WHAT WE BELIEVE IN CHILDBIRTH AND WHAT IT REALLY IS

In some women there is a fantasy that childbirth is a painful and traumatic event. There are even those who neglect their desire to be a mother because of the fear of childbirth.

All women want to have a good birth, but what is meant by a good birth? That does not hurt much, that there are no setbacks, that it is a natural birth?

Every birth is a world and everyone has their own concept of what a good birth is. But the really important thing is that the mothers arrive at that moment as well prepared as possible so as not to suffer disappointments.

A study by researchers from the University of Newcastle (United Kingdom) that reveals that women have unrealistic ideas about childbirth.

Of course, it is not the fault of the women, but of the prenatal education, of the lack of psychological containment that the future mother receives from the doctors, and to a large extent also of the taboos and the tortuous birth model that we usually see in the movies.

I think that fundamentally the key to a good birth is the information.

The authors of the study say, quite rightly, that "people involved in antenatal care should listen to women's wishes about childbirth and prepare them for what can really happen during it."

In the investigation discrepancies were found between the pain that women expected to suffer during childbirth and the methods used to alleviate it and their experiences, as well as mismatches between the power of decision and the participation that the parturient women believed they would have and what they really had.

Many kinds of childbirth preparation leave much to be desired, at least that is what I attended. They do not inform women of what is really going to happen and of the different birth alternatives that exist. They tell us the story as a mechanism in which women have little prominence, not as a physiological fact of which we participate.

Another curious fact that the study has revealed is how it influences the attitude with which women face childbirth. Those who felt optimistic had positive experiences while those who were negative generally had more painful births and negative experiences.

The truth is that, even in the case of difficult births, most women confess that they would repeat the experience because in the end it is a "happy pain" and what prevails is the great joy of having had a child.