28 December 2009
I'm steadily working through the video tutorials for the software program I am learning to use to make these YouTube videos. Thankfully they are very clear.
Besides they reassure me that I can do these videos with voice overs rather than have me be seen.
Why won't I want to be seen? Actually when someone looks at another person talking they mostly believe what they are saying is their opinion. When there is a voice over most people hear that as 'script'.
Because I'm about to do so many short videos it's important that the people who watch them will identify with them rather than have an opinion about me.
Also Common Knowledge Trust holds the birth stories of thousands of families. By doing a voice over for each one I can talk about 'us or we' rather than 'you'.
This is of course very delicate. For a woman who would love to have a vaginal birth after a Caesarean yet can't ... for whatever reason ... having others know how she feels makes her feel better. I believe I can achieve this with the voice over where I can always use the 'we or us'.
I'm also collecting images from Google to put into these videos.
Actually I'm feeling pretty good at the moment.
Have a great holiday season and New Year.
Monday, 28 December 2009
Friday, 25 December 2009
Time of fruition
Dec 25 2009
This blog is going to follow along the developments of The Pink Kit re-do.
The other day I was directed to a website offering a beauty looking online childbirth course and I freaked. Some of the content sounded as though it originated with The Pink Kit.
Then I got pissed ... I am not going to my grave without these skills become widely known and used.
Then I got determined ... so I made the decision to:
What's stopping me exactly?
I don't have the skills to make the videos. Then this lovely man has offered to be my mentor. He downloaded a bunch of video tutorials that I'm working through now.
As I was working through the tutorials I realized that I didn't have the skills to write the content.
It's not that I can't write something but how do I write something distinct about every variability?
For example, I want to do a 2 1/2 minute video for pregnant women who want to have a vaginal birth after a Caesarean but will end up with a non-labouring delivery.
How do I clearly and concisely explain that it's a pleasure to prepare your body to give birth, gives you something to do during the last few months of pregnancy, gets you and your partner working together and you feel closer to your baby?
How do I explain that using your skills on the way to hospital, while being prepped, during the surgery and in recovery makes you feel so much more connected?
And how does that sound differently if I were talking to a first time father planning a home birth?
So I recognize that I lack content and technical abilities. Now you can understand why I'm always looking for help from others like yourself. Obviously this blog with remain on the Internet for years so my asking for help will still be shouted after I've passed. But if you're reading this at the beginning of 2010 I need your help.
Without your help I'll continue because after being freaked and pissed I got determined.
Within 6 months I will have put up 30 or more short videos and I'll have figured out a way to gain the skills. Interestingly the four people who are helping me are young men. Two have not had children, one has and the other is expecting and using The Pink Kit skills now.
What else did I decide to do?
Instead of trying to re-do this whole resource with the hopes of picking up a distributor so it can be found in bookstores, I've decided to just finish the 29 rewritten segments and make them each a wee book. These will be put online and sold.
Soon people will be able to download ebooks with long titles like: Pain and your Pink Kit Method for birthing better® skills or A father-to-be's first baby and your Pink Kit skills.
These 29 resources will then be put into talking books and hopefully translated by friends.
I'm totally determined to keep working with the Internet to find a way to spread the concept of being skilled to give birth just because you're pregnant and you will give birth so why not be skilled and prepared.
This blog is going to follow along the developments of The Pink Kit re-do.
The other day I was directed to a website offering a beauty looking online childbirth course and I freaked. Some of the content sounded as though it originated with The Pink Kit.
Then I got pissed ... I am not going to my grave without these skills become widely known and used.
Then I got determined ... so I made the decision to:
- Learn how to make really good, short videos for YouTube and iPods
- Get the 29 segments finished of the rewrite that I've completed through 2nd draft and get these online as separate Pink Kit resources.
What's stopping me exactly?
I don't have the skills to make the videos. Then this lovely man has offered to be my mentor. He downloaded a bunch of video tutorials that I'm working through now.
As I was working through the tutorials I realized that I didn't have the skills to write the content.
It's not that I can't write something but how do I write something distinct about every variability?
For example, I want to do a 2 1/2 minute video for pregnant women who want to have a vaginal birth after a Caesarean but will end up with a non-labouring delivery.
How do I clearly and concisely explain that it's a pleasure to prepare your body to give birth, gives you something to do during the last few months of pregnancy, gets you and your partner working together and you feel closer to your baby?
How do I explain that using your skills on the way to hospital, while being prepped, during the surgery and in recovery makes you feel so much more connected?
And how does that sound differently if I were talking to a first time father planning a home birth?
So I recognize that I lack content and technical abilities. Now you can understand why I'm always looking for help from others like yourself. Obviously this blog with remain on the Internet for years so my asking for help will still be shouted after I've passed. But if you're reading this at the beginning of 2010 I need your help.
Without your help I'll continue because after being freaked and pissed I got determined.
Within 6 months I will have put up 30 or more short videos and I'll have figured out a way to gain the skills. Interestingly the four people who are helping me are young men. Two have not had children, one has and the other is expecting and using The Pink Kit skills now.
What else did I decide to do?
Instead of trying to re-do this whole resource with the hopes of picking up a distributor so it can be found in bookstores, I've decided to just finish the 29 rewritten segments and make them each a wee book. These will be put online and sold.
Soon people will be able to download ebooks with long titles like: Pain and your Pink Kit Method for birthing better® skills or A father-to-be's first baby and your Pink Kit skills.
These 29 resources will then be put into talking books and hopefully translated by friends.
I'm totally determined to keep working with the Internet to find a way to spread the concept of being skilled to give birth just because you're pregnant and you will give birth so why not be skilled and prepared.
Wednesday, 16 December 2009
Birth providers see lots of births
16 December 2009
Here's the reality ... it's really hard to talk to pregnant women about what they need because they have not been around lots of births. Birth and death ... two hidden transitions of life. Death is more common now with hospice however having birth centers (which would sort of be an analogy) still does not involve the whole family.
