The History of Birth: What Every Childbirth Educator Should Know

Childbirth has a history that is filled with traditions, strong community bonds, and power. Every person who has an interest in becoming a childbirth educator should make it a priority to know the this history of women's birth. Knowing the history of birth will not only help us to continue the strive towards a more traditional way of birth, but will also help to remind us of what a powerful and live-changing event birth was once viewed as.

Childbirth was once attended primarily by community midwives: women who were experienced in childbirth and who understood the natural process of labor and birth. Birth was a community event in which women would rally around and support the new mother and infant. Community bonds were strong, and despite the fact that women were placed in the more traditional role that is now viewed as "demeaning", every woman back then experienced and knew the power of her body: the power to go through the natural labor process and bring forth life.

That power that women once knew; that strong community bond among women; that inner knowledge of life and nature; all of those inner secrets that once bonded women together with their ancestors started to become lost once the physicians took birth away from women and midwives. Birth was moved out of the home and away from the midwives and into hospital where it could be "managed". Women gave birth under the influence of "Twilight Sleep" and no longer experienced that inner knowledge and power of birth. We were told that our bodies, once revered as the vessels of life, were inadequate to birth babies; we were "ill" and must be treated; that we were in danger from our own bodies what would not function properly to bring life forth and that we therefore needed to be "saved" from the doctors. As more and more women began to turn to hospitals for birth, that knowledge was in grave danger of being lost forever.

Now, there is hope. There is now an ever-growing group of women who have taken birth back into their hands and have reclaimed that knowledge. They are homebirthers, doulas, and midwives. And while their ranks are growing, they are still small.

This is why it is essential for all childbirth educators to know the history of birth. Because the knowledge of birth has been taken from women for so long, it is no longer passed on from mother to daughter through the generations. Now it is up to the childbirth educator, the doulas, and the midwives to know the history of birth and to teach it to expectant women, so that they will know that they do have the power and inner knowledge, and they can take it back into their own hands and claim it for themselves.