8 Do's and Don't's for a Safe and Healthy Birth

Janel Martin-Miranda, MA, LPC, copyright, 2006
http://birthkeeper/blogspot.com

Your obstetrician and your grandma both agree on what to do to prenatally to guarantee a healthy baby and a healthy delivery. Grandmas have known this wisdom for eons, and now logic, scientific research, and experience shows us it is true.

You need to:

1 - Eat a nutritious diet
2 - Drink lots of water
3 - Exercise regularly
4 - Get plenty of rest
5 - Avoid sick people
6 - Minimize stress
7 - Don’t use drugs
8 - Don’t lie on your back

Most women adhere to these like their baby’s health and life depended upon it. And, it does. BUT, have you thought about how these science-based admonishments for pregnant and breastfeeding women are NOT practiced during labor and birth in the hospital?

Let’s take a look at the list again and see if the very same do’s and don’t's that are medically and scientifically critical for healthy prenatal (brain) development ALSO apply to the brain of the laboring and birthing baby. Perhaps, when you compare prenatal and labor and birth together, we’ll all form a collective, chin-rubbin’, “Hmmm, something’s not right here.”

1 - Eat a nutritious diet
Labor and Birth:
Generally, most hospitals "restrict food" or do not "allow" laboring women to eat. Maybe some jello or juice, but not a meal. So, no protein and carbohydrates during the birthing mother and baby’s long marathon ahead of them – and, no water either.

Of course, a woman doesn’t always feel like eating during labor, even as she complains of hunger. And, really who wants to eat the notoriously nasty hospital food? A loved one who knows her, and her favorite or comfort foods, knows what to do – how to respond to her and nurture her.

The hospital ritual of depriving a mother of food just might have more to do with the days when woman tended to vomit because of the drugs used, and because of the potential for surgical birth today. (More likely when she's not nourished). For nine months an adult woman knows what her body can tolerate -- she's become a master at it. Women know how to trust their bodies and to know what they need, wherever and when they give birth.

2 - Drink Lots of water
Labor and birth:
During labor and birth, generally water for the laboring woman is minimized, but she is offfered all the ice chips she wants, whether or not she prefers it. "It’s the hospital policy."

Our bodies are 70% water. On an easy day in life we are told to drink eight glasses a day for health. But during labor and birth that be might hours to days in length, a woman is not allowed to judge how much water her body needs. This is dangerous – she needs to be fully hydrated for many aspects of health, including maintenance of healthy blood pressure and elimation of toxins.
When woman’s uterus dilates to 7-9 cm her body will naturally stop to take a break and to gather energy for the big burst of effort she will need to birth her baby. At this time she needs water to hydrate her uterus so it can work optimally. She also needs to be left alone and for the room to be dark and quiet – this is when a woman goes deep within to the ancient part of the brain that knows how to give birth.

In the hospital this lull is seen as “failure to progress” and because it is so close to being fully dilated, hospital staff panic. Something has gone wrong! She is bombarded with questions and medical caregivers tend to want to augment labor with artificial hormones, all of which interferes with the woman’s physiological process. Her ancient brain and her body never make the connection. This results in a longer labor and pushing and interventions when rest, fluids, and quiet is all she needs.

3 - Exercise regularly
Labor and birth:
Women are advised to continue their exercise regimes to maintain good overall health and muscle tone. Obviously, strength and flexibility are benefits of being fit througout pregnancy.
Movement (and sound) is a key to birthing the least painful and stressful way.

Most women prefer to be moving and adjusting throughout labor and quite often, a woman likes to have one leg up and to twist her hips, working with her baby to move through her pelvis.In a birth center or at home, women will move from room to room, in and out of the shower or tub, be intimate with partner, take walks, bounce on a ball, play with her older children, cook meals, and dance during early labor.

Wherever she births when she is left alone she will most often be on all fours during labor and birth which opens the pelvis centimeters more – enough to birth with less pain and without cutting her perineum. When left to allow their bodies to guide them women rarely, if ever, choose to lie in bed to labor or birth. It's too painful and decreases the pelvic outlet -- making labor too painful and making her feel out of control. She is not able to go into the pain when lying on her sacrum.

4 - Get plenty of rest
Labor and birth:
Rest IN a HOSPITAL!?!? Yeah, right! We all know the stories and jokes about adult patients wanting to go home in order to get some rest. Loud voices of strangers, phones ringing, machines beeping, nurses doing frequent checks; and don’t forget the shift change chaos and the residents, blood drawers and janitorial staff who must do their work right when you get to the toilet or settled in a cozy rest.Nowhere is the constant disruption by nursing staff more damaging than to the laboring baby and mother who need to stay in connection with one another. In between her contractions she must go within to rest. Those two to eight minutes of quiet and rest are profoundly important to mother and baby.

