Birth around the world

After days of our neighbour, Noon, telling me she wants her baby born and out, her babies birthday finally came.

Women in Cambodia often birth their babies easily and with no fuss. They walk around all during first stage, often with their mothers, stopping and holding onto something when a contraction comes, then continue on walking  when the contraction passes. The majority come in to centres during advanced labour and push their babies out. These women have incredible inner strength and resilience. They get on with what needs to be done, without being in their heads.

No one has breastfeeding problems. No one has 'not enough milk', 'too much milk' or 'my mum couldnt breastfeed so I can't' voices playing in their mind. Their babies attach to the breast sometime after birth, it doesn't have to be within the first hour and it normally isn't after time of skin to skin. It's so hot here that baby usually just lays next to Mumma, and then when baby makes a noise, Mumma picks it up and gives it breastmilk. There are not many families here that formula feed. It is simply a very dangerous choice in this country to do so, either because the water or the bottle is not clean enough and has deadly germs. I saw a sign once which said: 'Breastfed babies look like this' and there was a picture of a healthy plump child. Next to it it said 'Formula fed babies look like this': and there was a picture of a gravestone with a little flower on it.

Anyway, I'm going off track. Noon came into the centre after a restless night and morning at home. She lay on her bed on her back and we encouraged her to try a new position. She moved around freely, from her side, to the squatting, to kneeling, hardly making a sound. It was only about 2 hours of her being therer that her black eyed, black haired Khmer daughter was born. The placenta was born easily and fuss free physiologically and the cord was cut once it had stopped pulsating. Baby went to Mummas chest and  she looked relieved that her baby was here. It was beautiful.

This birth has bought up so many questions about birth around the world. Why is that it seems some culutres can just 'do birth'? These women in Cambodia all just get on with birth. They don't seem to need or want childbirth preparation classes, meditation for birth, spiritual guidance or hypnosis.It was the same in Ethiopia. No one asked for hypnosis and no one asked for epidurals or pain relief during birth.  At home in the west, it seems that birth is a huge market and we all pay (me included) large amounts of money to be  empowered, painfree, hypnotised, processed, zen and spiritual for our birth, and we still have an incredibly high caesarean rate and and even higher percentage of traumatised Mummas and Bubbas. Is it because in the west we are all in our heads that we physically can't get on with birth and we really do need all these other tools to help us out? Is it because in 3rd world countries, they don't really have an option, so they just 'get on with it'? And its not that one is right and one is wrong, its just an observation and a thought.

One thing I have noticed from being both here and Ethiopia is that women all sit together and spend their days in each others company. They have that village support and understanding without judgement. Is that the secret?

I don't know.

I don't have the answer.

But it has certainly got me thinking about the world and birth and the way we live within it.