The riddle of the extreme ends of the birth experience: Birthing consciousness and its fragility

Abstract

This paper focuses on the riddle of the extreme ends of the birth experience. On one end, are women who experience relatively successful childbirth as traumatic, and suffer from poor mental health during postpartum, varying from baby blues to postpartum depression and up to childbirth-related PP-PTSD. On the other, are women who experience childbirth as a highly positive, life-altering event. I offer that both extremes can be understood from the phenomenon of birthing consciousness and its fragility. When natural birth is uninterrupted, there are more chances for a natural birth process. At the end of an undisturbed natural delivery, women report ‘natural high’ sensations. However, even minor physical and environmental interruptions to the birthing woman stop the birth from progressing, thus requiring medical interventions. Out of analyzing the psycho-physical states during birth – natural and undisturbed versus highly medicated births – I claim that the fragility of birthing consciousness is the answer to the riddle of the extreme ends of the birth experience. Thus, the question ‘how does a low-risk woman get to a highly medicated birth?’ should be answered, not only in a physiological orientation, but also in a psycho-physiological and environmental context. Typical modern hospital birth environments often interrupt birthing consciousness, leading to a cascade of medical interventions and highly medicalized births with extremely negative birth experiences, which often results in poor mental health in postpartum. I argue that the first step to support a woman during a physiological birth, is to acknowledge the particular psycho-physical state of the birthing woman and its fragility, and not interrupt it unnecessarily.