Ina May's Guide to Childbirth: Updated With New Material

by Ina May Gaskin

Wherever and however you intend to give birth, your experience and what you can learn from it will impact your emotions, your mind, your body, and your spirit for the rest of your life.

Through the process of natural childbirth, I gained a lot of confidence in myself. I left my comfort zone and the culture I had grown up with. I learned that I can work through scary and painful situations and be strong and present when I need to be. My fear of not knowing how to be a good mother has disappeared as my confidence in my intuition of how to love Grace has increased. I have felt incredible energy and life force through my body, and I have really been reborn a happier, healthier, and more confident person. I have learned I can choose to focus on the darker side or the lighter side of all that is around me. I choose the lighter side and have the discipline to keep it up.

I guess the most important thing I figured out was that your attitude and how you approach your birth is of the utmost importance. In other words, it is important to face each birth like a bull, with full force, no fear or hesitation, with the attitude that you can do this and you aren’t going to hold back. This is your opportunity to remember your power as a woman, inhibitions not allowed. Those contractions are power surges, and each one gets that baby closer to birth.

Most women need encouragement and companionship more than they need drugs. That said, be aware that if your labor is accelerated by intravenous oxytocin, you are likely to experience a significantly greater level of pain than you otherwise would have had. Being upright and moving around may help alleviate this. Remember this, for it is as true as true gets: Your body is not a badly designed machine. You are not a machine. The Creator is not a careless mechanic. Human female bodies have the same potential to give birth well as aardvarks, lions, rhinoceroses, elephants, moose, and water buffalo. Even if it has not been your habit throughout your life so far, I recommend that you learn to think positively about your body.