#298 | Is Childbirth Painful?

Is childbirth truly one of the most painful experiences—even, as one person claims, comparable to being burned alive? In this episode, we bust this widespread myth after first diving into Elon Musk’s provocative claim that C-sections might lead to larger brains over generations.

The debate about pain-free birth has been raging on social media, with strong opinions on both sides. We discuss the unintended effects of setting women’s expectations about whether their births will—or won’t—be painful. 

Also, Cynthia shares insights from her work with HypnoBirthing clients, given that HypnoBirthing is commonly misunderstood as being a method that promises to eliminate childbirth pain. If it doesn’t make that promise, what is HypnoBirthing’s actual stance on pain? Moreover, how does Cynthia suggest educators guide women in their preparation?

We also feature listener comments, delve into the power of language to shape our perceptions of birth, and pose the ultimate question: Is childbirth inherently painful? Let us know your thoughts.

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Transcript

I'm Cynthia Overgard, owner of HypnoBirthing of Connecticut, childbirth advocate and postpartum support specialist. And I'm Trisha Ludwig, certified nurse midwife and international board certified lactation consultant. And this is the Down To Birth Podcast. Childbirth is something we're made to do. But how do we have our safest and most satisfying experience in today's medical culture? Let's dispel the myths and get down to birth.

Imagine the second episode of season six. I don't know if I ever imagined I guess I don't know. It's a long time. Forgot about it. It's a long time. It's a long time. It's gonna be a darn good season. I know I'm really excited. Great guests coming up. Very excited. All right, so what are we doing today?

Well, before we get into what we're doing today. Let's just briefly talk for a moment about something that was sent to me yesterday, some from some friends in healthcare. And it looks like it's a little bit outdated, but I don't know. It seems to be going around social media right now, so I guess it's relevant regardless of the date it was posted. This is from Elon Musk.

Who's he? I'm just kidding. Go ahead.

Never heard of him. Whoever he is, put that aside. It's not that whatever, it doesn't matter, except that he has an extremely large following and very big influence in the world, right? Yes, and he puts out there on whatever it is x states, there are certainly other factors at play. Thank God, he at least acknowledges that. But the heavy use of C sections allows for a larger brain as brain size has historically been limited by birth canal diameter. Now I didn't read the comments. I didn't see any of the original, you know, content here. I only have this little segment that he wrote, and I'm sure the comments are fascinating to read. But can we just talk about this for a second? Yes, this is, like, the one industry he's not in, and he's commenting on it.

So what he's saying, basically, is, if we start to rely on the heavy use of C section, basically promoting that all women should have a C section. And over time, as a result of that, humans can grow larger brains, because then we eliminate the birth canal, and there's no limit to the size of a baby that a mother can carry and the size of a brain that a baby can grow birth canals are, you know, they're like the appendix. They just really don't know what the purpose is for them. That's kind of where we're heading now, then we don't need them. Yeah, we don't need them. So obviously, he knows nothing about birth. Because, first of all, I'm not even sure how many 1000s of years this would take. I mean, evolution happens pretty slowly, but he obviously doesn't care about the birth experience. For about he obviously doesn't care about the birth experience for a woman or her baby, completely neglecting all the considerations of health for a baby being born vaginally in favor of bigger brains. And I mean, honestly, does head size have that much to do with brain size? Anyway, brain functionality. It's smart. It's not that. It's not about the relationship of brain size to head size. There's probably a pretty strong correlation between the two of those. There's not a strong correlation between brain size and intelligence. And I'm stunned that his comment implies that there is that would indicate that all larger people are a little bit more intelligent than smaller people, that men, on average, are more intelligent than women because their heads are larger. Of course, on average, it's just completely faulty. That isn't true. He's going based on the fact that humans are considered the most intelligent animal, and we have larger brains than the apes that preceded us in evolution. But he's he's missing the fact that that isn't about intelligence. The reason we view ourselves as so intelligent is that we have developed a prefrontal cortex, and that allows us to plan and to look at the future and look at the past. It's about the development of the prefrontal cortex. So this whole thing about brain size is just it's not true. The synapses of the brain are what has to do with intelligence. So the whole premise, never mind what he's getting wrong in our industry, the whole premise is wrong. But a casual comment like that is so harmful, right?

When you have that kind of influence. Right? I mean, now you're going to have moms running around thinking, well, if I give if I give birth by Plan C section, my baby's brain and head can grow larger, therefore having a more intelligent baby, which is just ludicrous thinking and overlooking all of the health benefits. I mean, there is truth to the fact that human babies are born earlier than many other mammals because of our upright position, like mammals who walk on all fours, can give birth to much more neurologically developed offspring they can, you know, an elephant can give birth to a baby, and the baby gets up and walks away a human baby. This is why we have the fourth fourth trimester is so important. This is why the first three months that babies are so neurologically wired to be close to their care provider, because their brains are actually a little bit underdeveloped compared to other mammals at birth.

