On this page you will find a host of articles written by professionals and well as activists. Spend some time on this page, it will enrich your knowledge of birthing!

Click on the heading of the article to take you to the full article as published.

Enjoy!

GENERAL:

Belinda Loudon, owner of Bella Rose Birthing Centre

A selection of writings based on her personal experiences of birth and pregnancy.

PAIN MANAGEMENT AND THE ROLE OF HORMONES IN BIRTHING:

Pain in Labour – Your hormones are your helpers by Dr Sarah Buckley

The process of labour is amazingly complex but superbly co-ordinated by a birthing woman’s natural chemical messangers- her hormones. These include oxytocin, the hormone of love, endorphins, the body’s natural pain killers, adrenaline and noradreenalin, hormones of excitement, and prolactin, the mothering hormone. We can improve our chance of a good and safe experience of birth through respecting, and working with, these hormones in labour and birth.

Ecstatic birth – nature’s hormonal blueprint for labor by Dr Sarah Buckley

This article was one of the most popular ever published in the Mothering Magazine. Birthlove Webmistress Leilah McCracken says: “Amazing research and passion about the integral role emotion, hormones and sensuality play in pregnancy, birth and breastfeeding.”

The Pain of Labour – A Feminist Issue by Andrea Robertson

Pain in labour is universal: it hurts to give birth. Since this is such a common experience it could be seen as comforting, a bond among women, a fundamental truth that confirms our special biological role and affirms the importance of our contribution to society. More often, however, it is seen as a blight, an unnecessary imposition, an affliction we must bear as the price for bearing children. This view, bolstered by the perception that pain is a symptom of disease and illness, has enabled medical men to convince us that pain is dispensable during birth, and is of no value, an evil to be cured with modern treatments and technology.

CHILDBIRTH:

Fish can’t see water – The need to humanize birth in Australia by Marsden Wagner

Humanizing birth means understanding that the woman giving birth is a human being, not a machine and not just a container for making babies. Showing women—half of all people—that they are inferior and inadequate by taking away their power to give birth is a tragedy for all society. On the other hand, respecting the woman as an important and valuable human being and making certain that the woman’s experience while giving birth is fulfilling and empowering is not just a nice extra, it is absolutely essential as it makes the woman strong and therefore makes society strong.

The Active Management of Labour by Marsden Wagner

Active management illustrates the confusion in the medical approach as to what is normal and what is pathological in birth.

Healing Birth, Healing the Earth by Dr Sarah Buckley

Sarah’s powerful edday on the lessons of birth – passion, love, power and surrender – and the healing that we can experience, individually and globally, through respecting and reclaiming this ancient rite.

Middle Class Beliefs: How They Define Normal Birth by Connee L. Pike-Urlacher, MS

The problem with defining a normal birth is as difficult as trying to define the individual in group terms. In looking at white, middle class women, the problem isn’t so much what normal birth is, but why this particular group of women doesn’t question what it is more carefully. Statistically, it is this group of women that seeks the most intervention, receives the most technological assistance, wants the most tests, and perhaps place the highest demands upon their healthcare workers, most often doctors.

HypnoBirthing

Ask anyone what their expectation of natural childbirth is, and most would use the word pain somewhere – regardless of whether they have even experienced it personally or not. So it’s never a surprise to me that women react with disbelief when I tell them that pain-free childbirth is actually possible!

The way to achieve it? HypnoBirthing: a complete antenatal course that allows couples to approach the birth of their child with excitement rather than trepidation, and with a full understanding of the physiology of birth, as well as their options during the process.

BIRTHING IN OTHER COUNTRIES:

The Place of Birth – The Dutch Midwifery System by Beatrijs Smulders

Dutch midwifery care is unique in the world. Our country has a totally different culture and system that allows Dutch midwives to work as they do and this is not because our midwives or obstetricians are very different from elsewhere but because our approach enables women to get the best of both worlds. The system prevents midwives and obstetricians from behaving in ways that are bad for women and demands the best from all of us.

On her own responsibility – The struggle for independent midwifery in the United States by Elizabeth Davis

The United States is the only country in the world that virtually eliminated the practice of midwifery. This took place around the turn of the century, when obstetrics became a profit-generating and male-dominated profession. Women could not acquire the requisite credentials because they were denied access to university education, and traditional midwives fell victim to a campaign organized by physicians to discredit their work.