getting from here to there in labor

8/18/2019 Getting From Here to There in Labor

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Geing from Here to There in Labor

Published by Common Knowledge Trust

P.O. Box 892

Nelson, New Zealand

www.commonknowledgetrust.com

Editor: Kayla D. Rau

© 2001, Common Knowledge Trust

ISBN 978-1-927144-32-9

Common Knowledge Trust has asserted rights under Copyright And Trademark laws to be identied as

the creator of all the work known as “Birthing Beer with The Pink Kit Method®.” All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmied in any form

or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, teaching, or other, without prior

wrien permission from the copyright owners.

Birthing Beer with The Pink Kit Method®

www.birthingbeer.com

D

The information in Birthing Beer with The Pink Kit Method® is not intended to be used for the

diagnosis, treatment, or prescription for any medical disorder. Please consult with your medical care

provider before beginning this program.

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Table of Contents

THE JOURNEY ................................................................... 1

THREE TIMEFRAMES ............................................... 2

WHAT IS LABOR? ...................................................... 3

AN IMPORTANT FACTOR

ABOUT PROGRESSIVE LABOR ................................ 4

WHEN TO USE WHAT PINK KIT SKILLS? ........................ 9

PRACTICE DURING PREGNANCY ........................... 9

PRE-LABOR .............................................................. 10

1ST STAGE ................................................................ 11

2ND STAGE ............................................................... 13

3RD STAGE ............................................................... 17

END OF THE ROAD: MAKING MEMORIES ..................... 17

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Getting from Here to There in LaborGetting from Here to There in Labor

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Birthing Better with The Pink Kit Method® 1 http://www.birthingbetter.com

The Journey

Birth is a journey. Like any other journey, if you look toward the end, it can seem too

far away. Progression is how you get to and through that end and keep your sanity

in the meantime. As the journey progresses, you must focus on what is immediate.

That’s how the athlete, dancer, or artist with skills behaves, and your job is the same

as theirs. You know that the goal is reached by the small, discrete steps you take

now.

Everything occurs in a timeframe

Let’s create a picture together. You’re pregnant or a father-to- be right now.

Somehow, you have to get rid of the big belly and replace it with a babe-in-arms.

Duh! But how do you get from your pregnant state to holding your baby? Of course,

you give birth! In order to appreciate exactly what this means, though, we have to

discuss timeframes.

When you look back on this past year, you’ll truly appreciate how much your life has

changed within that short timeframe.

When you rst fell pregnant, the last thing on your mind was the birth. In fact,

during the timeframe of the rst few months, you might have experienced morning

sickness which you believed would never go away! You probably also believed the

“fat” feeling was going to last forever—until you began to show.

During the middle of your pregnancy, you might have felt really good, like many

other women, and time just ew by. On the other hand, if you continued to have

uncomfortable health issues, the pregnancy seemed to drag on.

Now, during the last phase of pregnancy as you approach the birth, you may become

uncomfortable again. In the last few weeks, as your baby gets ready to be born, it

Getting from Here to There in LaborGetting from Here to There in Labor



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sends messages to your body to change. Your hormones gradually soen and ripen

your body, preparing it for this new activity that marks the end of pregnancy: giving

birth.

Through pregnancy, you’ve discovered that time expands and contracts. Sometimes

you feel it ies by; others you feel that every minute lasts forever.

How you behave, act, or even think during these timeframes can make a huge

dierence on how you feel about what you are experiencing and the memories you

take with you. Skills always help any person to cope with timeframe uctuations beer than if time just passes you by, with you bumping into things you’re not

prepared to deal with.

In other words, time is something you do. If you already have children, you know

that, when your rst was born, you suddenly woke up to how much time it takes to

take care of a baby. Many women and men express it this way: “What did I do with

my time before I had a baby?” Time is something you ll with “doing.”

Three Timeframes

From your reading in other childbirth books or through your childbirth education

class, you probably already know that childbirth has three timeframes, or stages,

although most of the focus is on the rst two.

1st Stage: During this Stage, your baby moves down through the hole in your pelvis,

and your cervix opens. You’ll be told by your doctor or midwife how open your

cervix is (“You’re ve cm dilated”) and how much of your baby has moved through

your pelvis (“Your baby is engaged, still high, or well down”). These terms can be

quite cryptic. That’s why The Pink Kit teaches you how to personally feel what ishappening inside you. It’s your body and your baby, and the more you can get your

head to understand where your baby really is, the more you can make sense of what

is happening to you.



