Trusting God’s Design for Birth: Trusting the Birth Process – The Body Knows Best

5 days ago
9 min read

By: Christine Russell, CPM

Trusting the Birth Process – The Body Knows Best

God made the body wise to know how to grow a baby and when to birth a baby. The body and baby know when it is time for birth.

Psalm 29:9 says “The voice of the LORD makes the deer give birth.” If that’s the case, doesn’t His voice make women, who are created in His image give birth? Psalm 139:16 says, “Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book” (NIV). God has a birth date and a death date and every date in between already chosen for us before we form in our mother’s womb.

A due date is simply a “Guess Date,” because we are providers don’t know when you actually ovulated and conceived that baby. An early ultrasound can help give us a better guess date but can still be off by up to 2 weeks. If you were tracking your cycles, you can better help us to come up with a more accurate due date, but there is more at work than just a conception date.

Different women grow or gestate babies at different rates and in different pregnancies. Sometimes, there is a gender difference for a particular woman’s gestation rate (I’ve had clients who have all of their boys late and their girls early, and vice versa). Sometimes, the gestational rate has to do with the nutrition for that particular pregnancy. Sometimes, it has to do with the health of the placenta. To force a woman to be induced for being “late” is completely wrong! The medical world likes to scare women into inductions by telling them their babies have an increased risk of dying the longer the baby stays in. In reality, babies who go to 39 weeks have a 99.9% chance of survival, and to 40 weeks, also have a 99.9% survival. A baby carried to 41 weeks has a 99.8% survival and to 42 weeks has a 99.7% survival. When you look at the studies, the number of women in the study in the later weeks of a pregnancy significantly drop because of the lack of providers willing to let them go that long, or just due to having their babies, so that also impacts the numbers. What medical providers don’t discuss are the risks of babies who are forced to come before they are ready: risks of induction not working, ending in a C-section for failure to progress, babies going into distress from the induction process then ending in a C-section, babies who aren’t in optimal positions for birth and hormones not in place for birth leading to C-sections or more interventions, babies who end up being earlier than expected who then need NICU support, babies who end up being earlier than expected and are poor/weak nursers or struggle more with jaundice because they are early.

Another issue with the medical world is that they don’t trust that God made the body know how to labor. Hospital providers are quick to say that things aren’t progressing fast enough and that Pitocin or breaking the water or just having a C-section would be best because they lack trust in the birth process. God made the body to know how to labor. The body works with mom and baby throughout labor. The uterus knows when to relax and space contractions out to allow mom to rest or prevent baby from going into distress. Once medical interventions start, the body loses the choice and ability to pace labor for what is best for mom and baby, often leading to more interventions like an epidural, because mom can no longer tolerate the labor pain or gets exhausted, or baby goes into distress forcing a mom into a C-section.

Often, hospitals have a set protocol and timeframe for a woman to labor and dilate. If a woman doesn’t fit their timeline, interventions like Pitocin, breaking the water, or C-section will be used. These expectations aren’t fair because no 2 labors are the same. So many different factors come into play to make a labor fast or long, including genetics, hormones, rest/fatigue, nutrition, fitness, baby’s position, force of contractions, regularity of contractions, ripeness of the cervix, and comfort level of the mom. Many hospitals still use a dilation guide made by a doctor who did hourly cervical exams on moms put under twilight sleep unaware of things as they labored. That’s totally absurd and ridiculous to compare an unconscious laboring woman from a conscious one!

Hospitals also like to do frequent vaginal exams to assess dilation progress. Not only is this invasive and increases the risk of infection for the mother as well as the baby, it really doesn’t give much information other than whether or not dilation is happening. Dilation rates vary in each labor due to differences in the regularity and intensity of the contractions and a baby’s position. I’ve seen births where a mom went from 4cm to pushing in 2 contractions. I’ve had a mom at 6cm push her baby out in the next contraction. I’ve had a mom go from water breaking with no contractions to a baby 8 minutes later after having only 4 contractions total (obviously, I missed that birth)! I’ve had a mom who was at 6cm (not in labor) for 2 weeks before going into labor. I’ve seen a mom stuck at 9cm for 24 hours. I’ve had a mom at 10cm with contractions that stopped for 12 hours after a long labor to give her a break before they kicked in again, and she got the urge to push.

While on the topic of dilation. It is very rare that I have a “need” to check a woman’s dilation. If I feel that what she’s doing in labor doesn’t match with what her contractions are doing, and I fear she is pushing against a cervix, I might ask to check. If I am concerned about the possibility of a cervical lip holding up labor progress or a cervix returning, I might ask to check. If I am concerned about baby being in a not-ideal position for birth and want to get an assessment of which position baby is in to get mom in the optimal position to fix the malposition, I might ask to check. The only other time I am checking a cervix is at mom’s request because she wants to know, and I am always quick to explain that it’s information but not a predictor of how much longer her birth will be. I honestly feel that cervical exams can actually disrupt the labor pattern and either discourage or potentially give false hope to a laboring mom. I’d rather leave things be, unless there was a true concern, or the mom really wanted that information.

