excerpt 1
Of course, women who need medical intervention should have the best that can be provided; intervention saves lives. But some 75-80 per cent of births should go as smoothly as nature intended.
The problem is that just a fraction of the number of women who don’t have a medical requirement for intervention are getting to the finish line without being subjected to meddling from midwives and doctors.
Meddling that supersedes a woman’s own desires and instincts, and impairs her body’s ability to cope as it is designed to do.
Under normal conditions, a woman is best left to be her own director, behaving in an instinctive and uninhibited way. Only when that is allowed to happen will she get the rush of Mother Nature’s feel-good cocktail: a hormone boost designed specifically to flood her body with exactly what it needs — not just to get her through every stage of labour, but to ensure that she won’t find the process so physically and mentally difficult that she never does it again.
We were designed for this, and we deserve to be rewarded with the natural high that obstetrician and mother of four home-birth children, Dr Sarah Buckley, describes as Mother Nature’s ‘pat on the back’.
if you mention oxytocin to most women who have given birth in a UK hospital, they will think of it as a drug, administered by drip, to speed along her contractions.In fact, in its natural form, it is the ‘love hormone’ — the same one that floods our brains during orgasm, and is also boosted by cuddling, breastfeeding and other positive, loving experiences.
We produce it naturally in massive quantities during labour and birth, and its effects cannot be artificially replicated.
This wonderful stuff reduces fear, increases trust and promotes a sense of connectedness with those around you. There is nothing like it for making a woman feel that everything is in her control and that everyone is on her side.
It is also what gives a new mother that ‘loved-up’ feeling after the birth, helping any memories of pain or anxiety to fade almost immediately.
It is a primal reaction that when our adrenaline levels rise, labour halts, because our brain is telling our body that it’s not safe to proceed. By counteracting fear, oxytocin keeps adrenaline levels in check, which ensures that labour progresses steadily.
What’s more, as a pheromone, oxytocin is contagious, transmitted through the air and picked up by the nose. Studies have shown that when a father attends the birth of his child, his oxytocin levels rise as well, making him part of the love-in and — importantly — more ready to connect with his child
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1393248/The-birth-junkies-An-agonising-ordeal-No-says-maternity-expert-NICOLE-CROFT-giving-birth-natural-high-powerful-leave-mothers-addicted.html#ixzz1OKWsVTDl
excerpt 5
Endorphins are 500 times stronger than morphine. They improve your mood and, most incredibly, have amnesiac qualities, which is why as birth progresses, a woman should feel increasingly ‘away with the fairies’.
After a totally natural birth, it is often very difficult to remember the specifics of it, and that’s the way it should be.
It’s also why a lot of women will often say that — much to their surprise — the earlier part of their labour was more difficult than the later parts, when they were much more ‘out of it’ and more flooded with endorphins.
And it’s the reason why inductions are generally harder to cope with, because they artificially accelerate the labour process, hitting the mother with back-to-back contractions, before the body has had time to produce sufficient quantities of hormones and natural pain relief.
Perhaps I sound crazy, perhaps I sound high, but I have seen enough births to know that no one knows better than Mother Nature.
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