Rarely do families want lots of friends and family with them during the birthing process. This hinders the ability for our societies to change what is expected of expectant parents!
When my New Zealand friend, Andrea, who works as a midwife talks about births ... these are also 'birth stories' but told from the viewpoint of a birth professional ... she will talk about what she sees.
What she sees is both how the woman is coping or handling the situation, what the father is doing and what is happening with the birth process and need for medical care. By the way, having increased medical care does not change how the woman is managing or what the father is doing! This is where the viewpoint of a birth professional is so very different from the perceptive of the mother and father.
For example, within the Natural Birth Movement there is a belief that 'birth should be natural unless there is a real medical need'. But what does that mean in how women and men deal with the process. In other words, increased foetal monitoring doesn't stop a woman from using relaxation or good breathing skills nor does having an internal foetal monitor stop a father from helping the woman cope with increased pain of having to remain in bed. Nor does it stop both of them from rearranging the pillows so the woman is more comfortable and can partly lie on one side or another.
Just because there is heaps of medical care any birthing woman and man can use all The Pink Kit skills as needed.
So birth professionals see heaps of births. They know that every woman will eventually 'get through' the birth ... one way or another! That means the birth professionals are trying to prevent a woman from perceiving her experience as 'suffering' (which is a word used to indicate a woman is not coping well ... which is another way of saying she does not have the right skills or she is not using the skills she has been taught) and to safeguard the wellbeing of the woman and baby.
Most birth professionals do not believe ... rightly so ... that how a woman copes with the process or how a father helps is their business. It isn't. It's our business as society! Presently, our societal attitudes of childbirth actually block any consideration for having skills be a natural part of pregnancy and birth preparation and management. How sad that is.
Sometimes I do have a sadness. In the past 40 years since The Pink Kit evolved there have been millions of families who have given birth without these skills. In New Zealand alone, since 2001 when the original Pink Kit resource was launched there have been almost 500,000 births. Andrea only attends 60-80/year. This means those families who she has encouraged, inspired, required, educated, demanded or insisted to self learn the skills are a unique few compared to what families in New Zealand could experience.
And New Zealand has a midwifery model of care and you would think that women who work as midwives would want to work with skilled families rather than work with women who are 'getting through' the birth and most fathers standing around or not really knowing what to do. But women who work as midwives in New Zealand have been strong advocates of 'birth is natural and there is nothing a woman needs to know.'
So birth providers see lots of births. That means they are actually ok with women moaning and groaning their way through birth and they are ok, even if irritated, with the lack of skills of fathers-to-be. Most birth professionals will praise women for just getting through birth ... which is right to do ... it's monumental enough to just get through labor. However, what if more families actually skillfully worked with their baby's efforts to be born whether having a natural or medical birth? What would birth providers see? More families being skilled! Won't that be nice for everyone?
From the view point of families having babies. Most just don't know what birth is like therefore they have no idea that birth is about coping, managing, dealing with, working with a dynamic process. Most families, if they ever see a birth video, will see 'the birth' ... the last 20 minutes or so. The Birth is usually the easiest part! It's the labor that families need to work with. And few birth videos show the hours and hours of labor ... people would be bored! That's sad in a way.
But I understand the boredom because it's very boring to be with a woman who is not coping. There's not much anyone can do except 'coach' her but that is absolutely exhausting if you have to do it again and again for hours and hours .... particularly with women who don't respond to coaching.
Sadly in the Natural Birth Movement there is a viewpoint that 'women shouldn't be coached, they should be left alone to discover birth themselves'. Wow, do we really want other women to just face this dynamic experience without any skills, knowledge or help? That's a profound societal viewpoint. If we want women to be left alone then they should be informed that no one will help them and they are just on their own.
In fact this is what we didn't want when we demanded our husbands be present. We did not want to be left alone because we knew we weren't skilled and at least we wanted someone with us. But then Lamaze was the class that gave both of us skills and for years families used Lamaze in whatever birth they had.
But Lamaze also promoted 'natural birth' so often people stopped using the skills if more medical care was needed or felt they didn't work. The Pink Kit skills work in every birth because every birth should be a skillful experience.
Here's how you can help:
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/
Here's the reality ... it's really hard to talk to pregnant women about what they need because they have not been around lots of births. Birth and death ... two hidden transitions of life. Death is more common now with hospice however having birth centers (which would sort of be an analogy) still does not involve the whole family.
Rarely do families want lots of friends and family with them during the birthing process. This hinders the ability for our societies to change what is expected of expectant parents!
When my New Zealand friend, Andrea, who works as a midwife talks about births ... these are also 'birth stories' but told from the viewpoint of a birth professional ... she will talk about what she sees.
What she sees is both how the woman is coping or handling the situation, what the father is doing and what is happening with the birth process and need for medical care. By the way, having increased medical care does not change how the woman is managing or what the father is doing! This is where the viewpoint of a birth professional is so very different from the perceptive of the mother and father.
For example, within the Natural Birth Movement there is a belief that 'birth should be natural unless there is a real medical need'. But what does that mean in how women and men deal with the process. In other words, increased foetal monitoring doesn't stop a woman from using relaxation or good breathing skills nor does having an internal foetal monitor stop a father from helping the woman cope with increased pain of having to remain in bed. Nor does it stop both of them from rearranging the pillows so the woman is more comfortable and can partly lie on one side or another.
Just because there is heaps of medical care any birthing woman and man can use all The Pink Kit skills as needed.
So birth professionals see heaps of births. They know that every woman will eventually 'get through' the birth ... one way or another! That means the birth professionals are trying to prevent a woman from perceiving her experience as 'suffering' (which is a word used to indicate a woman is not coping well ... which is another way of saying she does not have the right skills or she is not using the skills she has been taught) and to safeguard the wellbeing of the woman and baby.
Most birth professionals do not believe ... rightly so ... that how a woman copes with the process or how a father helps is their business. It isn't. It's our business as society! Presently, our societal attitudes of childbirth actually block any consideration for having skills be a natural part of pregnancy and birth preparation and management. How sad that is.
