Did you have a natural birth?

29 November 2009

Back in the early 1970s as The Pink Kit Method For Birthing Better® was evolving most women, whether there were health concerns nor not, gave birth in hospital and endured the standards of practice that were not always pleasant to say the least.

For many women regardless of what was done to them, the labor went on and the birth happened on one level while the assessments, monitoring and procedures were on another level. Sometimes those things did feel unpleasant and even unnecessary.

Curiously, during this period and up to the mid1980s all women were experiencing this similar background to birth. Even during this period there were many women who experienced a natural birth. Often this meant, back then, that the labor progressed with a manageable level of pain and the baby came out without much fuss.

In other words, the medical standards of practice were perceived of things that happened to you and your birth went on anyway. This meant there was little judgment from one woman to another. If a labor and delivery moved along then women perceived themselves as 'lucky'. A complicated birth had nothing to do with whether medical care was part of it rather it had to do with a long labor and slow delivery ... how words change!

What we observed throughout the 1970s was a common background to pretty much all birth experiences. Having this shared background ... the hospital, obstetricians, obstetrical nurses and standards of care ... meant we could work with and around those stable factors with our own skills. Most of the Pink Kit families felt they had a natural birth because of the skills they used. Working with what was happening inside the process of labor and delivery gave our experience an aura of normality.

Of course there were some women who just felt totally negative about their birth experience, or doctor, or staff or ... When 'choices' became more available we experienced a very complex change. One woman said it beautifully.

'At my first birth I went to my local hospital and my local obstetrician. I had a terrible birth and blamed the hospital, doctor and husband. The second time I was pregnant I found a woman obstetrician and found another hospital with a better reputation for supporting Birth Plans. My husband did his best but really felt useless and left it to me to make my Birth Plans because I was so agitated. The birth was terrible and once again I blamed the hospital, my doctor (although I really liked her) and my husband who once again was worthless and I told him so. For our third pregnancy I was determined to have my baby at home. I found two midwives and read everything they asked me to read. I went to pregnancy yoga classes, took homeopathics, had accupuncture and did everything. By this time my husband was more alienated but I didn't care ... it was my body, my birth. Anyway, the birth was still terrible. Sure I liked being at home but my midwives were really different than what I expected. They had been so involved during pregnancy but during the birth they left me alone even when I needed help. My husband stood around and I felt more lonely at this birth then I had in my other two hospital births.

When I got pregnant the fourth time I realized that I had to learn to birth. Fortunately I found The Pink Kit Package. What can I say. I wept. If I had had these skills the first time I would have saved myself and my husband years of sorrow and anger. It took a while for me to interest my husband, not because of the skills but because of the torment I had imposed on him by expecting him to know what to do to help me when I didn't know how to help myself.

Curiously, I had to go to the first hospital because I developed some health issues. This didn't stop me in the least from preparing my body including the internal work. My husband, once he really felt welcome, totally loved learning about my body and how he could help. He was amazing and it made me even sadder that I didn't realize how he had felt so terrible at his own lack of know-how. We became closer and talked a lot about everything.

Anyway, this birth was the most complex and needed the most medical care. It didn't matter. My husband and I worked together beautifully. The staff and doctor complemented us constantly about how beautifully we worked together. They were easy to talk to and we could tell they were much more relaxed because we were so focused together on using skills. We didn't fight against things but we worked with whatever assessments, monitoring or procedures they needed to do to make certain both me and our baby was fine.

We had such a remarkable and natural birth regardless of all the medical care. This was the most natural birth because we actually knew how to help our baby be born. We are totally frustrated by how many people just think we had a 'lucky' birth or 'easy' one but in no way believe we could have prepared my body to give birth or used skills to work through the process. This is what I can say ... learn how-to birth.'

This woman says it all. We must change the paradigm about childbirth. You can help Common Knowledge Trust to do this:

Here's how you can help:

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Thanks. Together childbirth can change for our children and grandchildren.

Find out more about our New Zealand registered charitable Trust, Common Knowledge

Go right to and purchase a Pink Kit Package for someone you know and love who is pregnant

http://thepinkkitforpositivebirth.blogspot.com
http://twitter.com/PinKitPregnancy
http://expectantfathers.blogspot.com/

Did you have a medical birth?