I mean, that also has to do with bone development. We have semi porous brains, and most mammals have much more dense, uh, did I say brains? Bones? We've semi porous craniums, bones, the bones, structural system is semi porous in humans and in other animals, it's it's very dense. So that's why they can walk away. I don't know that. I just think this comment of his rife with problems. And the end, I think perhaps the biggest problem is, yeah, there's no continued conversation about it. He had that little note, like, there are other factors at play, right? Let's poo poo, all of those like mortality, that never mind birth satisfaction, mortality and never mind health of the baby. But it sets off rumors, because if enough, 10s of millions of people will read that and they have at the next dinner party you're going to have, the person who says, oh, did you hear the baby's born by C section? Are more intelligent. That's just how this thing goes. More irresponsible, right? I think it was irresponsible. He doesn't know he did that. You know, it's everyone feels they can talk about birth. It's just, you know, but when you're inside of this industry and you really understand what is at play, mortality, It's life and death situation a deep matter of health, even in the case of survival, we shouldn't casually make comments like this, yeah, don't, let's not forget about the the squeeze, the neurological impact of the squeeze going through that vaginal canal, and how important that is for a baby's neuro development and the microbiome. Hello. I mean, that is probably the most important reason that a baby needs to come through the vagina. That is sets you up for your life, your your health, for your life. So this is anyway we're talking about it. Because if Elon is going to put something out there like that, we are going to need to refute it so that this does not get translated into, oh, I should have a C section so my baby's head can grow larger and be more intelligent. No.

Well, I think his people have been talking to our people, and he's been trying to get on the show. So this would be, oh, talk about him. Well, we'll say yes now, and we'll have him on now that we have a topic. Okay, great. Okay, perfect. That'll be a fun conversation. Okay? But really, the point of today's The purpose of today's episode, is to talk about the concept of pain in childbirth. So this whole conversation started back in early few weeks ago, anyway, on our Instagram when I shared something that was another one of these blatant, just absurd statements that was flying around social media, and I shared it on our page, and it started a very interesting conversation around the concept of pain and women's perceptions of pain, and the word pain, and everything about pain and childbirth. So I guess we should start with the original statement. Okay, so this was a post that said giving birth is the second most painful thing a human can experience the first is being burned alive. Oh, my God, I really hesitated sharing this. I'd like to know which person experienced both and and just the just even like reading that was so it was just so gruesome to even read that I didn't even really want to share it. But then I thought, You know what? If this is how we're talking about childbirth, and this is what people are liking and agreeing with, then, okay, this is part of the major problem we have in our culture around childbirth. So the conversation basically started around, you know, saying is, is pain the right word to describe the experience, the sensation, the feeling of childbirth, or should there be some other interpretation of this? And many women wrote back and felt like, you know what, I'm really frustrated by all these natural birth accounts that are talking about pain free childbirth. And I went into birth with the expectation that if I did all the right things, and I, you know, I did. You. Whatever preparations, birth, planning, preparations, and Heaven up birthing, and all this stuff that I would experience birth as painless, and that they were so disappointed that that was not their birth experience, and they were so shocked and overwhelmed by how painful the experience actually was. And I have a ton of antidote, and I have a ton of anecdotes that we can share from the moms who wrote in and started this discussion. But the consensus was, can we please talk more about expectations around pain or lack thereof in birth? And many women also wrote in and said, Oh my gosh. You know, my kidney stone was 1000 times more painful than birth I would take. One woman said I would take bumping into the corner of my bed and, you know, stubbing my toe over the I would take that pain over childbirth.

So anyone, anyone would take stubbing their toe over. Did she say it the other way around? Yes, the other way around.

She say that pain was so, yeah, sorry, sorry, I the pain of stubbing my toe was far worse than the pain of childbirth.

