Your brain wants control, your body needs security - about having children under modern conditions.
Our modern maternity care is based on the desire to scan for and avoid risks for mother and child through external control and medical technology. And it is fantastic from many perspectives, the pregnant women who need care can often be found and sick or weak children can get extra help. But for a healthy parturient, the desire to control and measure can create risks that were not there before. What do I mean then? Isn't it good to do everything to ensure that the child and parent are well during the birth?
Safety during childbirth is an incredibly complex issue, and at the same time, under the right conditions, amazingly simple and ingenious! The bottom line is that our brains and our bodies (and hormonal systems!) can experience security in different ways. Intellectually, many people feel safe with very well-trained medical staff nearby and with machines that measure heart sounds and the force of uterine contractions. But the security you need to be able to give birth is a deeper, ancient sense of security that has nothing to do with surveillance and control. Your womb and your hormones (which control birth) need peace and quiet, darkness or dim lighting, familiar loving faces and hands around you, the safety of being able to let go and trust the process, nothing to disturb or worry and freedom from having to grasp intellectual decision. The routines and demands placed on a woman in labor in a modern hospital environment tend to slow down the ancient hormonal process that is birth.
I often get the question "How can I create security and a homely feeling even though I want to give birth in a hospital?" I want to answer that it is possible, but it requires careful preparation and luck! You need to have a doula or other support persons with you who can guard your space so that you can go into yourself and let the hormones flow. You cannot give birth while you yourself ensure that your birth certificate is read, that you are allowed to give consent before care routines take place and at the same time create an atmosphere in the room. It can be an overwhelming task for a partner as well, who is there to be close to you AND become a parent himself. Unfortunately, it is also a lot about luck, the luck of meeting a midwife who believes in you and who is knowledgeable in physiological births. And who dares to trust you even though she may have to go against the hospital's routine.
It is possible to give birth undisturbed in a hospital, but it usually requires a team of support and a lot of preparation and persistence on the part of the parents. And a great understanding of how hospital births work and what you will encounter when you get there.
