Natural Birth is an involuntary physiological process that occurs when labour commences, progresses and culminates in the expulsion of a baby from a mother’s womb.
How does a midwife explain a slow labour or a long ‘second stage’? The fact that a woman may be fully dilated does not mean she is ready to expel her baby from the womb. Midwives and obstetricians make this mistake all the time, as if the woman were a mechanical engine that should fire it’s pistons at the turn of a key. Midwifery is both an art and a science and part of that art, in the present climate, seems to be to prevaricate in order to align ourselves with what obstetric theory advises we should be doing.
A mother who is forced to push (coached pushing) tires more easily and is less able to recover in-between the contractions, as is her unborn child. Women need privacy, quietness, time and gentle encouragement to complete the second stage of labour spontaneously and birth their babies with their own efforts.