Birth is a very normal, physiological body function. Your body knows how to birth. Just as your body knows how to cough, sneeze, produce waste, digest and process foods into energy, so your body knows how to grow and give birth to a baby. Women have been giving birth for many years, some estimate close to one million years. The same process which occurs today was happening a thousand years ago in exactly the same way. We have not perfected birth, although birth is safer today because of the knowledge and technology now available to us.
How to cope with the pain of childbirth is a common concern of women and their partners and provides motivation to prepare for childbirth. There are many ways of dealing with the pain of labor and birth. Anesthesia, chemicals, and instruments can be used to help you through labor, however, many women choose to avoid any intervention in the birth process. Instead they use their environment, their body, and their minds to create the acceptance necessary to allow the birth process to occur without fighting or holding back.
Ideas about how the pain of labor should be delt with and experienced have changed in the last 150 years: During the 19th century, birth was seen as a time of suffering for women. Queen Victoria was the first woman to accept chloroform for the delivery of her eighth child in 1853.
- to read the rest, see WOMEN'S HEALTH AND BIRTH CARE