27 November 2009

I want to talk to all of you who had medical births back then.

In the 1970s and before pretty much everyone went to hospital in the US and had an obstetrician as a care provider. This wasn't true in other modern countries so if you're reading this from afar then your birth experience will be a bit different but what I'm going to talk about would be the same for you.

In this entry I'm not going to talk to women who had natural births yet. That's for another entry.

By the mid 1980s women had more choices, the Natural Birth Movement became prominent and the Midwifery Movement became active. Women wanted more choices to have home births and have 'continuity of care midwives.'

Something happened during this transition period that we could observe and hear because The Pink Kit skills were evolving from the mid 1970s to the 1980s so families were beginning to have different conversations.

While most pregnant families attended either Lamaze or Bradley classes in the early 1970s/1980s and were learning a set of skills, by the latter part of the 1980s/1990s and to today the emphasis in the classes shifted away from skills and toward 'information' so that families could make 'informed choices'.

Families in the early 1970s knew they would have standardized medical care around the birth experience. Some were fine about this and others, for personal or religious reasons, were not comfortable with this fact but most people didn't have many choices. That means we had to work with what we had and work around it.

Also there were many women who had health issues that came into pregnancy or developed during pregnancy. There were also some babies that had known health problems which meant the woman's experience would be medical even if she were healthy.

Knowing how to create space in our pelvis, how to keep the inside of our pelvis relaxed and to keep our sacrum mobile meant we had something to do even if we had to lie in a hospital bed and had tubes and cords attached to us.

Curiously this similarity of our experience ... giving birth in hospital, being faced with standards of maternity assessments, monitoring and procedures, being under obstetrical care and having staff obstetrical nurses met we had a back drop to putting skills into our experience and seeing what happened.

Too many families felt the breathing and relaxation techniques they were taught often 'didn't work' when more medical care was added to the physiological and very natural process of birth. Coupled with the foundational goals of both Lamaze and The Bradley Method for 'natural' birth, too many women with health issues or who experienced the medical standards of care then felt either they or the techniques failed. This did not leave good personal experiences or memories.

One thing that had profoundly changed by the early 1970s was the change in pain relief. In my mother's generation women were rendered unconscious during the 'delivery' as a way to reduce the 'suffering' of childbirth. Many of you know ether and hypnotics were also used. When I gave birth in 1970 we were most likely be given demeral or something like that. So, we were more awake and Lamaze and Bradley did give us something to practice with our husband and try to use during labor and birth.

This was a great and positive change to what we, as expectant parents, could do for ourselves. When I talk about The Pink Kit skills relative to Lamaze and Bradley, do not think that I am putting those systems down. They were the first attempt to link pregnancy and childbirth to being a skilled activity. The Pink Kit Method sprang from a belief we need skills but didn't focus at all on whether the birth process would have medical assessments, monitoring and procedures or not ... because most would. Pink Kit families did not want to see the birth of their child as less because of medical care whether wanted or not.

What were the biggest things we discovered? We learned that each of us has a slightly different shape to the hole inside our pelvis.

• Some did have long tail bones, some little nibs ... check yours now and think back on your birth experiences and whether your tail bone played a part in the delivery ... not the labor.
• Some of us had lots of space between our sit-bones but had less space front to back. See if you can determine that for yourself either by sitting on a hard chair and noticing where your sitbones are or by feeling that space.
• Some of us had wide, broad, long sacrums or curved under ones. A few had really little ones and a few of us had very big ones. Often our birth stories reflected what happened under our sacrum ... back labor or not.
  

Just with that information we could develop skills. Our bones were fixed yet they were controlled by our muscles, soft tissue and the positions or postures of our body. We learned to sit, stand or lie in such a way as to create as much space between our sitbones and front to back as possible.

Just this skill during labor helped us focus on our body rather than 'the pain'. Lamaze and Bradley used 'focus' as well. Often that focus was on something outside us such as a spot on the wall or a candle. The PK skills turned our attention back to our body ... but to the inside and how we could scan our body and create space and relaxation. This kept us more connected AND it meant our skills could adapt to any situation no matter what type of medical care we experienced.

No one could take away our ability to focus our mind inside ourselves. This was wildly important and motivated us to continue evolving a set of complex skills. The first place was our body.

