UK correspondence

25 August 2007

I arrived on 21 August to the UK and got in touch with a friend of mine who works as an independent midwife. I invited her to let people know that I would be in the UK for the month of October and would like to speak about growing a skilled birthing population.

Shortly afterwards I received an email from a woman who works as a midwfe who is gathering people to show a film called Red Tent. I have not seen the film. She mentioned it was about a pregnant woman (having twins), a midwife and an obstetrician.

She said she had never heard of me nor The Pink Kit. So I sent her an email explaining where The Pink Kit Method For Birthing Better® might fit into the film. This is what I wrote.

Hi again:

I've been thinking about the film you are about to show and where the PK comes into play. May I take some time to explain that now.

There are three primary characters: pregnant woman, midwife and obstetrician. The PK is only about the woman and what she can and should do to prepare for birth ... more so when she is having a less common birth (twins) that draws concerns (right or wrong) from the modern (and sometimes traditional) health system.

In our present maternity systems, this woman obviously is making a 'choice' about her care provider. Choice is considered to be one of the acts of taking responsibility for birth by the woman. The two birth providers will obviously have different view points about the safety/risk factors of this particular birth (which may or may not be true).

So, the PK's underlying goal is for pregnant families to take on another aspect of responsibility ... preparing for birth and using self-learned birth and coaching skills based on our human commonalities. After all, in the simplest form childbirth is an exercise in plumbing. An object has to come out of a container. In order to do that it must pass through a hole in a tube, open a diaphram and then an aperture. We can prepare our container to help the object and then work with the object's efforts to come through. As humans, unlike other animals, we have a very sophisticated cognitive brain that can couple to our physical body through learned skills. This is one of our humanity's gift and disaster. We are very skilled in multiple ways from driving a car, to cooking a meal, to building roads, dancing, playing an instrument.

Certainly we can use our cognitive mind to make 'choices' however skills are more likely to produce results than just 'choice'. 'I choose to have a great meal tonight' is more likely to consistently happen if the cook has the skills. Even if those skills are married to the more subjective aspects of our humanity such as intuition and instinct.

The PK developed in the 1970s over a 10 year period because families wanted more skills so they could feel in 'control' of their birth. There was and still is NO effort to try to make birth more 'natural' with these skills. Birth is birth in all it's forms. Pregnancy leads to birth. When we are pregnant, it's the right time to prepare for birth.

It's true that we can never predict what our birth will be like, however, we learned that our skills could adapt to all and any birth reality and be the focus to give us the control we wanted.

The results have been spectacular. Families have more positive birth experiences. This means, each person or family feels more positive about their own experience. For example. 'The PK was great. I had an epidural hours after I thought I would.' or 'The internal work was terrific, I can have pain free sex for the first time in 2 years' Or 'Loved the PK, preparing for birth brought us closer as a family and I used the skills during the c/s and in recovery.'

Or 'without the PK skills our unexpected and unassisted home birth would have been terrifying.' Or 'Our birth plans changed, but we kept using the skills anyway and had a great birth.'

You get the gist.

Our Trust promotes what is probably a newish concept given to us by the thousands of birthing families who really understood the importance of learning how to birth and coaching during pregnancy and then using the skills in their birth. It's seems to make common sense yet there are things that hinder the concept.

Regardless of what hinders the concept, we have to face a reality. We are all one humanity. We all blink, cough and can tighten up our rectums. Babies grow inside our body and have to come out. All women give birth out the same hole (let's just put aside c/s for a moment) and every labour consists of one contraction followed by another.

Pain is often associated with the contractions and humans tend to react to strong pain by tensing up and feeling uncomfortable. Women who have no pain or very manageable pain do not find birth challenging although there still may be medical conditions that require attention and even a still birth at the end or other problems.

Every woman can prepare her body for giving birth in the same way because we share the same body and the same skills can be used to prepare our container to open up to let the object out. This self learning brings us closer to the process of being pregnant and giving birth and grows our confidence and capability to handle the unknowable ... what labour will be like. However, labour unfolds and then we can use our skills throughout and at every moment to work with our baby's efforts to be born.

men have the exact same body and can learn these skills. Then they can learn to read and hear how a woman is reacting to the sensations produced by the baby's efforts to come through her container. He can immediately see and hear whether she is coping or feeling challenged by the internal sensations and help immediate. Helping a woman meet the challenge gives her the sense of staying in control. Being in control also means letting go but knowing how to.

The woman in this movie (which I have not seen) may choose a home birth with a midwife. She can take another form of responsibility by preparing her body then work with her babies efforts. This lowers some potential risks associated with any birth (failure of the baby to come through the tube, open the diaphragm or the aperture). This also helps the woman who works as a midwife within a political environment.

Anyway, our Trust would like to see this concept become wide spread and eventually a high social expectation that when you are pregnant you learn how to birth.

Thanks for your interest. Don't hesitate to correspond. I'll try to get into internet cafes for the next month. After that, as I mentioned, I'll be in HERTS for a month before heading back to NZ.

If I keep saying the same thing but in different ways, please forgive me. My role is to keep giving the same message so that people can begin to conceive of their whole birthing population as people who need to be skilled at giving birth and coaching. It seems to make common sense yet somehow isn't even thought about.

Today there was a commentary in a local newspaper about a woman who has made the 'choice' to have a home birth because she didn't like getting lost in the hospital trying to find out where to go to get lab tests. She also didn't like the personality of the first midwife she met and she thought the hospital was dirty.

Fair enough. All those things play on your head during pregnancy and may be the driving force for you to make other choices. Although she did say that if the hospital had been clean and new like some of the new maternity hospitals that she would go there. So, her choice to seek out and pay for an independent midwife was based on things 'outside' of herself.

Immediately I sent her an email and the comments above. Unless we become skilled at giving birth, external factors will play heavily in our opinions. How will she feel if some medical necessity requires her to go to that hospital? Well, if she and her husband had their Pink Kit skills they would go and keep using them and focus more on what they can do for themselves than on external factors.

So, let's jump on board and grow birth skills for all of us and all our births.