Labor is hard work. It is hard work to birth a baby (or two). It is really hard work to let your body do this work. It is incredibly hard work to keep your mind quiet, your Self out of the way. And by doing just that, perfecting the doing of nothing, you can let your baby and your body give birth.
Finding ease, finding softness, finding the places, the positions, the moments where you can melt -this is crucial to being able to birth. In labor, look for ease. Let yourself be guided to positions where you can deeply relax. Let yourself be drawn upward to gently walk or softly dance. Let yourself be pulled down to a comfy palette (or couch, or bed) and surrender to gravity, body melting as the waves of contractions ebb and flow.
By finding ease in labor, you allow your body and your baby to do the hard work of labor. Body and baby have to find new positions, new relationships to each other. They have to birth, have to be born. It is hard work to get one human being out of another! To allow that to happen, it is important for you to keep your conscious mind out of the way, and to let your primitive self come out of the shadows. Finding ease allows your self, your body and your baby to trust, to relax and to work intensely together. Labor is the hardest work you every do by doing nothing at all.
May all babies be born into loving hands...
K. Michelle Doyle, CNM, NYS LM
www.localcaremidwifery.com
www.localcaremidwifery.blogspot.com
This post is part of: Tuesday’s Conscious Connections for Finding Ease