Birth rarely gets a good rap – whether in the media or from those around us.
Pregnant women hear all the things that can go wrong during labour, the drugs they will want to take, and how their bodies will probably feel afterwards (not good).
And yet there is a growing number of women who enjoy labour and birth.
5 Reasons Why Women Love Giving Birth
These women are pushing back, talking freely about why they love birth, and how much they look forward to doing it again.
So what is it that women love about birth?
#1: Going Into Labour
After 9 long months, the waiting is over! You’ve been preparing for this moment for a long time. For the last few weeks you’ve been convinced you will be pregnant forever. The excitement is real – you are actually going to have a baby at some point in the near future.
It’s hard to believe these tightenings in your body are signalling the end of pregnancy. No more waddling around, constantly needing to wee – and you’ll get to see your feet again really soon!
And more than that, you get to experience birth – something more women are embracing as a natural process, and a unique journey into themselves.
Find out more about what early labour looks like.
#2: Getting Primitive
Being in labour is pretty much the key for opening the door to your inner self. Most women who have had positive labours will use words like ’empowering’, ‘euphoric’, and ‘powerful’. If these are words you wouldn’t usually attribute to yourself, you might be surprised.
Labour is an intensely physical experience, but it’s also an emotionally challenging one. At some point during labour, you will need to dig deep and find the strength and power to keep going. Like elite endurance athletes, you will find yourself pushing past the physical sensations, to find the inner core of your self.
Sometimes labour is peaceful, other times it is raw and earthy. Birth calls on your primitive brain to take you through the experience. As this happens, your body will begin to ‘take over’ labouring, and you will instinctively make the sounds, or move into the positions, that give you the power to give birth.
Can position and sound help during labour? Actively birthing your baby has many benefits.
#3: Believing You Can
Most women go into labour feeling scared. For over 100 years, women have been told how incredibly dangerous birth is, and how defective their bodies are. High rates of interventions and c-sections are testament to that fact.
The human body is the result of millennia of evolution. Given the right conditions and support, our bodies rarely fail us. Belief in your body’s ability to give birth, and the confidence that your body actually knows what to do, are powerful tools, and will help you to trust in the natural process of labour.
Find out why an undisturbed labour has so many benefits for you and your baby
#4: Meeting Your Baby
The last moments of labour are often described as the most intense experience a woman will go through. There is a lot going on, your body is working incredibly hard, and you might be thinking there is no way you can take much more.
Then, with a huge physical and emotional sense of release and relief, your baby is born. For the first time, you see her hair and eyes, and the shape of her ears. You’re knocked out by how small she is, which is hard to believe, considering the proportions of your belly a few minutes ago.
And you’re amazed by the fact she just came from there, to here.
These first moments, as your baby emerges from your body, and you see her as a separate person for the first time, are incredible. You are on a huge high from birth hormones, and there’s a lot of euphoria going around! In that moment, the intensity of labour vanishes, and you feel you could climb a mountain, or run a marathon.
Find out why the first undisturbed moments after birth are so precious.
#5: Telling Your Story
Giving birth is life altering. Regardless of how they give birth, most women see the moment as crossing a line – something that alters them in some way, whether physically or emotionally.
Most of us will be exposed endlessly to the negatives of birth. Strangers home in on our pregnant bellies, and feel compelled to share the gritty, gory details of their birth experiences. Everyone – friends, family, the woman who makes your morning coffee – has a story. It’s not often you hear the good stories.
This is why women who have a positive birth experience love to talk about it. You will too. You want to re-live those moments when you feel you can conquer anything, and to remind yourself and those around you that fear doesn’t have to rob you of an empowering birth.
There’s no denying labour is hard work, for a lot of women, and it can be painful. But there are rewards too. Birth is not just the end to pregnancy. It can make you feel incredible, and show you for the first time how strong and powerful you really are.
