In my first birth I knew breathing is important and I thought I got this, but I didn’t know how to use sound effectively. So there I am, labouring already since hours and hours and at some point my midwife tells me I should be a bit “lower”. So now I was living in Spain at that time and in my understanding the midwife tells me to be more quiet. OMG, I couldn’t believe it, I thought I can be at my home and express myself the way I wanted, I just wanted to let all my emotions out…. And then this. Little did I know and literally years later I found out what she really meant.
Everyone knows that breathing for birth is one of the most valuable tools mom has, it’s her super power tool. Teaching dad how to breath will help her to be reminded to deep breathing. If you tell a labouring women, “take long and deep breaths” she might not be receptive to the words. But what about if the birthing partner breathes with her, intuitively she starts to imitate him, isn’t that what all new borns do? Yes they learn their parents breathing patterns, that’s why it’s a good idea to keep them close.
There is something really interesting about making sounds, we all make sounds when we speak. But have you ever thought how different sounds resonate differently in your body?
For example if you say aha with a strong H and a short a, like having the solution to a problem, this sound would resonate in the head, it is a head focused sound because of it’s relation to it. You could say aha? with a question mark and it becomes a different meaning, it’s still in the head though.
Then there is a sound like ååååhhhh, yes its the Swedish å and not everyone can pronounce it but feel it from the heart, when you look into your babies eyes for the first time, your heart melts and you would say ååååhhhhhh.
And then there is the ååååååå grunting sounds, it’s when you take your shoes off after a long day and sit down of exhaustion, it’s a releasing sound. It’s tone is very low and if you say it you should feel your belly muscles activating and feeling the energy moving down.
Out of all these three, the last one is the one we want to use in labour.
Sound is basically just the extension of an exhalation. And what do we want to do in labour? Yes breath the baby out, more exact, exhale the baby out. My teacher Francoise Freedman from Birthlight would say, give birth to your breath and the baby will follow.
So the sound will carry the vibration into the muscles, and what do vibrating muscles do? Right, they relax. So, sound relaxes.
And what did I do in my first birth? I screamed and by doing that I was shooting the energy upward with a high pitched sound, whereas a low pitched sound moves the energy down, down to bring the baby into the world.
This is one of the tools I teach in my birth preparation class, ohh and then there is still the one sound to use when the baby should not come PRRRRR, this sound disengages the energy from the pelvis, is completely in the head and many women report to have used it so that they didn’t give birth too fast.
Yoga has amazing tools for birth preparation and the equipment is already in every women.