Because men share the same body, we could learn together. Men had interesting thoughts about both Lamaze and Bradley. They felt involved but a bit outside the process. A woman's pregnant body remained mysterious. Timing contractions and breathing with a woman was pretty good but still left men feeling like a third wheel and not certain if they were really helping.

This had to change. We had to evolve a system that involved men as much as women because family life was changing as well and all of us wanted our families to be strong. We wanted our husbands present at the birth of our babies. This meant we absolutely had to train men to be competent to be a 'birth coach'.

For most of us ... and its still true today ... birth is something that happens to us but we have not exposure to lots of births so each of us is going into a phenomenally important experience with very little exposure, involvement or experience. This has played a huge role in developing The Pink Kit skills. We can't practice birth, most of us will never go to another birth but our own or maybe a friend's. Somehow we had to develop a resource that expectant parents could use in their own home ... sort of like a driving manual.

One thing we learned, we all had to do this activity of giving birth so we had better learn how.

The next thing we learned had to do with the tissue that surrounds our bones.

Even back then, every skill we learned and shared with another person meant we had one more thing we could focus on during the birthing process. The relief we felt at being able to take skills that always worked in every birth was palpable. No longer were we hampered by systems that were focused on natural birth and techniques that didn't work in certain situations.

By turning our focus inside into our body we felt truly connected to the process and knew we were actually working with our baby rather than just getting through the experience.

Here's how you can help:

• Donate Look at the bottom of the right menu
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• Publishing
  
• Translation

Thanks. Together childbirth can change for our children and grandchildren.

Find out more about our New Zealand registered charitable Trust, Common Knowledge

Go right to and purchase a Pink Kit Package for someone you know and love who is pregnant

http://thepinkkitforpositivebirth.blogspot.com
http://twitter.com/PinKitPregnancy
http://expectantfathers.blogspot.com/

What did we learn first?

25 November 2009

As The Pink Kit Method evolved the first breakthrough was about our universal body. Knowing how long our tail bone was was the first step to finding out about our body. I have no medical training. Never took anatomy or physiology. We learned by feeling and experimenting.

Mostly we worked from the birth stories that talked about what we physically experienced. There was so much to talk about. It's amazing what remarkable detail many women remember what they were thinking about what they were experiencing.

I haven't talked much about men but The Pink Kit was as much about how men viewed the experience from outside looking toward the woman while the woman looked inside herself and outside to how others behaved around or to her.

Families wanted a system that totally and equally included skills for both roles ... being pregnant/giving birth and helping to prepare for birth/supporting or coaching.

Most of the physical stories were like these:

• "I had such back labor'
• 'I had such hip pain'
• 'I pushed for hours'
• 'I my contractions got shorter and further apart'.
• 'The contractions seemed to stay the same.'
• 'I threw up'
• 'I was so tired'
• 'I didn't know how to push'
• 'I pushed so hard and my baby came so fast I required lots of stitches'

I'm sure you've heard a bunch of these stories as well. Often we were working backward ... 'What do you think might have helped!'

By doing so we could find out about our body with those experiences in mind. As women we were very certain when we learned something about our own body whether that might have made a difference. We could do that because those experiences often left us feeling out of control and skillless. We were seeking greater understanding and the understanding came in the form of more knowledge about our body and the skills to work with our body no matter what.

Some people would say 'But I was required to lie on my back and that's why I had so much difficulty pushing'. That was true, so we had to find the skills that worked no matter what ... and we could. Any woman forced to be on her back can still breathe in a relaxed manner (didn't say it was easy), can still keep her sacrum mobile (if she knows how), can still soften inside her pelvis (if she knows how) and still make small adjustments that create more effective contractions (if she has the skills).

Women who had little choice, realized how vitally important it was that they could have the best experience possible. Women who chose natural birth realized how vitally important it was to do everything they could to achieve that and have the skills to continue to use (not fall back on!) if more medical care became part of the experience. Finally, we had a system that cross over all borders and boundaries. We knew that our shared human body carried the shared pregnancy/childbirth skills that had been missing.

We learned that we needed to know what shape our pelvis was ... not the anatomical term but what we actually had. We knew we couldn't touch the inlet to our pelvis but we could feel the outlet because we sat on that hole all the time without even realizing it. We found that our side-to-side and front to back dimensions were important. That was the space our baby had to move through.

