Expectations from the Past

When a woman goes into labor, she brings her past with her: the sorties she has heard about birth, any experiences of her own or other's childbirth, and her own early chilhood events. She also brings her hopes and fears with her: about pain, about her ability to give birth, as well as about the health and saftey of herself and her baby. 

Pregnant women have varied expectations of pain, based on what they have heard or experiences.  One thirty-eight-year-old mother, expecting her first baby, said that her own mother described childbirth as one of the hardest experances of her life. Another first-time mother-to-be became fightened watching a television special on birth in which eeryone was screaming and was finally silenced with medication and high-tech interventions.  A third mother rememebered that her 1st birth, she was given pitocin to speed up her labor and found that she could never get on top of the contractions. She remembered begging for the epidural and for this current birth was planning to have one as soon as she started labor.  However, when she began experancing this labor with a doula, she had a very different outcome than she imagined. " I became so focused and in tune with the doulas vioce  hardly noticed the pain.  We were walking; she always had her hand on me. During every contraction , she showed me how to lean into my husband. He held me as he braced himself against the wall. I could let my whole body relax. She guided me to breathe through the contractions. She counted backward 20-to-1, slowly, three times, encouraging me to just breath through  it.  By then, I could feel the contraction ease. I could value the power of my body and my baby working together. This was so different from the first birth. We continued this way in a kind of rhythm through each contraction. I depened on her every word. She added an image of an ocean wave rolling through the contractions. I was amazed at how powerful I felt and yet safe and relaxed. I wasn't afraid and I noticed no pain."

Though a duola cannot solve issues in the mother's past or erase the messages th ewoman gas heard, with  the future stll known, she can begin her work being fully present with the woman to clam her fears, to validate her strength. to reassure her that she won't be alone, and to work with her on measures to alleviate pain.