5 - Avoid sick people
Labor and birth:
Ah, the hospital IS where SICK people go!! Hospitals are the germiest places on the planet. THAT alone is reason enough to not give birth in a hospital. It is estimated that nearly 100,000 patients per year die per year from hospital acquired illness. Later, your infant is more likely to become sick shortly after going to the pediatrician for his or her “wellness check.”

Every woman is prepped for an IV in the event of a fever or an emergency cesarean. If a woman uses epidural anesthesia for pain she has a second puncture wound in her spine accessing her cerebral spinal fluid, a direct route to her brain. Every puncture makes her highly susceptible to an invasion of new germs for which she has no immunity. Birthing babies do not have immunity to the germs at the hospital. Both have immunities for being in their own home.

Birthing women and babies often are on antibiotics which is now known to contribute to other health issues – because the normal flora the mother and baby need is killed and they are susceptible to germs in the hospital. Patients in the general population do not have immunity to germs like staph, pneumonia, or influenza. How safe can it be for a newborn, with no immunity to be exposed to all of it at once?

6) Minimize stress
Labor and birth:
The hospital environment is one of the most stressful for staff and for patients. (I hear there is not really a shortage of nurses, just a shortage of nurses who are willing to work in that environment). Patients experience noise, constant disruptions, waiting for attention and information, increased blood pressure just walking in the door, and physical violations (even when helpful) by strangers. Everyone complains about the gowns and their inability to maintain dignity.Having a baby is high on the index of stressful events. Could the stress be minimized?

Imagine how a woman manages to give birth so exposed to strangers, with so many disruptions, hungry, fearful, and numb from the waist down. Imagine a woman and man at home in their own home and environment surrounded by people (trained) they know and trust who will respect their wishes. A baby will live the life he or she is born into – stressful or peaceful.

7) Don't lie on your back (The baby’s oxygen supply is compromised.)
Labor and birth:
Even though she told not to lie on her back during pregnancy, especially the last trimester. She is on her back for most of the labor and birth, especially if she uses epidural anesthesia for pain.

In the hospital women are routinely confined to bed, especially since 85% of them use epidural anesthesia for pain relief. Numb from the waist down she is unable to even roll over. As she lies on her back she is, as the physicians warn her during prenatal period, impairing the blood supply to her baby. As she sits on her sacrum she restricts the pelvis from opening. She is also sitting on a huge bundle of nerves and this severely increases her pain.

New walking epidurals are meant to give women more mobility, but she is still "BWUID" (Birthing While Under the Influence of Drugs" and with minimized oxygen), and she is unable to move in the way needed for birthing her baby through her pelvis. Why is it ok to birth under the influence but driving under the influence is major social and legal problem?

8) Don't use drugs
Labor and birth:
Don't use drugs especially illicit, alcohol, and smoking because they pass through the placenta to the baby. Drugs prescribed by your physician are ok.

Apparently, there are only two things that are consistent “No-no’s” for both a pregnant woman and a laboring and birthing woman in the hospital – don’t smoke or drink alcohol. Are we really to believe that drugs affect the human baby during pregnancy and breastfeeding, but NOT during labor and birth?

Where is the scientific evidence that the baby’s brain and body “turn off” during labor and birth, or can differentiate between illicit use and prescription use? None of the drugs women are told are safe during pregnancy have had trials to show this, and none of the drugs EVER used in obstetrics have been shown safe for the laboring and birthing brain – which has a billion neurons at birth.

What is the reason for these glaring discrepancies in logic, science, and practice -- other than the belief that the relative short period of labor and birth, and the experience of it, is not critical to the baby’s brain development? Could it be that medical science is distorted to support certain practices - that better serve the system and time needs of medical staff? To maintain the status quo of hospitals as the “safe” place to birth?

Did you believe the medical wisdom for prenatal development and care doesn’t apply to the laboring and birthing baby, but now you wonder about that?? Do you have a child who was born “under the influence” of epidural anesthesia or are you an obstetric physician and just now feel a combination of anger, fear, and denial? That’s your inner wisdom, feelings, your body speaking to you. Feelings are stored in the body and processed through the brain. What one can’t process through the brain comes out as denial and anger. Stay tuned for more information on how to deal with the guilt and anger, and how to help your child.