What image comes to mind when you close your eyes and picture a woman in labor?
Do you picture a white, blue, or green gown open to the back imprinted with a hospital name? An IV pole being dragged down the hall as mom paces? A woman confined to a narrow bed with monitors strapped to her belly?
What scene is in your mind when you think the moment of birth?
Do you see gloved hands and a team of masked hospital staff? Do you picture blood or bodily fluids? Do you envision a new baby in the hands of a doctor while mom is lying on her back with legs in stirrups?
Visualization and the visual images we program in our brains are important in determining our birth outcomes.
Our media has repeatedly shown us images and scenes of birth that place birthing women in submissive positions where birth is done to them as if there is someone more qualified than the laboring mom in the room. If you have never seen or even imagined birth differently than you have been shown on TV and movies how are you to create a different birth outcome? One where a woman, undisturbed by strangers or machines, joyfully delivers her baby, in her own power.
All top athletes use visualization as part of their training.
They see themselves accomplishing their goal. Since the brain does not know the difference between something experienced and something vividly imagined your body goes through the same reactions as actually performing the tasks at hand. Preparing for birth is like preparing for an Olympic event. You need to visualize your self crossing the finish line. As you spend time doing this the image of what that finish line looks like will become ingrained or programmed in your brain.
So what might the finish line look like for natural childbirth?
Birth photographer Lynsey Stone shows us with her stunning images of birthing women. Erase the images you have been exposed to up until now by replacing them with the beauty of real, normal, natural birth.
These images say it all. Peace, joy, love, bliss, excitement, calm, release. This is birth. Fill your brain with these images. Picture yourself as the birthing woman in these photos as you create the birth of your dreams for you and your baby.
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.46100206951.55904.46038581951&type=1
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.54471891951.64136.46038581951&type=3
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.114768141951.97833.46038581951&type=1
Please leave your comments. How do these images make you feel about birth?