Sometimes I do have a sadness. In the past 40 years since The Pink Kit evolved there have been millions of families who have given birth without these skills. In New Zealand alone, since 2001 when the original Pink Kit resource was launched there have been almost 500,000 births. Andrea only attends 60-80/year. This means those families who she has encouraged, inspired, required, educated, demanded or insisted to self learn the skills are a unique few compared to what families in New Zealand could experience.
And New Zealand has a midwifery model of care and you would think that women who work as midwives would want to work with skilled families rather than work with women who are 'getting through' the birth and most fathers standing around or not really knowing what to do. But women who work as midwives in New Zealand have been strong advocates of 'birth is natural and there is nothing a woman needs to know.'
So birth providers see lots of births. That means they are actually ok with women moaning and groaning their way through birth and they are ok, even if irritated, with the lack of skills of fathers-to-be. Most birth professionals will praise women for just getting through birth ... which is right to do ... it's monumental enough to just get through labor. However, what if more families actually skillfully worked with their baby's efforts to be born whether having a natural or medical birth? What would birth providers see? More families being skilled! Won't that be nice for everyone?
From the view point of families having babies. Most just don't know what birth is like therefore they have no idea that birth is about coping, managing, dealing with, working with a dynamic process. Most families, if they ever see a birth video, will see 'the birth' ... the last 20 minutes or so. The Birth is usually the easiest part! It's the labor that families need to work with. And few birth videos show the hours and hours of labor ... people would be bored! That's sad in a way.
But I understand the boredom because it's very boring to be with a woman who is not coping. There's not much anyone can do except 'coach' her but that is absolutely exhausting if you have to do it again and again for hours and hours .... particularly with women who don't respond to coaching.
Sadly in the Natural Birth Movement there is a viewpoint that 'women shouldn't be coached, they should be left alone to discover birth themselves'. Wow, do we really want other women to just face this dynamic experience without any skills, knowledge or help? That's a profound societal viewpoint. If we want women to be left alone then they should be informed that no one will help them and they are just on their own.
In fact this is what we didn't want when we demanded our husbands be present. We did not want to be left alone because we knew we weren't skilled and at least we wanted someone with us. But then Lamaze was the class that gave both of us skills and for years families used Lamaze in whatever birth they had.
But Lamaze also promoted 'natural birth' so often people stopped using the skills if more medical care was needed or felt they didn't work. The Pink Kit skills work in every birth because every birth should be a skillful experience.
Here's how you can help:
- Donate Look at the bottom of the right menu
- Editing
- Lay-out
- Design
- Illustration
- Computer animation
- Publishing
- Translation
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/
Monday, 14 December 2009
Can midwives change birth?
14 December 2009
I had a talk with a friend of mine who works as a midwife in New Zealand the other day. She requires (yes, requires) her clients to use (not just look at) The Pink Kit Package. Now there's a long story about our relationship that you need to know.
When many of us were having babies way back then (I lived in the US then) there was a movement to shift birth away from the modern maternity system into a direct entry midwifery care model. There was a belief that the statistics or high rates of 'medical intervention' was due to over aggressive doctors who were too keen to intervene and midwives would permit women to birth naturally without intervention.
I happened to immigrate to New Zealand in 1995, knowing absolutely nothing about birth politics in that country. Since I've never been involved with the 'politics' surrounding birth I didn't investigate either.
Certainly from the 1970s when The Pink Kit was evolving there were many families who also hired midwives and had home births. Was there fewer 'natural' births? Yes and no. There was much fewer standards of care that included some assessments, monitoring and procedures yet there were not more women who knew how to labor well or men who knew how to help the woman manage well. And there certainly were many problems unseen that then required women to head to hospital.
Over the years I've heard tens of thousands of stories about childbirth ... many from women planning, attempting and having home births as well as those who birthed in hospital with midwifery care as well as more conventional hospital + obstetrician. Just having a home birth or working with a midwife does not change either 'outcomes' nor how women feel about how they coped with the experience.
Having a home birth and working with a midwife does change how women feel about their surroundings and the attention they receive during pregnancy ... although not always at the birth ... nor always after the birth. Most women love having a midwife during pregnancy. A significant number are disappointed with the relationship during the birth or after the birth.
However, this entry is not about home births or midwives ... it's about the New Zealand midwife and her relationship to The Pink Kit and her clients.
When I arrived in NZ in 1995, women who work as midwives had become Lead Maternity Carers in 1990. There was great hope in the midwifery community that this change would create more natural births ... preferably at home. When I arrived the hope was high.
However, by 2000 the c/s rate had almost doubled to 28% or greater and home births were rare. New Zealand midwives were not interested in the concept of growing a skilled birthing population. They strongly advocated, as they do today, that birth is natural and women don't need to be taught how to birth. This is 180 degrees from the concept of The Pink Kit Method For Birthing Better® skills that have been used by multitudes of expectant families because they believed they should be skilled!
My friend, A ..., finally became involved with The PK ... mostly because she was totally exhausted by seeing so many expectant parents just not have a clue, rely on her too much and just being around. She often explained that going to 6 or more births each month where women groaned their way through labor and fathers stood around feeling useless was just so tiring.
Certainly as a professional she has always been expected to update her education so she and her colleagues are always looking for things that they can learn. The idea that you insist your clients learn The Pink Kit skills themselves just bent her sideways.
She didn't know how to tell her clients this was not a choice. She matured over the years ... and this entry is not about her growth in her profession and how she has grown a skilled birthing population of her clients but you can see her statistics.
Anyway, years down the road she is always frustrated when new clients aren't already on board, but she understands that there is no social expectation that expectant families be skilled!
Although she is known in her local areas as a midwife who works with The PK, sometimes couples use the 'reasonable reasons why not' when being told to work through the PK. So here I am at the punch line.
The other day she told a story about going to a family's house for an ante-natal visit. The woman hadn't gotten into The Pink Kit at all ... 'I'm too busy at work. I take maternity leave at 38 weeks so I'll get into it then'.
