“…new inquiries revealed a flow we could have known by intuition if we had remembered the teaching of plants. The new leaves take up oxygen into the tightly packed air spaces of their young, developing tissues, whose density creates a pressure gradient. The older leaves, with looser air spaces created by the tatters and tears that open the leaf, create a low-pressure region where the oxygen can be released into the atmosphere. This gradient exerts a pull on the air taken in by the young leaf. Since they are connected by air-filled capillary networks, the oxygen moves by mass flow from the young leaves to the old, passing through and oxygenating the rhizome in the process. The young and the old are linked in one long breath, an inhalation that calles for reciprocal exhalation, nourishing the common root from which they both arose. New leaf to old, old to new, mother to daughter…” Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer, p. 102
Apparently, when I was born, the obstetrician or midwife would hold the newborn upside down and vigorously pat them. This was done with the intention to stimulate the newborn to breathe, and also with an eye to helping the baby to expel fluid and mucus. I can’t find out, with a brief Google search, when this barbaric practice started, but unfortunately it is still going on.
We all want the newborn to breathe. Most babies breathe very soon after they emerge into the world. A lusty cry is exactly what we want to hear, and we often do. I’ve only attended one birth where the baby did not initiate breath, and that was a very traumatic and highly charged situation which ended badly. And maybe things could have been done differently by the midwives, and maybe not. I was attending as a doula at the time, and my purpose was to provide care and loving comfort to the mother, which as you can imagine was well nigh impossible.
Anyway, most neonates do breathe, and I’m noticing some interesting ways that their first breath unfurls. When I used to attends birth in the hospital, we expected to hear that loud and lusty cry almost immediately. When we didn’t, things would usually unfold like this:
there would be a tiny silence. Then the mama would say “why isn’t she crying?’
then someone would clamp and cut the cord, grab the baby, and put them on a little bassinet, out of reach from the mother.
then people would surround the newborn and stimulate briskly, and baby would cry. Sometimes quietly, sometimes loudly, but there was always a response to the brisk stimulation.
If you could measure the tension in most hospital birthing rooms, it usually gets higher and higher during the pushing phase, until the baby is born. Then it subsides when the baby cries, but if baby doesn’t cry right away, it peaks again and everyone gets very tense and … you guessed it! … they hold their breath. This also happens when the mother is pushing, especially if she is doing directed pushing. The nurse is counting, someone else is yelling Push Push Push, and everyone in the room, including the mother, holds their breath. Finally baby gets expelled and I wonder if he would also like to hold his breath, since everyone else is? In any case, I’m sure he feels the tension in the room and his primal screams seem to be an indication.
On the other hand, I am noticing something interesting in situations where the mother is giving birth in her own space. And just to be crystal clear, “her own space” means a place where she feels comfortable, safe, and loved. It is usually at home, but it can also be in a birth centre, or in a hospital, if her care providers are conscious and totally focused on her. In these situations, the tension is not palpable in the room while the mother is pushing. If anyone is holding their breath, they will notice and breath out. A woman who is pushing instinctively may hold her breath and bear down, and she may not. So the other people in the room only need to check their own breath.
When baby is born, there is often a deep silence. Occasionally a newborn in this type of space will give a big cry, but often they will not. I’ve noticed that sometimes the other people in the room will give a big collective sighing breath, and then the mother, sometimes together with her partner, will gently and instinctively and intentionally move their hands over the baby’s body. Remember, the umbilical cord is still attached. No one is in any hurry to clamp or cut anything, because they see that everything is unfolding as it should. Of course, there are situations where it is necessary to intervene, and to do it quickly, but thankfully those are rare.
The quoted passage above from Kimmerer’s book really struck me because I imagine something similar happening in the newborn’s body as she is born into the air. There is still a relationship with the mother, a pressure dance, when a newborn is still attached to the umbilical cord, and hence the placenta, and hence the beating of the mother’s heart. Again, to be crystal clear, I am not dictating a pseudo-medical maxim here. I’m talking about the poetry of human life (indeed of all life), and I’m suggesting we may try to be more aware of it. Many things happen that we cannot truly understand. Where do babies come from? Where do we go when we die? How does a baby take her first breath?
There’s a pulse of life that’s almost unbearable, if we allow ourselves to be still and listen to it. It’s the pulse we hear when we remain silent when a baby is born. We hear it when we are walking (or running, in my case!) alone in a forest. Where we come from and where we are going is a mystery. It’s the journey we can be grateful for. A journey of trust, deep silences, shared laughter, risks taken, gifts given, radical joy, and love.
“What Triggers the Onset of Regular Breathing at Birth?
This question is still unanswered. Once outside the shielded intrauterine environment, the newborn is bombarded by many stimuli – visual, acoustic, thermal, tactile, and pressure – either totally new or of unusual intensity. Also, neural and chemical information present before birth assumes a new dimension after birth. For example, as air enters the lungs, the increase in transpulmonary pressure brings the airway slowly adapting receptors to a new level of activity. The arterial chemoreceptors, sensing a major increase in the partial pressure of oxygen, decrease or cease their prenatal activity; it will take a few days before they reset to the new oxygen level. The prenatal surge of many antioxidant enzymes testifies to the uniqueness of birth as a hyperoxic event. The relative contribution of so many stimuli and new conditions to the onset of ventilation and the establishment of a steady pattern is difficult to quantify.” (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/272408747_Breathing_-_First_Breath)