This is an area very close to my work in HypnoBirthing, and having taught HypnoBirthing for 18 years to 100 and something couples a year, more than 2000 couples, I learned very early on in my work that I better get this conversation right, because it is all about expectations, and in HypnoBirthing, the founder of HypnoBirthing had her position on this, and what she said was, childbirth is without pain. In a normal birth, unless something is wrong or the baby's mal positioned. Birth isn't painful. That's not what I say. And then you have, of course, society saying it's the most painful thing. I don't I think it would be presumptuous of me to tell anyone whether it's painful or not. My strong belief, and my only belief, as an educator who continues to educate women in this is, let's not talk about pain. How about anytime someone runs a marathon, people die. They have ambulances there. People collapse from injury, from pain. But when you're planning to run a marathon, nobody says, Oh, my God, the pain like, oh, you can't imagine the cramps you're going to experience, or what happens if hypothermia develops, or if you pull a calf muscle, they go into this feeling powerful and strong and with a positive view. My commitment to my couples as soon as we start working is, can we just not do that? Because who am I to say? I've experienced three things that were significantly more painful than childbirth. In fact, I don't describe my births as painful, though they were incredibly intense, incredibly but pain is not the word for me. It was intense. It was like the relief of a lifetime when it was over. But it's not the right word. Pain for me is something where my body is screaming, something is wrong, like when I broke my wrist, the body is screaming. You're going to deal with this right now, something is wrong. That's for me. That isn't the experience of childbirth, but I had, I remember the first client I had early in my work. Her name was Monica. She's one of my first feedback clients, and I remember she called me, laughing about her birth and telling me how painful it was. She's like, it was painful, and she was laughing about it, and I remember just taking it all in. This is so interesting. She's laughing describing it as painful. I could cry thinking about when I broke my wrist. It was so painful. And she went and had another V back. So I'm like, what is it? Is it society? Is it the expectation? Is it the story? Is it that we think it'll be painful, so we experience it in terms of pain. So I let it be I just say, how about we go into this and focus on how we respond to what we feel rather than what we feel? Let's hear what our community said about this, now that you heard my professional take on it.

Yeah. So I guess the question is, if we don't discuss it as a painful experience, then are we still also under preparing women for something that might be extremely overwhelming. And the other argument that was brought up a lot when I commented a very similar thing as what you just said about, you know, maybe pain isn't the right word, and you know, this is the intensity and the discomfort and the overwhelming sensations that are, no doubt, part of birth. Nobody can deny that are part of a normal physiologic process, whereas breaking your wrist is a pathologic process. And there is that it's a signal to your body that something needs urgent attention and that something is wrong? And so lots of women started to write in about, well, what about my ace and clitic baby, or my posterior baby, or, you know, my malposition baby, that's a sign that there's something is wrong in the body. And that birth experience was, was experienced. Experienced as a lot more painful. And we had moms who had had super simple, spontaneous vaginal births, and then one baby that, you know, their fifth baby that was posterior asylum and ended up in a C section, and to them that birth was painful. So how does that play into it? How do we, well, it also we also forget that culture has an enormous role. So in the Western world, especially, I think in the United States, maybe we can add South America now, because their C section rates are like 90% in so many countries. Yeah, but women grow up fearing birth, and the most positive thing most women ever hear is, don't worry, you'll forget it all later, as if that's some kind of consolation to us. So I don't again, we have having all the experience that I have. I've never had the sense of women not being prepared enough. Because we can say, if you feel an intense cramp, if you feel a weightiness, if you feel a pressure, we just by avoiding the word pain. There's not this terror that we have, but they come into the experience expecting pain well, except a lot of women are being taught now that they can override, that they can supersede the pain in childbirth if they do the right type of preparation. And I think that's what we have to get away from.

That's talking about pain, that's saying you can feel no pain, that's still the concept of, here's how to feel no pain. What I say and this, I think this is truthful and ethical to say, I would never presume to know what you'll experience in birth. How can I possibly know my two births felt nothing alike? How could I presume to know what every woman's experience is like. You'll tell me what it's like when it's over. However, what I do know is every human being can change their experience, their physiologic experience, with breath, focus, relaxation, there are things that actually change our physical experience, and that's where we put our focus. And turns out, it's very effective, but this pain conversation never goes away, and I can see why women resent the concept of a pain free promise, because I think it's presumptive, or the women resent the fact that, well, I did do that work, I did do the meditation, I did do the focus, who promised them they wouldn't feel pain, who promised I think the disappointment is In if I do all those things and I still experience an overwhelming birth, what did I do wrong?

That's the person who was promised what they would or would not physically experience. All we know is you can have your most comfortable birth, which still may be incredibly uncomfortable. Your most comfortable birth, we know for sure is through the path of physiologic relaxation, focus and breathing. We can change our birth experience mid birth. We can make it worse by tensing and clenching and shortening our breath, or we can respond differently to it. It still can be incredibly intense. Some women can call painful, but that's that woman's most comfortable path, just like if you get in the dentist chair, not that that's a good comparison, because that's not a natural experience, but you still will. 100% of people theoretically should have a much more comfortable experience by getting in that chair, listening to music, placing their focus on something that calms them, deepening their breath and relaxing their jaw, their mouth, their hands. That's the path, and we just don't say what you will or will not experience, because who can say that? It's too intimate? Who can let's hear what women said about it?