Andrea said she just felt so frustrated yet again. She noticed there was lots of information about baby strollers on the table. She asked the woman how long she'd been looking through the information about strollers.
The woman responded 'Since I got pregnancy I've been going over each one to decide which to get'.
Andrea's response. 'You mean to tell me you've spent the time finding out about strollers but don't have time to teach yourself the birth skills and prepare your body to give birth?'
Andrea said the woman was shocked. That's how far we need to go ... a long, long way to change attitudes.
Here's how you can help:
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/
I had a talk with a friend of mine who works as a midwife in New Zealand the other day. She requires (yes, requires) her clients to use (not just look at) The Pink Kit Package. Now there's a long story about our relationship that you need to know.
When many of us were having babies way back then (I lived in the US then) there was a movement to shift birth away from the modern maternity system into a direct entry midwifery care model. There was a belief that the statistics or high rates of 'medical intervention' was due to over aggressive doctors who were too keen to intervene and midwives would permit women to birth naturally without intervention.
I happened to immigrate to New Zealand in 1995, knowing absolutely nothing about birth politics in that country. Since I've never been involved with the 'politics' surrounding birth I didn't investigate either.
Certainly from the 1970s when The Pink Kit was evolving there were many families who also hired midwives and had home births. Was there fewer 'natural' births? Yes and no. There was much fewer standards of care that included some assessments, monitoring and procedures yet there were not more women who knew how to labor well or men who knew how to help the woman manage well. And there certainly were many problems unseen that then required women to head to hospital.
Over the years I've heard tens of thousands of stories about childbirth ... many from women planning, attempting and having home births as well as those who birthed in hospital with midwifery care as well as more conventional hospital + obstetrician. Just having a home birth or working with a midwife does not change either 'outcomes' nor how women feel about how they coped with the experience.
Having a home birth and working with a midwife does change how women feel about their surroundings and the attention they receive during pregnancy ... although not always at the birth ... nor always after the birth. Most women love having a midwife during pregnancy. A significant number are disappointed with the relationship during the birth or after the birth.
However, this entry is not about home births or midwives ... it's about the New Zealand midwife and her relationship to The Pink Kit and her clients.
When I arrived in NZ in 1995, women who work as midwives had become Lead Maternity Carers in 1990. There was great hope in the midwifery community that this change would create more natural births ... preferably at home. When I arrived the hope was high.
However, by 2000 the c/s rate had almost doubled to 28% or greater and home births were rare. New Zealand midwives were not interested in the concept of growing a skilled birthing population. They strongly advocated, as they do today, that birth is natural and women don't need to be taught how to birth. This is 180 degrees from the concept of The Pink Kit Method For Birthing Better® skills that have been used by multitudes of expectant families because they believed they should be skilled!
My friend, A ..., finally became involved with The PK ... mostly because she was totally exhausted by seeing so many expectant parents just not have a clue, rely on her too much and just being around. She often explained that going to 6 or more births each month where women groaned their way through labor and fathers stood around feeling useless was just so tiring.
Certainly as a professional she has always been expected to update her education so she and her colleagues are always looking for things that they can learn. The idea that you insist your clients learn The Pink Kit skills themselves just bent her sideways.
She didn't know how to tell her clients this was not a choice. She matured over the years ... and this entry is not about her growth in her profession and how she has grown a skilled birthing population of her clients but you can see her statistics.
Anyway, years down the road she is always frustrated when new clients aren't already on board, but she understands that there is no social expectation that expectant families be skilled!
Although she is known in her local areas as a midwife who works with The PK, sometimes couples use the 'reasonable reasons why not' when being told to work through the PK. So here I am at the punch line.
The other day she told a story about going to a family's house for an ante-natal visit. The woman hadn't gotten into The Pink Kit at all ... 'I'm too busy at work. I take maternity leave at 38 weeks so I'll get into it then'.
Andrea said she just felt so frustrated yet again. She noticed there was lots of information about baby strollers on the table. She asked the woman how long she'd been looking through the information about strollers.
The woman responded 'Since I got pregnancy I've been going over each one to decide which to get'.
Andrea's response. 'You mean to tell me you've spent the time finding out about strollers but don't have time to teach yourself the birth skills and prepare your body to give birth?'
Andrea said the woman was shocked. That's how far we need to go ... a long, long way to change attitudes.
Here's how you can help:
- Donate Look at the bottom of the right menu
- Editing
- Lay-out
- Design
- Illustration
- Computer animation
- Publishing
- Translation
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/
Saturday, 12 December 2009
What exactly is the Recognition Effect?
12 December 2009
I was watching Dr. Phil today and he was talking to the Me Generation ... kids and parents who gave their children everything and now the kids feel 'entitled' but don't want to work for anything.
He talked about how good it feels when a person can see themselves doing a task well, knowing they have the skills to do the task.
That is the recognition effect ... knowing you know how-to.
This is the gift Common Knowledge Trust wants to give expectant parents ... the skills to know how to help their baby be born.
Won't it be wonderful when every mother and father-to-be can learn the skills, watch themselves using the skills to prepare the pregnant body to give birth then seeing themselves using skills during the birth? Won't it be wonderful when all expectant parents can watch themselves with pride during this phenomenal time of life?
You can help achieve this because it was not something our generation achieved!
Here's how you can help:
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/
I was watching Dr. Phil today and he was talking to the Me Generation ... kids and parents who gave their children everything and now the kids feel 'entitled' but don't want to work for anything.
He talked about how good it feels when a person can see themselves doing a task well, knowing they have the skills to do the task.
That is the recognition effect ... knowing you know how-to.
This is the gift Common Knowledge Trust wants to give expectant parents ... the skills to know how to help their baby be born.
Won't it be wonderful when every mother and father-to-be can learn the skills, watch themselves using the skills to prepare the pregnant body to give birth then seeing themselves using skills during the birth? Won't it be wonderful when all expectant parents can watch themselves with pride during this phenomenal time of life?
You can help achieve this because it was not something our generation achieved!
