Why would you have an unmedicated birth?
… 3 Things my unmedicated births taught me.
“Why would you have an unmedicated birth?”
This is a question I get asked as a doula all the time from nurses, doctors, clients, or even random bystanders when the topic arises. And while there are lots of really good reasons to accept medical pain management during labor, there are also valid reasons why somebody may choose to give birth without the help of medical pain management.
Disclaimer: As a doula, I love helping people utilize epidurals or other medical pain management tools to have the delivery that best aligns with their birth preferences and meet the needs of their individualized birth experience. I also think that there is so much confidence that comes from having the birth that was right for you and your baby, no matter what it looks like. There is no superiority in birth. This article is to highlight my personal experiences, not to give advice.
Personally, I chose to pursue having an unmedicated birth with my first baby because it was an experience I desired to have. I thought that if I hate it, I never had to do it again; but I was always super curious about birth and wanted to know what the experience was like (no surprise that I was already nerding out about the birth process way before I chose my current profession). Personally, I also have a hard time trusting people I don’t know and like to stay in control of my body, so having free movement and the ability to do what felt right to me in the moment was a huge driving factor.
Both of my births taught me so many lessons that I have carried into my life and parenthood. Just like preparing for and accomplishing the running of a marathon, birth (in any form), has a way of pushing you to brink of what you thought possible, and teaching you how to accomplish things you thought were outside your grasp. While I’ve learned many things from these experiences, these are the three that I carry with me the most through my daily life.
When you hit a wall, climb it instead of turning back around.
Going through the undisturbed process of labor brought me to a few points where I hit a wall during both of my experiences. The first wall I hit was right when active labor started, but before I entered into “labor land.” Labor land is a name for a mental place lots of people experience during unmedicated labor. It is when you mentally go to a different realm in order for your mind to be protected from the experience your body is having. People describe it in all different ways, but I commonly hear it described by most people like they were kind of floating above the experience, or that time didn’t seem to exist (Ex: 3 hours passed, and they thought it had been 20 minutes). Labor land is usually seen as a relief, because it brings you away from your thinking brain and into a more primal state.
For me, when active labor first hit, it felt very intense and scary, but once I dove in and allowed myself to get enveloped by it, I found ease in the labor process and a flow to my contractions. Before hitting active labor, my thinking brain was saying “this is too much" and “I can’t handle this getting worse,” but allowing yourself to break through the waves and accept the intensity of the contractions, is the first step to achieving an unmedicated birth.
The second wall I hit was transition. This is very commonly known as the “oh shit” moment in unmedicated birth. It is when the contractions get very long, strong, and close together; and it pulls you over the brink of laboring to the pushing phase. The reason this phase is so intense is because of the hormonal cascade that happens before your body reaches 10cm dilated (fun fact: a lot of my clients also feel defeated or overwhelmed around this point in labor even with an epidural!). The first time I hit this wall, I internally cursed myself out for making such a stupid decision and not getting an epidural; by my second birth, I learned to accept transition for what it was and welcome it as a sign my labor was almost completed.
While I had certainly worked through struggles when accomplishing goals in my life before ever experiencing labor, labor was the first to really bring me to my internal breaking point. I came up against walls that I felt like I had no business climbing, but digging in deeper and telling myself “but what if I do it?” helped me accomplish my goals.
Having this experience has helped me tremendously in life and in parenting. My first baby had colic for the first six months of her life, and there were many days and nights I reached a breaking point and wondered how I could ever keep caring for her the way she deserved to be cared for. I truly believe that accomplishing my goal of an unmedicated birth gave me the confidence to continue to be strong in those first few months postpartum. I learned that I could do things I didn’t want to do and could do it well. I learned that accomplishing the hard things has a lot more to do with mental fortitude, then your actual physical stamina.
Discomfort isn’t something to fear.
It is a pretty common human response to associate pain with danger. Our bodies feel pain, and instinctively want to find a way to run away from it or avoid it. Birth is different, as pain with birth does not often mean that anything is wrong. Having an unmedicated birth forces you to learn how to work through pain and discomfort without running away. This education can open up a whole new realm of discipline to your life, creating stamina that can be used to advance yourself mentally and physically.
I recently hosted a prenatal yoga class for my clients, and the instructor (who is also a doula), had my pregnant clients hold a squat for one-minute intervals, replicating the discomfort of contractions. We worked through breathing techniques that clients could use as they were experiencing the discomfort. I did the exercises alongside all my first-time moms participating and automatically leaned into my breathing and distraction techniques as the discomfort built, knowing that each feeling, no matter how intense, eventually fades. Before going through unmedicated birth, I would always be dreading similar physical challenges and would stay in my head counting down the seconds and cursing that I put myself through the experience.
Learning how to lean into and work through discomfort for a goal, has opened up my mental capacity to endure. Whether that is a squat during a workout, rocking my crying child for an hour, or pushing past a mental obstacle to grow my business; learning that I don’t always have to shy away from discomfort has greatly impacted my perseverance.
These lessons have be integral in my success as an entrepreneur. When before I may have hit career obstacles and turned a different direction, birth has taught me to put my head down towards the goal and find different paths forward. When I first opened and struggled to book clients, instead of saying “well I guess doula work isn’t for me",” I found other paths to help me achieve my dream of running a successful doula business. I have continued to come up against many challenges as I’ve grown my business, and I am glad I have never backed away from my dreams or I wouldn’t have the job and team that I love today!
Your success is determined by your environment.
While there is the potential to meet your goals in an adversarial environment, it is much more difficult to work through a physical or mental feat while also fighting the people surrounding you.
As a hospital-based birth doula, I often find clients thinking that if they want a “natural”, or low-intervention birth in a hospital, they will be forced to argue and fight with staff to get it. This puts your body into fight or flight mode and makes it difficult for you to give into labor and let your contractions progress. Biologically, our bodies want to feel safe in order to spontaneously work through the labor process… and life is no different.
When trying to accomplish a goal, it is imperative that you surround yourself with people with are on your side. Just like you might build a labor team by picking a hospital that has policies that align with your goals, a supportive OBGYN or midwife, an encouraging doula, and a partner who believes in you; it will be much easier for you to accomplish other goals with the right team on your side.
When working through breastfeeding struggles, are you listening to your mother-in-law who has only formula fed or seeking out an experienced IBCLC to help. Are you surrounded by people who think negatively about being a mom with a career, or do you have a partner and friends who support your dreams to pursue a career while being the best mother you can be? You can only do so much on your own and building your village (whether that be with relationships or paid support), is integral to our successes as not only parents, but humans.
I do want to mention that shaping your environment does not mean only finding people who agree with you or will tell you what you want to hear. A true caring partner, friend, or provider, sometimes has to clue you into reality and help you pivot when your goals or dreams just aren’t possible; but making sure you have people on your side who are not only willing to share your goals, but believe in your ability to accomplish them, are integral to the ease of your success. The joy of true partnership or friendship is that the relationship doesn’t make life harder but gives you people to fall back on during hard times, so you don’t give up.
There are so many life circumstances that can teach you that you too, can do hard things. Some people run marathons, some people go to law school, others get out of abusive relationships; but in my life these life lessons came to me through the journey of my unmedicated births. There is no one right way to birth, and birth holds different challenges no matter if you choose every pain medication available to you, an elective c-section, or give birth amongst the chipmunks alongside a creek.
Our births have a way of teaching us how to surrender, how to let our babies lead, and how to trust the support systems around us; all principal lessons that will lead us to a balanced parenting journey. No matter how you choose to birth, my wish for you is that you allow it to open you and shape you into the person and parent you are meant to be.
