Abstract
This chapter focuses predominantly on the impact of the midwife-woman relationship. In this chapter, the intricacies of the women’s experiences of pregnancy and anticipation of birth are discussed and developed into a conceptual figure that illustrates their ambiguous approach to pain, the unknowable nature of birth, and the trust that women therefore placed in their own bodies. We further the argument that a focus on embodiment can provide a point of departure for contemporary attitudes to birth, discarding old dichotomies and embracing complexity. Drawing on contemporary childbirth literature, we reassert the centrality of the midwife’s role and approach to pain.
ROSE
It was fantastic!
It was exactly as I wanted.
So I had the waterbirth that I wanted,
And had an amazing midwife who was very helpful
And also left me alone most of the time,
Which was nice because that is what I wanted as well.
And, it was just good, it was good.
After I had him I went ‘Oh yeah I could do that again!’
I had all my music and my oils burning and it was just lovely!
I was very lucky.
When I first went into labour I called up and I said ‘Oh I want to have a water birth,’
And they were like ‘Umm, okay we will see what we can do.’
And when I got there they were like ‘We had to move someone out of this room so that you could
Have the tub.’
Then the midwife was supposed to finish at 9 but she ended up staying on
Because
She was the only accredited water birthing midwife
So she just, like, stayed on over time for me,
So I could stay in the water and it was just
Really good.
The water was amazing!
It was so calming.
I was having,
I was getting pretty tense before I got in the water,
Thinking ‘Oh I don’t know if I can do this
It’s all a bit too much!’
But as soon as I got in the water, I could
Just relax in between contractions
And it was just so much nicer
And warm!
Because
I was really cold before I got in the water.
And private!
It feels more private when you are in the water,
Cause, you know
You don’t have everyone staring up your vagina the whole time,
Cause the water sort of makes it feel like you are a bit more covered up.
Painful—it was weird
At the same time a lot worse and a lot less than I had expected.
I hadn’t expected to feel so normal in between contractions
All of a sudden you are just ‘Lalalalala’ chatting away
Like everything’s normal
I wasn’t really expecting that.
When my contractions started I was like ‘Oh yeah wow this really hurts!’
When it got to the point where I was ready to push I thought,
‘Oh isn’t it supposed to get worse before the pushing starts?’
Once I’d kind of gotten used to the pain,
I just expected it to keep getting worse and worse and worse and worse,
And then it sort of didn’t get as bad as I thought.
But, I mean it was still pretty bad.
Yeah, man the contractions are so much worse than the pushing!
Cause you just think
There’s just no end in sight.
You just think
‘How many hours am I going to have to go through this for?’
Even up until the very end I was still ten minutes in between contractions,
Then all of a sudden it was all happening.
I probably would have brought a pack of cards or something because it just—
It would have been less scary,
If you knew that you had that rest time.
Because although the pain is really bad
When you’ve got that little break to rest you can sort of
Revitalise yourself,
Eat something.
I was eating grapes the whole time, yep.
Because they all said there is going to be a gap in between contractions
But then didn’t really say you are going to feel totally normal.
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Notes
- 1.
Grosz’ (1994) ‘mobius strip’ where physical and cultural turn in on each other in a helix-type structure is often cited as a clear description of the synergistic relationship between subjective experience and social construct.
- 2.
Although Foucault’s (1991, p. 138) concept of ‘docile’ bodies has been criticised by feminists for dispensing with the possibility of agency and resistance (see Davis and Walker 2010, p. 4), it has also been argued, and it is our position, that a Foucauldian analysis of power allows for agency and resistance, at the micro-level of interaction.
- 3.
- 4.
Lundgren and Dahlberg’s (1998) findings were as follows: Pain is hard to describe and is contradictory; Trust in oneself and one’s body; Trust in the midwife and the husband; Transition to motherhood.
- 5.
Several women in interview mentioned the book Birth Skills by JuJu Sundin, a Sydney physiotherapist and antenatal educator. They specifically referred to the description of birth pain as positive, and the analogy between the contracting uterus and the contraction of any other working muscle (e.g., during exercise). This normalised the pain of birth, and in combination with an explanation of the birth hormones that contribute to the body coping with pain, was seen as useful knowledge for approaching birth.
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Newnham, E., McKellar, L., Pincombe, J. (2018). A Circle of Trust. In: Towards the Humanisation of Birth. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69962-2_6
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