My Personal Birth Philosophy

Everyone who has had kids, is expecting, or wants to have kids someday, has their own ideas of how pregnancy, labor, and delivery "should be." Everyone has an opinion. Not all of them, however, are educated opinions, and instead of simply listening to your friends and midwives and nurses and doctors and basing your opinion off of theirs, do some research and form your own opinion. That is what I did, and that is what I encourage every pregnant mama (and her partner) to do. Here's a good article regarding the importance of forming your own birth philosophy: http://www.babyzone.com/pregnancy/labor-and-delivery/birth-philosophy_71242

So now, I'm going to lay out what my personal birth philosophy is, and why:

"If it's not broken, don't fix it."

It's as simple as that. I believe that the human female's body was made to give birth (as all mammals were), and that it can be trusted to do the right thing. There are of course exceptions, but in general, a woman's body knows how to grow a baby, when it should be born, how to birth, how to feed a baby, and how to recover, and she requires little to no intervention to do things as nature intended. Pregnancy is not dangerous, or an illness, or something to be feared. It is a natural process that our mothers, and their mothers, and so on and so forth, have been doing throughout the ages, and if our bodies didn't know how to do it, well, our species wouldn't still be here, would it?

I also believe in the necessity of good prenatal care. Yes, nature knows what it's doing, but as I stated before, there are exceptions. Monitoring the health of mother and baby, without expecting anything to go wrong, is an integral part of ensuring a good labor and delivery, even if all it does is instill confidence in mom that she's strong and healthy and she can do it. I do not, however, believe a pregnant woman should be treated as if she's made of glass and about to break at any second. The last thing she needs is to be bombarded by her care provider with everything that could go wrong, if there's no evidence that any of it will happen to or affect her. Deal with things as they come up, but there is no reason to assume that anything will go wrong without sufficient evidence.

That, in a nutshell, is my birth philosophy. Trust your body, and it won't fail you, even if things don't go exactly as planned. Educate and trust yourself, and no matter what you choose or what happens, you'll feel empowered in your birth.