I found the responses regarding anterior lips [Issue 2-23]
interesting. My first 3 labors included such lips. In each
case my midwives were able to push it out of the way and my
babies were born soon after, despite my lack of urge to
push. I began to think of this as just a normal part of the
way I labor. It was only after the birth of my third baby
that my mother began to share the details of my own birth.
She was a single teen mother, alone, frightened and in pain.
She was treated horribly by the hospital staff but her labor
progressed quickly. The doctor was not yet present when she
felt the overwhelming need to push. A particularly brutal
nurse yelled at her to stop pushing until the doctor
arrived. When she continued to push, uncontrollably, the
nurse crossed my mother's legs and laid across them, all the
while yelling at my screaming mother to "shut up!" and to
stop pushing. I could see the pain on my mother's face as
she relived this experience. She had never wanted me to
think that the day I was born had been anything but the most
incredible day of her life!
Talking through it, though, cleared up some very powerful
body memory within me. I believe the experience of birth had
been ingrained upon me. Pushing had been interpreted as
something bad that needed to be stalled or avoided, hence
the lip and lack of pushing urge. Once I made that
distinction, I was never again troubled by another lip and
did gather some degree of pushing urge, albeit not
incredibly strong, with my last two babies.
-Valeri Webber
Reprinted from Midwifery Today E-News (Vol 2 Issue 24 June 14, 2000)
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