You find out you are pregnant and some time later the thought comes to mind… “how the heck am I supposed to prepare for birth?”
… right?
So you turn to Google or maybe even ChatGBT and of course your doctor…and rapidly become overwhelmed with the vast quantity of information you are bombarded with that includes varying advice with unending options! What’s a mama to do?!!
Grannycore your pregnancy and birth, thats what!
I’m not telling you to go have a free birth off in the forest (unless of course that is what is calling you), but what I am encouraging is a slowing down, a turning within and preparing for birth in a way more aligned with pre-modernized medicine. It’s about returning to your ancestral roots, learning your maternal history, quieting the noise and finding your innate maternal wisdom and guidance.
Because if I have learned anything over the last four years working with pregnant women, the ones who quiet the noise, build a deep faith in their innate power, and listen to their inner guidance above all else… it’s those women who have the most beautiful births and feel the best about how their birth went. This is regardless of how it may look from the outside.
At the end of the day, I think women just want to feel good through pregnancy, have a healthy baby and feel empowered by their birthing experience. Unfortunately that last element, of feeling empowered, is all too often and without true legitimate cause stripped away from birthing women.
And it is through taking a step back in time during pregnancy and shutting out a lot of the modern noise that you are more likely to find yourself- your voice, power, wisdom- in pregnancy and through birth. This is what I mean by “Grannycore” your pregnancy and birth.
Modern life has pulled us far from our ancestral roots, wisdom and even physical bodies…We are in a time of information overload that pulls us further away from our intuition and trust in our body’s capacity to birth.
Modern life also causes our bodies to be less prepared for birth. Our daily patterns of movement (aka way to much sitting) results in patterns in our body that are not conducive to easy birthing. Lastly, women often follow the basic advice of taking a birthing class, doing kegels and maintaining a stable exercise routine. While not bad advice and absolutely better than doing nothing, I propose something different…
Preparing for birth physically, mentally and on a spiritual or energetic level. Let me explain…
-By preparing physically for birth I mean knowing your movement and alignment patterns that may disrupt the ease at which your baby is able to position optimally and then navigate the birth canal easily. This would include having a personalized movement plan to reduce patterns in your body that may make it harder for your baby to do what it innately knows how to do.
-By preparing mentally for birth, I mean wrapping your head around what it is likely going to be like to birth and coming to a place of peace, surrender, or even neutrality regarding going into labor and birth. Yes! This is 100% possible even for your first birth. It takes the use of a personalized combination of tools such as journaling, visualization, breath and releasing of fears.
-By spiritually or energetic level means arriving at a place where you feel held up by your own innate maternal capacities and trust in them to your core. In other words, finding a way to place complete faith in your body’s ability to birth.
If you would like to “Grannycore” your birth but are not sure where to begin, I invite you to take a look at “Aligned with Birth”. It’s a 90-min self-paced course that will teach you the essentials of preparing your body through birth. This isn’t a promise the moon workout routine or series, instead it’s a guide to understanding your body better and making conscious choices to move in a way more conducive to birth.
Check it out HERE
In Health,
Hilary
