Many, many women have been told that either their body is "too small" or they grow babies "too big" to birth vaginally without medical help, if they can birth vaginally at all. You would think that, because these words are spoken by experts so frequently, they must sometimes be true. However, the more faith one has in the design of human birth, the less one believes in the ever-present threat of CPD (Cephalopelvic Disproportion) otherwise known as big baby/tiny pelvis syndrome.
Humans have evolved over a period of generations because of the successfulness of human childbirth. Those who grew babies too big or had pelvises too narrow died and took their defective genes with them. You are here today, reading this article because, in your gene pool, birth worked. It worked at a point where there were no doctors interfearing in the process and no "medical miracles" that would rescue a woman from her own genetic fate. Yes, women died, babies died and in the process, Nature perfected itself.
Position and time are the most common reasons CPD is diagnosed. Birthing is an activity that requires lots of space and various forms of support in order for the mother's pelvis and the baby's head to connect in a productive way. When birth is expected to happen on a narrow, raised bed and laboring women are drugged to the point where they couldn't change positions under their own power, even if they tried to, birth doesn't always work anymore.
Some interesting medical research indicates that the squatting position increases the dimensions of the pelvic outlet. This is seen as a significant advancement in our medical knowledge. "If delivery is impeded, try moving the birthing woman into a squatting position, it increases the pelvic outlet", says the enlightened obstetrician. However, the very latest research indicates that the truth is delivering on the back reduces the pelvic outlet and is causing babies to die needlessly.
Actually, the position that seems to offer the most room for a baby's head to manuver through the pelvis is hands and knees, but when is the last time a television show, movie or magazine showed you a mother birthing on all fours? It can be a pretty tricky feat on that hospital bed and it becomes nearly impossible with an epidural needle inserted in the mother's spine. Everybody "knows" birth is something women lie down to do, right? In truth, the very idea of women crawling up on to narrow hospital beds in order to birth is a pretty new and strange variation to the evolution of childbirth. It doesn't always work and it's not the fault of the pelvic or fetal bones involved in the process.
Next, the issue of time. In a society where everything seems to run according to schedules, appointments and timetables, birth doesn't always conform to the common timetables of life. All too often, a lazy relaxed birth just isn't possible due to an arbitrary policy that demands birth within a certain number of hours after the waters breaking or full dilation or some other sign of labor. Slow labors are often "hurried along" with the use of Pitocin and other induction drugs. Pitocin has the potential to create its own brand of distress in many birthing mothers and babies. That's a whole other article there.
There is a new and interesting theory spreading about the use of Bovine Growth Hormones (BGH) in dairy cows and how it likely ends up in the milk (and yoghurt, ice cream, cheese, etc.) that American women are taught is loaded with healthy calcium. The concern is that BGH-enhanced babies are now being grown larger than women can comfortably birth.
It's a good idea to realize that calcium doesn't come from cow's milk alone. In fact, the cows producing that "healthy", calcium rich milk are producing it on a diet of grasses and grains. It's cheaper and more sensible to eat greens for the calcium than to drink the milk of an animal who may or may not have eaten greens and was probably not as healthy as it could have been.
Baby heads and women's pelvises have been improving the dance of birth over thousands of years. If we merely trust women and babies to dance to their own inner music, tell us what kind of support they need in order to function best and don't restrict the movements of the dance to what someone else is comfortable with, they tend to do just fine.
Gloria Lemay's "Pelvises I've known and loved" ~ A creepy midwifey title to one of the best articles on pelvic size on the 'net.
Midwife archives on fetal head molding
Midwife archives on birth positions
cbirth archives on fetal positioning including posterior
Ril writes (in response to a woman who'd been told by her Grandmother that her family had "small pelvises"):
Pelvises are not hereditary, at least, I do not believe they are. Diabetes, cancer even maybe, but it is not like your family stood in line when life was being handed out, and your great great great grandmother picked the wrong darn pelvis.