Yeah, I will get into that. I think that one of the best responses we got, of course, came from Barbara Harper, who said just the most perfectly profound statement in that she did say Pain is inevitable in childbirth, but suffering is not that is where we have the difference. And I still think that pain is not the right word. I think it's just we need a word that is more comprehensive. Pain is very pain is very specific in our brains, to pathology, to problems, to things that have gone wrong, to things that we have to run away from. And the discomfort or pain of childbirth is the opposite of that. It is something that you have to surrender to. It is something that you have to embrace. It is something that you have to feel. So we need a word that encompasses that. It's gotta be a bigger word.

I mean, I always talk about it in terms of intensity, but I still disagree that pain is inevitable or even intensity. We throughout history, there have been how many women who gave birth in their sleep. I don't know how it's possible, but they woke up with babies. I've had clients who said to me, the baby slipped out. This isn't the norm.

Oh no, that is totally possible. And I've had absolutely I've had probably a couple dozen women tell me their birth stories that when the babies came out, they said to their husbands or to whoever was in the room. Um, I can't wait to do that again, like it was blissful. So I don't agree that it's inevitable.

There are women who experience birth without pain. There's no question, right? It is not a painful experience for them. And tons of women wrote in and said that. I think her point is that you can't there is going to some women are going to experience pain and childbirth. And many women actually are in the inner battle here. The inner conflict is, do I actually have control over that? And how much do I have control over that, and how much of that is just my physiology and my natural pain threshold, or the ease of, you know, my baby's position, length of labor. I mean, there's just so many factors, and so how much does each individual, individual woman actually have the ability to control that? And I agree with you completely. When you're promised a pain free experience and you don't have that, that is going to be the greatest disappointment, and you're going to feel like you did something wrong. You'd feel betrayed. Also, you just feel betrayed. How? But also, how could someone tell you what it'll feel like? All we can control is, how will we will respond to what we're feeling? That's it, and there's so much out of our hands. We don't know when you'll go into labor, we don't know how much rest you'll have had. We don't know how it's going to feel, if it's going to be comfortable, if it's going to be in your back, in the front, all we have is, how will we respond to what we're feeling? That's it. That's all we have. And we really stop thinking about, well, what will it feel like? We stop that? How will we respond? Becomes the whole name of the game. That's, that's the work I do. That's the work I've done. For years. I have never had anyone tell me that I promised anything to them or that, you know, they this was not what I thought. Because how could I tell them what my two births felt nothing alike? So I think we need to. I The word is so overused, empowered. I mean, it's such a hard word to even use anymore because it said too much. But empowering women is truly giving them the awareness of what they can control and letting go of what we can't and how we respond is in the realm of what we can control. That's it. That's all we've got.

And then are you of the belief that fear, the experience of fear, or fearing birth, makes it more painful. We know that birth, that fear plays into the physiology of how birth goes. There's, you know, that absolutely is seen in nature all of the time. But does a woman's fear make her experience birth as more painful?

Yes, of course, we already know that. That's That's why a benefit of many programs is we, we try to, we don't try to. The intention is we release anything that can provoke fear. One example from ina may Gaskin is she was once checking a woman mid labor. She was checking how dilated she was. The woman was leaning back in bed and her husband's loving arms, he was straddled. She was leaning in him. They were both leaning backwards on the bed, and ina may put her hand inside and checked her for whatever reason, she did a vaginal exam, and in that moment, the husband nuzzled with his wife. Nuzzled cheek to cheek, and just said, You're marvelous. And Aina Mae felt the woman's cervix open two centimeters. In that moment, the woman didn't know what her cervix did, but she closed her eyes and grand and said to her husband, say it again. And he said, You're marvelous. And she said, Say it again. She knew she felt wonderful hearing it, and I may had the experience of seeing that her physiology fully responded to that. So that's the opposite of fear that was just experiencing love, acceptance is a beautiful story, yes and I, and again, fear we. There's 1000s, millions of examples of how fear can impact the physiology of birth. But does a woman's FEAR OF BIRTH make her experience birth as more painful if she has a painful birth experience, does she look back afterwards and say,

