Amy is in late first stage labor - what words can be used to describe what's happening? This is one of my favorite topics, and the Sept-Oct 2006 Mothering magazine www.mothering.com featured an article that I would love to have been the author of. Alyssa Colton, the author is not a birth activist but a freelance writer and she did a fabulous job in “The Language of Birth” article. The website also has an article titled “Language of Labor” which was written by a childbirth educator that proposes using another word for “contraction.”
At the beginning of my doula training I discuss the importance reframing our feelings about birth. Everyone is given a sheet and encouraged to reframe negative words about birth and write them down throughout the training. This is also a good tool for doulas and childbirth educators to use with their clients or students.
When I began teaching the Bradley Method in 1969 we reframed “pains” to “contractions” because we knew that labor didn’t have to be painful, but you needed contractions to have labor. Hypnobirthing uses “surges” because “contraction” implies pain. Of course, in Ina May’s Spiritual Midwifery contractions were given a 60's term - “rushes.” I have had clients use “waves” and “sensations.” We need to think positive about what is happening, so how about describing them as “dilating events”?
In my opinion “contraction” is not the most important word to be reframed, but “pain” is, and that's another post. Does Amy look like she is in pain? No, she is in labor!
Amy is supported here by her cousin, Monica a Bradley Instructor/doula, her daugher, and her mother.