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At the end of 1st Stage is a period of labor called “transition,” which can be the

toughest, yet shortest, part of 1st Stage. This is the period when the cervix opens

entirely and your baby’s head moves all the way through your pelvis and into the

top of your vagina (its birth canal).

2nd Stage: This Stage is what people call the “delivery” or “birth.” Your baby moves

through and out of your vagina and into your arms.

3rd Stage: This Stage is when you deliver the aerbirth/placenta.

What Is Labor?

Labor is composed of contractions and a space between. Your baby stimulates its

home (its mother’s whole body and specically the muscles of the uterus). This

stimulation causes the uterus to tug open its closure (the cervix). The tugging open is

the contraction, and then the uterine muscle rests, which is the space in between.

Each contraction has ve phases, and you will work through each phase.

You will inhale and exhale through one breath cycle aer another, using eective,sustainable breathing skills that give you the ability to work and cope with the

sensations of each contraction.

Your body will always be in some position or posture throughout the labor, and

you will learn how to nd positions that truly relax you inside, help you stay

open, and create space for your baby to move through and out of your body.

Your husband/partner will be there to help you cope with the hard work. This is

not the same role as for your birth provider.

Remember the process! Basically, it’s quite a simple plumbing journey. Your baby

has to open the closure, or diaphragm (the cervix), to its home (the uterus). Once thediaphragm opens all the way, the baby begins its journey out of its home by moving

into the tube in the bones that protects its home (the pelvic hole). Your baby will then

travel the short distance down through an aperture (the vagina/birth canal.) Finally,

your baby will stretch open the end of the aperture and be born.



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You can read much more about the physiological journey a baby takes in any

childbirth book. In the Pink Kit, you’ll come to understand concepts at a more basic

level. However, you’ll be able to overlap the information you get from other

resources with the skills in The Pink Kit. Other resources tell you how the process

happens; the Pink Kit teaches you how to work with the process.

What can you expect during progressive labor?

Most people think that the three Stages of childbirth each have a very clear beginning

and ending. That’s not always accurate. The beginning part of 1st Stage can beterribly unclear, manifesting as “false labor,” “pre-labor,” “niggling labor,” or “non-

progressive labor.”

On the other end of the 1st Stage is “active labor,” which birth professionals consider

to start when you are about three cms dilated and your contractions are one minute

long and three minutes apart. Progressing, active labor is NOT the same as

progressive labor.

During progressive labor (which happens in the 1st Stage),

contractions get longer (timeable),

the space between contractions gets shorter (timeable), and

contractions get more intense (not timeable, but felt by the woman).

Short form for this: longer, stronger, closer together. Although your doctor or

hospital probably doesn’t want you to come in before your labor is “established,”

you can still have hours of contractions at home, growing in intensity and frequency

every hour or two.

An Important Factor about Progressive Labor

When labor is progressive, each contraction has a bell-shaped curve that can be

drawn on a graph, as it starts, gets more intense, reaches a peak, subsides, and ends.



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If you have a fetal monitor strapped to your belly, you can actually see the shape of

the contractions. It is also oen reected in the sounds a woman makes.

For some women, the bell curve can be a bit o -center. For example, the contractions

can become very painful very quickly, which brings the peak of each closer to the le

-hand side of the bell. Other contractions can start quite slowly, with the heightened

pain coming toward the end and the contractions ending quite abruptly. This puts

the peak toward the right side of the curve.

The operative word is “bell,” rather than “plateau,” which has no dened peak. Flatcontractions indicate a stalled labor. They sound sort of like an almost-sneeze.

What stalls labor?

Luckily, there are a nite number of reasons. We’ll start with some of the more

uncommon ones:

a short umbilical cord

cord wrapped around the baby’s body

placenta in the way

the baby in an unusual position

the baby just too big to come through the pelvic tube

You need to discuss these things with your birth professional. They are infrequent

occurrences and not always easy for professionals to identify.

However, this is your baby and your birth, and you need to feel a high degree of

safety, so ask. Furthermore, while you cannot prevent these situations, you can have

a huge impact on whether they actually compromise your baby by preparing yourpregnant body and then working with your baby’s eorts to come down, through,

and out.



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There are a few other, more common things women do without realizing that these

things (in their particular birth at the moment) are hindering the process. This is

where the Teamwork between the woman and her birth coach is so vital. As a

woman, you will be engrossed in the process. As a coach, you get to see what the

woman is doing. Together, you can make certain you do everything possible to keep

your baby’s container (the woman’s body) as open and relaxed as possible. If you

take your skills seriously, you do have control over these problems!

