Are All Births Valid?

Over the last couple of years I have come across some social media posts titled 'All Births Are Valid'.

Usually those posts outline an induction of labour or caesarean birth story, never a spontaneous birth (or at least I haven't seen one that does).

There are hashtags #allbirthsarevalid, #allbirthisvalid, #AllBirthsAreValid.

You can get a cute pin on Pinterest, too.

I recognise that this slogan is a gesture to validate birth experiences other than the seemingly blissful waterbirths we see shared on social media, and in a world where we increasingly seek validation from others, I can see that this might seem like a helpful thing to do.

Posting 'All Births Are Valid' posts is meant as an act of solidarity to women who suffer because their dream of a physiological birth didn't come true. It's for women who feel judged for their choices and for women who are judging themselves retrospectively for their choices. And it's for those women who choose wholeheartedly to medicalise aspects of their journeys or whose babies truly need their parents to use life saving medical advances. All of these are experiences of birth worthy of sharing and hearing. 

I get it!

I am all for respecting every woman for her way of giving birth without question or judgement. Just yesterday I had a client who had a caesarean with her first baby and felt judged by her peers having to listen to 'too posh to push' comments (really, how are we still at that?). 

Giving mums a platform to share their positive experiences of medical birth is as important to me as giving women who felt violated by imposed interventions a voice. A caesarean can be the most powerful and life affirming experience. I have seen it and I have heard many accounts of positive medical births. 

But are all births valid?

As a mum who has had a lot of unexpected birth interventions, this terminology has always felt off to me. I wasn't really sure why but I now know why I see this slogan as deeply problematic and I am ready to share my thoughts with you.

This type of messaging is often used by midwives come business owners who see routine  interventions as 'necessary' and medicalised birth as the only possible way 'to keep baby safe' in certain circumstances. If we just tell women nicely about why the interventions are necessary, then they'll have a positive birth experience. This is often considered realistic birth preparation and it primes you for having your birth medicalised.

'There, there, dear. The experts know best and all births are valid, so don't you worry, you did so well!'

I've also seen this slogan used by birth advocates who are trying to walk the fine line of advocating for physiological birth whilst trying to appeal to a wider audience in a competitive market and knowing that at least half of the general public will have caesarean births if they remain uninformed. I've been there myself. In my early days I modelled myself on other (seemingly successful) birth education businesses and moderated my language in order not to offend anyone. If you try really hard, you might even find this line somewhere among my many many pieces of content (or you may not, I truly can't tell you). I was afraid that my messaging could be interpreted as 'shaming' women who had interventions. I was afraid of what other people might think of me. 

I have come a long way since then. Being an entrepreneur has been the most intense self-development journey I could ever have imagined and the truth is that you'll get haters no matter what, so you might as well be unapologetic about what you stand for.

I stand for sovereign birth and our freedom to choose (which is distinctly different to 'natural' birth and 'informed choice')!.

Sovereignty in birth (and in life in general) means that you are the only authority over your own choices. You take full ownership of them. That comes with immense amounts of self-responsibility. Blaming others for feeling 'shamed' by what they said does not exist in this framework because you accept full responsibility for your feelings. Personally I love feeling uncomfortable about a message, it means that I can dig a little deeper, get to know myself a bit better (like this exploration right now of why I see the slogan of 'All Births are Valid' as harmful and counterproductive in the context of giving all women a voice). The beauty of it is that when you make truly sovereign birth choices, an elective caesarean is as legitimate a choice as a freebirth in the Atlantic Ocean. The snag? You don't get to blame anyone else if it didn't turn out the way you hoped.

As I see it, 'All birth is valid' goes along with other common slogans in the current birth space like 'Fed is best',  'All that counts is a live baby' or even 'Breast is best'.

Here's how my old Cambridge Dictionary describes 'valid':

As you can see, the validity of any kind of birth can never be in question, it is evidenced by the fact that the baby is born and it does not need to be affirmed any further. Once the baby is no longer inside your womb, the 'necessary conditions' of birth have been met and it is therefore 'valid'. By reiterating its validity despite the interventions you are by default othering the people who experienced them through their own choice or otherwise. To me it implies a sense of pity for the woman. It feeds into a victim narrative and I don't think that's in any way helpful. 

Stating that all births are valid is simply saying that all babies have been born.

Just like 'fed' or 'alive', 'born' is the bare minimum metric for describing the baby's start to life. By reiterating the validity of all birth, aren't we potentially closing down the conversations around how we could enhance a baby's experience at the very start of their lives? We are also closing down the conversation around why posts like this are even deemed necessary.

Slogans like 'All Births are Valid', 'Fed is best' and even 'Breast is best' are very convenient for the institutions and I am sceptical of them because they are encouraging us to be accepting of the current state of affairs.

I think we can reasonably aim for more than the bare minimum.

The 'All birth is valid' slogan is yet another expression of the institutionalisation of birth. It normalises industrial birth and that is a slippery slope because industrial birth plays out entirely within the medical industrial complex and, as I see it, this is a threat to our humanity (equal to the threat posed by the agro-industrial and the military industrial complexes). We are encouraged to outsource all responsibility for our babies' births to total strangers. Those strangers are taught to consider the immediate outcomes over physiology and the long term health of the family. They also routinely default to 'preventative' practices of minimal or no demonstrable benefit and, arguably, in some cases they even cause harm.