Here's how you can help:
- Donate Look at the bottom of the right menu
- Editing
- Lay-out
- Design
- Illustration
- Computer animation
- Publishing
- Translation
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/
Tuesday, 8 December 2009
One of Common Knowledge Trust's thoughts
8/12/2009
One trustee of Common Knowledge Trust answered a question that I continue to pose ... 'Why is there so much resistance to the concept of The Pink Kit Method For Birthing Better®
This is her response. She has 3 Pink Kit babies out of 4 kids. She's a woman of deep faith and supports the efforts of CKT because of the universal skills found in The Pink Kit.
She sent me this Dec 2, 2009 in response to the email I sent her about this blog, my continued frustration and curiosity as to 'what needs to be said' in order to change the 'don't know there is a need to know'. There is SO much resistance ... but actually we don't call it 'resistance' so much as 'reasonable reasons why not.'
There is a huge difference between 'resistance' which usually comes from knowing something but choosing not to ... resistance is natural. However, if a person doesn't even know they need to know then they don't have any interest in knowing or they believe it's just a belief or they believe it's a repetition of whatever is already known ... in other words ... 'reasonable reasons why not'.
If we get past the 'don't know there's a need to know' and can get to 'ok there's a need to know but what do I need to do' then a new layer of 'reasonable reasons why not' come into play.
Below is what this woman who had one baby not knowing she needed to know. Found the skills one week before her 2nd baby and totally invested time and energy to learn the skills with her husband because she realized that this was the 'missing' information she sort of knew was missing but never found so decided she wasn't right and all there was to know was what was already known.
She knew these skills filled that place inside 'is there something missing?'
'You must remember that our market (pregnant people) are the most distracted/self consumed people on planet earth around their baby having time. Getting their attention, from a distance, even with birth information is difficult aye. I still think the biggest obstacle to this information is that people want to be looked after, paid attention to as someone special. To take ownership of our entire birth process (which is what we are advocating) eliminates that attention that so many need and so we find only a few. I know that from my experience it was this attention that took away my power, I wanted to be free of it, take ownership of my childrens births and so I embraced the birthing knowledge in the Pink kit.
During the rehash (This is the re-doing of the resource we hope you will help us with) that C. and I did, we broke down the information/skills into bite sizes that people could choose when they needed, or at a pace that they could cope with. It was mainly about the processing of information at a managable rate in what ever time people have available to them before their child is born.
There is a lot of mention of how they will feel or what the outcome of taking in or integrating this knowledge will do for them. ie ownership, being proud of the way we managed our birth.
Question; Does the independence produced by the taking in and use of this knowledge leave people feeling afraid on a level they are not conscious of?
Do people on a subconscious level interpret the taking full ownership of ones birth as meaning there will be an absence of attention/love, care and nurturing from many outside sources (other people)?
Maybe we need stepping stones of another kind for people to travel over, stepping stones.
I can talk about and talk about The Pink Kit, the most forcefull thing I say these days to any pregnant people is "Have you heard of the pink kit" Yes or No. I then say "www.birthingbetter. go have a look, there s everything you need to know about getting you baby out...and more'.
Interesting that one of the 'reasonable reasons why not' that will come from reading the above letter is the phrase 'taking full ownership of one's birth' .... To too many people that phrase is interpreted as 'do the birth myself ... NO WAY'.
This is why we know that people don't even know they need to know and that knowing isn't about 'doing the birth yourself' or about any type of birth ... it's about the fact that you are pregnant and will give birth therefore as a parent-to-be you need to work with your baby as it works to be born.
Here's how you can help:
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/
One trustee of Common Knowledge Trust answered a question that I continue to pose ... 'Why is there so much resistance to the concept of The Pink Kit Method For Birthing Better®
This is her response. She has 3 Pink Kit babies out of 4 kids. She's a woman of deep faith and supports the efforts of CKT because of the universal skills found in The Pink Kit.
She sent me this Dec 2, 2009 in response to the email I sent her about this blog, my continued frustration and curiosity as to 'what needs to be said' in order to change the 'don't know there is a need to know'. There is SO much resistance ... but actually we don't call it 'resistance' so much as 'reasonable reasons why not.'
There is a huge difference between 'resistance' which usually comes from knowing something but choosing not to ... resistance is natural. However, if a person doesn't even know they need to know then they don't have any interest in knowing or they believe it's just a belief or they believe it's a repetition of whatever is already known ... in other words ... 'reasonable reasons why not'.
If we get past the 'don't know there's a need to know' and can get to 'ok there's a need to know but what do I need to do' then a new layer of 'reasonable reasons why not' come into play.
Below is what this woman who had one baby not knowing she needed to know. Found the skills one week before her 2nd baby and totally invested time and energy to learn the skills with her husband because she realized that this was the 'missing' information she sort of knew was missing but never found so decided she wasn't right and all there was to know was what was already known.
She knew these skills filled that place inside 'is there something missing?'
'You must remember that our market (pregnant people) are the most distracted/self consumed people on planet earth around their baby having time. Getting their attention, from a distance, even with birth information is difficult aye. I still think the biggest obstacle to this information is that people want to be looked after, paid attention to as someone special. To take ownership of our entire birth process (which is what we are advocating) eliminates that attention that so many need and so we find only a few. I know that from my experience it was this attention that took away my power, I wanted to be free of it, take ownership of my childrens births and so I embraced the birthing knowledge in the Pink kit.
During the rehash (This is the re-doing of the resource we hope you will help us with) that C. and I did, we broke down the information/skills into bite sizes that people could choose when they needed, or at a pace that they could cope with. It was mainly about the processing of information at a managable rate in what ever time people have available to them before their child is born.
There is a lot of mention of how they will feel or what the outcome of taking in or integrating this knowledge will do for them. ie ownership, being proud of the way we managed our birth.
Question; Does the independence produced by the taking in and use of this knowledge leave people feeling afraid on a level they are not conscious of?
Do people on a subconscious level interpret the taking full ownership of ones birth as meaning there will be an absence of attention/love, care and nurturing from many outside sources (other people)?