Yes, well, she won't know that consciously. She'll only have her experience. But we are conditioned to fear birth, so the minute we feel anything, we get scared. It's like, if you go to the dentist here, so many people fear the dentist, and if they even come near them, they're like, ah, they go crazy. It's like, I haven't done anything yet, but they have so much fear. Yeah, I think we all know that. I mean, I think you have, I think we do have to believe that when you are fearful, you are experiencing things in a more tense and uncomfortable way, and that does increase the sensation of pain. Now, can women fear birth and still have a totally easy, fast, physiologic and maybe painless birth. Yes, they can, because there's just this other element of the physiology of birth that can just be very powerful, and it can go both ways, right. But every woman should arm herself in the best way that she possibly can to expand. Experience birth in the safest way, and that is to learn to trust birth and to learn how to cope and manage your own physiology in the face of discomfort. And that you know that that can be done through things like breath work, meditation, even physically training yourself. I think you know sometimes, maybe athletes like you use the example of marathon runners, if you have been through those physical discomforts, your your mental game has been conditioned, your mental strength is there to go to a different place mentally when you get to that edge, well, you said the keyword, the keyword is trust. So I think anyone can have a really beautiful birth experience without formally learning any of these tools. They simply have to trust like all the other mammals do, because they haven't been taught to fear it. It's just like sex. It's just like when you have young adults who are anticipating their first sexual experience. So many women are taught that it's painful the first time. And you know, if she's first of all with a partner with whom she doesn't feel trust, it sure as heck isn't going to be as pleasurable. Her body isn't going to open and be the same. But if she's expecting pain, you know her muscles are going to be tight. You know her vaginal muscles are going to be tense and tight. If she's not expecting pain and she's experiencing trust and intimacy and love, her body's going to completely transform and open. It's the exact same thing. Trust is the game, not the I Agree, meditation, breath work and techniques, and I don't think, though, that it's just about trusting birth. That's one thing, because we are conditioned to fear birth, and we have and you do have to undo all that learning and learn how to trust birth. And we do that through listening to our podcast, through listening to positive birth stories, through reading Anna May's work, all of that stuff to educate ourselves, to learn how to trust birth. But I think the other element of it that is so important is actually trusting your own body. Like, do you trust your body when you get sick? Do you trust your body will heal when you get injured, do you trust that your body will heal, or do you feel frantic and panicked and need every you know Doctor in the world to give you a second, third, fourth opinion, whatever it is like, how much safety Do you feel within your own body when you get to the edge of discomfort? And we all have fears in our body, but the work is in overcoming those through trusting your body when you have difficult experiences, and trusting that your body can heal, and trusting that your body has the internal mechanisms to solve whatever issue is going on, whether that's a fever or an asynclitic baby. I don't talk about that enough. Okay, so let's talk. Let's let's hear from, let's hear from our community on this. Okay, so the first response to the comment about, you know, giving birth is the second most painful thing a human can experience, next to being burned alive. First woman said, well, then being burned alive must not be that painful. My unmedicated birth is the only birth I would willingly repeat out of the three. So her medicated births were more of a painful experience for her than her unmedicated and we can't take out her emotional experience from that. And she can't take it out either. If she didn't feel loved, embraced, welcomed, she was defending herself, she will have a worse experience. And even she can't declare that it was necessarily physiologic pain that was present in her more painful births. It could have been how she was treated and how she felt. That changes the experience too.

And we also can't overlook the fact that in an unmedicated birth, you get that whole endorphin system going that actually helps you to quickly erase and forget, you know, any of the overwhelming discomfort that you might feel right in birth. Another one said, my midwife almost didn't come in. My midwife almost didn't come in time for the birth of my third because my husband and I literally laughed all day long, and we didn't think I was in real labor until it was almost too late. Very similar to the client that you had, Rhonda.

I laughed all through my birth, she said, and ate watermelon.

This woman said, I wanted this so badly, but birth was absolute agony for me.

Oh, I thought you meant a different I just thought of a different client. I was talking about Monica earlier with her V back, who was laughing, telling me how painful it was. But I've had, I just thought of another client who just laughed and enjoyed her birth the whole time and eat watermelon. Okay, so I've seen women labor like that. Yeah, I bet anyway, for this woman, birth was absolute agony. Another mom said, I appreciate let's see. And I said, women experience a wide range of feelings, physically and emotionally in birth. Birth can be blissful, but it surely isn't always but culture informs our thoughts and thoughts inform our experience. So we must dispel the idea that birth is something to always be feared. That's the starting place, right? Like we have to at least start by trusting birth. That's the foundation. Do? This woman said, I appreciate your response, and I totally understand why these experiences aren't the forefront. We don't want to scare women, but I do think I have seen more, but I do think had I seen more of my experience out there, I would have felt a tiny bit less alone and less shocked and less diminished when it happened to me. I think maybe it would be nice to include these types of conversation for the girls like me reading through the oh my god, birth was so much easier than a root canal stories every day, so that there is some acknowledgement that it is not always sunshine and rainbows and not just sharing positive stories over and over and over and over.

