Here's a little excerpt from an article by Dr. Michel Odent, noted French obstetrician.
"According to traditional wisdom in rural France, a baby in the womb should be compared to fruit on the tree. Not all the fruit on the same tree is ripe at the same time. A fruit that has been picked before it is ripe will never be fit to eat and will quickly go bad. It is the same with a baby. In other words, we must accept that some babies need a much longer time than others before they are ready to be born. If you have some apple trees in your garden, you will listen to your common sense and choose an individualized and selective approach: you will not pick all the apples on the same day."
Read moreIn the past, it was the partner’s job, as coach, to time each contraction with a stopwatch. I still have my old list of “...8:27...8:39...8:45...8:54...”from my first labour in 1983. The fixation on time has continued. Now there’s even a program that you can download to your Blackberry which will graph your contractions!
In contrast, I encourage my clients to let go of actively timing contractions at the beginning of the labour process. I think timing contractions is almost too simplistic a gauge of how labour is progressing. It makes you focus on an external reality and lose touch with your inner rhythm, your inner knowledge. It can also make you fixate on how long things have been continuing which, in turn, can lead to frustration or impatience.
Read moreIn 1982, I was obsessed with everything to do with babies. I ducked into every book store for months before I got pregnant. You’d find me sitting on the floor by the Pregnancy and Childbirth section, surrounded by books. These weren’t “Earth Mother” books. I started with the encyclopedic books, looking for the ones authored by doctors with the most letters behind their names... FRCP, etc. You know, the books which scare you half to death with descriptions of all possible things which can go wrong. Then, I went to the university medical bookstore to look at obstetric textbooks. I even studied an obscure Swiss method of breathing for labour, which I photocopied from the main library. This method left me exhausted, out of breath, and very, very confused. It didn’t help when my husband and I went to prenatal classes and pretty much “failed” breathing. And when the nurses at the hospital asked us what our “birth plan” was, we just said “to have it go well”, and then I asked if I could blow-dry my hair before the obstetrician started my induction. Yikes! Over-prepared with book knowledge....under-prepared with inner knowledge.
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