We had to find out how mobile our pelvic bones were ... particularly our sacrum. We had to know how to move our sacrum to give our baby more room and deal with back labour.

We had to really pay attention to keep the inside of our pelvis relaxed as a way to help dilation. We had to truly prepare our birth canal way beyond 'perineal massage.

Little by little, we learned how our body fit inside our body and how to follow its passage through our body. We had to become comfortable with our birthing body during our pregnancy even if that was not easy to do. Pregnancy was a special time requiring a whole new change approach to ourselves.

We learned, we applied our skills and then we talked and talked and talked about what we had learned and how we could improve our skills. We refined and gained a greater sense of our human/woman beingness.

Between the early 1970s and early 1980s these skills grew but it wasn't until 2001 that we got the first Pink Kit resource available to the general public. Wow. What a long time it has taken.

Now we can to go further. We need your help ... skills and funds to take this resource to a new level.

Here's how you can help:

• Donate Look at the bottom of the right menu
• Editing
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• Design
• Illustration
• Computer animation
• Publishing
  
• Translation

Thanks. Together childbirth can change for our children and grandchildren.

Find out more about our New Zealand registered charitable Trust, Common Knowledge

Go right to and purchase a Pink Kit Package for someone you know and love who is pregnant

http://thepinkkitforpositivebirth.blogspot.com
http://twitter.com/PinKitPregnancy
http://expectantfathers.blogspot.com/

Is there any order?

23 November 2009

I keep going back to read what I've written to see if there is any order to talk to you about the importance of having skills firmly tied to the pregnancy/childbirth relationship/transition. There's so much to talk about and one thing leads to another.

When I gave birth to my first child in 1970 whatever happened at birth was the societal norm. In other words, questioning the medical approach to childbirth had barely gained momentum. However by 1982 when I gave birth to my second child childbirth had become entirely divided ... with the exception of the development within The Pink Kit. Yet, what we were doing was so under the radar and so not aligned to the new message being given.

How do I explain this but most of you will understand. Women began to question whether childbirth was a medical issue requiring medical intervention. There were so many 'standards of care' that were being questioned and so many of those were then dropped out in an attempt to 'normalize' childbirth or make it seem less medicalized.

The camps soon established themselves: the 'natural' birth advocates and those who supported the modern medical maternity approach. Expectant families were encouraged to make 'informed choices' based on being given 'information'. The childbirth preparation classes such as Lamaze or The Bradley Method and later Active Birth publicly promoted natural birth.

Because The Pink Kit Method evolved informally by expectant families many of them had taken such classes yet had not felt successful for many reasons. Some of the breathing techniques proved impractical or didn't work in certain situations. When more medical care was needed, suggested, imposed or required often couples felt they had lost control and did not continue to use the skills they were learning for their 'natural' birth. In other words, many families believed that if their birth had medical 'interventions' they had failed or been imprisoned by the system.

Since I had no interest in the politics surrounding childbirth I personally couldn't address anyone's concerns. By focusing on how to prepare the pregnant body to give birth at least each of us had control over the amount of time and effort we put into doing so during the last 16 weeks of pregnancy. One of the first things that changed was the sense of 'waiting' to see 'if' ... in other words, we learned to spend time preparing the pregnant body just because we were pregnant, not because we were going to only have a natural birth.

We removed the birth preparation from all factors and placed our preparation into the responsibility we had to take on behalf of our child as parents. This was the one thing each of us could do. Individually we freed ourselves from focusing on 'other' to focusing on ourselves. This took us into an amazing, new perception about pregnancy and childbirth.

The new perception that opened was simple to the core. Everyone of us who is pregnant needs to prepare our body to give birth. Doing so gives a strong and clear message to our child that we will do what we can to make it's passage through our body as forthcoming and safe as possible. Although none of us could determine what type of birth we would have, we ultimately knew that our preparation would make that process more effective for our baby.

Something else happened. As we became more skilled and used those skills in whatever birth unfolded, we felt better about the birth experience even if it was not as we would have wished. What went on around us or to us did matter sort of but how we managed, coped, handled and worked through the process became our focus.