Being tense. Example: Tense up your rectum right now. Would this tension help

or hinder a small grapefruit from coming down, through, and out? Obviously,tension will hinder the passage. Likewise, any inner tension in your cervix, pelvis,

or vagina can make your internal space harder to pass through. Obviously, any

woman would want to remain so and relaxed inside to help her baby, wouldn’t

she? So what’s the deal? Pain. Contractions are most oen accompanied by

intense, naturally occurring pain. Your skills will help you consciously choose to

let go of internal tension, even if you don’t like the pain.

Keep in mind: As a man, you MUST help your woman accept the painful process

that is the journey of your child out of her body, where you planted it, into yourarms, where you will both parent it. Internal tension can be soened even if it’s

unpleasant, because it’s for the higher good: your child’s birth.

Bending over, leaning forward. For some babies, this bends their passage or their

body in relationship to the inside passage. Example: a woman is siing on the

toilet, leaning back, and the contractions are bell-shaped, strong, steady. In fact,

she feels they are ecacious. Someone suggests she change positions, so she turns

around, facing the back of the toilet, leaning forward. The contractions change;

they become shorter, less intense, and spaced further apart. The woman’s

husband notices this aer half an hour and talks to his partner. She’s noticed it aswell, but really liked the break because the contractions were geing so intense.

He asks if there is anything more he can do to help her cope, because both of

them realize they need to work with the intensity, as it means the labor is



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eective and they don’t really want to do anything that stops that. So they gure

out how to incorporate whatever set of skills they need to use right then.

Keep in mind: If your baby feels ne even if you’re leaning forward, your

contractions will stay strong and ecacious. Whenever you change positions, you’ll

know whether your baby is okay with your decision within three contractions. The

rst one, the baby is thinking, “Hm.” Second one the baby thinks, “Naw” or “Yeah.”

On the third one, the baby shows either the “Naw” or “Yeah.” “Naw” contractions

will be at. “Yeah” contractions will be bell-shaped.

Being closed or not being in open positions. At every single moment of your life,

your body is in some posture or position. This is why you need to learn pelvic

skills, so that, whatever posture or position you are in, your pelvis tube is open

and the so tissues are pliable and so. This is not always easy, because the pain

is real and very strong. As stated above, you have to be determined and use your

willpower to overcome your instinctive or intuitive response to pain, which is to

tense up! It’s your conscious choice to accept the pain (even if you hate it) and

work with the pain (use of skills) that will make you a skilled birthing woman

and skilled coaching man.

Can a woman recognize when her labor is or is not progressive?

The answer is YES, even if it’s a woman’s rst birth. She can feel that the contractions

change every hour or two. Oen, it’s the woman who realizes the labor has stalled or

the baby is stuck, because the contractions all seem the same, with no change.

A progressive labor should run start to nish for about 4-15 hours. That’s a

reasonable timeframe for the progress. If the labor is too rapid (i.e. shorter than

4 hours), a woman can feel very overwhelmed. (Although a very short labor certainly

tells you that the big object got out of its container with no diculty!)

If a labor doesn’t become progressive, or a progressive labor stalls and takes more

than 15 hours, this is a clear indicator to you that the “object” is having some

diculty doing what it’s supposed to do. Your jobs are to



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keep your labor progressive,

recognize in a reasonable time if labor is stalling, and

gure out where your baby is stalling and use skills to get it going again.

Always keep in mind the relationship between the 3-dimensional baby and 3-

dimensional body. Your birthing body basically uses three parts:

The Cervix

In your Pink Kit resources, you’ll learn skills such as the following to help your

cervix open:

Pelvic Clock

Cervical Relaxation

Deep Touch Relaxation

Directed Breathing

The Pelvis

As you keep in mind the metaphor that giving birth is an exercise in plumbing, you

can imagine what happens if a big object can’t easily move through a tube. It getsstuck. Luckily, the pelvic tube is exible. Your Pink Kit resources teach you the

following pelvic skills:

Mapping Your Pelvis

Body Positions

Hip Li

Kate’s Cat

Sacral Maneuver

Deep Touch Relaxation

The Birth Canal or Vagina

In your Pink Kit resources, you will learn how to do Internal Work on your birth

canal. This important skill can make all the dierence in the world to the nal

journey of your baby. These are some of the Internal Work skills you’ll learn:



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Sit Bone Spread

Kate’s Cat

Sacral Maneuver

Body Positions

When to Use What Pink Kit Skills?

