top of page

Week 36 :: Rest is the Revolution

Day 1: week 36

Week 36 is the time when most women begin to see their provider weekly. This can be a gift of increased nurturance and care, or it can mark the beginning of stressful conversations, increased anxiety, unnecessary medical monitoring and medical grooming for inductions, interventions and stress. Use our appointment journals to consider your thoughts, feelings and questions before and after each appointment, to reflect upon the type of care you are receiving and whether it aligns with your intuition about your body, your health, and the health of your baby.

Common occurrences: Medical providers are trained for 'intervention based models' meaning, they get so much training on how to intervene, conduct procedures, tests, etc. that often it can feel compulsive or second nature for interventions to be recommended such as inductions ('your baby is measuring small or big, so we may need to induce')

Here is some data from Evidence Based Birth about induction and cesarean rates for a 'suspeted big baby' (keep in mind, ultrasounds and external measurements are only estimates for baby's size)

Is it Harmful to Suspect a Big Baby?

When a big baby is suspected, families are more likely to experience a change in how their care providers see and manage labor and birth. This leads to a higher Cesarean rate and a higher rate of people inaccurately being told that labor is taking “too long” or the baby “doesn’t fit.”

In fact, research has consistently shown that the care provider’s perception that a baby is big can be more harmful than an actual big baby by itself. ...[I]t is the suspicion of a big baby—not big babies themselves—that can lead to higher induction rates, higher Cesarean rates, and higher diagnoses of stalled labor (Levine et al. 1992; Weeks et al. 1995; Parry et al. 2000; Weiner et al. 2002; Sadeh-Mestechkin et al. 2008; Blackwell et al. 2009; Melamed et al. 2010; Little et al. 2012; Peleg et al. 2015). Birthing people who were suspected of having a big baby (and actually ended up having one) had triple the induction rate, more than triple the Cesarean rate, and a quadrupling of the maternal complication rate, compared to those who were not suspected of having a big baby but had one anyway.

This information is meant to empower. If you are feeling pressured by your provider and you do not intuitively sense that there is a problem, it is worth advocating for your desired outcome, asking for more information, or in extreme cases of gaslighting, not being heard, or coerced treatment without consent; changing providers. Inductions and cesarean births can be a powerful and life giving intervention but are extensively over-used in the modern medical models. Waiting for your baby to be born can feel incredibly challenging, but it is worthwhile to trust your intutiion and the journey of your own baby's self-determination to allow the right timing. We will work with this energy of advocacy in the Power & Advocacy embodiment next week.



Day 2: week 36

Pleasure & rest embodiment. Laying down or seated, sense into your body, into the tissues, fascia and rivers flowing through you. Sense into the powerful river flowing between your heart, the placenta, the umbilical cord and connect your heart with your baby. Envision a glowing light surrounding your baby, so that the baby is protected from anything that arises within you that does not serve this child.

allow yourself to rest into the surface even more, allowing your heels to melt, allowing your toes and tendons and bones in your feet to melt, (continue throughout the body) melting all tension away

Now begin to notice one area of the body that feels good. You may sense warmth, lightness, or perhaps even erotic energy. Sense into this space in the body and welcome it, breathe in, expanding this sensation to move to the area surrounding. With each breath, this pleasurable and restful feeling grows. It expands into each cell, bringing light and illumination into any tension. Remember that your pleasure is a divine gift, a divine right for you to feel within yourself. As you sense into the delight of pleasure, lightness, rest within your body, allow it to expand into every corner of your body, and radiate out into your aura, expanding beyond you, so that even if you touch a flower, cook food or hug a loved one, you are sharing and expanding the blissful trust in restful pleasure into your environment. As you embody this with an open heart, offer the knowing to your baby, that it is good for them to feel good in their body. Show them with your body, the pure bliss of resting into the presence of their body. Invite your baby to also fee the warm, light or pleasurable feelings that are available to them. Envision how it will feel when you are resting together, the baby on your chest, nowhere to go, nowhere to be, offering each other the blissful, warm, safety and security of being skin to skin together. If you would like to take this further, you can begin to caress gently the parts of you body that feel illuminated with this pleasure, This could be the upper legs and thighs, the hips, the breasts, even the vulva, open yourself to giving yourself and recieving yourself pleasure from a restful state.


"with this embodiment, we will practice bringing yourself into a deep state of rest, while also welcoming a sense of pleasure into the body. We view pleasure as the feminine gift of the divine, when the feminine principle of pleasure is embodied, it is a gift to the world and sends out a healing frequency into the world. Take care of yourself if you have any resistance arise, as bringing authentic pleausre into the body can touch also into the shadows, which can be times when you couldn't access pleasure due to anxiety or depression, being afraid of the power of your sensuality and pleasure body, or having been harmed emotionally, sexually or in some way traumatized in the past. It is ok to move slowly, pause when needed, and allow yourself to process any emotions that are surfacing with the 'emotional processing toolkit'" Perhaps your pleasure has sometimes been at an extreme, this practice can also support containment of a restful and pleasure state in the body by maintaining awareness and presence, and actively moving with the flows in the body."



Day 3: Week 36

Deeper Knowing: Oxytocin vs cortisol

Oxytocin is the love hormone, and it comes online when our bodies are sleeping, to initiate sex and pleasure and during bonding with loved ones, especially in intimate ways. The bond between mother and child especially in the early years is incredibly intimate, this is part of the Great Design.

Oxytocin is present throughout sexual orgasm, initiation and duration of labor, as well as during breastfeeding and skin to skin time with your baby.

In our cuture, we are often showed images of women 'walking themselves into labor' or exersizing to jump start labor. While this is possible, it may not support the progression of labor.


This is why we say rest is the revolution. Resting during contractions, engaging in sensual or sexual or partnered intimacy can strengthen labor progression. Engaging in rest and intimacy leading up to giving birth in the days and weeks ahead lays the groundwork for the flows of oxytocin.

While sex at the end of pregnancy may feel uncomfortable at times, or undesirable, it is possible to find ways to engage in intimacy such as massage, cuddles, external sexual stimulation, attention to breast and nipples, head rubs, etc, that can both create a bonding and supportive intimate life, increase feelings of safety and support in the body, and lay groundwork for intimate communication and new intimacy practices in the postpartrum phase.



 
 
 

Comments


© 2024 by The Birthing Soul LLC | All rights reserved

bottom of page