At 13-weeks pregnant my midwife asked where I’d like to birth my baby. I didn’t have a bump yet, but my reply was instinctive: “Wherever’s safest for when I start bleeding out”. Of the very little thought I’d given childbirth basically all of it involved pain, fear, poo and a lot of blood. For something literally so everyday, that I'd yet to experience, why was my go-to so horrific?
I’m currently around six weeks away from meeting our first baby, bouncing on a birthing ball as I type.
During pregnancy so many mums seemed to delight in taking me aside and warning me of the road ahead. Recounting their own horrible experiences, the pain, the unexpected interventions and the tearing - there's always lots of chat about tearing! But the most frightening thing? Most of these women didn’t realise their stories were frightening. Their traumas were normalised in those conversations. Shrugged off as ‘just how it is’.
It’s no wonder my fears rose and during the pandemic I wasn’t alone with reports that more pregnant people than ever felt anxious with cases of Tokophobia seemingly on the rise.
“No one should go into birth feeling scared” says Illiyin Morrison a midwifeand a birth debrief facilitator - specialising in supporting mothers with trauma. Over the phone (while reasoning with her own toddler to put shoes on) Illiyin tells me how during labour our bodies make two hormones; oxytocin, the feel-good hormone and adrenaline, which we produce when we’re scared. Adrenaline is actually very bad for labour, as it steals oxygen from the uterus muscle to give to our arms and legs, leaving us ready to fight or fly… Not helpful when your uterus is working hard on bringing your baby earthside. So, increased fear and, therefore, increased adrenaline can result in longer more painful labours - a kind of self-fulfilling prophesy.
I told friends I’d prefer to hear their birth story after I had my own to add to the conversation
Of course, there’s a need to voice birth trauma. Illiyin says “I don’t think the desire to share negative stories is ever meant to scare, I think it comes from a lot pent up emotion and, when these women start talking about their births, I think it’s to offer a warning. Like they want to save you from their experience.” In those situations, Illiyin believes, as uncomfortable as it is, it’s the pregnant person who needs to assert their boundaries. “You’re going to need to set boundaries as a parent so you might as well practice while you’re pregnant”.
Telling friends, I’d prefer to hear their story after I had my own to add to the conversation did make for some uncomfortable zoom calls and frosty doorstep drive-bys, but I’m glad I did it.
I also side-stepped sensationalised TV shows about childbirth, decided to stop worrying and start reading – everything from textbooks, to positive Instagram birth posts and the NICE guidelines on childbirth - but perhaps the most helpful thing was finding hypnobirthing, which is basically meditation. However, in two weeks it taught me more about my body and how it will labour, compared with 30-years of owning a vagina.
“When you start thinking about birth simply as the reproductive system functioning in the way it was designed to; a completely involuntary process - no different to breathing or digesting food - then a lot of fear slips away.” Says Megan Rossiter, a birth educator and the founder of Birth-Ed, a hypnobirthing company offering antenatal courses.
Sarah, 40 and a mum of two agrees, telling me that her two births were nothing alike. “I had basically no preparation for my first birth. I dealt with my fears by burying my head in the sand.”
Sarah feels her first birth was traumatic and says she wasn’t focused or equipped to deal with her contractions. However, her second birth is a different story. After finding hypnobirthing Sarah opted for a homebirth (statistically the safest place for low-risk mothers giving birth to second and subsequent babies) and describes the experiences as extremely healing. “My contractions started in the evening, but they were calm and I breathed through them easily, while settling into my little bubble. A midwife appeared at 7am, 45-minutes later I got into the warm pool in our living room and 15-minutes after that Felix was born. Whenever I think back to the birth, the emotions are warm and fuzzy – no pain, just an other-worldly magical feeling.”
Sarah’s homebirth story is sadly becoming less common as Megan tells me: “Births that have interventions (from induction to caesarean birth) seem to be on the rise, so while they may not be 'normal' in terms of the normal functioning of the human body, they are certainly commonplace. Birth is incredibly emotive and there's absolutely no single right way to do it. However, there can be a school of thought amongst some healthcare providers and some parents of 'all that matters is a healthy baby'. So many women are told, or even say, 'at least we were both ok in the end'. But to me, it's so much more than that. Safe and positive do not have to be mutually exclusive.”
I’ve come a long way since that 13-week appointment, even if I am still occasionally staring at my fiancé, while our baby kicks me, thinking; "What have we done?!". But I do now feel I have tools to deal with my anxieties and Illiyin left me with some great advice: “Write down your fears as well as your birth preferences and take them to your midwife, the person who is going to be in the room with you. I can say you’ll be ok, but I don’t know the set-up where you’re giving birth and I won’t be there. And, don’t just talk to the health professionals supporting you, make sure your birth partner knows what your anxieties are and what your preferences are. If any of the things you’re worried about come up and you can’t speak they need to be able to speak for you.”
From the negative stories we’re told, to birth’s dramatic rep in the media, it can feel as though childbirth is just another casualty amongst the many painful experiences chalked up to the fact of being born female. But today there’s undoubtedly more support and good information out there than ever before to help you plan a positive birth. Maybe not a perfect birth, but an experience that’s not shrugged off as, ‘just ‘how it is’.