To begin to address women's needs in a meaningful way, we must encourage a yielding relationship to the childbirth process.
Pain in labor is a reality. And the expectation of pain, as well as some means for coping with it, goes a long way toward healthy birth outcomes.
THE BIRTH OF A BABY IS THE BIRTH OF A FAMILY. A myriad of births takes place at once: women become mothers, husbands become fathers, daughters become sisters and sons become big brothers. One birth ripples through generations, creating subtle shifts and rearrangements in the family web.
Unfortunately, we rarely regard pregnancy and birth as formative phases in family making. Nor do we realize that, as a woman enters motherhood, she feels new pressures, some of which derive from her own experience of having been mothered and some of which are engendered by family and societal beliefs and mandates. Moreover, hardly ever are the coping styles promoted in the marketplace applicable to the stress of labor.