This wasn't always easy because factors could challenge our willingness to continue to work well on behalf of our baby rather than feel pity for ourselves. Many of us had less than ideal births yet all of us felt incredibly empowered because the skills were so adaptable and our preparation paid off.

One way it paid off mightly is how birth professionals responded to being around skilled families. First, none of them believed you could actually learn a set of skills that always worked. Like people who advocated 'natural' birth, birth professionals in the medical field were as committed to the inaccurate belief that there is nothing you can do about your birth because there's no way to know what it will be like. Most often birth professionals thought the women were 'lucky' or had an 'easy' birth rather than being skilled. However, all birth professionals loved being around skilled women and skilled men. They were also much more relaxed when more medical attention was needed because the couples weren't fighting.

Whether a couple truly believed the medical assessments, monitoring or procedures were necessary many times they just accepted them as part of maternity care and worked around them with their skills. This put the couple in control of how they coped and managed and birth professionals relaxed (even in the most serious situations) and worked better with the families.

Today this would be wonderful. Imagine the vast majority of expectant parents taking time during the last 16 weeks of pregnancy to prepare the body to give birth and learn the skills to work with their baby's efforts no matter what type of birth unfolds. Imagine how birth would change if we just had skilled families. Those families could be your son or daughter or even grandson or granddaughter being pregnant and giving birth. That's why it's so very important that we, grandmothers and grandmothers-to-be, get this resource into it's most appealing presentation.

Whatever happened during your birth, imagine that you actually knew how to prepare your body to give birth, that you had taken time with your partner and then used those skills in whatever birth you had ... then imagine all of our generation having done that. And imagine that we had the skills to teach our children who then taught their children.

If Lamaze or The Bradley Method worked for you that is terrific because they are both wonderful systems. At the same time you know that neither of those systems have cross-over to any family that is pregnant for no other reason then both of them are strong proponents of 'natural' birth which then has an unintentional negative consequence ... the exclusion of other women. We needed a system that included all of us and that's one reason The Pink Kit Method differs from anything on the market and why it needs your help to be better.

Here's how you can help:

• Donate Look at the bottom of the right menu
• Editing
• Lay-out
• Design
• Illustration
• Computer animation
• Publishing
  
• Translation

Thanks. Together childbirth can change for our children and grandchildren.

Find out more about our New Zealand registered charitable Trust, Common Knowledge

Go right to and purchase a Pink Kit Package for someone you know and love who is pregnant

http://thepinkkitforpositivebirth.blogspot.com
http://twitter.com/PinKitPregnancy
http://expectantfathers.blogspot.com/

We're going back in time

20 November 2009

We're approaching the day of Thanksgiving in the US. If we look at pregnancy and childbirth over the eons of human habitation ... we have to give thanks to the modern maternity model that has:

• Stopped the 'suffering' in childbirth
• Made birth safer

I know that there will be some of you who have quite a strong 'anti-medical' opinion about birth but let's face reality ... birth is as full of problems as it isn't. Birth is 'natural' and without health care that means anything that happens during pregnancy or birth is 'natural' and 'normal' even if infrequent and unwanted.

How do we know that pregnancy and giving birth has the potential for unusual and uncommon, serious potentials? We looked at analogies for everything. So think about these two scenarios.

#1 Scenario:

Take 1000 unpregnant women, put them in a room for 12 hours. Some will have health issues. Some will be into 'natural health' and others who will love modern medicine. Some of the women will take care of themselves and others just live. Some will smoke, others never have. Some are too thin, others too overweight. In other words, one thousand women will have different backgrounds, beliefs, ideas and life situations. But how likely is it for any of these women to have a major health problem within those 12 hours? And how likely is it that any of these women will experience the heightened level of pain that causes women to feel they have 'suffered'?

In actuality, the second is more likely. There are many women living in pain because of some injury or illness. However, it's unlikely any of these women will have a major health issue within these 12 hours.

#2 Scenario

Have all these women be in labor. Right away, just that means there are more likely to be increased health issues for either the mother or baby. And there's more likely to be women in pain they are not able to cope with.

