Hello again!
I am so grateful for Aware Parenting for so many reasons.
One that jumped out at me today, when I was making a meme about babies healing from their birthing experiences, was after my son was born.
My son was posterior.
My daughter had been posterior too, and an amazing 86 hour, mostly unassisted birth.
I was a HypnoBirthing Instructor and had stayed deeply calm throughout her birth.
By the time my son was born, I had done everything I could discover about to help him not be posterior, but he still was posterior!
But I am so grateful to my Craniosacral Therapist, who I went to throughout my pregnancy.
She was a doula and she told me about the Back Labour No More book, and The Lifting Technique.
By now I was also trained in Calm Birth and was working with it with couples.
I used the lifting technique with my son, and his birth was about an hour and a half. And it was unassisted again.
He stayed posterior throughout the second stage, when suddenly I could feel him turn, and then he was born within a few surges.
He was born in the bathroom. After a few moments, I put him to my breast to feed, and he clamped on so tight that it really really hurt.
And that is where I am SO grateful that he was my second baby, and that I had experienced two things;
1. exactly how to position a baby to latch on and how comfortable it feels;
2. that I’d listened to many many hours of my daughter’s crying in her four and a half years, and I was also an AwP instructor, and so was very comfortable with listening to crying.
If he had been my first baby, I wouldn’t have known what to do.
And there’s no way I would have felt comfortable with listening to him crying in my arms.
It took me until my daughter was 3 months old before I could start to listen to any of her feelings.
And I wouldn’t have known what to do about him clamping on.
But I did know.
I knew that he had had a fast posterior birth, and there was likely to be a lot of tension in his jaw that was causing the clamping on.
My craniosacral therapist was coming the next day to give us both a treatment, and we continued those treatments for a while.
But I knew that I could listen to his feelings straight away.
So, within a short time after his birth, I calmly held him in my arms and gave him my full loving presence, and listened to him crying.
I gazed into his eyes, and told him, “I’m here, and I’m listening. I love you. I’d love to hear how it was for you.”
I imagined how it would have been for him, having that fast posterior birth.
I felt deep empathy and compassion for him.
I listened to how it was for him to be born so quickly, in that posterior position and to be the size he was (a midwife friend visited a couple of days later and we estimated that he would have been 9lbs and I have a slim frame and small pelvis.)
And after that first cry, when he latched on, the latch was much less of a clamping, and it felt much more comfortable for me and seemed much easier for him.
And later, I listened to him crying again.
I lay right beside him, with him in my arms, and I listened to his feelings again.
I told him that I was there with him, and that I was listening, and that I loved him, and that I was happy that he was sharing his feelings about his birth with me.
And again, after that cry, his jaw was even more relaxed, and when he fed, it was even more comfortable.
And after the third cry, his latching on felt completely comfortable for me and his muscles felt correspondingly much more relaxed.
And we continued a beautiful and easy breastfeeding relationship until he was two years old.
And I continued listening to his crying in my arms, throughout his infancy, and he was incredibly aware, present, relaxed and open.
I love this picture of him because it gives an idea of the quality of relaxation and openness he had, which I believe is because I listened to such a high percentage of his feelings (as well as meeting his needs for closeness and attunement.)
There’s much more to share about his early years; for now, I really wanted to share this story because it’s my first hand experience of how crying in arms can be a life-changing experience for babies and mothers.
And whenever I hear of a mother whose baby seems to have difficulties feeding, I wonder whether crying in arms might help.
Babies go through a massive process during birth.
As you might know, I’m passionate about Stan Grof’s work, and have been for 25 years. I’m doing a course with him at the moment and it’s reminding me of the huge forces that babies go through if they are birthed vaginally or if they have an emergency Caesarean.
Imagine the pressures that are on all parts of their bodies, particularly their shoulders and skull, as they move through the birth canal.
I know that listening to babies’ crying in arms when all their needs are met isn’t for everyone.
And I love to remind you that it’s never too late to listen to more feelings.
If we can heal from our birth as adults, which we can, of course it isn’t too late to start when our little one is a toddler or a child or even a teen.
AND those feelings are easier to access and express for babies, closer to the original experience.
If I hadn’t already been very comfortable with big feelings in babies, I dread to think what might have happened for me and my son’s breastfeeding relationship.
And if your little one is a baby, you might see her releasing birth feelings when you’re holding her and she’s crying and arching her back.
You might see her connecting with birth feelings when she’s in a sling, or in the carseat, and the confinement reminds her of stage two of her birth.
If your little one is a child, you might see her healing from her birth if she keeps on wanting to hide under your jumper and jump out, or crawl through tunnels, or if big feelings come up when you put a jumper over her head.
Anything that reminds us, or our babies or children of being born, can help bring those feelings so that they can be expressed and released with loving support, and so we can experience what we didn’t experience the first time around.
So, if your baby was separated after birth, you might find that separation from you brings up big feelings.
If your baby had medical interventions or you were given syntocin or pitocin or whatever it’s called nowadays to start or speed up the birth, you might find that your child might have really big feelings of powerlessness and rage when he doesn’t get to choose what happens.
If you had a long second stage, you might feel fear or terror in enclosed spaces where you don’t have choice about what happens, such as planes, underground trains or lifts.
Our psyches are amazing things.
We are constantly trying to release past feelings and heal old hurts by feeling those feelings in similar situations.
I wonder how this was for you to read.
I wonder if you remember things about when your baby was born.
I wonder if you’ve noticed them healing from their birth, either as a baby or a child.
I wonder if you know anything about your own birth, and whether you see any themes related to your own birth showing up in your life now.
It’s never too late to heal from more of our own birth, and it’s never too late to help our babies and children heal too.
Love,
Marion xxx