Of course she does! If we are just let be when giving birth, our bodies know what to do. No coached breathing or pushing necessary, thank you very much!

Yes, the nurse was making a positive comment, and that’s great. I can also see how it’s kind of sad that she was soooo surprised a woman could “instinctively” know how to birth her baby.

I hope that watching this birth helped broaden her horizons and realize how much of the medicalized birth paradigm is pure (male invented) fiction.

Sad that the nurse was surprised by this, but hurray that she was happy to see it! Many of us natural birthing mommies know that keeping the mouth loose and open and making low moans is better, not shrieking and hollering. I remember the nurses at my VBAC were so happy to see me breathing deeply and evenly during the waves; I got the feeling they see more hysteria and begging for epidurals….

I’m the mom that submitted this story for posting. The entire birth, though at a hospital and my first, went well and I had lots of support from the nurses at that hospital. I wasn’t terribly crunchy at the time, and a homebirth hadn’t even occurred to me as an option, but I had been raised with a very positive view of natural birth. What was particularly funny to me at the time was that I was breathing the way Dr. Sears recommended in his Birth Book, with a vibrating kind of “vvvvvvvv” thing going on. I guess it’s supposed to relax your face and throat? Keep you from tensing up? But I was in transition, and I wasn’t about to stop breathing and tell her “Actually, I learned this from a book!” Either way, it worked for me, and I appreciated the encouragement in that moment!

And ditto what Lauren said above – the long, slow deep breaths really worked for me, for both of my unmedicated and amazing births! No screaming required.