Don't deny this reality, regardless of what type of birth you had. The reality is ... pregnancy and giving birth increase the probability that something will happen. Not everything will end in death or injury for either mother or baby. Some babies might be born with genetic or other problems. Some mothers might develop childbirth related health issues that relate to non-pregnant health or arrive just because of pregnancy. Other women will feel they've had a great birth yet their baby could be a stillborn. Other women could feel labor was the experience from hell, hate themselves, their husband, midwife and doctor.

In other words, pregnancy and childbirth brings all of us as women to the edge physically and mentally. This is the basis of The Pink Kit Method. If we're going to be on the edge then we have to have skills to handle ourselves. We may have no control over whether we have or develop health issues or whether our baby does. However, the whole experience is an activity we are doing ... moment by moment ... and we have control over what we do with our body at every moment. Is that important? You bet.

So here's another analogy. Think about the road system. Any society can build wonderful roads, have great signage so people never get lost. Rules of the road can be well known with a traffic police presence and wonderful mechanics. We can have a terrific choice of vehicles. Given all these things, mayhem would ensue! Why? Without skilled drivers behind the wheel of those vehicles, there would be chaos.

Every modern society expects every person who drives to learn the same set of complex skills. If you can remember way back then, it took you time to learn to drive. Driving isn't something someone else can do for you and you don't learn one skill before another. You have to learn and perfect a complex set of skills then use them at every single moment you are behind the wheel of your vehicle. Without this complex agreement among people then the injury and death toll would be much higher and we'd all suffer.

Yet, childbirth has never really been connected to skills. Yes, Lamaze and Bradley focuses on some skills yet didn't work for many families (which we'll discuss later). When The Pink Kit developed it had to work for everyone! And the skills do work for everyone because absolutely everyone is a human being so working with our body is a shared human experience. Each of us then could use the skills in whatever birth we were experiencing because we could 'choose' to. We could choose to stay connected to our birth experience. Pink Kit families learned right away that childbirth is NOT a dentist appointment but a sport's, dance, musical performance. Giving birth is always an activity and all expectant parents need to learn that then become skilled.

So the analogy of driving went further. We can all agree that everyone must learn a set of skills, prove they can use those skills prior to getting a license. But we also agree to always use those skills even if the weather is crappy, a child runs across the road or other things that can unexpectedly happen.

Childbirth is no different. Skills always make the experience better no matter what happens.

So, over the years we learned that birth is always something we do and we should want to know how and do it better.

For example 'the birth' might be short and both mother and baby healthy, there are many, many women who still felt they 'suffered'. The 'outcome' has little to do with how we felt about ourselves and the experience. Yes, external factors do play a role in how we feel but how we managed, coped, handled and dealt with the experience holds as many memories as what happened to us or around us.

In other words, there are two elements:

• Others
• Ourselves

Pink Kit families (individually) knew they often had little control of 'others'. Families wanted control over themselves no matter what they were faced with ... the 'what if'.

So, The Pink Kit Method combines what we have in common ... our human body to what we can do for ourselves during the birthing process.

The Pink Kit Method was driven by stories. Each story was different. Think about your births and the births your son and daughter have gone through in order for you to be a grandmother. Try telling those stories without referring to 'other'. That's hard. 'Other' is so very involved with the whole process.

• 'I had a rough internal exam' ... that's about 'other.
• 'My doctor was so gentle whenever he checked me' ... still about 'other'.
• 'We got to the hospital in the middle of a snow storm' ... 'other'
• 'I had a wonderful home birth' ... 'other'
• 'I had a great hospital birth' ... 'other'
  

The list goes on and on and on. What happens when we only tell our birth story from our self.

• 'I just couldn't relax'
• 'It was the breathing that really helped'
• 'I had terrible back labor'.
• 'Second stage was just one contraction'

Here's the thing ... we don't have enough stories about what we have done for ourselves. In fact, birth stories tend to be composed of several elements:

• Time frame ... 'my labor started at 6, my water broke at 11, we went to hospital at 3 and I gave birth at 9.'
• What they did to me ... 'My midwife, doctor was great', 'I told me to push when I didn't want to' or 'I wish someone had told me to push'.
• How it felt ... 'my labor niggled for days', 'I had terrible pain in one hip'

With the exception of a few comments like: 'I focused on my breathing' or 'I learned after my first birth to relax more' most women cannot explain what they did during the birth. This has to change and The Pink Kit Package is the only resource that can bring about this change because it is the only pregnancy/childbirth preparation system that is just 'skilled-based'. Information abounds, skills are lacking.

