My husband uses pregnancy hormones to explain my crying spells :) but I want to talk about hormones in a more positive way and how they contribute to the amazing birth process. I feel this is important because you cannot "trick" hormones. They will be produced in the body by real feelings and emotions. That is why when people say that a woman desiring the "comfort" of a home birth as an unrealistic reason, I question their understanding about the process of birth because it's success is very much based on the comfort, relaxation, and support and love felt by the mother. I am not saying that a mother cannot have these things in a hospital birth, but based on personal experience, it is not easy to feel relaxed in calm in a cold and uptight environment.
So first...oxytocin: the hormone by which the birth process in driven by. Actually it the hormone that the whole creation process is driven by because it is also the hormone present during love-making. It is very interesting that the same hormone present when the baby got into the uterus is the same hormone that gets the baby out. Oxytocin is the "love hormone." So in order to increase the production of this hormone to increase the efficiency and process of labor, the environment set up how you feel most relaxed and comfortable, similar to love making...that is, no distractions, with people who love and trust, low light, warm, and feeling like you can "let go." There are plenty of stories of women who go to the hospital only to have their labor stop, or even more obvious, have their labor stop when a doctor whom that do not have a strong, trusting relationship with simply walks in the room. Bottom line, everything surrounding a woman in labor must be conducive for her relaxation and comfort...including people, objects, and types of energy.
Adrenaline is the stress hormone and is the opposite of oxytocin. When it is present, labor stops...such as when a mother cat is in labor and feels threatened by human presence and so her labor stops until she is able to find a more private spot. The same goes for other animals who are threatened by a predator...they put their labor on hold due to the adrenaline hormone that kicks in.
There are often births that are "stalled" and so the medical model philosophy would say that there is something wrong with this woman and so we will just have to help her with pitocin or by performing a c-section. A better solution would be to consider WHY the labor is stalled and explore the emotional aspect of that. What kind of aspects about the experience are tense and what might the mother be holding inside of her, even from the past, that might be influencing the oxytocin hormone from doing it's job? If a hospital birth is in order, it is difficult to control some of the environmental factors, but one thing that can help is to have a supportive birth person called a doula. (See my post on birth support and doulas here). A doula is a person that can be with all the time during labor and help to handle situations that might otherwise cause stress for you.
Advocates of the medical model and hospital births emphasize that they provide interventions to problems in labor that would not be available in a home birth. The question that needs to be considered is whether or not those problems were not only cured, but also CAUSED by the hospital environment. In addition, was the intervention with its risks the only solution, or is there are simpler, natural, and more risk-free way of helping women birth more smoothly?
Choosing a home birth is not just a matter or preference, but in accordance with the understanding that I have gained about the birth process and the integral part that hormones play, I believe that I will that I will have a faster, less eventful, more enjoyable, calmer, and thus SAFER birth by choosing and controlling environmental factors that can affect the natural birth hormones.
The more I learn about birth, the more I am in awe of the amazing human body, namely the woman's body. God, our creator, knew what He was doing. It is an integral part of His plan to have us bring spirits in this world by means of a body so that they could be tested and experience joy. He certainly did not leave the way we would get here up to doctors.
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