All woman are different, all woman birth differently. All babies are different coming through the pelvis as well. The only thing in common from your little family history, is all woman in the same family who have been told by the generation before them that they had hard births, and small openings in the pelvis so be careful...
I call it p.a.t.h.o.s for "passing on the heap of sh*t", also works for piling on the heap of sh*t. Women like to do this when they find out other woman are pregnant
Why don't they just say to us...
"I'm going to tell you some really bad stories from now until you birth, and try to scare the living daylights out of you, so you in turn will later in your life, try to scare the heck out of every pregnant woman you know, OK? It is a rite of passage, part of being a woman, so here's the bull, and now you take this bull torch and pass it along too, OK? Thanks"
Don't pass the torch on, go into the bathroom and drown the flame, OK? In a big tub of water.
You CAN birth past your pelvis, you grandmother does not know your pelvis intimately. Don't let it get to you.
Maoinagh writes:
My midwife says she doesn't believe Cephalopelvic Disproportion exists. Out of 1100 births, she thought she saw one true case of it. The mother gave birth with no problems. Personally, I find pelvic exams useless and will not have any.
Judith writes:
Here's what I know about hands and knees and the "Gaskin maneuver".
Ina May and the other Farm midwives learned it from Belizean (Afro-Carribbean) and highland Guatemalan midwives, after Plenty started doing "hippie Peace Corps" stuff in Central America in the mid-1970s. But frankly, it's always rankled me a little that Ina May (who I love for some other wonderful contributions) has taken credit for bringing this to the homebirthing and midwifery worlds of the home birth renaissance.
One of the first four books on home birth was The Birth Book, by Raven Lang, (not to be confused with a William Sears book of the same name that came out much later) about the Santa Cruz CA midwives, 1972. Jeannine Parvati credited it as one of her sources when she wrote the first edition of Prenatal Yoga and Natural Birth, which appeared in 1974 when she was pregnant with her twins and her eldest (not a homebirth) was 4 years old. If you can get a copy of The Birth Book (mine disappeared from a box of my stuff in a Berkeley attic while I was in Central America myself in 1977-1978), you'll see that the majority of the women in that book birthed hands-and-knees.
Now, the Farm was somewhat isolated from parallel hippie cultural developments, including in midwifery, for their first five years or so (1971-1976), and may not even have known Raven's book. A few birth people criticized the Birth Book a little for being TOO reliant on hands and knees, and said that, once again, it might not be the best for all women (baby might come out "too fast" for some? I dunno...)
Silverhawke writes:
I have this theory about the anthropology of birth, and where we are headed with it in the future. I strongly believe that we are eventually going to evolve into creatures who CAN'T give birth, if we don't stop the process now.
1/4 of all babies born in the United States are born surgically. That is not accounting for the numbers of forceps and other sorts of assisted births. Our bodies remember these things and I believe pass them down genetically.
My husband says we will just evolve into a technocratic society, and eventually all have our babies surgically, or by transporter, if we aren't careful, but I say it is foolhardy to rely on technology, and at what cost? If we phase out our ability to birth, what is next, nursing? YES! More women have serious problems producing milk than EVER BEFORE, but more than that I'm worried that our inherent instinctive behaviors will also be phased out.
I can't imagine a world where I wouldn't/couldn't instinctively bond with my child, or have the instincts at my disposal to protect them.
I know this is very pessimistic, and not at all like me normally, but it will be a bleak future for our children's children if the western world doesn't open their eyes and SOON!
Anne writes:
Wow-that really made me pause. It makes sense, though, and the sad fact is that most women would look back (if our species survives this long...)and feel so sorry for us, just like many women do today when they learn that their grandmother's couldn't be induced when they were two hours 'late'. Good idea, and I have to thank you, as you've given me some new inspiration on topics for my senior project...
Kat writes:
Your post makes me think that instead of the computers gaining a sense of self and "coming to life" so to speak, we are turning ourselves into the computers. We are slowly becoming machines completely out of touch with our instincts, unable to do anything (give birth, nurse) without mechanical assistance.
