I was going to do a “top ten book list” with this blog...but the first book deserves a page of its’ own. I am in the process of reading the book again, and I have to say that my mindset towards birth and the lack of fear I have concerning birth and the lack of pain I experience, has MUCH to do with this particular book.
For those reading this blog that do not know me, I have home-birthed four of my children and am about to birth the fifth here at home. I have a unique history as to why I birth at home. My dad is a doctor. So, when I went to work with Dad, I always was either at the hospital or his general office. As a small child, I thought very little of the cold sterile rooms, the tall ceilings, the drab colors, and all of the doctors with the same “uniform”. Groans came from the various rooms that were scary. Within moments of my dad telling me where babies came from and especially the part about where they came OUT....I solidly set my heart and my mind that I would NEVER have a baby at the hospital. NEVER.
When my mom married my dad, she already had had three children from another marriage. My dad didn’t mind whether they had children or not, he just insisted if they DID have children, that she birth them at home. This was the most terrifying prospect my mom had ever faced. She was knocked out for all three of the primary births, and had no clue how to have a baby on her own. Well, she read Grantley dick-Read’s book; Childbirth Without Fear, and on February the tenth, 1973, my mom had me by herself in the apartment where she and Dad were living. He came just in time to catch me and wrap me in a blanket and go show me off to all of his doctor friends. Admittedly, it was the most empowering moment of my mother’s life.
When I got pregnant, she handed me the book she read in 1972. Childbirth Without Fear, by Grantley Dick-Read. This book is still in print. I have the hard-bound second edition, copyright 1959. As I read the book again, it is occurring to me that my thought processes concerning birth are completely different from the average American woman. I don’t “just have a high pain tolerance”....I love every moment of birth from the first contraction to pushing. I think I have to agree with Grantley Dick-Read that birth is not painful, nor is it meant to be painful. It is just hard work and it becomes painful if you are overexhausted, low on iron, or just “low” period. That’s when you feel pain...but if you are Up and ready for the moment, the moment is oh-so-glorious. I guess this is why I am adamant about not birthing at night. I want to be fresh. I want to just have eaten a good meal. I want to birth while the kids are napping and I can focus. And, so far, I have found this to be an easy task. BUT, I do the exact exercises Grantley Dick-Read teaches in his book and I have resorted to his side-lying, breathing technique in almost every birth at one point or another. If my labor starts at night and I want to avoid going into full labor, I just lie on my side and start the deep breathing that he teaches, and usually I can go back to sleep in 30 minutes or so. Many women get excited and jump up the minute it all starts, but I look at it like a nice marathon. Would I like to start at 3AM or would I like to start at 8AM-or even after breakfast? Knowing that I won’t be able to make it the whole way if I don’t have enough sleep motivates me to “sleep through” the first phase of labor if necessary.
As I am reading my favorite birth book (again), I realize I took the words in his book as my own and have lived out Grantley Dick-Read’s philosophy in every single one of my births. I don’t believe birth is equivalent with pain and neither does he. As Grantley Dick-Read points out in his book, the hebrew word for “labor” that God awarded Adam for his sin is the same Hebrew word “labor” that God awarded Eve for her sin. In both instances, labor means hard work, requiring some sweat. I’ve never seen a man at work...painting the house persay, that was in physical pain. He may grunt and groan and sweat....but I have not heard a man yell for a pain reliever from the simple act of working. The guys that translated under King James just put their own little word “pain” in Genesis 3 and other various places in scripture...so for years and years women have accepted their “lot” in life, when their “lot” was the same as mans...work and sweat and in a days’ time your fruit will come forth.
Grantley Dick-Read was a physician, and had some serious questions concerning childbirth and pain. He noticed that women in the lower classes experienced little to no pain, whereas the higher the class, the more “pain” they experienced. He began to research and found a tremendous connection between fear and pain. The more afraid of birth a woman was, or the greater the fear she had, the more pain she experienced in birth. Grantley Dick-Read goes to great lengths to prove this scientifically and then in actual life. He would educate a woman about birth...and then when it came to the birth, he would have the anesthesia there, but only 2 out of 200 women took the anesthesia. After 40 years of live experience with his hypothesis....he was totally convinced that medical science has done away with educating a woman and just offered anesthesia as the “answer” to birth.
He spends the first half of the book with all of the science behind fear and the nerves and the blood not getting to the uterus...and the second half of the book teaching you how to not have any fear in the birth and what to expect....I just LOVE this book. I love that it’s written by a doctor and I love that he proved his theory over 40 years and I love that it is still in print and that it EMPOWERS WOMEN. Too much, nowadays, women are not empowered to do the very thing God gifted them to do. I really like the empowering part.
I know for me, it worked.
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