Maybe we need stepping stones of another kind for people to travel over, stepping stones.
I can talk about and talk about The Pink Kit, the most forcefull thing I say these days to any pregnant people is "Have you heard of the pink kit" Yes or No. I then say "www.birthingbetter. go have a look, there s everything you need to know about getting you baby out...and more'.
Interesting that one of the 'reasonable reasons why not' that will come from reading the above letter is the phrase 'taking full ownership of one's birth' .... To too many people that phrase is interpreted as 'do the birth myself ... NO WAY'.
This is why we know that people don't even know they need to know and that knowing isn't about 'doing the birth yourself' or about any type of birth ... it's about the fact that you are pregnant and will give birth therefore as a parent-to-be you need to work with your baby as it works to be born.
Here's how you can help:
- Donate Look at the bottom of the right menu
- Editing
- Lay-out
- Design
- Illustration
- Computer animation
- Publishing
- Translation
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/
Friday, 4 December 2009
This blog's got me thinking
4 December 2009
This blog definitely has got me thinking. I've been thinking about the resistance to The Pink Kit skills. Women who live in developed societies resistant the concept ...
Let me tell you after 40 years since the beginning evolution of The Pink Kit skills, the reasonable reasons why not are both more entrenched and have grown.
The other night after a very unsettling conversation with another pregnant woman I realized several things.
Pregnancy and childbirth has hit a stone wall. Mothers and fathers-to-be as well as birth professionals do not know they need to know. That's a form of unconscious incompetency. People don't know they need to know or that there is a universal system for pregnancy/childbirth preparation and skills. People can't imagine such a thing. They don't even think to look for something like that.
In fact most people think that everything about pregnancy and childbirth is already in books and classes as well as therapies, treatments and care provided.
No one is even looking for something else. Back in the 1970s/80s were looking for new things but since then nothing has changed.
Let me write this in the first person so you can take this into your own mind. If you don't know that you don't know then you won't be looking for anything. You actually just don't know that there could be anything else ... much less a huge system. In fact, it's this initial step where I encounter the first 'reasonable reasons why not'.
Only about 20% will even go further with me in this conversation. This means I have not been able to even get the conversation open past the 'I don't know there's anything else and actually don't believe there is.' Needless this has caused frustration in me. If I had been talking to people about achieving more natural births or been anti-medical then the conversation could have moved into the typical political debate. However, the Pink Kit skills are totally unattached to birth politics ... being skilled has nothing to do with anything other than the fact you are pregnant and you will give birth no matter how, where or what is happening. That's why these skills are universal.
In fact, when I speak with women in traditional communities these women have very few 'reasonable reasons why not'. Like all other women, they don't know they don't know or that there is a whole system that could make birth better for them but they are more open to listening, experiencing and trying out the skills.
If you are among the 20% who are willing to even listen to me about skills, then I try to introduce you to one or more of the skills. At this point modern living women usually have trouble getting their mind paying attention to their body. Most modern women like 'information' but are not very comfortable with 'feeling' their body. Curiously, both traditionally living women and men are much more likely to 'get' the skills. In fact, both men and traditionally living women bring about 90% of themselves to this part of the conversation. They have much fewer 'reasonable reasons why not'.
Of the 20% who are willing to even try the skills, many of these will come up with 'reasonable reasons why not' learn them.
One would think that the Feminist Movement would have opened the collective mind to new things but it hasn't with regards to this concept. Sure, sometimes I do think it's me and somehow I'm hindering this concept. I'd probably think that was accurate except for the fact that both modern men and traditional women actually open up to the concept very easily. We have a woman's issue here.
Let's just regroup for a moment. I'm writing this blog because I hope you as a grandmother or grandmother-to-be can help to change this resistance. When we start with unconscious incompetence (don't know you need to know) then this can stop all conversations. If you can move to knowing there is something you don't know then this is 'conscious incompetence'. You actually know you don't know even if you don't know what there is to know. This is when people feel uncertain and incompetent. This is an easy time for people to reject once again something that is new just because humans like to feel comfortable with their skills. Children are not as embarrassed at feeling unskilled but adults shy away from learning new things.
Once there is an acceptance that there's a system you don't know about then you have to be willing to learn, practice until you achieve the 'recognition effect' ... you now know you know.
In the past 40 years I've only been able to move a tiny % of tens of thousands of women toward a willingness to self-learn these skills. That's made me sad but not politically enraged. This is not a political issue but a societal one. There is just no societal expectation or acceptance that pregnancy and childbirth be a skilled experience. There's no one to blame for this generalized unskilled birthing population except ourselves. We got stuck in the ideological political debate about 'natural' and 'medical' birth.
Something happens once a woman learns these skills, prepares her body during pregnancy for the birth and then uses her skills during her birth experience no matter whether her birth is natural or medical. This is the state of conscious competency.
Women and men who share these Pink Kit skills know they know together, achieve a level of intimacy as a couple, friends or family that is never achieved without them. Not only that but once you do know you also know that others who know these skills are share the same common language. In other words, women or men with these skills can all help each other even if they were strangers.
These women and men also know that the majority of other women and men don't know and sadly they experience the same resistance. Over the past 40 years I've heard from thousands of women and men who have tried to interest friends or relatives to become skilled ... and meet the same ''reasonable reasons why not'.
All Pink Kit families come through their pregnancy and birth experience feeling totally skilled and competent no matter what. They also restudy the skills during each pregnancy and refine and improve their skills through each subsequent birth.
The next entries will be sharing these skills although we want you to want to purchase The Pink Kit Package for pregnant family and friends ... and help us re-do the whole thing.
Here's how you can help:
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/
This blog definitely has got me thinking. I've been thinking about the resistance to The Pink Kit skills. Women who live in developed societies resistant the concept ...
- That there is a universal system for pregnancy/childbirth.
- That skills are essential for mothers and fathers-to-be so that they can actually work with their baby's efforts to be born.