You're wondering what I say to that? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know my I'm of two minds on that. I've heard this before and I've thought about it before. On one hand, there is harm that comes from having curated social media that only shows one thing, and then when a woman has a different experience. She's like, great. So I'm the unlucky one. That's not a great way to feel, or I did something wrong, and they can feel resentment toward the social media page, toward their baby, toward their the people supporting them. I don't think that that's a great thing, and I don't love it. The other side of me, I again, I don't know my position on this, because I see two sides to it. The other is to share negativity. Can plant a seed, and that can really scare people too. What do you do? You know, it's we can control how women are going to interpret all the information that they're seeking and that they're consuming, and I think, I think the only path through it is not to presume what her experience will be. But I don't know that it would be so great to have a page of horror stories, yes, like I was not going to, so I don't think that's helpful either, but I hear her point that she present that like, Great nobody. Where are the women like me out there who want to share their stories? And I get it, they don't make it to the page. It's not. It doesn't, doesn't, yeah, and you know, the thing is, we have to, like, when you and I were giving birth, social media was not a thing, so we basically had the cultural influence of birth as a dangerous thing to be feared. And then, you know, we could pick up a nice book and read about positive birth experiences, but we weren't having this curated feed, like you said, of only the glimpses. I mean, when you see those perfect births on Instagram, those are glimpses into their birth experience. And sure, the occasional birth, it does happen that a woman has a four hour peaceful labor and hardly a grown and everything is worth three in my case, or three hours birth in my case, from beginning to, I know it happened. It happens. Yeah, it does happen. It all exists. The four day labors exist. It all exists.

And the woman who has a beautiful, empowering home birth but roars her way through it the entire time with loud, deep groans and is vocal and is, you know, very it doesn't all have to be peaceful and quiet and still be a good birth. But of course, your social media feed is going to curate what you are intrigued by, and then you're going to see more of that, and then your world view of birth becomes very narrow. So I think we really it's just about like opening up the the view on this.

I mean, Yvonne strachofsky was on our podcast sharing her birth story, and a key point she made was how much following our page helped her to trust in her body for her second birth. So she would be on that other side, saying, I just needed to see over and over again how one can trust birth. I don't think there's a solution. I just think it's all out there.

This woman says, yes, my labors brought me to the edge, but because I was not afraid, I was able to cope after it's over. I after it's over, I grieve, in a way, because it's over, the experience is like nothing else. The point is, even if not having the blissful labor experience, it's nothing to be feared. It's a walk with God and so empowering. This woman says it is not in response to my comment, yes, birth is not perfect. Sometimes it doesn't go well, and that experience can be physically painful in a in a pathological way. So when birth does go off track a little bit, then the experience of pain can be greater. I've seen that that happens. Of course, it happens. But we must start by viewing birth as a normal, natural, physiologic process that is manageable, and what our bodies are designed to do, that has to be the foundation. That has to be the view we're coming from.

I also. Like to teach my clients that for birth to go well, it doesn't have to follow the perfect path. Nature is prepared for things to go awry and to be you know, if the baby's head is unusually large, the body knows how to make the head smaller for the birth. If the baby is not well positioned, and it's a natural birth, the woman can respond and feel how to move and give more space. I don't want women to think that they have to have all the luck lined up for the perfect birth, and it's only this path that's going to lead to their good outcome. Nature, it has a lot up its sleeves to help us get through the difficult situations. I mean, when when C sections were not an option, certainly there was more mortality. That wasn't a good thing, but there were far more successful vaginal births after very difficult vaginal births. I mean, nature's figured out a way with very unusual circumstances, so that's all part of the trust that my birth doesn't have to go perfectly for it to go well. And that's not just trusting birth that's also trusting your body and your body's ability to adapt, right? So this woman says, you know, birth is not pathological by nature, if everything goes normally, and it doesn't for every woman, and that is why some women can say it was a painful one, and some that's why some women can say it wasn't painful, and another woman can say it was excruciating. Something can be painful, and it still doesn't have to be scary. We can be realistic about how challenging and yes, painful birth often is for many, many women, and still not be afraid of it. Back to the concept of trust and pain with purpose. I think that's a very important distinction about the discomfort of childbirth, this woman says, to this woman's point, if I felt really let down by natural birth, to this woman's point, I felt really let down by the natural birth community. After my first birth, I felt like a failure and a wimp because of how my first perfect at home birth went. Then I had my next few kids and realized that no, my first labor was actually way worse, and other women were actually having less painful experiences. I wish I had seen more. Yeah, it was really insane. But you can do it unless, if you call it a pressure wave, then it won't hurt. So that's, you know, the whole language thing of just saying, Oh, well, if you call it, if we don't call it a contraction and we call it a waiver. You're not going to feel it. No, but contraction, I do have an opposite. I do. I do take issue with the word contraction, because the cervix isn't contracting. That's the thing. It just doesn't make any sense. That can any contract. Universe is contracting way up high. And when a woman is in labor, psychologically, her mind is at the cervix. So the word contraction when you're getting massage, the therapist shouldn't say, okay, just let go all your stress. And, like, think of that last argument you had with a work colleague, and just like, put that to the side. You don't do that. So I think language is powerful, and I don't think it was smart of whoever came up with the word contraction. If women like the word and they're comfortable with it, they should use it. And I don't like euphemisms either. I don't like when people go crazy with euphemisms. So I think women should call it what they want to but I am a proponent of alternate language, like calling it a surge, which is like a wave, and that is actually what's happening. That's exactly what's happening. The muscles do wave through the uterus. It's personal, and she'll interpret the language in her own way. It's her choice. But the language I see when people are pushing them with these euphemisms, that's also totally annoying. Yeah, and you can't, you can't expect that just because you're going to call it something different, it's going to be different. But language does matter, and if we do change language over time, that shifts culture, and then if we shift culture, there's more trust over time. But that doesn't mean that in one individual woman's case, if you just eliminate the word contraction and eliminate the word pain, she's going to have a completely different experience. But I mean, we have to. I have never said, I don't think in the podcast, and definitely never, in any of my classes, I have never uttered the words ring of fire. Because everything that comes out of my mouth, there's a part of my mind saying, is this going to serve my audience or not? And I believe that doesn't serve anybody. To say you might experience the Ring of Fire. How terrifying is that? I mean, it's a could they have come up with anything more terrifying than Ring of Fire. So I had never heard that before I gave birth, but so I don't know how that might have messed with me if I had heard of it, but I know it would have scared me. So I do think language is an important it is conversation, and she has a point, because anything too euphemistic is totally annoying. So I also get that.

