These accounts of the disassembling and destroying effects of pain are helpful in understanding how pain, if it is integral to
childbirth, might be understood as threatening women's subjectivity in
childbirth.
Putting attention on the breath is another terrific lesson from
childbirth.
Rose was joined in Cape Town by WRA leaders from 17 countries--including Burkina Faso, Malawi, Nigeria, South Africa and Zambia--who uphold maternal health is a human right and underscore that a woman's risk of dying in
childbirth is 1 in 26 in Africa, as compared to 1 in 7,300 in industrialised regions.
The pool can be used during both labour and
childbirth by women who have had a straightforward pregnancy without complications.
Natural
childbirth advocates beg to differ, and make some good points, including the benefits of not giving big drugs to tiny infants and the fact that birth is, after all, a natural occurrence -- albeit one that feels like being drawn and quartered.
But for the majority who seek first time
childbirth classes, they are coming to it blindfolded.
By using breathing and relaxation techniques taught in a good
childbirth class, a woman can take advantage of her body's endorphin release (natural pain-relieving substances), which will make her labor easier.
Through its year-long sponsorship, the Huggies disposable diaper brand will provide educational materials as well as bath and body products to millions of expectant morns in
childbirth classes.
Later, a study in Uganda from 1997 to 1999 (the HIVNET 012 clinical trial) found that a single dose of nevirapine given to the mother and a single dose to the infant reduced HIV transmission (from
childbirth or breastfeeding) during the first 14 to 16 weeks of life to about half of what it was with a very short course of AZT.
Childbirth is often seen as a burden and an ordeal, fraught with pain and danger, even disgusting.
The researchers stress that their findings do not indicate a causal relationship between sexual problems after
childbirth and postpartum depression.
Rarely do they occur as a complication of
childbirth, and only approximately 200 such cases have been reported in the literature worldwide.