- That both men and women can equally learn and use skills
- That skills always improve every birth experience
- That childbirth is too major a life event to be left to intuition and instincts alone
Let me tell you after 40 years since the beginning evolution of The Pink Kit skills, the reasonable reasons why not are both more entrenched and have grown.
The other night after a very unsettling conversation with another pregnant woman I realized several things.
- People confuse me (the messenger) with the 'skills' (the message).
- It's really, really difficult not to stimulate a list of 'reasonable reasons why not'.
Pregnancy and childbirth has hit a stone wall. Mothers and fathers-to-be as well as birth professionals do not know they need to know. That's a form of unconscious incompetency. People don't know they need to know or that there is a universal system for pregnancy/childbirth preparation and skills. People can't imagine such a thing. They don't even think to look for something like that.
In fact most people think that everything about pregnancy and childbirth is already in books and classes as well as therapies, treatments and care provided.
No one is even looking for something else. Back in the 1970s/80s were looking for new things but since then nothing has changed.
Let me write this in the first person so you can take this into your own mind. If you don't know that you don't know then you won't be looking for anything. You actually just don't know that there could be anything else ... much less a huge system. In fact, it's this initial step where I encounter the first 'reasonable reasons why not'.
- 'I've read everything there is.''
- 'My midwife teaches me.'
- 'Birth is natural, what's there to learn?'
- 'Everyone's different.
- Oh, yes ... there are more!
Only about 20% will even go further with me in this conversation. This means I have not been able to even get the conversation open past the 'I don't know there's anything else and actually don't believe there is.' Needless this has caused frustration in me. If I had been talking to people about achieving more natural births or been anti-medical then the conversation could have moved into the typical political debate. However, the Pink Kit skills are totally unattached to birth politics ... being skilled has nothing to do with anything other than the fact you are pregnant and you will give birth no matter how, where or what is happening. That's why these skills are universal.
In fact, when I speak with women in traditional communities these women have very few 'reasonable reasons why not'. Like all other women, they don't know they don't know or that there is a whole system that could make birth better for them but they are more open to listening, experiencing and trying out the skills.
If you are among the 20% who are willing to even listen to me about skills, then I try to introduce you to one or more of the skills. At this point modern living women usually have trouble getting their mind paying attention to their body. Most modern women like 'information' but are not very comfortable with 'feeling' their body. Curiously, both traditionally living women and men are much more likely to 'get' the skills. In fact, both men and traditionally living women bring about 90% of themselves to this part of the conversation. They have much fewer 'reasonable reasons why not'.
Of the 20% who are willing to even try the skills, many of these will come up with 'reasonable reasons why not' learn them.
- 'I'll be having a hospital birth and won't be allowed to move around.'
- ' My midwife will let me get into any position I want.'
- 'I know walking is good in birth'
- 'We do something like this in yoga'
- 'Our childbirth classes teach breathing and relaxation'
- 'I'm working right up to my due date and have no time.
- 'I have other kids at home and don't have time.'
- 'My husband won't be interested'
- And many more
One would think that the Feminist Movement would have opened the collective mind to new things but it hasn't with regards to this concept. Sure, sometimes I do think it's me and somehow I'm hindering this concept. I'd probably think that was accurate except for the fact that both modern men and traditional women actually open up to the concept very easily. We have a woman's issue here.
Let's just regroup for a moment. I'm writing this blog because I hope you as a grandmother or grandmother-to-be can help to change this resistance. When we start with unconscious incompetence (don't know you need to know) then this can stop all conversations. If you can move to knowing there is something you don't know then this is 'conscious incompetence'. You actually know you don't know even if you don't know what there is to know. This is when people feel uncertain and incompetent. This is an easy time for people to reject once again something that is new just because humans like to feel comfortable with their skills. Children are not as embarrassed at feeling unskilled but adults shy away from learning new things.
Once there is an acceptance that there's a system you don't know about then you have to be willing to learn, practice until you achieve the 'recognition effect' ... you now know you know.
In the past 40 years I've only been able to move a tiny % of tens of thousands of women toward a willingness to self-learn these skills. That's made me sad but not politically enraged. This is not a political issue but a societal one. There is just no societal expectation or acceptance that pregnancy and childbirth be a skilled experience. There's no one to blame for this generalized unskilled birthing population except ourselves. We got stuck in the ideological political debate about 'natural' and 'medical' birth.
Something happens once a woman learns these skills, prepares her body during pregnancy for the birth and then uses her skills during her birth experience no matter whether her birth is natural or medical. This is the state of conscious competency.
- You know you have integrated your mind and body
- You know more about your pregnant body and your baby's relationship to your body than anyone.
- You know more about your birthing process than anyone else.
Women and men who share these Pink Kit skills know they know together, achieve a level of intimacy as a couple, friends or family that is never achieved without them. Not only that but once you do know you also know that others who know these skills are share the same common language. In other words, women or men with these skills can all help each other even if they were strangers.
These women and men also know that the majority of other women and men don't know and sadly they experience the same resistance. Over the past 40 years I've heard from thousands of women and men who have tried to interest friends or relatives to become skilled ... and meet the same ''reasonable reasons why not'.
- 'You had a natural birth but I'm not brave enough'
- 'I asked my midwife/doctor and they didn't know anything about The Pink Kit so it must not be important'.
- 'My doctor/midwife assured me I'd know what to do on the day'
All Pink Kit families come through their pregnancy and birth experience feeling totally skilled and competent no matter what. They also restudy the skills during each pregnancy and refine and improve their skills through each subsequent birth.
The next entries will be sharing these skills although we want you to want to purchase The Pink Kit Package for pregnant family and friends ... and help us re-do the whole thing.
Here's how you can help:
- Donate Look at the bottom of the right menu
- Editing
- Lay-out
- Design
- Illustration
- Computer animation
- Publishing
- Translation
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/
Wednesday, 2 December 2009
The present and past collide
2 Dec 2009
As I write this blog, present time, I am thoroughly amazed at how entrenched and resistant the general population is to having a skilled birthing population ... rather than an 'informed' and 'choosing' population. The language of resistance is used by so many people that it becomes common language and believed to be common sense.
