This article is basically a hypothesis I made while reading about Natural Infant Hygiene(1) (also known as Elimination Communication – EC) while researching the alternatives available for potty training my 10-month-old daughter.
Knowing what I know about HypnoBirthing and that being able to fully relax during labor provides a satisfying and comfortable birthing experience, it occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, the C-section rate for women in the Westernized world is increasing due to to sphincter control. methods the mother experienced as a child?
Let me explain how I arrived at this perhaps bizarre point of view.
Potty training in the westernized world is a period, usually around 24 months, when parents have to teach their children to recognize the feeling they need to get rid of and let them know it’s about to happen. The parents then take the child to the potty or toilet and when the task is successfully accomplished, the child receives some form of reward such as praise, stickers, or candy. The problem often lies in the fact that, at the age of 24 months, a child often cannot discern that she needs to “go” and accidents happen. Culturally, we communicate to our children that pee and poop are disgusting and need to be controlled.
Natural Infant Hygiene(1) believes that a baby is “ready” to learn to go to the toilet at birth because it is already aware that it needs to have a bowel movement and tries to communicate this to its mothers so that they can attend to its needs (usually holding the child on a container for their urine or poop). It is not “potty training” in the conventional Western sense and there is no “reward” when the child successfully eliminates because this is what the child naturally wanted to do in the first place. Babies learn very quickly and without coercion that they need to signal clearly to their mother when they need to have a bowel movement so that the mother can grab the receptacle of her choice and the baby can have a bowel movement. Natural Infant Hygiene, with evidence drawn from medical researchers such as Dr. Thomas S. Ball (2), argues that if a baby is allowed to soil their pants (as we allow them to do up to 24 months) they get used to this feeling. and they lose the ability to discern what they need to eliminate. An ability they clearly have at birth. This leads to “retraining” (potty training) at 24 months on how to recognize that they need to relieve themselves and then use a potty to do so. (There’s a lot more to it than just this, so check out the research if this is something you’re interested in.)
I believe that babies are born knowing that they need to urinate and defecate, and that they try to communicate this to us through facial gestures, sounds, and body movements. It is the parents who need to learn their baby’s cues and then respond appropriately. Therefore, I do not subscribe to the view that children need to be potty trained at 24 months because I believe this creates a stressful learning environment for the child. I believe it should happen from birth using Natural Infant Hygiene methods.
The hypothesis that cesarean sections may be higher in women who were “potty trained” around 24 months of age stems from my belief that many mothers in labor are afraid of giving birth. They are going through a variety of terrifying emotions that lead them to experience incredible pain during childbirth. Not all C-sections are true emergencies. Many women end up with a C-section when their obstetrician diagnoses a “failure to progress” or “cephalopelvic disproportion” – the baby is “stuck.” A woman working in what she perceives to be a stressful environment (eg, a hospital) communicates to her unborn baby that she is under great stress. The baby responds with a prolonged and elevated heart rate. The obstetrician tells the mother that her son is in distress and to spare the mother further agony, the obstetrician suggests a cesarean section (or forceps, or vacuum extraction). It is true that the baby is in distress, but it is usually not due to the original diagnosis of the obstetrician. It is because of the mother’s fear of communicating “danger” to her son. What is also true is that a relaxed and comfortable mother will deliver her baby quickly and with relatively little discomfort and a stressed mother will experience pain and fear, and her delivery will take much longer.
My thoughts started like this; “Despite her parents’ best intentions, perhaps a pregnant woman was potty trained as a child in a way that caused her fear and tension, or perhaps she was taught to “hold it” against the strong urge she needed. to relieve himself.Perhaps he felt shame when he had an “accident” and indirectly learned that elimination was unpleasant, embarrassing and should be controlled or else he will not be able to please his parents.“. It is a well known phenomenon that a child cannot eliminate when placed on his potty, but will eliminate 5 minutes later when he is out of it. This is often because the child is stressed while on the potty and is unable to relax the pelvic floor muscles to allow voiding to occur. When he is not in the bathroom, he is relaxed and accidents happen.
Perhaps then, a woman who is unable to relax enough to “let go” and allow her baby to fully descend into the birth canal when she is in labor? She is so stressed, so terrified and in so much pain that she simply cannot relax and let her body do what it is naturally designed to do, using the “Natural Expulsive Reflex”. The feeling of giving birth is similar to having a bowel movement, since the same muscles are involved, and it is a very common fear for a woman who is going to have a bowel movement during childbirth! Why should she fear this? Maybe this fear really started when she was a little girl and when she found out that pee and poop are nasty and disgusting and disgusting and that her continence muscles need to be controlled and by association childbirth is nasty and disgusting and disgusting and So do your continence muscles constrict causing the birth to falter?
During labor, a diagnosis of “lack of progress” and “cephalopelvic disproportion” are generally misnomers for a woman’s inability to relax her muscles enough and allow her bones to move naturally as a result of the wonderful cocktail of pregnancy hormones that facilitate this. She cannot deliver comfortably, the baby “gets stuck” because she is paralyzed with fear, and her pelvic muscles contract. The fear of childbirth is something that exists in her mind and affects her body with the “fight, flight or freeze” reaction.
Fear is often a learned habit based on cultural practices. At HypnoBirthing, we give back to the woman the right to a natural birth, without fear and without severe pain. We do this by teaching mothers to completely relax, to “let go” with self-hypnosis and allow their birthing bodies to do what they are designed to do. Pooping during labor is highly unlikely and the least of a woman’s worries during labor! Fear of birth in the Western world is commonplace. HypnoBirthing takes that fear and turns it into joy and wonder.
Disclaimer: This really is just a hypothesis based on drawing conclusions from my continuing efforts to keep abreast of research related to natural birth and the power of the mind to dictate experiential results. I am not aware of any research being done on studies of the relationship between westernized “potty training” and caesarean section in later life or the use of forceps and vacuum extraction. Carrying out such a study would be time consuming, since it would have to span a woman’s life from the years when she is toilet trained until she gives birth to her own baby.
Resources:
1 Bauer, Ingrid, “No Diapers!”, natural Wisdom Press, Saltspring Island, BC, Canada, 2000.
2 Ball, Thomas S. “Toilet Training a Mongoloid Infant at the Chest”, california compendium of mental health Flight. 9, 1971