Childbirth and Coronavirus

With the advent of the coronavirus, the number of home births in the world has inevitably increased. There are an infinite number of reasons for this, and each has their own.

Despite the fact that I myself gave birth to three out of five babies at home (and even after an emergency Caesarean, and two youngest ones in fully unassisted homebirth), and for more than 20 years I have been helping babies to be born without violence in the SPACE OF LOVE, I in no way urge anyone to give birth at home! Moreover, today I consider home birth an irresponsible and unsafe undertaking if it is childbirth without the necessary preparation - physical, psychological, energetic, as well as without decent support. Not everyone can afford to be assisted for various reasons, but the preparation must be at your best. This is a moment of personal responsibility and choice for each of us.

It is important that this choice is still ours!

For thousands and thousands of years, women have been able to give birth on their own. Each of us has a program of natural and successful birth. We will definitely talk about programs with you a bit later, but for now, let's talk about common sense.

Yes, a lot has changed over thousands of years: ecology, nutrition, lifestyle and thinking, but at the core we are all the same women with one of the most powerful instincts that lives in us, the instinct of procreation - the birth of a new life! At the level of instincts, we know how to give birth! It remains only to get to these programs of natural birth, or, as I call them ‘Eve settings’, and awaken them in the correct way.

The coronavirus has given us all even more reasons to think about how we live and how we give birth. At the same time and unfortunately even more power to people in white robes. Everyone knows the term ‘obstetric violence’. In case you haven't heard, the Internet is teeming with information on this topic. Obstetric interventions as the coronavirus (if everything we are told is reality) have acquired the scale of a pandemic. After all, it is impossible to develop immunity to violence. Alas, there are also natural reasons for this: a certain infantilism, shifting responsibility to doctors and adopting the position “they will give birth for me”, which sometimes leaves doctors no choice. Of course, there are enough indications for interventions for other reasons.

However, do you know where a woman gives birth is best and softest? Under what conditions?

When she feels completely safe! And so far we are not talking about home births that are so close to me, with their SPACE OF LOVE at all, but about creating the safest space for a woman in labor and external support in the process of giving birth to a new life.

Do you know which births have the least interventions?

Everything is simple and complicated at the same time here: trained couples in partner childbirth have the least interventions due to my experience! When a woman is not alone. When next to her is a loving and beloved man, as well as a person who understands what and how it happens in childbirth, and can provide psychological and technical support and assistance. This function has now been taken over to the masses by the doulas. For which many thanks to them! Yes, this does not solve all the problems and sometimes does not even save one from the notorious obstetric violence (sometimes it is very sad to read their stories). Often almost every birth is a battle for naturalness! Still, doulas are a kind of a ‘rear in maternity hospitals’.

What has the coronavirus brought with it to obstetrics in CIS-countries and worldwide?

Almost complete ban on partner childbirth!

If in self-respecting metropolitan perinatal centers and leading maternity hospitals in some places partner births are still possible, while the periphery taking advantage of the occasion completely closed the doors of their ‘sanctum sanctorum’ for husbands and doulas. Or they created almost impossible conditions for the freshness of the tests. So the woman was left alone with the system!

How does the system work? As usual, as a system: according to prescriptions and protocols! If you don’t fit to the standards, there is no time to tinker with you due to the flow of women in labor. And if the presence of birth assistants (e.g. doula) gave medical staff the time for a natural process (the woman in labor was looked after by the doula), then their absence more and more often leads to induction, augmentation, amniotomy, episiotomy, squeezing, and emergency Caesarean sections.

Do you know that there are statistics on a significant decrease in premature births and the birth of low birth weight babies during the coronavirus period? ^[1]

Do you know why? Because pregnant women have become less likely to visit antenatal clinics and doctors' appointments. Less stress, less intervention, less preterm birth and low birth weight babies to be nursed in incubators. Worldwide, premature birth is the leading cause of death in babies under five. About a million babies die every year all over the world due to complications associated with preterm birth ^[2]. And many of the survivors suffer lifelong disabilities. At the same time, the number of premature births increases annually, and then suddenly a decrease. There is really something to think about!

[Ed. Note] “It started with doctors in Ireland and Denmark,” writes The New York Times. Over the past two decades, babies under 3.3 pounds, classified as very low birth weight, accounted for about eight out of every thousand live births in the hospital, which serves a region of 473,000 people. In 2020, the rate was about a quarter of that. The very tiniest infants, those under 2.2 pounds and considered extremely low birth weight, usually make up three per thousand births. There should have been at least a few born that spring — but there had been none.” (Dr. Roy Philip, a neonatologist at University Maternity Hospital Limerick in Ireland)

While the Irish team was digging into its data, researchers in Denmark were doing the same thing, driven by curiosity over a “nearly empty” NICU. Dr. Michael Christiansen of the Statens Serum Institut in Copenhagen and his colleagues used newborn screening data to compare births nationwide during the strictest lockdown period, March 12 to April 14, with births during the same period in the previous five years. The data set included more than 31,000 infants. The researchers found that during the lockdown, the rate of babies born before 28 weeks had dropped by a startling 90 percent.

