Welcome back

18 June 2008

Long time since I wrote in our birthing better blog. I've been in Costa Rica and the Galapagos Islands which is off the coast of Ecuador.

I had access to cable TV and believe it or not there were stations dedicated to showing childbirth! That's pretty amazing to me really.

The births were all sorts: cesareans, water births, hospital births with lots of intervention and others quite 'natural'.

Now you have to understand that as the Trustee to Common Knowledge Trust is to speak from one perspective only .... whether the mother and father-to-be appear to have birth and coaching skills. That's the only thing I look at when watching birth videos.

Before I go further let's all agree on one thing ... if you're pregnant you will give birth ... guaranteed 100%. How, where, when, with whom are all up in the air until that day but one way or another you will give birth.

Giving birth one way or another is not the Pink Kit Method For Birthing Better® goal. Our goal is for you to recognize that giving birth is an activity you have to do and that activity is entirely, exclusively and totally directed to your baby's efforts to be born.

If you don't have the appropriate skills to do that then you'll still give birth but it will be one way or another ... and what I saw on TV in both Costa Rica and Ecuador was no different than I've seen on thousands of videos since 1970 ... women are just getting through labour.

Curiously I also watched a Trinny and Suzanne program about bra fitting. How does that have anything to do with giving birth? They went to the last town in the UK that made bras and set up a challenge. They invited 1,000 women to come to a free bra fitting and receive a free bra.

They got 400 professional bra fitters who kept records of how many women had the correct size bra. What did they discover? Ninety percent (90%) did not have the correct bra on. 90%!

Then Trinny and Suzanne talked about why so few women. They wondered if women were lazy, didn't care, didn't know or what. The reasons are not so important as to the result. If you don't know or don't have the skills then you can't do the task at hand.

So with 90% of women in a town that made bras not having the correct size, well what does that say about us giving birth?

From what I see on birth videos from the perspective of the Pink Kit skills, I can tell you that more that 90% of women don't have a clue how to give birth, they are just getting through birth. I'll also tell you that 100% of fathers don't have a clue how to help.

This is sad but a hidden epidemic. Because women get through birth, it's assumed that it's perfectly ok for them to do just that. Society places no social expectation that pregnancy is the time to learn the best skills so every woman can work with her baby's efforts to be born and that fathers need to know how to help his partner do that task well.

We've got to up our game.

What's even more curious about these real life births shown on TV ... whether the woman births in water or with lots of tubes the lack of skills is absolutely the same for both the woman and man. Not only that but the care providers are all very alert and using their skills and watching the woman 'just get by' and ignore the father who is usually just paralyzed by her side.

Anyway, birth has got to be better than this.

So get your Pink Kit or give it as a gift to a loved one. Don't go into birth without the skills that can change your birth experience from something that happens to you to something you participate in at every single moment.

I guess I'm back online for a while.