone had fed their family the noon meal. More newly married women attended along with most of the women from the day before. Men aren’t welcome but they buzzed around outside keen to somehow catch a bit of what was causing so much excitement in the village. Unmarried girls were also excluded.
We reviewed everything we had gone over the day before and it was like a group recital. As I was going over things, they would say the same thing but in Urdu. Zeeba had become so good at translating it was easy for me to understand what she and the women were saying.
Hand gestures work well. We then had to go over how women in the village understood the inside of our pregnant body.
Many of us who live in developed countries as well as traditional women are more than a bit vague about what’s inside us. I asked the women what holds the baby up inside so it doesn’t fall out for the months of pregnancy. They had no concept. In modern countries many women have heard of their cervix but really don’t have a clue where it is or what happens during labour even though they might know about the term 'dilation'. When it comes to feeling' what is happening inside, that’s very vague.
What's inside is hidden and it's hard to 'touch'.
Many modern women at the end of pregnancy might go to their midwife or doctor and be told their baby is engaged or 3/5 down, the cervix is 50% effaced and 2 cm dilated. Intellectually they may understand but don't have a clue what that feels like in their body. In fact, if we really understood what 'dilation' meant then we won’t be so afraid of the pain. We’d connect the change in pain with the change in dilation. In fact we'd embrace an increase in pain because we'd understand this means the cervix is further dilated and the birth is sooner.
We had one of those interesting moments when Zeeba drew the women a picture of the uterus just like we see in all the two dimensional illustrations. You could see the blank look that comes over so many of us when we see such an illustration. We can't relate that flat illustration to our body which is distinctly 3 dimensional.
To understand where the cervix is, we need to see something the inside of our pelvis like a large circle and a smaller circle (the cervix) as being inside and in the center of that larger circle. Fortunately in The Pink Kit Package http://www.birthingbetter.com/product6.htm
there's an simple to understand visual of where the cervix is, what happens to birth and how the baby does come out.
We only had only this short few hours to go over some of the body preparation.
Then I asked whether women tear during the birth or have problems with their vagina from giving birth. They said many do. I showed them how to do the internal work after telling them the story of the ultra orthodox Jewish women who ‘do their homework’ in each pregnancy because they are:
- Comfortable with their body.
- Know the internal work will really help to prevent tears, piles and damage.
Like people every where they absolutely loved the hip lift, sit bone spread and Kate’s Cat. In most developing countries fathers are the birth coach. In Pakistan there is a strong cultural divide between women and men, however, I was told of a tribal group where the father helped in labour and birth.
They were amazed at how mobile their body could be. Like most of us, we never think about these things but they are so important in childbirth. We always have to keep in mind that a large object is trying to and must come out of our body (a container). Everything we can do to make our container more open for this object and more relaxed the better.
It doesn’t take education or schooling to feel the difference between tension and relaxation. This is the reason, The Pink Kit Method will become known throughout the World … we are all one humanity. The skills will help all of us give birth and also give those family members who sit with us the skills to really help.
Tomorrow is another day and I am off to Hyderabad for a week of meetings with both educated women and village women.
Visit:
http://www.commonknowledgetrust.com
http://www.birthingbetter.com
http://www.thepinkkit.com
0 comments:
Post a Comment