Whoa you say ... 'I used Lamaze or Bradley, Active Birth or even Hypnobirthing'. In time you'll learn how The Pink Kit Method is so distinctly different that it's shocking this whole system has not been known before ... but it's true. Birth skills are not high on anyone's priority. But that can change with you help.

Our Pink Kit Package is already online and been selling since 2001. But it needs to grow much bigger and sooner and this can only be done with your help.

You can see our Incorporation Certificate

You can see our Tax Exemption here

And you can donate at http://www.birthingbetter.com (Scroll down the right hand menu and there's a paypal donation button.)

What Exactly Is The Pink Kit Method For Birthing Better®

18 November 2009

Hi other grandmothers and grandmothers-to-be

It feels quite nice to know I am speaking to this group of human beings but perhaps not for the reasons you think. Although like most of you I grew up during the Feminist Evolution, I did not find myself supporting some of the viewpoints. Since The Pink Kit Method evolved during the early 1970s, it was immediately apparent that both the expectant mother and father wanted a set of shared skills they could use within their family to prepare for the birth of their child and to help their child be born.

In fact, it was us, women, who wanted our husband or partner to be with us during the whole childbirth process. There were several reasons (and you are more than welcome to add your comments).

• We didn't want to be left alone during labor.
• We wanted the father of our children to know what we went through to give birth.
• We wanted the father of our children to be more involved with our kids so we believed that if they were more involved in our pregnancy and birth.

Most of us know that our mother's generation had a very different birth experience. You might not be familiar with what happened during your grandmother's experiences. You are probably aware that all of us (not so far back in Time) lived without modern medicine which truly developed sometime over the past 150 years.

This one fact, means that each of us have a historic and ethnic relationship to pregnancy and childbirth that we might not know about. If like many modern women you read heaps of books during your pregnancies, you might be aware that most 'historic' references tend to be 'Western European' ... but for many women this is not their background.

This is all leading somewhere! So each of us has come from a different ethnic background and family experience. Birth was not very discussed. If you have any living older women relatives ... ask them about their birth experiences.

It's amazing how little of how to prepare for childbirth and how-to give birth is passed on. It's more likely someone will have taught you the exact skills to make a bed rather than give birth. And I'll discuss this in later entries.

The initial evolution of what has become known as The Pink Kit comes from families who wanted to know how to prepare for birth and what they could do for themselves. And this evolution occurred during the time (early 1970s) when childbirth was changing.

In fact, many women our age question why The Pink Kit is different from the 'choices' that became available for so many of us.

What are 'choices'? Can we actually 'choose' what type of birth we want? More exactly, can we 'choose' what type of birth we'll have? And what happens to pregnant women who don't have 'choices'? Or what happens when 'choices' change?

The families who came into my life knew that pregnancy/childbirth was not like a menu although sometimes it felt like a wish list. We want but can't necessarily have. We get what we get and that's what each of us had to contend with. You never know what your birth will be like (we know that's accurate!) but that doesn't mean there's nothing we can do.

All these expectant parents wanted to know what they could do 'if'. That was so powerful. What if?

Yet, answering this question seemed so individual and based on each unique pregnancy and situation. There seemed to be nothing in common. We had to discover what we all shared in common. Not only us, as women, but with our men. It was our body.

The present Pink Kit resource ... the one I'm asking you to help our New Zealand charitable Trust, Common Knowledge, re-do is all about our pregnant then birthing body ... and how to prepare the birthing body to give birth and how to work through the process of giving birth ... no matter what type of birth unfolds.

We know that once we are pregnant, the only way out is to give birth. This can be a miscarriage or a full term baby. This can mean a dead baby or mother or a 'rice paddy' birth. There is no way out of pregnancy except through the transformational process of giving birth.

So, The Pink Kit Package is the complete resource of birth preparation and childbirth skills ... and they are not like anything you think you know. That's what happened, a whole new approach to pregnancy and childbirth was born out of necessity based on the 'what if'.

There were a few other fundamental elements of this approach to pregnancy and birth ...

• Both fathers and mothers-to-be had to have equal yet different skills so families can work together.
• The skills had to work in every, every, every type of birth. Every birth was made better by preparing to give birth and to have skills to work with the process ... which is in fact an 'activity.'

