Birth Article

This is a wonderful article about birth by Sarah Buckley. She discusses the effects our hormones have on the birth process and the possible effects of using synthetic drugs as pain killers and labor enhancers. I have included the introduction and some of the conclusion, followed by a link to the complete article....
Giving birth in ecstasy: this is our birthright and our body's intent. Mother Nature, in her wisdom, prescribes birthing hormones that take us outside (ec) our usual state (stasis) so that we can be transformed on every level as we enter motherhood. This exquisite hormonal orchestration unfolds optimally when birth is undisturbed, enhancing safety for both mother and baby. Science is also increasingly discovering what we realize as mothers- that our way of birth affects us life-long, mother and child, and that an ecstatic birth, a birth that takes us beyond our Self, is the gift of a lifetime.
Giving birth is an act of love, and each birth is unique to the mother and her baby. Yet we also share the same womanly physiology and the same exquisite orchestration of our birthing hormones. Our capacity for ecstasy in birth is also both unique and universal, a necessary blessing that is hard-wired into our bodies but that requires, especially in these times, that we each trust, honor, and protect the act of giving birth according to our own instincts and needs.
Dutch professor of obstetrics G. Kloosterman offers a succinct summary, which would be well placed on the door of every hospital birth room:
Spontaneous labour in a normal woman is an event marked by a number of processes so complicated and so perfectly attuned to each other that any interference will only detract from the optimal character. The only thing required from the bystanders is that they show respect for this awe-inspiring process by complying with the first rule of medicine--nil nocere [do no harm].

Mother Magazine Article: Ecstatic Birth