The Glorification of Quiet Birth

The glorification of quiet birth

In recent years there has been a lot of talk about birthing quietly, calmly, breathing babies out.

You *might* be able to, and it’s potentially beneficial in terms of pelvic floor integrity to make the actual birth (particularly of the baby’s head) as gentle and controlled as possible. Gently breathing the baby down and out might be a wonderful way to achieve this.

Many midwives praise a quiet birth, many prefer it and proactively push pain relief when birthing people get LOUD, many (not all) hypnobirthing teachers talk quietness, calmness, gentleness and show the videos to go with that....and so many many birthing people strive for this.

HOWEVER.

Normal physiology is hard to fight, and really, we shouldn’t fight it. Usually the expulsion stage of birth is reflexive and sometimes fast and furious, and no attempts to ‘breathe’ the baby out are going to work. Sometimes it’s overwhelming. Sometimes it is like vomiting downwards. Sometimes it takes a LOT of effort to shift the baby downwards. Sometimes people scream. Sometimes people howl, sometimes they make loud grunting noises. Sometimes they just need to let all the energy out SOMEHOW to integrate the power of birth. And that is OK.

And then of course there is confusion about voluntary pushing and involuntary pushing. Often people say ‘I never pushed’. What they usually mean is ‘I never made myself push, my body did it all for me.’

They *usually* don’t mean ‘I breathed my baby down without once closing off my glottis (that catch in the back of the throat that midwives are so good at identifying.....pushing).’

Trust that your body most likely knows exactly what it’s doing.

Desperately fighting the urge to expel a baby by proactively trying to stop the overwhelming urge to bear down can be just as upsetting and detrimental as being directed to push a certain way. Trying to talk people out of disappointment when they did NOT have a quiet birth and feel something went wrong is absolutely heartbreaking. I have done it many times.

Yes, this is one of my bugbears.

So, let’s not glorify QUIET birth, let’s glorify birth that feels satisfying to the birthing person, however that might be ♥️

Artwork by me 😬

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