Transitions

Spring is my favorite season.  The year unfolds before us in the Spring, trees slowly bud, flower and then leaf.  The dreary landscape livens with a vague green fuzz on branches until suddenly the city is even greener than it was before.  I enjoy watching these changes regularly throughout our busy days and weeks.

One of the tings I especially love about Spring is the longer days.  I’m not a morning person by nature so getting up in the dark is sometimes(strikethrough) always a painful process for me (I’m so thankful for my little little blue light  that helps me wake my brain up before noon!).  As the world is waking from the Winter, I enjoy waking a bit more every morning.

Until the second Sunday of March, when my naturally unfolding awakening is jarred by the reality of Daylight Saving Time.  The “springing forward” of time is arbitrary and annoying and it undoes my body’s trust in the lengthening day.  It usually takes me at least a week to recover from the shock and never again does my mind feel as in tune with the lengthening days and the earlier sunshine. 

This shock to my system reminds me a lot of the way women’s bodies react to disruption during labor.  They may be able to see a change coming, they may adapt to the change eventually, but the shock to her system is real, the impact on her psyche, her body and her labor is real.

Successful transitions are meant to be smooth and gentle.  We don’t wake up one morning and find our bodies hugely pregnant, they grow, slowly over time.  Most women don’t go straight to hard, fast labor, but ease into it slowly, with contractions building in duration, intensity and frequency.  Our bodies give us the gradual pace so that we can wrap our minds around what is happening. So that we can successfully cope.

Most women’s labor will be interrupted from this natural unfolding by a myriad of transitions.  Whether it is something as simple as driving to the hospital or something as important as the administration of epidural anesthesia, the jarring change in environment or physiology causes changes in labor.

As a doula, I’ve seen women navigate these transitions – building up a labor that has slowed down from the car ride and transition to the hospital, agreeing to pitocin to stimulate contractions that dwindled after receiving an epidural, changing coping strategies as labor naturally unfolds from early to active to transition to pushing – and I’m regularly impressed with the grace and willingness they have to do what is necessary for themselves and their babies during labor. 

There are those who would uphold the extreme position to abandon all distraction that most women in labor in industrial nations experience.  I agree that one of the most impressive and wonderful things to witness in labor is a woman’s instinctive and natural coping.  And I think we all, hospitals, doctors, nurses, midwives and even doulas and partners, are inclined to do things that take away from a woman’s instincts.  I’ve found over the years that instead of pulling tricks out of my labor bag, I watch and hold space and worry less about what I should be doing. Instead I watch women to plug into their natural instincts and then follow their lead.

But most women are not going to give birth in a secluded room in their homes.  Most women give birth in hospitals and as such, are subjected to many interruptions to the natural flow of their labor.  Does that mean they can’t have instinctive, low-intervention birth experiences?  Absolutely not.  What it means is that they need a little extra help staying connected to their instincts, their natural ability to cope and their vision for how they want to be in labor.

Just like Daylight Saving Time interrupts our observation of Spring, interruptions in labor are inevitable (except in Arizona? Okay, probably not a perfect analogy).  But with trust, planning, coping and a little blue light, women can make it through.