Easy birth is not a myth. It’s time to recognize that difficult birth is what ought to be abnormal.
I’m so excited to continue our birth stories blog series with part 2, the story of the birth of my daughter, Rayyaan.
If you missed the first blog in this series, check out Pain-Free Birth: Muneeza’s Birth Series Part 1
I shared in that blog that I believe it’s important for women to share their birth stories to remove the fear and uncertainty surrounding giving birth.
Sharing our stories helps to empower us as women. Read more about the importance of strong women to create strong communities in my Mother’s Day 2023 blog: The Strength of Women.
So often, the only images we see of birth are surrounded by pain and panic, but that is not normal. Click To TweetIt may be common, but in my experience, birth can be sacred, pain-free, and even easy, which is not to say birth isn’t intense – it is – but intense does not mean trauma for the mother or baby.
Today I’ll tell the story of my second daughter, Rayyaan. An astoundingly easy birth that still amazes me.
AN EASY START
This time, I knew what to expect a bit more and that I could trust my body to guide me through the birth experience.
When labor began, I had very mild birth surges (what most professionals call “contractions,” which I disagree with – contraction implies tightness which is not what the uterus is doing; it’s preparing the uterine muscles for birth, and relaxation is crucial).
These surges would come and go and were very inconsistent, so I knew there was still time. I continued to move around easily, spending time in the kitchen, speaking with my husband, and getting along with my day. There was no indication that we should head for the birth center.
I continued to hydrate throughout the day. Then, around 10 p.m., labor suddenly became very intense.
I knew it was still early, but things were progressing, so I got into the bathtub and listened to my HypnoBirthing recordings which I found hugely helpful before and during the birth of my first daughter. I put myself into a deep hypnotic state.
I intended to bring my second child into the world at home, but at the time, my husband and I were in a two-bedroom apartment along with my entire family who was visiting – mom, dad, three sisters, and of course, our eldest daughter. As much as I wanted to, I knew I couldn’t give birth at home.
As I deeply relaxed in the bathtub, aided by the HynoBirthing recordings, I lost conscious awareness of my external circumstances. I’ve always been able to reach deep meditative states quickly, and this was no exception.
Suddenly, I jolted awake, and my husband walked in, asking if I was alright. I felt my labor was progressing, so I said, “We need to go.”
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LET’S GO!
The birth of our first daughter took 21 hours, so my husband thought he had time for a quick shower and change of clothes before we left.
I told him we needed to get going right away! Like, right now. This was an entirely different birth.
He was wearing pajamas, so I told him he had 30 seconds to change, and then we needed to move.
My sister had planned to accompany us to the birth center if I went into labor, and as we were getting ready to leave, she said she also wanted to change out of her pajamas. I told her there was no time – grab a jacket and let’s go!
A BEAUTIFUL MOMENT
We left the apartment, and I had a surge so massive I had to stop and lay in the hallway just outside our apartment door. I was essentially in child’s pose for anyone familiar with yoga. I breathed and moaned through the surge, and my dad came out and asked, “Are you alright?”
I looked up at my father midway through my surge, unable to register any thoughts. But I remember him looking at me intently and saying, “I’m so impressed with how you’re handling this.” He was so sincere.
I didn’t register what he was communicating then, but reflecting back; it was a beautiful moment of respect from father to daughter.
All I could think then was, “We gotta go!” I kept saying, “We gotta go, we gotta go.”
READY OR NOT
My husband got the car from the garage, my sister grabbed our birth bags, and we were on our way with me in the backseat – the front seat was not an option because I could not sit upright. I knew we were getting close.
We arrived at the birth center, where they tried to put me into a wheelchair. I said I wanted to walk and followed them to the birth room.
The staff was trying to get me into a gown, into the bed, and to hook me up to a monitor to get a baseline rate, but amidst all of this, I said, “Oh, I think she’s… I think she’s coming!”
The nurse said, “Oh, no, no, no, try not to give birth right now! The midwife isn’t here yet!” And she said more things that I didn’t register before running out to get a midwife.
And I just remember saying, “I’m not doing anything.” It was out of my hands! I was in the middle of another birth surge and could feel my daughter moving rapidly down the birth path.
My sister had gone to the bathroom attached to my room, and my husband had turned around to get something from our bags.
And then Rayyaan, my second daughter, popped right out onto the bed.
