Did you know that the very things you've been taught to do when planning a natural birth will set you up to fail? If you already read Part 1of this series then you know that there are common practices and beliefs about birth that will lead to your confidence being undermined.
These are the beliefs, attitudes, cultural expectations, misconceptions and medical practices that are so routine in maternity care and our birth culture that you don't think twice about them.
They're the things you see most often in the mom groups and in mainstream childbirth education that are leading you right down the exact path you don't want: the path to a cesarean, induction, episiotomy, forceps delivery, or simply a birth where you lose all control and things happen to you that you didn't ask for, didn't want, and might not have even agreed to if you'd known the risks and that you had other options.
In other words, these are the things that seem obvious in hindsight as you learn how birth really works and your own psychological and emotional needs during labor, but they aren't easy to spot beforehand because it seems like it's just "normal" and "to be expected."
You can watch the next 5 here and then read more about how I came to discover these Natural Birth Traps below.
So, how did I figure this out and how can you avoid falling into these traps and the many, many others that are so common in our birth culture?
First, let me tell you a story:
When I was growing up I was pretty much the perpetual student when it came to anything new that I was experiencing or that had piqued my curiosity.
I have a tendency to dive right in and consume every article, book, and resource I can get my hands on, and if there's a class I can take then you bet I'm jumping to sign up.
So when I got pregnant with my first baby I immediately subscribed to every email newsletter, every blog, and signed up for every single pregnancy and birth forum. Facebook was still gaining traction and hadn't created Groups yet, but if that had been around you better believe I would have been in those too.
I pretty much consumed birth information 24/7 and I was so disappointed when I learned that I couldn't sign up for prenatal classes until my third trimester.
I was a star student in those classes. I took all the notes. I practiced all the positions. But I was also doing some things that the rest of the moms in the class with me were not doing. For one thing, I was the ONLY mom planning a homebirth. I was also the ONLY one who had hired a midwife.
Like many first time moms, I thought that these classes would prepare me for a natural birth, because that's what the instructor was teaching! That's what we'd all come here for!
I had also assumed that the information I was getting from the mom blogs and birth books would help ensure I had my beautiful homebirth.
What I found out later was shocking! At our "graduation" class where all the moms had their babies and we told our stories, I was the ONLY one who had managed to have a completely natural birth experience. One other mom out of the 20 of us had given birth vaginally. She'd been induced and then her baby had gotten stuck, and she had a vacuum delivery. The rest of the moms had cesareans.
Think about that for a minute. Out of 20 women all planning a natural birth and taking the same classes that were supposed to prepare us to get that birth, only 2 had vaginal births.
It was enough for me to start questioning what was going on and coming to the conclusion that is Natural Birth Trap #20: Mainstream birth education perpetuates all the other Natural Birth Traps that can derail your plans before you even go into labor!
This is what led to me creating the 5 Pillars of Empowered Birth, which you can learn more about if you grab my ebook Your Empowered Birth below.
In this book you will learn the entire Empowered Birth System and how you can use it to get your dream birth experience and avoid the biggest traps when it comes to planning a natural birth.
You'll be able to avoid crumbling under the pressure of an OB or midwife who is pushing for you to have a vaginal exam (even though you now know that your cervix is not a crystal ball).
You won't feel like you have to get into labor by your due date, which will allow you to rest as you need to and just not worry about it. You won't get tricked into inducing just because you hit someone else's arbitrary timeline. You also won't give in to the pressure to have a membrane sweep, and you won't exhaust yourself physically, mentally, and emotionally trying to do "all the things" to make your labor go faster just to avoid your care provider pushing interventions you don't want or need.
You also won't hire anyone who doesn't fully support you and believe in your ability to birth your baby in your own time, in your own way.
The best part about using this system is that anyone can do it!
You can use this system to plan your birth even if you've been labelled "high risk", if you have a "small pelvis" or you have a high body mass index. You can use it even if you develop Gestational Diabetes.
You can use it even if you've already had one or more cesareans and this is your last attempt to actually experience natural birth, because you know you should be able to do it.
