Lamaze Isn’t Just About Breathing!

Working towards becoming a Childbirth Educator through Lamaze I have noticed one thing.  Everyone still thinks Lamaze is about all about breathing! I must admit, before I became familiar with modern day Lamaze, I would have thought the same exact things because of all the movies that still depict Lamaze as a woman in a taxi cab on the way to the hospital “whoooooo whooooooo heeeeeeeee”

In the 1950′s a man by the name of Fernand Lamaze, a French Obstetrician developed a method of breathing and relaxation to help women in labor, and coping with the pain of childbirth. Over the next decades Lamaze evolved into what it is today and has turned far away from the original breathing focused birth technique.  During this time, Lamaze has really changed from a method for giving birth to a philosophy that helps to educate women on what birth can and should be, while giving them confidence on birthing the way our bodies are intended to.

The Lamaze Philosophy of Birth includes :

• Birth is normal, natural, and healthy.
• The experience of birth profoundly affects women and their families.
• Women’s inner wisdom guides them through birth.
• Women’s confidence and ability to give birth is either enhanced or diminished by the care provider and place of birth.
• Women have the right to give birth free from routine medical interventions.
• Birth can safely take place in homes, birth centers, and hospitals.
• Childbirth education empowers women to make informed choices in healthcare, to assume responsibility for their health, and trust their inner wisdom.

That is a far cry from teaching women how to pant through birth through strange breathing techniques.

A great resource for learning more about birth and childbirth education is the Lamaze Magazine. There is a lot of great information on moving during labor to help with pain relief, and enhance your birth experience.

The words birth and experience are used a lot in the subject of childbirth education. Many feel as though the experience for mother and baby are not important as long as the end result is a healthy baby.  More and more modern day studies are showing this to be more and more inaccurate, as there are an increasing number of birth trauma cases that go hand in hand with the rising number of surgical births, and birth experiences that have a lot of medical interventions.

I look forward to discussing more, the more I learn in my journey to becoming a childbirth educator.
This should be a fun 6 months!

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