My husband turned around immediately and said, “Oh my God, she’s here.”
My sister exited the bathroom and said, “Oh my God, she’s here!” She had only just told our mother we had arrived at the birth center,
The nurse ran in with a midwife, and both said, “Oh my God, she’s here!”
And that was the end of Rayyaan’s birth story. Very different from Hanaan’s!
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EASY GOING
Rayyaan arrived about an hour and a half before midnight that evening. I spent no more than five minutes in the birthing room before she came. Talk about an easy birth!
Afterward, I had no experience of any discomfort. It was amazing! Rayyaan just slipped right out. It was an incredible experience – honestly, almost unbelievable.
Rayyaan maintained her easygoing nature beyond her birth – she slept, she ate, she pooped, she slept, she ate, she pooped – she was an entirely different personality to her older sister.
The birth story of my second child perfectly illustrates the point I made earlier – birth does not have to be difficult.
Reflecting on my easy birth with Rayyaan, the biggest takeaway I carry with me is that trust is CRUCIAL when it comes to birth.
In birth, trust is what opens the door for ease. Click To Tweet
Little newborn Rayyaan
THE 3-FOLD TRUST: TRUST YOUR BODY
As women, we must cultivate three layers of trust before giving birth.
Trust in our bodies, trust in ourselves and trust in our support system.
When women trust their bodies, anxiety surrounding birth lessens. God designed our bodies to create life and bring new life into the world. We can trust our bodies to perform the miraculous acts that are natural to them.
A lack of trust in her body is a huge reason a woman has a difficult birth. We have been trained to believe that giving birth is inherently dangerous and full of risk, but this is not what our ancestors experienced.
Birth used to take place in the home – as did death. It’s only in the last century that we’ve moved both of these stages of life into hospitals.
There is currently a focus on what can go wrong with birth. Hospitals are a place of illness and emergency. When a woman enters a hospital, she will consciously and subconsciously connect to this aspect of the hospital and feel that she is not safe. This does not reinforce to women that an easy birth is even possible, let alone likely.
It’s essential to be aware of potential risks and prepared with medical intervention protocols if necessary. Still, it’s even more critical to TRUST that, given the right environment, our bodies know what to do and how to do it safely for both mother and child.
THE 3-FOLD TRUST: TRUST YOURSELF
When women trust themselves, we remove obstacles to birthing with ease.
Women are rarely given a blueprint for a successful birth. We’re not passing that knowledge from mother to daughter as previous generations have.
During my time as a birthing practitioner, my goal was always to build trust with my clients who were first-time mothers – trust in themselves. Trust paves the way for an easy birth.
A surrender can happen during birth when a woman trusts her intuition to guide her in what she and her baby need. Surrender leads to ease – to easy birth.
For women, surrender during birth is akin to orgasm. Trust and vulnerability are needed in both situations. Fear and anxiety will inhibit that surrender as they block a woman’s belief in herself.
Have you ever heard of a woman experiencing an orgasm with a clenched jaw? It isn’t going to happen!
When we are relaxed, our mouth and tongue are also relaxed. There is a connection between the lower abdomen and our oral musculature.
Tightness in the mouth means there is tightness in the cervix and pelvis. This is why, during orgasm, a woman’s mouth is open and also why vocal sounds during birth often mirror the vocal sounds of sex and orgasm.
When we have bowel movements, our jaws are relaxed unless we’re constipated.
Ina May Gaskin, known as “the mother of authentic midwifery” and a leading founder of The Farm, a beautiful birthing center, has spoken about the “sphincter law.”
The sphincter law states that sphincters – muscles that govern much of what occurs in our lower torso – do not respond to commands. They operate unconsciously as members of the body moving in unconscious intelligence. Sphincters respond to how safe we feel.
Toddlers, while potty training, learn to urinate in their diapers first, which is safe, comfortable, and warm. It takes time for toddlers to acclimate to toilets, which feel strange after the comfort and ease of a diaper.
Very often, little ones don’t trust the new circumstance, and their bodies won’t relax or release on the toilet.
When she was young, my daughter refused to use the bathroom at her friend’s house. We had a 30-minute drive home, and I knew she couldn’t hold it for much longer, so I encouraged her to go before we left her friend’s house, but she refused.
The moment we got home, she had the longest pee! She needed to feel safe to relax and release.