Common Knowledge Trust is trying to raise enough funds through Angel Investment to re-do this whole resource ... using the most contemporary computer animation and very commercial publishing. So, can you help us?

As of November 2009 Common Knowledge Trust needs:

• Funds to re-do the project because you care about families.
• Design
• Illustration
• Computer generated graphics
• Editing of written material and visual re-do
• Lay-out of written material
• PR
• Articles
• Help getting the new resource into bookstores
• Translations into other languages
• Creation of a simpler resource that can be translated into multiple languages and given to pregnant women in clinics throughout the world

In other words, we're on a mission to change pregnancy and childbirth so that all expectant parents can be skilled to help their baby be born.

We cannot guarantee a 'better' birth for ourselves or loved ones however, we can always 'birth better'. We can always birth better ... particularly given that so few skills have been connected to this Life transforming experience. Consider where most women have come from ... anything is better. The Pink Kit Package has been changing the world ... one birth at a time.

Now's the time to up the play and make this resource widely available worldwide. Common Knowledge can only do it with your assistance.

How To Reach You?

13 November 2009


My daughter is pregnant which means my son-in-law is pregnant. My son and his wife are trying to get pregnant. My kids are 12 years apart and I'll probably have grandchildren less than a year apart. That's so neat.

But this blog is not about my family, it's about The Pink Kit resource that Common Knowledge Trust produces.

I need to reach out to you and ask for your assistance. The reason I'm feeling bold enough to do this comes simply from the fact that if you're a grandmother or like me, a grandmother-to-be you have come to that role through birthing across generations. You or someone else gave birth to your child and your child has or will give birth to your grandchildren ... or even great or great, great grandchildren.

Child birth has led us all here.

What did the birth of your child mean to you? Or if you adopted, what did the birth of your child mean to you? What does the birth of your grandchild mean to you and his/her parents?

There are no words really, are there? The birth of each of our children and grandchildren is one of the most precious and monumental experiences in Life. Without a doubt. Is there any thing that you can think of that makes one child's birth more significant or important than another child's?

Think on that. Think deeply and watch your inner voice. Is the birth of anyone's child more significant or better than the birth of someone else's child or even one of our other children?

I need us to think about this question because I am reaching out across the ether sphere to reach a number of you who want to help Common Knowledge Trust re-do The Pink Kit Package ... part of The Pink Kit Method For Birthing Better® so that the rift in childbirth can be healed.

I take courage in hand today because this morning another grandmother-to-be and I shared a bus ride to the airport. She is also expecting her first grandchild and I spoke to her about The Pink Kit skills. Like so many other women before her, I spoke about childbirth when we had children (for me 1970 and 1982), how her friends felt back then about their births and what she hears today.

After hearing about The Pink Kit Package and this new system of childbirth preparation she was absolutely convinced that the gaps she experienced would have disappear had she and her husband known The Pink Kit skills. I know that for a fact since my daughter was born prior to the evolution of these skills so I didn't have them. However twelve years later this system had evolved and I used the skills for my son's birth. They changed my life because I had moved from an informed woman to a skilled one.

Since I evolved the system (not in response to my daughter's birth) in the early 1970s by working with hundreds of expectant families (no I'm not a midwife, nurse, childbirth educator, doula. Nor do I have any medical or scientific background or training or qualifications), I can honestly say that I've been privileged to bring these skills into a present day resource. This resource has grown a huge Pink Kit family worldwide who have self-learned a simple set of unique skills to:

• properly prepare the pregnant body to give birth ... for any type of birth including a non-laboring Caesarean.
• work with the baby's efforts to be born as parents together no matter what type of birth unfolds.
  

Now is the time to re-do the project and make it more contemporary using the exciting technical capabilities not available to Common Knowledge Trust in the early 1990s.

So I'm writing this blog with the hopes that other grandmothers and grandmothers-to-be will bring forth their skills and angel investment and help us in our endeavors.

Over the next few weeks I'm going to explain:

• exactly what the resource is
• why it's so important to our societies to have skilled parents-to-be
• how you can help
• where our Trust is today with creating a more contemporary resource.
• what happens if we don't get this resource re-done and distributed worldwide.