This system is the most versatile and multi-dimensional way to plan and get your birth your way, without having to fight any battles, beg for permission, convince anyone of the "evidence" for what you want, or compromise to make others feel more comfortable with your choices.
The Right Mindset: How to get past your fears, create your vision of your ideal birth, and identify any old stories or misconceptions you absorbed from others that are holding you back from getting what you really want.
The Right Education: How to start asking the right questions when it comes to any information you are presented with, so that you can filter out what works for you and what you're planning for your birth and what is only going to talk you out of your dream and undermine your confidence in your body's ability to birth.
The Right Environment: How to determine where YOU will feel safest to birth, and how to create that environment that will support your ability to find additional resources and support for what you are working toward in planning your dream birth.
The Right Facilitators: How to choose the childbirth educator, care provider, and doula who will work for YOU rather than try to tell you how you need to think about things or push their own agenda and plans on you.
The Right Support: How to seek out those people who will support what you want to do and cheer you on, so that you no longer feel like you have to convince them or "educate" them, and you don't feel alone in how you want your birth to go.
Plus, when you get this book you will also have accesses to these bonuses:
This is the full list of 20 of the most common Natural Birth Traps that you can download onto your computer or even keep in a Google Drive and access from your mobile devices. It will serve as a quick reminder for both you and your partner on what you want to avoid as you get to the end of your pregnancy.
Forget the cookie-cutter lists of questions to interview a doula. They're full of generic information that doesn't really help you figure out what you really want or if this doula is even a good fit. I've compiled this list specifically because as a doula and childbirth educator I heard the frustrations of my friends in birth work who wished they had clients who were a much better fit for the kinds of services they most love to offer. By reading this short guide, you'll have a clearer idea of what to look for when setting up interviews with doulas and getting referrals, and you won't accidentally hire someone who is not able to fully support your birth vision.
In this quick guide you'll learn about my 5 step framework for asking the right questions and making decisions in your pregnancy and birth that align with what is most important to YOU, so that you don't fall for the common scare tactics that lead to being talked into inductions, cesareans, vaginal exams, or anything else you've decided you don't want. You'll also know how to weigh the true risks and benefits when something comes up in your pregnancy that puts you outside the very narrow view of what's "normal" (that doesn't exist in the first place).
There's a few other goodies I've included as well, but you'll have to get the book first to find out what they are! Just click here and you'll be taken to our sign up page where you can enter your name and email. Once you do that you will instantly receive your copy of Your Empowered Birth in your inbox and information on how to grab the rest of your bonus guides as well.
You're probably wondering why I would give all this away for free.
The truth is that this system is incredibly valuable and I could easily sell it for hundreds of dollars.
In fact, people pay me thousands of dollars per month for me to walk them through their own personalized Empowered Birth plan and support them as they work through their fears and learn how to communicate their wishes to their care provider, doula, and even their partner.
The problem is that this system works SO well that when women hear about it they want to work with me too...however I only have so much time in any given day. So in 2022 I set out to write the entire system out, step by step, so that if someone either couldn't afford my coaching packages or didn't have the time to sit down each week to meet with me on a call, they could still get the help they deserved.
Again, I could have put this behind a pay wall, but then it wouldn't be accessible to everyone AND this is something of which I am passionate about.
I got into birth advocacy and education because I saw the problems from both sides as a mother who fell into a lot of traps and as a birth worker listening to the stories of my colleagues who desperately want you to know how to read between the lines and see these traps.
I cannot tell you how many doulas have been traumatized by what they saw happen to their clients, of which the mothers had no idea just how they'd been tricked by the medical system. But as doulas we can't really interfere with your choices, and we can only present information and then cross our fingers that you pick up on the fine print and decline that vaginal exam or induction.
The problem is that often you don't see what we do, because as I said, these Natural Birth Traps are everywhere. That's why I finally got so tired of seeing you and other moms fall into them that I created this video series and accompanying guide to the 20 most common ones.
So what was the trap that surprised you the most in this video, and did you fall into any of these with your previous births?
Comment below and let's discuss!
~Carly
P.S.
If you like this video and any of the other ones on my blog then I invite you to like, share, and subscribe to my YouTube Channel so this information gets out there to more moms just like you who need it.