How to become an expert on birth and babies

Published: Thu, 11/07/19

I never realised that there was so much to this baby business. The local children’s centre is running a series of three, two hour long, antenatal classes The first one was on Monday this week and Venetia and I joined 11 other couples who are all due to have their babies sometime in December. This week we learned about how to bath and change a baby and how to ensure that the child sleeps safely. Venetia also had her visit from the health visitor, lots of cleaning and tidying in anticipation but in the end the visitor did not look round the house at all.

Venetia also decided that we should do a privately provided Hypnobirthing course of four sessions (after a free taster session last week). Hypnobirthing is more concerned with the physiological and emotional aspects of birth than the local authority provided antenatal classes. So far it has been interesting although by the end of the month I will have undergone at least 16 hours of training in various aspects of birth and caring for babies. Which should enable me to support Venetia more fully. I may also be a bit more prepared for assisting in caring for the little one when it does arrive.

I am also picking up some very interesting information which is new to me. In a sense childbirth is the flip side of martial training. You could say that martial training is about knowing how to cause death and destruction and thus knowing how to protect life. Birth is about bringing a new life into the world and endevouring to avoid the death or injury of child or mother. Both can be life and death struggles. The modern world tries to protect us from both the risks of violence and childbirth but essentially human beings are the same as we have always been. There is only one way to get into this world and no one gets out alive. The same goes for all vertebrates and most invertebrate creatures too. In common with other mammals there are certain hormones which have a great deal with how we experience the intense experiences. Hormones are chemical messengers which our body releases into our circulatory system. These chemicals
travel around the body and trigger receptors which will have certain effects on our physiological processes.

Endocrinology (the study of the endocrine system, the glands and hormones that are present in the human body) is a complex medical discipline in its own right. However, our daily experience of life is largely governed by two main groups of hormones. Stress messengers of which the best known is adrenaline and, what is sometimes called the ‘love hormone’, oxytocin, which is released when we feel calm, relaxed and connected. This is a massive over simplification and hormones are released in ‘cocktails’ depending upon the actual stimulation a person is exposed to. For the purpose of this post stress and calm will do.

In a martial arts context there is a lot of talk about adrenaline, why it might get released and what its effects might be in a violent situation. It is important and adrenaline has some pretty strange effects. When I was at college many years ago I ran and taught a kick boxing class. One of my students went in for his yellow belt grading and needed to do about 2 minutes gentle sparring as part of the test. Afterwards he was describing that he felt strange and shaky. I did not really understand what he was going on about until I realised that he was having an adrenaline rush for the first time in his life. (I think he had had a rather sheltered upbringing, but there has to be a first time for everything.) A big problem with martial arts is that it is very difficult to create training situations where adrenaline will actually be released. It did happen to my student under the unfamiliar stress of a grading, but if you have seen
some real violence it is very hard to get genuinely stressed in a training situation. A more likely experience in a well run class is that those training feel safe, accepted and encouraged to discover their full potential and the hormone released in such a situation is more likely to be oxytocin and its friends than adrenaline. This is probably a good thing in that people learn, flourish and develop in a calm and accepting environment than they do when stressed by fear and anxiety.

On the other hand, pregnancy and birth should be about the arrival of a baby with all the love and happiness that should bring. So, it is hoped that the mother will feel calm, relaxed and secure and thus under the influence of oxytocin during the pregnancy and during the birth process. The uterus even has oxytocin receptors which stimulate contractions to help with the actual birth. However, birth can be painful, frightening and a sense of losing control is common which will lead to stress and the release of adrenaline. The stress hormone will effectively stop labour, which makes sense from an evolutionary point of view (Neanderthal mother about to give birth when a saber toothed tiger turns up and she needs to find somewhere safer to give birth.) But not really helpful in a modern birth unit. It seems that a lot of what could have been perfectly natural births end up being medically induced or even as C section deliveries because
the mother ‘fails to progress’ because adrenalin has shut down the birth process. Which is even more stressful, releasing even more adrenaline and the cycle worsens. The Hypnobirthing training is intended to make pregnant women and their birth partners aware of these emotional factors in the birth process and thus ready to cope with them.

I am also reflecting on the unconscious factors which affect our experiences in life. I am being reminded that we can influence which hormones are most likely to be released according to the stimulation that occurs. These chemicals may make life a relaxed and pleasurable experience or an anxious and stressful trial.

We will look at this issue at the Rune Retreat next Midsummer, indeed we will do our best to create a situation where oxytocin is more prevalent than adrenaline. Come along and find out if we can manage it at http://rr.stavcamp.org/ You will have a chance to meet our little one too.

regards

Graham

PS A rather strange coincidence has happened with the Antenatal group, more on that later. In the meantime if you want to know more about the Hypnobirthing class we are attending the link is here https://www.letobirththerapies.co.uk/christine-duffill/