Practice During Pregnancy

Think about a sports or music performance. Obviously, you learn skills, practice,

then get ready for the performance, and you use your skills at every moment from

rst picking up the bat to crossing home plate, from rst drawing a bow across

strings to holding the nal note as the crowd applauds. It’s a seamless progression.

Labor is no dierent. You learn your Pink Kit skills, practice them more and more as

you get closer to the birth experience, and use them throughout the birth.

It is through your practice that you integrate the skills between your body and mind.This goes for both of you. The biggest hindrance to truly converting your Pink Kit

skills into a body/mind connection is the fact that most families have lile experience

with the birthing process.

If you had been present at 100 births, you would have seen some women who used

skills, stayed focused, and overcame the urge to just give in and whine. You’d have

seen other women who didn’t have skills or didn’t use them and ended up feeling

overwhelmed by the experience. You’d have noticed that those women who stay on

top of contractions and stay focused on whatever skills they were using were the

ones who felt best about their experience.

This goes for the fathers, too. Fathers who really help, not just wipe a brow or give an

ice chip, are the ones who have skills that are integrated between their mind and



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their birthing partner’s body. They are paying aention and modifying at every

moment. They are more likely to feel proud of themselves as men, partners, and

fathers. Men who do this are also deeply loved by their partners.

These are the important reasons why you want to ready yourselves with skills.

The process your baby is going through deserves your full aention. When you

use your best level of skills, you’ll always be working with your baby.

You and your partner will truly become a team with the goal of working with

your baby’s eorts. Birth is the literal gateway between being pregnant and being

parents, and you want to go through the gateway together.

Practiced? Now Use the Skills During Pre-Labor!

Aer months of practicing your skills while pregnant, you are now actually

beginning to work with the eorts your baby will make shortly to come down,

through, and out your body.

For example, as you feel a Braxton Hicks contraction, recognize it as having four

phases. (During active labor, there will be ve distinct Phases of each contraction.) Itstarts, your belly gets tense, it eases, and time passes before another one.

The Braxton Hicks contractions trigger the exact same mechanism as labor

contractions, except these are soening your cervix while labor contractions open it.

As you start to experience these pre-labor changes, it is a good time to begin the

“touch relaxation” to help calm down the hormone rushes. Also, begin using some of

your other skills.

Kate’s Cat—Oen, women experience backaches in the few weeks before labor

starts, as the baby moves into the pelvic tube. By using Kate’s Cat, you truly beginto mobilize and open your sacrum. This can reduce discomfort.

Body Positions—Now’s the time to go through your “open” labor positions (don’t

forget about where your upper body is).

Start your teamwork, as well.



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When you start to t all your skills into what is happening during this timeframe,

you are training yourself to respond automatically to the bodily sensations you will

have from now on until aer the birth. Think of this as the opportunity to apply what

you’ve practiced, minus major pain.

As labor becomes regular, then grows in intensity, time shis and compresses. Every

single moment, every inhalation and exhalation, becomes an exquisite moment by

itself.

Use the Skills During 1st Stage

This is what you need to focus on during the 1st Stage: use your skills to work with

each contraction and each space in between. Although this early period of the

birthing process may not be clear or dened, and even if your labor niggles or

doesn’t immediately get into a rhythm, rest assured, labor will sele down over time.

When you drive your car , do you use your driving skills one aer another or a

number of them at the same time? Do you have to pay aention to the environmentoutside your car? Do you also have to pay aention to how others are driving? Does

your aention change depending on the weather or road conditions?

Geing from A to B in a car is a journey. The journey can be dened or viewed from

the distance traveled. In other words, a 300-mile journey passes by lots of land.

You’d see a change in the environment, the trac on the roads would vary, the

landscape might range from dense urban to isolated forest. The journey can also be

perceived from the time it takes. During that time, you might feel hungry, need to go

to the toilet, hear a funny story, feel tension in your neck or back, or stop for a rest. In

fact, that same journey could be viewed by even more angles. You could be entirelyfocused on your car’s performance, or the purpose of the journey could occupy your

every thought.

No maer how you view this one journey, you still need to use a complex set of

driving skills at every single moment of the time you are driving. Labor is the



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same—with perhaps one exception.

Notice that, during this driving journey, you stopped to rest. You can’t do that in

labor. There is no stop (except the times between contractions) until your baby is

born. This means two things:

No maer what is happening on this birth journey, you cannot choose one

convenient, long rest stop. Instead, you will have many, many short ones that

happen when your baby feels like it.