Let me give you an example. A 30 something, lovely, educated pregnant woman was loaned the Pink Kit Package by a relative stranger with whom she had a one on one conversation about an entirely other project both these women were involved with. The pregnant woman was 32 weeks pregnant and the other woman explained which skills were on which of the 4 discs.
They didn't meet again until this young pregnant woman was 2 weeks away from her due date. They ran into each other in a parking garage. The young woman approached the older woman and told her 'we packed The Pink Kit away while we moved and just got it out last night'.
Because the older woman had personal experience with the skills (remember they are 40 years old even if they weren't always publicly available). She offered to meet with this woman and her husband.
The young woman wasn't comfortable with that. She said she felt birth was so personal that she couldn't bring a stranger into that relationship. That was one of the reasonable reasons why not I've heard over the years.
Another reasonable reason why not was that they hadn't looked through the resource in the past 6 weeks. That's a choice as well and just play lack of knowledge that skills are so essential to what she is going to do ... give birth ... and how the weeks before need to be used to prepare the body to do so.
Because she had chosen to put it away because she was moving, she and her husband had not done any body preparation. She felt this was reasonable. So I asked her a question.
'If you had a practical driving test on Dec 4th and that was the only one you could take, would you now feel you could pass it if you hadn't practiced in the last six weeks?'
She didn't think she would pass the driving test if she hadn't practiced. Yet like so many others, she didn't see that the birth of her baby could be impacted by her not learning and practicing skills for birth.
This young woman is bright and I'm absolutely certain that in hindsight after the birth she may be more aware of how much an activity giving birth is and how more enriching skills make it.
In fact there is such an entrenched misperception about birth that we've counted over sixty-five reasonable reasons why not when a pregnant woman is faced with the Pink Kit skills.
Here are some reasons:
Driving a car is more important to most of us than giving birth. That's not exactly what women are saying because childbirth has no historical connection to skills so it's not as though people know and are just choosing not to learn. People do not know they need to know. That's how deep the disconnect is ... generations deep.
That's why we're asking for you to help us re-do The Pink Kit Package.
Here's how you can help:
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/
As I write this blog, present time, I am thoroughly amazed at how entrenched and resistant the general population is to having a skilled birthing population ... rather than an 'informed' and 'choosing' population. The language of resistance is used by so many people that it becomes common language and believed to be common sense.
Let me give you an example. A 30 something, lovely, educated pregnant woman was loaned the Pink Kit Package by a relative stranger with whom she had a one on one conversation about an entirely other project both these women were involved with. The pregnant woman was 32 weeks pregnant and the other woman explained which skills were on which of the 4 discs.
They didn't meet again until this young pregnant woman was 2 weeks away from her due date. They ran into each other in a parking garage. The young woman approached the older woman and told her 'we packed The Pink Kit away while we moved and just got it out last night'.
Because the older woman had personal experience with the skills (remember they are 40 years old even if they weren't always publicly available). She offered to meet with this woman and her husband.
The young woman wasn't comfortable with that. She said she felt birth was so personal that she couldn't bring a stranger into that relationship. That was one of the reasonable reasons why not I've heard over the years.
Another reasonable reason why not was that they hadn't looked through the resource in the past 6 weeks. That's a choice as well and just play lack of knowledge that skills are so essential to what she is going to do ... give birth ... and how the weeks before need to be used to prepare the body to do so.
Because she had chosen to put it away because she was moving, she and her husband had not done any body preparation. She felt this was reasonable. So I asked her a question.
'If you had a practical driving test on Dec 4th and that was the only one you could take, would you now feel you could pass it if you hadn't practiced in the last six weeks?'
She didn't think she would pass the driving test if she hadn't practiced. Yet like so many others, she didn't see that the birth of her baby could be impacted by her not learning and practicing skills for birth.
This young woman is bright and I'm absolutely certain that in hindsight after the birth she may be more aware of how much an activity giving birth is and how more enriching skills make it.
In fact there is such an entrenched misperception about birth that we've counted over sixty-five reasonable reasons why not when a pregnant woman is faced with the Pink Kit skills.
Here are some reasons:
- 'I'm having a hospital birth and will just trust my doctor'.
- 'I'm having a natural birth and will just trust my midwife.
- 'My husband won't be interested'
- 'We're taking a childbirth class'
- 'I just trust birth'
- 'I'm working up to my due date.'
- 'My last birth was ... good, bad, a caesarean, easy, complicated'
Driving a car is more important to most of us than giving birth. That's not exactly what women are saying because childbirth has no historical connection to skills so it's not as though people know and are just choosing not to learn. People do not know they need to know. That's how deep the disconnect is ... generations deep.
That's why we're asking for you to help us re-do The Pink Kit Package.
Here's how you can help:
- Donate Look at the bottom of the right menu
- Editing
- Lay-out
- Design
- Illustration
- Computer animation
- Publishing
- Translation
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/
Sunday, 29 November 2009
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:
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/
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:
- Donate Look at the bottom of the right menu
- Editing
- Lay-out
- Design
- Illustration
- Computer animation
- Publishing
- Translation
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/
Friday, 27 November 2009
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.
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:
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/
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 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
- Editing
- Lay-out
- Design
- Illustration
- Computer animation
- Publishing
- Translation
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/
Wednesday, 25 November 2009
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:
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:
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/
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'
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
- Lay-out
- Design
- Illustration
- Computer animation
- Publishing
- Translation
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/
Monday, 23 November 2009
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:
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/
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
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/
Thursday, 19 November 2009
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:
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:
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.
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.)
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
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
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'
- 'I just couldn't relax'
- 'It was the breathing that really helped'
- 'I had terrible back labor'.
- 'Second stage was just one contraction'
- 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'
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.)
Tuesday, 17 November 2009
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).
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 ...
As of November 2009 Common Knowledge Trust needs:
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.
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.
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.'
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
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.
Friday, 13 November 2009
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:
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:
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.
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.
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