As a baby, I was born at 30 weeks and was in an incubator for 6 weeks, and this experience ignited a passion in me from my teenage years onwards to understand what babies experience during and after birth.
I remember the first time that I realised that our birth deeply influences us. I was having dinner in the kitchen in my home as a teenager, and my parents were listening to a Radio 4 programme where a man was talking about remembering his birth during hypnotherapy. I was spellbound.
In my twenties, whilst training as a psychotherapist, I became passionate about pre- and peri-natal psychology, and the research which showed the vital influence of birth. I went to several rebirthing and Holotropic Breathwork workshops.
When I was pregnant 21 years ago and came across Aware Parenting, and learnt that we don’t need to wait until adulthood to express the feelings from our time in utero and during and after birth, and there was another spellbound moment.
I am so grateful that I had this information before my children were born, and that their dad and I could listen to their feelings related to their births.
Babies can express feelings about their birth and heal from stressful or traumatic elements of it.
Even if the birth is beautiful, birth is a huge experience for babies – Stan Grof’s work helped me see that (I highly recommend looking into his work if you don’t know it!)
So babies aren’t just sleeping, feeding and playing as used to be thought. They are processing what they have experienced, and telling us about their experiences. They are feeling all kinds of feelings.
Babies and children have so much wisdom. They know how to heal.
The more we free ourselves from our cultural conditioning about babies, and the more we have our unexpressed feelings heard, the more we are able to lovingly hold our babies in our arms when they have feelings to tell us. The more we can cooperate with their natural healing processes.
The baby who always pushes into a position that replicates how they were positioned during birthing, the toddler who keeps playing a game where they get stuck, or who always cries when any clothes are put over their head, the 5 year old who always wants to play games involving tunnels – are often inviting healing related to birth.
If you’d like to learn more about Aware Parenting with babies, I have a free Babies Have Real Feelings ebook and audio here.