In the United States, Dr. Stephen Patrick, a neonatologist at Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital in Nashville, estimated there were about 20 percent fewer NICU babies at his hospital than usual in March. Although some sick full-term babies would stay in the NICU, Dr. Patrick said preterm babies usually made up most of the patients, and the drop-off seemed to have been driven by missing preemies”. ^[1]

Well, now it’s time to talk what is closest to me.

Coronavirus and homebirth

Here I will be also prescriptive, although against fanaticism: “They won't let me in with a partner, so I'll somehow give unassisted birth.” Yes, there are already cases of childbirth under a cherry tree in the maternity hospital area, when a couple in Cherkassy (Ukraine) was simply not allowed into the maternity hospital with a positive test for Covid-19. Fortunately, everything ended well. The story is just blatant. But ... I am especially amazed by couples who go to the first unassisted childbirth without any preparation. Their approach is “We’ll get through somehow”. So the point is not even in the deteriorating statistics of homebirths, and not even in creating additional precedents for doctors for horror stories about homebirths, when they saved everyone - “they gave birth SOMEHOW at home, and then went to a maternity hospital: save us! Suture up, stop bleeding, and so on!” Yes, I agree, in the organized homebirths with decent assistance there are similar precedents, but this is an extremely rare exception in my experience. That's why I'm insisting that everything needs to be done wisely.

Well, for more than 20 years of homebirths delivery I’ve faced with many cases. The key thing I came to is that you need to prepare for any birth! To prepare to homebirth is like the flight into space! If there is an opportunity, look for a qualitative assistance with reviews and recommendations. If there is no possibility, get ready three times more. To begin with, you can read my book “Birth in the Space of Love” or any similar literature, where the process of homebirth is sorted out. Close down your personal birth, look for the online support, again with reviews and recommendations.

So now it’s time to talk about the programs. Oh, what a crucial topic!

At the level of the soul, we all know how to give birth wonderfully; without this humanity would have died out long ago. However, we live in many programs that we received from our ancestors by inheritance and at the level of genes, as well as which we acquired at the level of history - in past incarnations. Now there is a birthing generation of girls which birth has often been induced. They carry this program in themselves, and it (with a high probability) can popup when they give birth to their children. And moreover, which will be passed on to their girls by inheritance.

Has your past birth been induced? The subconscious, just like the body, could already have assimilated this “help” program and will wait for intervention in the next birth.

What to do? Get rid of these programs and resurrect the basic settings stored in our subconsciousness. That is why now I run not just the preparation for childbirth, in which I surely have also accumulated my things for 20 years, but I definitely supplement it with psycho-energetic work with the subconsciousness. Actually, I start any preparation for childbirth with it, and just before the closure of childbirth, I suggest sorting out your issues first.

After all, how many nuances might be avoided when fears do not live within us, which attract various options for the development of events; destructive programs preventing giving birth beautifully and safely living the experience of motherhood easily and with pleasure do not work. Remember, “SUBCONSCIOUSNESS CAN DO EVERYTHING!” And it really can!

We close the PERSONAL birth: we work through the period of our intrauterine life, we re-live our birth and heal it, and we also analyse the early postpartum period.

Gosh, how many things live there, which we do not even guess; it is enough just to touch, and ... like a Pandora's Box! We are working on programs that we were burdened with by our inner circle - parents, grandparents who influenced our development as a person to the maximum. We do “quarterbacking” with mom and dad. Experience shows how super crucial it is in order to give birth safely. Not “easy”, namely “well”.

The coronavirus with its entire list of negative influences on the world has given us time and the opportunity to stop, think and figure out:

• How do we want to live?
• How do we want to give birth?
• What is really true value and what is the tinsel from the Christmas tree?
• Where is the true knowledge, where is the depth, and where are only masks?

The key point is just to learn to distinguish one from the other!

I wish you all magical childbirth, wonderful babies, fragrant vertexes and pink heels! As well as countless happy days in the New Year, New Life, and not only during the holidays! Well, it is exclusively within our power to turn weekdays into holidays regardless of any coronaviruses and lockdowns.

Hugs and much love,
Your Svetlana Bondar

Warm pictures are from the family album of the author of the article

References

1. Elizabeth Preston. During Coronavirus Lockdowns, Some Doctors Wondered: Where Are the Preemies? July 19, 2020. Accessed at January 10, 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/19/health/coronavirus-premature-birth.html.
2. Fact sheet of the World Health Organization. Premature birth. February 19, 2018. Accessed at January 10, 2021. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/preterm-birth#:~:text=Approximately%201%20million%20children%20die,the%20age%20of%205%20years.