Often, a medical provider will use the line of “I’m going to break your water to speed things up and help you have a baby sooner.” Unfortunately, only in rare cases does breaking the water actually speed up labor. What it does is make contractions a lot more painful for mom and baby because the water bag is no longer creating a buffer between mom and baby increasing pain to both during the squeeze of the contractions. Because of the intensity of the contractions, everyone thinks that labor is now progressing more quickly. However, the increased intensity and discomfort only increases the risk of a mom needing an epidural or medicine pain relief. It also increases the risk of the baby going into distress since the baby is no longer protected by the water. If baby is not in the best of positions for birth, it makes it harder for baby to reposition without the water giving the baby buoyancy. If the baby is still high in the pelvis, breaking the water can cause a cord prolapse (cord comes out ahead of the baby’s head – this is an emergency and often requires a C-section). Rarely, if the bag is really tight with a lot of fluid in front of baby’s head, there may not be as much pressure on the cervix since the fluid in the bag is softer than baby’s head. I’ve only seen this twice in over 550 births. If labor is really long, that might be a time that breaking the water could potentially help finish the dilation process quicker with the head putting the pressure on the cervix. I’ve had a mom who came to me for her 5^th baby who had midwives previously who “always broke her water” to help her have her babies quicker. I told her that breaking the water doesn’t necessarily help babies be born faster and that disrupting the labor by breaking the water could potentially make it longer. She asked that I be willing to break her water. I told her because I believe that a laboring woman is in charge of her birth, that I would comply with her request even if I felt it was a bad idea and explained the risks at the time I did it. She was progressing beautifully in labor with contractions on top of each other and increased rectal pressure felt. I fully expected any contraction to be the one to end 1^st stage and that she’d be pushing soon. She was looking at the clock worried that her sleeping children would be waking up in an hour, and she wanted to have her baby before they woke up. She then asked that I break her water so she could birth before the children woke up. I told her that she was so close to pushing anyway and that she probably would have her baby within the next 30 minutes (she usually doesn’t push for more than 2-3 contractions), but she wanted me to break her water anyway, so I did. As soon as I broke her water (she was a stretching 8cm with head well applied to the cervix), her contractions stopped. After 10 minutes of no contractions, she asked me why the contractions stopped. I explained that I interrupted her labor by breaking her water. She then asked for herbs to help get the contractions going again. I then spent the next 2 hours using herbs to get her back into a good labor pattern for her to start making progress again. Sadly, her children were awake for 2 hours before she finally pushed her baby out.

Lastly, position is everything when it comes to laboring. Working with gravity in upright positions and working with your baby as your baby navigates the boney prominences in the pelvis helps labor progress. When a baby isn’t in a good position, often the uterus recognizes its work is in vain, and it will space contractions out or stop all together for a time. Helping your baby be in optimal positions throughout labor helps prevent the spacing out of contractions or the off and on again labor pattern. That’s why freedom of movement is so important. Also, being able to feel your baby in your pelvis is so important, so you know how to position yourself to help your baby out. Epidurals prevent you from being able to work with your baby since you can’t feel your baby. I always love the labors I support where a mom suddenly changes positions during or after a contraction based on what they are feeling from their baby. I smile every time I see it. God made our bodies to know exactly what to do without someone telling them to do it. Yes, sometimes moms get overwhelmed and need suggestions, but ultimately, they can try those suggestions and find which one makes the most sense for them.

Trusting that the body knows when to push is another trust medical providers often lack. They think a woman needs to be checked and told when to push. How many animals do we go around checking their cervixes and telling them when to push? It’s instinct. Women know when to push. The reality is, they can be 10 cm dilated but the baby is still high and needs time to get down further into the pelvis to trigger the ejection reflex, forcing a mom to push. There is no point forcing a mom to push for a longer period of time just because she’s fully dilated (this goes against the rationale they use for moms with epidurals whom they let “labor baby down” since they don’t get the urge to push as often since they are numb). Also, a mom could be not quite 10 cm, but the baby is low enough to cause the ejection reflex, causing the head to dilate the remaining cervix as mom pushes the baby down. A cervical tear is extremely rare in labors in which moms push with the ejection reflex with a cervix still present and tear the cervix. Yes, on occasion, a mom might push when she shouldn’t, because it feels better or makes her feel like she’s going to have a baby sooner. Often, by observing lack of progress and asking some simple questions, you can determine if she truly feels the need to push or if it’s just a desire to push and adjust that accordingly.

God made the body so wise, and He made women’s bodies to know how to labor. The body isn’t broken. With proper support and trust, the body can do what it was made to do. Trust the process!