“Try not to worry, but your baby’s head is very large!”
I heard this a lot in the later days of my pregnancy, from one sonographer after another. Try not to worry? Why don’t I tell you not to worry about the prospect of pushing a watermelon out of your vagina! Let’s see how effective that is!
Mamas-to-be - do you ever find your mind drifting to that moment you’ve seen far too many times on tv dramas? The poor birthing woman is laid there on her back, feet in stirrups, screaming bloody murder as her birth partner tries not to pass out in the background?
Ok, let’s pull this highly dramatised and outdated picture apart and give it the proper kick out of the door that it deserves.
Let’s start with lying on your back to birth. Who came up with that idea? Actually it was King Louis XIV in the 1600’s who insisted on his wife lying in this birthing position so he could have an unobstructed view of his children being born. And for one reason or another, it stuck. Prior to this, women squatted, stood or sat to birth their babies. Look at every other mammal on the planet. Do you see any of them lying down on their back, legs sprawled to birth? Absolutely not! Think of something else you regularly push out of your body from that general vacinity - would you ever go to the toilet laid on your back, legs flailing? Of course not. You use gravity to help you bear down and expel. Such is the case with a baby! By labouring in an upright position you maximise your ability to push down by having gravity on your side. You also maximise the potential of your pelvis to open and allow your baby’s head to enter and pass through. Let’s talk more about that.
In pregnancy your body is releasing a hormone called relaxin which helps to loosen the ligaments in your joints. The bones and ligaments in your pelvis move apart and stretch in labour, allowing the baby to pass through. Lying on your back in bed reduces the capacity of this opening which in turn means the baby has a smaller gap through which to fit. So get off your back Mama, and return to the instinctive primal position you want to birth in.
Something else to think about… Your baby’s skull isn’t yet fully formed. In fact, there are still spaces between your baby’s skull bones, or skull plates. This soft space actually allows the skull bones to overlap as your baby travels down the birth canal. This means the diameter of your baby’s head reduces significantly as your baby is being born. If you use a mirror to check your progress as you push your baby out, you will notice that the skin on your little one’s head is wrinkly and loose, and kind of looks like a little brain coming out. This is because the area of the skull has reduced so significantly as your baby is being squeezed down the birth canal, that it causes the skin of the scalp to fold and wrinkle.
And let’s talk about the actual size of a newborn head once it’s out anyway! The average newborn’s head circumference is only about 35cm, much smaller than you might imagine! So you can leave those fears about birthing a watermelon far behind, as an average watermelon’s circumference is about 81cm.
And at the point of crowning and birth? Well that’s where your doula helps you slow things down with special breathing techniques to allow that sweet little head to come out slowly, which gently stretches the vaginal skin. This part of your body is meant to thin out and stretch to allow the baby’s head to pass through without trauma. When you birth slowly and gently, it allows time for this skin to stretch efficiently without causing any damage.
So what do we have at the point of birth?
A pelvis that loosens and widens.
A head that overlaps and shrinks.
And vaginal skin that thins and stretches.
In short, your body is designed to give birth, exactly the size and shape you are.
So next time you start stressing about that itty bitty head making it’s way out of you, know that on a physiological level, science is on your side, and your body truly is the perfect size to birth your baby.