Why do we need to do all this conscious preparation?

Sometimes I think why are we doing it all?

We have been birthing our babies since the beginning of time. Why do we need to do all this conscious preparation, why do we need to dig so deep?

If you’ve been lucky enough to come from a line of women who’ve shown you birth – birth where biology is represented in all her glory – then you will have trust for the normalcy of it written into the deepest part of your brain. This will drive your belief in your body’s ability and there will be so many less barriers for your journey to birth.

But that experience is rare now.

Now our brains are layered in doubt and fear, our conscious and subconscious are filled with birth as trauma, birth as dangerous and birth as painful. And to add more layers to this, our maternity system is steeped in paternalistic and infantilising behaviours.

To step out from under that weight into a clearer space, to strip back each layer and examine it, does take this deep work.

But it is freeing work, as each layer is peeled back, the air feels clearer and your path less cluttered.

With medical interventions in birth continuing to increase, and access to care that supports unhindered birth steadily decreasing, this work has never been more necessary to discover what you need for yourself.

So the question isn’t why are we doing it, but rather why wouldn’t we be?