The need to feel safe holds for a woman giving birth. If a woman trusts herself and knows she is safe, she can ease into birth and avoid painful hardship.
THE 3-FOLD TRUST: TRUST YOUR SUPPORT SYSTEM
Finally, women must trust their support system, which includes their emotional support system (partners, family, trusted friends), birthing practitioners, and surroundings.
Animals in Nature do not give birth when they do not feel safe. For this reason, species like elephants, dolphins, and lions do not give birth in isolation.
When a mother lion gives birth, other lionesses protect her nearby, and male lions patrol the surrounding area. Female elephants surround a birthing mother with comfort and protection. Dolphins guard a birthing mother in the wild.
As humans, we also rely on our community for support and protection. Without that support, we cannot feel safe enough to surrender to the birth process.
Our partners, midwives, family, and friends are essential to a successful birth. And this trust must move into the practitioners participating in our birth.
The Barn, the birthing center I mentioned earlier, has an extremely high success rate regarding natural birth. For example, less than 2% of births that have taken place here have required a cesarean, and only 5% of births needed a trip to the hospital. Read more of their stats here.
Compare that to cesarean births accounting for 32.1% of total births in the USA alone in 2021.
This number comes straight from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in the United States, link here.
The Barn is doing something right to prove that easy birth is possible.
The primary factor that makes The Barn unique is a deep sense of trust between mothers and their support system. Along with birthing practitioners who see medical intervention as a supplement to primary care, not as the best or only option.
Birthing practitioners’ trust in themselves and the woman’s body also extends directly to the birth experience. Doctors constantly looking for signs of a necessary intervention will find those signs far more readily than an experienced midwife trained to look for red flags while she trusts a woman’s body to do most of the work.
Let’s look at the physiology of birth for a moment. A woman’s cervix must open (dilate) and thin (efface) for the body to give birth.
There is a specific cascade of hormones that drives this process. If a woman is in fear, or is disturbed during her birth process, that cascade of hormones is interrupted, and the cervix may close rather than open.
When medical staff with good intentions encourage a woman to “push!” against her body when it is constricted due to a lack of safety and trust, more harm is caused than help.
A woman coerced to push against her body is far more likely to receive a “failure to progress” assessment from a medical professional, which is the justification used to implement medical intervention during birth.
Forcing a child through birth is also a significant reason women experience pain and difficulty in birth, which can lead to injury for the mother.
When caring practitioners and loving support systems surround birth, it’s natural that a woman will not find it easy to surrender to her birth process.
A sterile, impersonal, “official” approach to birth is anything but natural, despite tremendous advances in our understanding of the importance of hygiene during birth, which has helped to protect mothers and babies from easily avoidable exposures.
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SUPPORTIVE TOOLS
In part one of this birthing series, we looked at supportive supplements and nutrition to best prepare for pain-free birth. Today, let’s look at additional support we, as women, can call upon to bring about an easy birth.
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Focus on the following shots for potent tools related to birth:
- Betrayal and Broken Trust Stabilizer
- Wisdom and Intuition Stabilizer
- Guilt and Shame Shifter
- Speaking Your Truth Stabilizer
- Adrenal Fight or Flight Stabilizer
You can also pray to the following angels to guide your pregnancy and the circumstances leading up to and surrounding birth. Read more about these and other angels here.
- Angel of Birth
- Angel of Fertility
- Angel of Mother’s Milk
- Angel of Faith
- Angel of Trust
I recommend HynoBirthing as an excellent resource for mothers. I am not only a former HypoBirthing practitioner but have also used HypoBirthing techniques during the birth of my three daughters.
HypnoBirthing encourages women to master their ability to surrender and find calm within themselves regardless of external circumstances. Building a sense of sovereignty over your emotional self and internal responses to external events is crucial.
A NEW VISION FOR BIRTH
Birth does not have to be hard. Birth does not have to be traumatic. Birth does not have to be painful. Click To TweetEasy birth can become something we expect to experience! I hope this will inspire any aspiring or expecting mothers out there not to allow fear to surround their first, second, fifth, or tenth birth.
If you’re looking for resources to prepare your body, mind, and spirit for a pain-free birth experience, check out part one of this blog series – linked here!
I’m humbled to be able to offer you resources to help make your experience your own, aside from mainstream influences that may cause anxiety and uncertainty.
To your health and peace,
Muneeza
