Birthing Upright

Here's a few things I did not know:

• Movement greatly helps cervical dilation during early labor and helps bring baby into most advantageous position for passage through pelvis. (Of course this makes perfect sense, as I was hiking just hours before giving birth to Lady, who had the easiest delivery I can imagine).
• Women in traditional societies all over the world almost always choose upright positions in labor.
• So the worldwide consensus is this: women don't choose to lie down to labor unless culture pressures them to. (Also true of Lady's birth. I REALLY didn't want to lie down, that is when it got really painful... So excited to not have to do that this time)
• Common postures (worldwide): sitting, kneeling, standing, squatting, hands-and-knees.
• Supports are also used commonly, such as: overhead rope to pull on, birth chairs, ground stake, or embracing someone else.
• Benefits to upright position: better use of gravity, maximum circulation between mom and baby, no compression on mom's major blood vessels, better alignment of baby to go through pelvis, stronger rushes and increased pelvic diameters when squatting or kneeling.
• The first recorded instance of a woman lying on her back was not until 1663 when a king's wife told her to do so, so that he could watch from behind a curtain.
• Lying on back was created to benefit the physician and male-midwife who might want to use forceps. There is no benefit for the woman.
• In the 1860's Queen Victoria used chloroform, which popularized the use of various anesthesias and led to more lying down, and was seen as more "ladylike"
• Some women MUST be upright or on all fours to have a baby.

"Instinct will guide the woman more correctly than the varying customs of the times"