I am frequently asked whether The Pink Kit is making a political statement about childbirth.
I'm more frequently told that The Pink Kit MUST be about natural birth, alternative and even anti-medical and pro-home birth and midwives.
Sometimes when you have a job, your personal opinions are different from your job description. As a trustee to Common Knowledge Trust, I have to consistently and clearly give the same message about The Pink Kit Method For Birthing Better®.
However, I have to admit. I personally hold the same opinion.
So, let's get down to it. NO, emphatically, NO ... The Pink Kit is not making a political statement about birth.
However, The Pink Kit is making a SOCIAL statement and that social statement evolved along with the skills from hundreds of families in the 1970s. No, we didn't get together and brainstorm. No, we didn't take the skills from other systems.
No, there is no scientific basis:
- For knowing your body.
- Learning how to work with your baby' s efforts to be born.
- Working together in partnership with your husband, friend or relative.
- For feeling confident about how to use your skills in whatever birth you have ... because giving birth is an activity.
Over the years we have received information about women who work as midwives and doulas who are 'teaching' other birth professionals these skills yet are doing little or nothing to directly get the skills to expectant parents ... nor encouraging those they are teaching to also grow a skilled birthing population.
This is not a political issue. It's a social issue and tells us something about what we value and how we symbolically treat each other as women.
On 7 January I wrote an entry about a conversation I had with a woman who works as a midwife and her thoughts about becoming more skilled.
That's the story of one woman who might work with a number of families during the years she is in practice. But what about all the other expectant parents? And what does it mean if she takes the approach of being the practitioner who 'owns' these skills?
There is no doubt that the families who were the foundation of these skills fully gripped the reality and benefit of having their own set of skills. Too many birth plans changed. Too many birth providers were unexpectedly occupied elsewhere on the day of the birth. Too many medical issues prevented the preferred choices. Too many, many other issues made the 'perfect birth' improbable.
Isn't that what so many people want with their birth? A perfect birth and perfect baby.
We seemed to be screaming that we deserved, were entitled and required a perfect birth ... just like an apple with no bruises.
Then reality struck. We had to do it ourselves. If we wanted a perfect birth, we had to accept less then perfect along with our imperfect lives. If we expected others to give us a perfect experience then we were often disappointed, angry and let down.
If we believed wishful thinking would produce that rapturous experience, we were startled into reality with the first few really painful contractions.
But no matter how we viewed the whole situation around us, we were left with one stark truth. We were more responsible for ourselves than we believed possible. We believed 'they would take care of me'. We believed 'we have no choices'. We believed 'birth is unknown therefore unknowable'.
This all changed once the skills evolved into what has become The Pink Kit Method For Birthing Better®.
Then the question immediately surfaced once the Pink Kit resources became publicly available ... who should 'teach' or 'do' the skills.
From the view point of CKT this wasn't even a question or a thought. The skills come from us ... women and men who are having babies. And the skills need to remain with us.
If these skills are co-opted by birth professionals then we socially perpetuate the situation we have now ... women who don't know how to birth and fathers who don't know how to help them.
The social symbolism is profound. We either continue to reduce the role of expectant parents, keep them feeling afraid, reliant on their provider and in fact ... a child OR we socially grow a new value that equates being pregnant with learning how to birth/coach for whatever birth unfolds.
When we look at the world what do we want for ourselves? Do we want the necessary and essential skills that help us navigate through this incredible and dynamic, life transforming event ... even if the delivery is surgical OR do we want to remain passive looking for someone to save us.
Look at your own life. Do you feel more comfortable when you have skills to fulfill whatever task is facing you?
If you need a teacher of The Pink Kit then use The Pink Kit Package. It is your teacher.
If you are a birth professional who is teaching or doing the PK skills on your clients, think bigger and become conscious that you are perpetuating a type of reliance that can tire you and cause your clients to either overly admire you or be angry you didn't meet their expectations.
If you are a birth professional who is teaching other birth professionals these skills then at least get them to become wholesalers and/or affiliates of The Pink Kit and in parallel grow a skilled birthing population.
The Pink Kit skills were not developed to become midwifery or doula skills, they evolved from us ... we ... who were giving birth. Let's grow that empowerment in more of us.
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