How can we have Liberated Births in a system that wants to control women?
Some thoughts on liberated birth and re-writing the fear-based birth script
Recently, I made a call out for liberated birth stories, to create a collection for pregnant women to read before their own birth. Essentially, I hope to empower and inspire mothers-to-be and to rewrite an old fear-based script, into something sovereign and women-centric.
Running on a high from my own beautiful birth (read about that here), I initially hoped I’d have a huge response. Turns out I wasn’t being very realistic, which I realised as I came down from my birth high and began talking to friends about my project.
I'm very aware that it’s not a common thing to have a liberated birth in our society. In my call out for liberated birth stories I had a woman say something along the lines of “you'll probably be inundated with people!” Which I found a sweetly naive perspective, from a woman who has possibly lived in an area that has a larger percentage of liberated births than is usual throughout the Westernised world. Which is probably why finding willing women has been challenging.
I had another friend initially say that she would share her liberated birth story and then when thinking about her births, her upbeat demeanor sagged as she realised that there were a few things that happened which dis-empowered her, in the system that she birthed in. After this she sighed and stated, “actually, I don’t think I have one to share.” It is a sobering reality.
So, what is a liberated birth? Briefly (as I’m planning a much deeper dive into this through a post and chapters of the Birth in Your Power book), it’s a birth that, at the end of it and throughout, makes you feel powerful and in charge of your own experience. I’m not talking about only ‘freebirth’ or homebirth, I’m talking about any kind of birth where the woman was the one in charge of what happened to her, where she was given all her options and chose from her inner truth what option she felt was right for her and her baby.
Birth that is intuitive, birth that is fully supported by people who respect and honour the birthing woman, birth that is woman-centred and mother-led.
I want to address this ‘sobering reality’ here, because I don't want to make any woman feel bad about not having a liberated birth. It’s no individual woman’s fault. It is the system that has created the culture of birth that we live in. A patriarchal colonial system that wants some people at the top of the hierarchy and the rest below them. Control is the operative play and this is achieved by disempowering the masses in various ways. For mothers this begins in pregnancy, through birth and right on into motherhood (think Mother Guilt, expecting perfection and other shame tactics).
For women in general, we are not honoured. Still there is sexism, patriarchal power and violence. And this means that mothers - especially - are not honoured in the way that they used to be, in past cultures when we lived in ways closer to the Earth and matriarchy was the norm.
Now, the status quo is that women should just ‘do what they are told’ and not be strong or know what they need or want. That way, doctors and people within the system can continue to have ‘power over’, to do what works for them, to do the thing that fits easily into the system, to ensure each birth fits the parameters laid out by the system, by the protocols and, ultimately, by the ‘man’. Think about obstetricians persuading women to have C-sections during holidays, because they want to know they’ll get out of there in time to celebrate (although they don’t say this to the parents). Think about the push for induction, when there’s no evidence that it has better outcomes than just waiting for baby to come in their own time.
There is no space or energy to honour a woman as a unique being with unique needs and preferences. There is no space for anything but the protocols of the system.
I am aware there are people within this system who do try to respect and honour the birthing woman, but they are tied up in the system and still must honour, above everything, the system and its protocols (or risk losing their job or being sued). I am also aware that these people are the ones we must gravitate towards if we wish to birth within this system, as well as having other excellent support around us.
To stand against the status quo demands a lot from a woman. It takes energy, education, knowledge of your boundaries, self-work (perhaps years of it) so that you know how to tap into your inner knowing and follow your Spirit, rather than capitulate from imposed fear.
Not all women were made to be the leaders of this. But some were, and those women, myself included, are the ‘wayshowers’ for other women. The bright burning light in the dark to guide others. That is what I hope these birth stories can be. Bright sparks of feeling, wisdom and truth, so that women can follow their own feeling, wisdom and truth.
Many of us need this guidance at one point in life or another, because the system is against us.
Socioeconomic factors, age, inexperience, lack of community to share positive stories, educational failures: are all factors that make having a liberated birth hard to achieve.
Why would the government want to educate women in all the ways they could birth, when they want them to birth the same way: in a controlled hospital setting to control the outcome as much as possible? Why would the system want women to feel empowered and in charge of themselves, when they want to be in charge of them and have ‘power over’? Why would the system want women feeling in control and good about themselves, when they want the opposite, so that women stay within the system they have created for them?
It is through no fault of any one woman that we have so many negative experiences around birth. It is the system of control that has created a culture of negativity, fear and dis-empowerment.
So, for the woman who didn’t feel like she had a liberated birth, my project is not to shame you…
It’s to empower you if you have another child.
It’s to point you in the right direction to educate yourself and heal from your previous birth, for yourself, your child and the next birth.
It’s to help you see that these stories come from normal women, just like you, having their human experience. So, liberated birth is within your grasp, truly.
It’s to support you to heal from any dis-empowered birth experiences.
It’s to give yourself the gift of retelling your own traumatic experiences through the words of another, spun on its head, to become powerful, just like you.
It’s to accept that perhaps negative ‘protocols’ happened to you during a very vulnerable time and, because you didn’t have the proper support holding you, you couldn’t possibly have dealt with it any differently.
It’s to open your eyes to yourself and your negative experiences from the context of being within the system, so that you can realise that none of it was your fault.
This project is for all women and mothers, no matter what their experience of birth was.
Not only is this project for pregnant women, to provide them with women’s wisdom through lived experience, resources, suggestions and support; it is also for those women who don’t feel they had a liberated birth, and women who are seeking healing from negative birth experiences. To gift these women closure around their experiences. So, they can read a heap of stories woven with love, power and positivity, to help heal their own experiences on a collective and core level.
You can read these stories and feel into the healing within them. You can tell yourself, these sisters, against all odds, had empowered births. I didn’t, but now I know: it wasn’t my fault.
With these stories we are re-writing the birth script for all our sisters. Because we all deserve to have a liberated birth - even in this system, we all deserve to be in charge of our bodies and our babies, we all deserve to choose our own birth experiences and be listened to, respected and cared for no matter what we choose.
With all of that said, I would love to hear from more women who wish to add to this project with their own liberated birth story. To show our sisters: ‘these sisters, against all odds, had empowered births’ and they did it for all of us.
Click here to learn more about the project.
Click here to be inspired by my Liberated Lotus birth.
If you feel the call, please direct message me or email me at yeninservice@protonmail.com