Making Your Choice – Natural Birth or Intervention?

As you enter the pregnancy and birth mindset, one of the terms that you will hear bandied about quite often is “natural birth.” A natural birth is a labour and delivery that do not involve any intervention – i.e. there are neither any drugs nor unnatural procedures such as a Caesarean. To give birth in this manner, you will need to find natural methods of pain relief and dealing with labour in order to deliver your baby. Obviously, these methods do exist and they are extremely effective, as women have used them to deliver their babies since the beginning of time.

Choosing the way that you give birth is a very personal decision. Some women feel, as soon as they find out that they are pregnant, that they would prefer to use an epidural and will not hesitate to undergo a caesarean if this is what they are offered. But other women feel differently and are more fazed by the idea of an epidural than the pain of labour.

So where do you stand? Are you more interested in following the course of nature or would you prefer to use the technology of today’s world to help you?

Making Your Choice – Natural Birth or Intervention? - brettneilson / CC BY 2.0

In this article, we will provide you with some useful information to help you make your decision. We also suggest that in addition to reading this, you watch a natural birth video.

Methods of Natural Pain Relief

One of the first questions that any woman considering a natural birth will ask when preparing for childbirth is how it will help her deal with the pain of labour and contractions.

To answer this, we need to keep in mind what pregnancy and labour really are. Although most women have medical examinations and give birth in a hospital, pregnancy and birth are very different from any other medical issue. This is because they are not an illness but are a very natural and normal procedure.

The pain of labour therefore is unlike any other pain. Pain in other circumstances is a warning that our body is giving us to say that something is wrong. But pain in labour is simply a signal that the woman’s body is working through the process of giving birth. Therefore, it is not a pain that needs to fought, but should be worked with.

Of course, this concept does not belittle or lessen the pain that a labouring woman may feel during her labour and delivery. But bearing this in mind will make it easier for her to cope during contractions.

So what the most natural ways of handling pain during labour?

One of the most widely used and effective methods is breathing exercises. You will learn these at your natural birth education classes. The principle behind breathing (also known as Lamaze) exercises is that you breathe your way through contractions, riding along with them. This takes off the edge of the pain and you feel far more in control of your labour than you would if you took an epidural, which dulls the feeling in your lower body, or if you took pethidine, which will make you feel drowsy.

To find out more about Lamaze exercises, click here.

The great thing about this and any of the other methods described here is that they do not have the side-effects of drugs, which are also passed on to the baby.

Another way to help you through labour is to employ a doula. A doula will represent you and make sure that your labour is managed the way that you want it. Furthermore, she can give you both emotional and physical labour support. For example, if you want to speed up labour by walking around or doing hula hoops, she’s there to walk with you and support you. If you want to ease the pain in your lower back from the contractions, she will help you run a shower down your back. She’s the extra pair of hands that you need, who would not get flustered (unlike your partner or well-meaning friends or relatives who are emotionally involved) but she gives you more than that. Many birthing women have felt far more relaxed using a doula, and studies have shown that their presence is extremely helpful and even cuts down complications in labour.

Your doula can also help you with massage techniques to ease the pain, as well as giving you naturopathic and homeopathic remedies that will cause you far less harm than conventional drugs.

A more controversial method of natural birthing is water birth. This is a subject that has raised much debate in Australia, and not too many hospitals offer this option. It is used more for home births, and involves setting up a birth pool that you can sit in during labour and in some cases even for delivery. The main caveat that this (and home birth in general) carries with it is that you should make absolutely sure that the midwife who is assisting you is properly trained and comes with good recommendations and references.

Calm birth, or hypnobirthing, which is closely related, is a method through which women are taught a technique of “self-hypnosis” and how to tune into their body and its responses during labour and delivery by using relaxation and breathing exercises. To find out where you can learn about calm birth, click here.

Apart from natural birth pain relief, there are also methods of natural induction. These include nipple stimulation, walking up and down a lot, doing hula hoops, bathing and showering, and various exercises taught in childbirth education classes. Following these methods can speed up your labour without having to undergo the rigours of being forced to lie down while attached to a pitocin drip. Using pitocin for an induction speeds up contractions, making them more painful, and many women have felt uncomfortable undergoing this kind of induction.

A Natural Birth Plan

To make your wishes known and understood, you are well-advised to draw up a birth plan before you go to the hospital or to give to the midwife that will help you with your home birth.

You could include the following:

• You do not want an epidural, pethidine, or any other pain-relieving drug.
• You would like access to a shower, a birthing pool, a birth seat, bean bags, and any other equipment that will assist your labour in a natural way.
• When it comes to giving birth, you would prefer a natural position, as opposed to the conventional hospital method of lying on your back with your feet in stirrups. Giving birth on your back is not natural. The most natural delivery position is on all fours. In fact, you should first try to ascertain that the midwife you are working with knows how to handle such a natural delivery.
• You would only allow a caesarean section if the baby or you are in immediate, life-threatening danger. But under normal circumstances you do not want one at all.

Now that you have read all of the above, you will feel better informed about your decision. If you still decide that you prefer to have more intervention for your labour, this is your personal decision. And if the idea of natural birth still appeals to you, you now know what it entails.

Either way, we wish you a very easy, healthy birth.