Even during your brief rests, you cannot put your skills aside as you do when

you break an auto journey. You must use energy-conserving skills in between

contractions.

In between contractions, when you will have lile or no pain, use your active

consciousness to talk to yourself: “I’m going around the Pelvic Clock.” Or use it to

see yourself doing specic actions with your internal vision: you “see” some specic

area inside your pelvis and soen there. You can also combine the two, using a short-

form internal dialogue to say a specic word (“soen,” “relax”) while envisioningsoening inside a specic place in your pelvis.

As contractions get more intense, you will increasingly move from the verbal (le

hemisphere of the brain) and into the visual, right hemisphere. You will just “see”

yourself using good birthing behaviors, while choosing not to do tense up with the

pain. Yes, your visual right hemisphere still makes choices.

As for the working phases themselves (contractions), you have another whole set of

skills.

Directed Breathing—Helps you cope with the natural pain during contractions and

helps you achieve deep relaxation

Pelvic Clock—Helps you relax the so tissue of the pelvic oor, both during

contractions and rest periods.



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Cervical Relaxation—Helps you relax the so tissue of the cervix.

Leing Down Refex Relaxation—Helps with a pinched cervix.

Uterine Li—Improves the eectiveness of contractions.

Thai Massage—Helps the baby move down into the pelvic inlet.

“Bony Structure” skills (e.g. Hip Li , Rocking the Sacrum , Kate’s Cat)—Create

structural and internal relaxation.

Choosing Body Positions that help create internal relaxation and eliminate internal

tension no maer what posture or position you are in.

Stay on top of what your head is saying

Just as your body is always in some posture or position, you are always carrying on a

conversation in your head. We comment constantly on our own lives. We say nice (or

unpleasant) things to ourselves about what we are feeling or experiencing.

Labor causes this internal verbal conversation to become very focused. In fact, you

can determine the overall process of labor by what you are saying to yourself and

how well you are listening to what you are saying. Men, much of what a woman is

thinking, she does not verbally express, but there are times when women will explain

exactly what they are experiencing and doing in response.

Keep in mind: You’re lucky if you’re saying “This isn’t too bad; I can cope.” And

even if your head is saying “I HATE THIS,” you can also think “Boy, I’m managing

this well.”

During the 1st Stage, dilation is very much an exercise of fortitude. Remember “The

Lile Engine That Could”? “I think I can, I think I can, I knew I could!” Once you get

to the “I knew I could,” you are approaching or actively in 2nd Stage.

Use the Skills During 2nd Stage

Once the cervix is completely open and your baby has moved down through the tube

of the pelvis, its nal passage is through its birth canal. The pain associated with

dilation stops. Oh, what relief!



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If the birth canal is stretchable and not lled with tense tissue, each contraction

brings your baby further down this short passage (2-3 inches—you can feel this

distance when you work through the audio CD Internal Work). If the movement of

your baby down through its birth canal is not hindered by internal tension, there is

an urge to “bear down” or “push.” In other words, your body begins to eject your

baby.

When there is a spontaneous urge to bear down, the sensations are oen satisfying

and pleasurable (“productive”). But even with spontaneous bearing down, if the ring

of the vaginal opening is tight, you will experience a “ring of re.” A tight vaginalopening is the nal tension your baby tries to reduce. The Internal Work prevents or

reduces this sensation, as well as reduces any tension inside the birth canal.

Otherwise, your midwife or doctor might deal with this tension by cuing the

vaginal ring (episiotomy).

On the other hand, if the upper part of the vagina is tense, there won’t be a

spontaneous bearing down, nor will your baby continue down the passage. This can

be frustrating. Aer all the great work to open the cervix, to have your baby get

delayed at this point can seem unfair.To reduce or prevent a delayed 2nd Stage, your job is rst to prepare this area during

pregnancy to become stretchable tissue, and second to use your skills to keep your

active labor progressing. This nal part of your baby’s journey is still an exercise in

plumbing—an object has to come down, through, and out this last part of your body:

your vagina, your baby’s birth canal.

These are the skills you’ll use to keep this phase of labor progressive:

Breathing into the Perineum

Leing Down Refex Relaxation , to counteract your instinctive reaction to feeling the baby coming down

Internal Work

Sit Bone Spread

Hip Li



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Kate’s Cat

External Massage

Anterior lip

An anterior lip is caused by your baby pinching the front of the cervix against the

pubic bone, thus preventing the nal full dilation. Your job is to help your baby

move backward in your body, toward your sacrum. Your ability to relax this very

hidden and unreachable area of your female body is an important aspect of helping

your baby to birth.