So the point of this whole discussion here is that is opening up the conversation around this so that everybody feels like they have, you know, a space to be heard. And we're not saying we have the perfect answer to this by any means, but I would know one thing that is certain is that the more we trust birth and the more we trust our bodies, the more manageable this whole process is. For everyone, that's undeniable. Anyway, okay, let's see. I felt the same way after my first birth. I felt defeated and honestly a little traumatized, even though everything went really, really well. As time went on, I have come to love my first birth and realized it was really wonderful. I have minimal expectations for my second, which is due in two weeks, but I'm at peace having the perspective now that hard isn't that that hard isn't bad. Thank you for just having a space to talk and vent about these things. No one around me can relate. And I respond to your messages, and I respond to your messages so much with no real expectation of a response. Lol, but it's really just so helpful to have a space to relate. I think that's interesting. Some women have these beautiful home birth experiences, and they're still they still have this disappointment that it wasn't what they set somehow they had an expectation for it to be something different.

Well, they're shaken after giving birth. They're shaken emotionally. They've been made to be so vulnerable. It sometimes does take processing, and we do scan. You know this, you and I do birth story processing sessions with women, and for whatever reason, our brains scan and repeatedly scan for anything we regret. So after we give birth, there's just so much to process. So it's not surprising that it takes time to and who's to say which emotion of hers is the accurate one? She's come to see the birth as beautiful, but it was hard for her the day she did it. There's no right or wrong to it. It's just all part of her journey and her experience. She's left feeling at peace. That's a good thing. But that day, it was hard, turns out, and it didn't feel beautiful for her necessarily.

Yeah, I know, you know, I've never looked back on my birth as being scary or painful. I've never remembered that them that way. But as I was reading through these stories, I started to reflect on my first birth, which was 36 hours. And you know, at the end of it, I actually do very much. Remember thinking that I was going to die after birth. I thought I was so depleted, I was so worn out, I had probably bled a little bit too much after and I remember not letting my midwife leave the house because I was afraid if I went to sleep, I wouldn't wake up. But I never looked back on my birth as being scary. I do remember saying, Oh, my God, I don't think I'm going to have another baby anytime soon. I knew deep down that I would, but it's a natural feeling after birth to be like, okay, you know, keep that away from me for a while, and that's nature's way of probably ensuring that we don't have too many kids too quickly. I just wonder, though, if I had seen all the things that are out there on social media all the time about these blissful, beautiful births, if I would have looked back on my birth and been like shit. That's not how it was supposed to go. I had different expectations for myself, but I never, ever had those feelings, because what was I going to compare it to? I knew birth was birth. It could be long and it could be hard and it could sometimes be easy and quick. And so expectations and we probably have a warped sense of what birth should be, because we are so inundated with it. And we are so inundated because the algorithm, again, feeds us all the things that we're interested in. So you're not always seeing a variety of it, and we're inundated from the women in our own families, our friends who talk about birth, or the the older cousins or sisters who came before us have talked about birth society, any book you read from the 1800s or before someone's dying in childbirth, comedies, movies, it's everywhere. Beliefs are forming, expectations are developing. There's no avoiding it.

All. Right? Interesting, interesting stuff to talk about. So this woman says, yes, yes, most of most of the all natural accounts demonize any and all pain intervention, and the other think that all natural is stupid. When you have all the interventions with so much information, it's hard to navigate through all the noise and be confident in your own choices, especially as a new mom, so you're left with a mental health mess before, during and after birth. No wonder why? PPD, PPR, PPA is higher, okay, postpartum depression, rage, anxiety, yes, this is one of the few accounts I found that is that is all for informed decisions in birth. Thank you, ladies for all the important work and information you give to anxious mothers.