'All birth is valid' implies that as women we should accept the superiority of technology over our innate biology and get over it (because, hey, at least your baby's been born, what more do you want?). By stating on an Instagram square that 'All Birth is Valid' we are assuming that women need their experiences validated by an external source of authority and this assumption aligns us with the system and not with women. 

'All Births are Valid' validates maternity care practices, not the women themselves.

It glosses over the fact that many women feel that they did not receive adequate information before agreeing to interventions like inductions of labour. The vast majority of my R.O.A.D. To Birth clients are second time parents who had a poor experience first time around.

Women do not have to settle for mediocracy and we certainly have a right to express and celebrate our biology if we so choose. Freedom to experience ourselves in the full range of our biology as humans, in birth and otherwise, is our birthright and this goes way beyond the immediate experience of birth.

Very often women who want physiology informed care are taking the long view. They know that an undisturbed labour will (in the overwhelming majority of circumstances) result in the spontaneous birth of a healthy baby. Often they will have looked into the risk based approach to pregnancy and birth used by the medical industrial complex and they will have identified that 'risk factors' and the actions they trigger around the 'management' of their pregnancies and birth are not usually based on conclusive evidence. They prioritise trusting the innate wisdom of their bodies over the (often minimal) potential advantages of medicalisation. There are potential long-term benefits to this. It is safe to say that the over-medicalisation of pregnancy, birth and life in general is costing our societies not just financially. Chronic, non-communicable diseases can be traced back to what happens during pregnancy, birth and early postpartum. Breastfeeding, for instance, is most likely to establish easily after an undisturbed birth. And breastfeeding is not just about the transfer of food to a baby, it is not even about the quality of that food or 'bonding'. The impacts are even farther reaching. How we are fed as a baby, whether we latch to a nipple or artificial teat, and how we use our facial muscles in order to extract the milk also impacts our future health. It impacts on how we will breathe as adults. Mouth breathing is more common in people who were fed with a bottle and mouth breathing impacts our overall health massively. This is just one example of the wider implications of what happens to us at the very start of our lives. We know that babies who breastfed in areas of deprivation and poverty have better long term health outcomes than babies from wealthy backgrounds who were formula fed. That's not only due to the actual substance those babies receive but also to how they actually drink it.

We also know that there is a correlation between caesarean sections and the baby developing diabetes and allergies later in life. This has to do with the vaginal microbiome that babies are exposed to on the journey through the birth passage.

There needs to be space for discussing all of this without blame and this requires for all of us to first be kind to ourselves. Self-blame, in my estimation, is the most common  kind of blame and I also think it is the most harmful. Often the root of conflict lies in our instinct to defend ourselves in our choices and in my own experience , when I feel the need to defend myself it is usually because I doubt myself or I blame myself for not being good enough. Usually there's work to do, insights to gain. When I let go of self-blame, I can engage with a topic from a much more neutral place. It's not easy but it is worth it (and obviously I don't claim to get it right all the time).

Let's teach ourselves to first be kind to ourselves so that we can be kind to each other. 

Sometimes interventions are truly needed and sometimes they are simply chosen. All of it has to make sense only to you and your family, nobody else. We can own our choices in the context of our reality and still acknowledge that a different choice may have been more 'ideal' in the long term but absolutely not a feasible choice in the short run.

That's just how life goes. 

If we keep the discussion open, then we can acknowledge that all parents love their children. We can help parents who choose an induction of labour for instance find ways in which to pre-empt and counter the potential knock on effects. Could chiropractic and rhythmic movement practices for instance become routine parts of postnatal care after heavily medicalised births. Could chiropractors show parents how to help formula fed babies with the development of their facial muscles and bones so they don't become mouth breathers?  There are ways in which you can formula feed your baby in a way that supports your newborn baby's physiology. Is there someone you trust who has oodles of milk and who is willing to give you some donor milk for occasional feeds? If that's a hard 'no' then, what type of formula will you use (no, I hate to say they are not all made equal, but that's for another blog). How will you formula feed? Could midwives be trained properly in how to support this?

The initial investment in funding would undoubtedly be saved in the long run.

Could pregnancy massage, deep breathing practices, mindful birth preparation and pregnancy yoga help with avoiding medical interventions in the first place? Could we help women spare themselves a trauma experience by teaching them how to care for their bodies, minds and spirits?

Women need honesty in an environment of non-judgement. On a biological, primal level an industrial birth is no match for an undisturbed spontaneous birth and formula feeding is no match for breast feeding, of course not!

Does that mean that parents who have a medicalised birth and formula feed love their children any less?

No! 

There are so many ways in which we can lovingly engage with the fact that there is a primal way of being that is far more intelligent than any technology and that we live in a society where this primal way of life seems barely accessible and is actively discouraged by our structural systems. Or, let's face it, going back to our roots may just not be appealing at times and that's where our power to choose freely comes in.

Let's not close down the conversation by stating the obvious; That birth is birth and we all have been born!

What do you think?

If you are interested in this kind of conversation, join me for my Anchor body work and birth prep package. 

Email [email protected] to enqure.