about the pain you can’t escape at home birth


buttleman-birth-BIG-5.jpgMaybe you’ve always thought of yourself as having a low pain tolerance, so the idea of giving birth in a place where you don’t have access to pharmaceutical or medical pain relief is really hard to stomach. You feel sure you’d pass out or be in such agony that you’d end up transferring to the hospital.
There are many women who don’t think they can have a home birth because they’re “a total baby” when they have a headache or they were so miserable that one time when they had an injury. Therefore, they reason, they’d flunk the “test” of enduring labor without an epidural.
And the thing is that the entire medical-industrial complex wants us to believe this. We’ve been conditioned our whole lives to expect miserable pain as an inevitable part of birth and to run to medical heroism in the form of an epidural for relief. This conditioning doesn’t leave room for the consideration of out-of-hospital birth, does it? Well, you’ve been had, sister. 

Why you can handle the pain that comes with home birth

1. Labor pain is fundamentally different than any other pain. It doesn’t signal a problem, it’s not constant (you get breaks), and it produces a desired result (your baby in your arms instead of in your uterus) and then it’s DONE.

2. In fact, when you embrace the pain as a productive and intelligent helper, suddenly the word “pain” doesn’t quite fit anymore. Maybe we can call the contractions “sensations”?

3. For most women, home is their safe place where they lack inhibition and most easily access a state of relaxed peace. The familiar environment allows us to move around, retreat to our “cave” (often the bedroom) and do other comfort-seeking activity that then takes the edge off the intensity of the sensations. The environment itself impacts your experience of pain due to the limits/freedoms it affords you.

4. There are a million ways besides drugs to help you get through unpleasant/intense/painful experiences. If you think epidural is the only option, you need to expand your thinking.

Today you can access Labor Pain Remedy – a HOLISTIC plan for pain management in non-hospital births.

YOU CAN DO THIS. I promise.

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Brooke Collier is a holistic doula, christian birthkeeper, and birth photographer serving Grand rapids, MI and West Michigan and offering childbirth education around the world.

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