Oh, that's a good one to end on. Yeah. So did we solve this problem today? It's a problem that cannot be solved any more than we could line up 1000 young adult women who've never had sex and tell them all exactly what their experience will be like. How could we possibly. Totally can be done, and one time it might be great, and one time it might be horrible or difficult or uncomfortable, it would just be what it is. It's just what it is.

I do find it irresponsible as someone that women turn to to tell them what the experience will be like. How the heck do I know if I had a third child, I would probably have a completely new experience than the first two that I had. So how can I tell someone else what their body and their baby and the conditions surrounding their birth, how supported they feel, how welcome they are to move around, to eat, to eat, which is so important when we need to eat in labor. So I think the only feeling I have is we need to support and prepare women without telling them what the experience will feel like. And I just think everyone has to let everyone else have their strong feelings. So what if some woman thinks the natural way is the only way to do it. So what if another woman wants to schedule her C section that like, how can we know what women's experiences should be? How can we make those decisions? I just wish everyone would stop not only judging others, but almost the other way around too. Like, stop feeling judged and defensive and touchy about it too. Women have to just like, so what if there are a bunch of pages pro natural birth that isn't knocking you for the epidural that you got, that people have a right to be excited about whatever it is they're passionate about, and then all the other women have the same rights. So the concept that we have to choose a side, or that there's a right and wrong, just everyone has to let go of that that's just not getting anyone anywhere. It's so intimate and personal, I don't understand how anyone's mind even goes to that point that there's a right or wrong, but there are facts, and you and I like to talk about what the facts are. And there are benefits to certain ways of giving birth, and there are benefits to interventions when they're needed. So everyone just needs to settle down a little bit, I think, and you need to be able to filter your own information. And if you are struggling with filtering your own information, then it is probably best to just avoid the source altogether. And I do think the biggest culprit here we keep coming back to is social media. I mean, if you want to educate yourself on birth, and it's difficult to find the right space on social media or to filter out all through all of that noise, just pick up a few good books. I mean, I read one, maybe two books in pregnancy, and that was it. And that was enough. That was enough. And work on trusting yourself. Work on trusting your body. And that is built day to day, every single day, you know, taking care of yourself, trusting that if you get enough sleep you feel better, trusting that if you get sick and you rest and you take a bath and you, you know, take the eat the right foods and do the right things, that your body heals like that's how we build trust within ourselves, and then we bring that into our birth. And whatever our birth is, we trust that our body will provide, that our body will do the right thing.

One of the first things I say on day, one of my class to my clients, to start building trust, is that nature has an intention for you. Nature isn't indifferent to how your birth goes. Nature sure as hell doesn't want your birth to be painful and uncomfortable and miserable. Nature's intention is a survival. Its intention is always healing and survival and be that you survive your birth comfortably, so that you can immediately give birth and immediately be in a position to love your baby, because your baby has no chance at survival, because nature knows nothing of loving partners and neonatal intensive care units and formula, nature only knows there's you, so nature not only needs you to survive this birth, but to be in a position to love and comfort your baby from the moment he or she is born. With that belief, this is not about whether I'm right or wrong. This is a new belief we form about trusting nature. And the question is, does that belief serve us? And I believe it does to trust nature. We know that, and let's not forget that in every single birth there are elements. There is an element of surrender that is extremely important. There is an element of control that we must always relinquish, that we do not have 100% control over any birth, no one does, and that's just a fact of nature. We must accept that. The final thing I will say is that I was actually a little disappointed that there was no good German word for pain in childbirth. Are you sure? Yes, look it up.

I am anything German word for this, I was sure too. I'm sure of it. And if there isn't, the whole beautiful thing about German is you get to make up words. I bet there's a word like pleasure, pain, I could, I didn't find it. It Well, wasn't, wasn't related to chat. Of birth. Oh, okay, you know what? I'm on a mission. I know find it. I'll have to find it. I'll have to find that German word. I will, you know, I love it. All right, thanks for joining us. I think we need to keep talking about this over on Patreon. We need to do a I think we need to do an event talking about this topic. There are some women who would like to share their stories, so maybe we'll take that over to Patreon and get a few women to come on and talk about it.

All right, thanks, everyone. Next up, we'll see you next time.

Thank you for joining us at the Down To Birth Show. You can reach us @downtobirthshow on Instagram or email us at Contact@DownToBirthShow.com. All of Cynthia’s classes and Trisha’s breastfeeding services are offered live online, serving women and couples everywhere. Please remember this information is made available to you for educational and informational purposes only. It is in no way a substitute for medical advice. For our full disclaimer visit downtobirthshow.com/disclaimer. Thanks for tuning in, and as always, hear everyone and listen to yourself.