These are the skills:

Leing Down Refex Relaxation

Sit Bone Spread

Kate’s Cat

Hip Li

Sacral Maneuver

Energy/tiredness

Because any internal tension can delay the birth process, the baby makes certain

tension doesn’t happen—by puing the woman to sleep between contractions. There

is another purpose: a woman must have lots of energy to expel her baby, and resting

helps her to renew her energy. Particularly during late labor, women oen get very

sleepy. This seems to be inconsistent with the intensity, but it makes sense when you

remember that the woman’s body is working very hard.

Unfortunately, this sleepy period is oen perceived of as an indication that labor has become too hard for the woman. Just remember, if there is no medical concern, sleep

is a natural part of giving birth.



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This means you want to encourage and support sleepy periods. Of course, there is a

hitch. When a woman sleeps during rest periods, she oen wakes up suddenly in a

full- blown contraction. This makes it dicult for her to control herself. However, she

will give you a clue if you are watching over her or slightly touching some part of

her body. There will be a slight movement as her body starts another contraction.

This tells you that you have to resume using your skills right away.

Let your partner know that you are totally there for her and that she should rest and

sleep to restore her energy. Let her know that you will be aentive so she can begin

to apply her skills right away once a contraction has started. Helping her to rest well,stay hydrated, and stay well-nourished will help her stay on top of the process.

You, too, can sleep with her, but you have to be touching her body and able and

willing to come out of your sleep as soon as her body motion tells you another

contraction is coming.

Keep in mind: Being tired in labor is not an alarming issue. Women need to rest.

Labor is hard work. It’s strenuous. Resting is good. Continue to use your skills; just

choose which ones work best when she feels energized and when she wants to rest.

Medical concerns

As you can tell, resolution to a stuck or hindered birth process is all about opening

up the pelvic area, thus, an exercise in plumbing.

If you have a concern that there is a medical problem, it’s the birth coach’s job to ask

your doctor or midwife. If they are also frustrated that the labor is hanging up but

don’t think there is a medical concern, then your knowledge of your partner’s

pregnant body is all the more vital. They might not understand what you are doing, but that’s ok. Medical teaching does not include plumbing.



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Use the Skills During 3nd Stage

Oen, the most dangerous period of a progressive labor is aer the baby is born and

before the placenta is delivered, because this is the time when a woman might bleed

excessively. If excessive bleeding occurs, the woman will be given an injection that

will contract her uterus. Use what skills you can t in, let the professionals do the

rest, and just be thankful you live in a modern country with modern medical care.

Basic take-away

Birth is unknown until it unfolds. You just have to work with what you have, but

there are two very important things that you have huge control over:

1. Don’t go into labor tired.

2. Don’t overreact to contractions when they are lasting 15–30 seconds and are 5–

20 minutes apart. Instead, quietly learn about your contractions and teach

yourself how to relax in this early phase, so you develop good labor management

skills for the later stages.

End of the Road: Making Memories

Giving birth is seen from several time perspectives. The rst perspective is when

you’re pregnant and you look forward to the birth experience, knowing it’s

unknown until it happens. Then you view the experience as it unfolds and as you

experience it. Then you look back immediately aerwards with opinions and

emotions. Finally, you periodically look back throughout your life. The birth of your

baby is always something you look back on.

Only the human mind has the ability to imagine the future, be so self-reective in the

present, and recall experiences in the past.

Because you have imaginative power, you can project dierent scenarios. Imagine

that you are looking back right now to your child’s birth, in which you did not have



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or use your Pink Kit skills. Without skills, you can hinder the birthing process, but

not stop it, which means it will only get more tiring the longer you make it last.

Long, tiring labors are also more likely to end up with medical interventions. Now

imagine you are looking back to your birth experience in which you did have and use

skills. Which way do you want to give birth?

The human mind also endows you with the remarkable ability to see yourself as you

are using your skills, even if this is your rst baby, no dierently than you can see

yourself taking complex driving directions to a new place. You can both see all the

turns, as well as how you drive the car. You are in charge of what you do and howyou manage the experience, just as you are in capable of engaging with the natural

physiological process of birth.

Because the birth of your child is a one-time event and remains as a lasting memory

for life, it’s vitally important that you do feel skilled. You may not be able to control

much during the birth experience, but you can always control your skills. They are

what will empower you throughout the whole of the progression, from now until

you hold your baby in your arms.

getting from here to there in labor

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