Everything I needed to know about childbearing I learned fro

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Emon

Trad climber

Topic Author's Original Post - Mar 26, 2014 - 04:51pm PT

Everything I needed to know about childbearing I learned from climbing

1. It pays to have your skills matched appropriately to the grade.
My first and second births were like the difference between the first and second time I climbed the cave route. Take one: I was racking up for my first lead of the cave route in Indian Creek. This friend of a friend came up to share some beta. ‘Here’s the secret: Just when you feel totally pumped, stick out your foot. You can rest it on the opposite wall above as it angles in towards the anchor. Sweet no hands rest!’ Great, I thought. I began. I climbed, climbed, climbed. When I was totally pumped, I stuck out my leg, just as he suggested. Air. Nothing but air. The wall was still feet away from me. Take two: The second time I led the cave route, I remembered his advice. I climbed, climbed, climbed, and tried not to think about reaching for the opposite wall for a rest until I was totally pumped. I got to the anchors before I got pumped. Of course, every analogy limps. The cave route was easy the second time I led it; second childbirth was not easy, just easier. But the point is that some labors go differently than others; and women end up on both sides of that fact. I’m sharing my own experience in which I was lucky to end up on the happier side of that truth—nothing too complicated (except a twisted baby the first time I around, which lengthened the process but took care of itself without an intervention). When you find your own silver lining in that one, please do share. In the meantime, here are my other tips:

2.It’s all about energy conservation, until you get to the crux.
It turns out that one of the most fundamental skills in climbing is eminently transferable to the demands of childbearing. Labor and Pushing, the two main parts of delivering a baby, are entirely different processes. When it’s time to push, it’s time to muster all the energy you have to get your baby out. In labor (the time your body is preparing to deliver a baby by having contractions), the main goal is to relax, and spend as little energy as possible getting through those contractions. This is a concept climbers know well. Watching a climber with all muscles relaxed except those immediately engaged is one of the beauties of climbing. Sending a hard long route is as much a triumph of energy conservation as it is of raw strength or technical skill. Every stance, handling gear efficiently—these are little things that can make a big cumulative difference over the course of a route. It’s similar with labor—every little thing matters. Try to relax as much as possible, don’t tense your jaw, neck, or other muscles, etc. This is where your birth partner is so critical. Holding your head, offering water, doing whatever thing to make you more comfortable—over x# contractions, it adds up, to make you more able to endure and push through the crux when it comes.

3.Partner choice is super important. Your partner can’t pull the moves for you, but he/she can make a huge difference! See #2 above.

4.You can recover on route, so don’t psyche yourself out.
Have you ever been on a multi-pitch route where one section, or one pitch, got you thinking that this whole thing was maybe a bad idea and you should bail? But you get to the anchor, take some deep breaths, reconnect with your partner, organize the gear, assess the situation, and having regrouped, decide you’ll continue on, and it all goes fine? Labor was a bit like that for me. Both times in labor I experienced intense contractions that catalyzed doubt: ‘If it hurts this much so early on, how will I be able to make it down the road when contractions are harder and more intense?’ While such thoughts may seem rational and valid (and no one wants to seem the fool), they are not helpful, so table them. I found that labor didn’t quite progress on a regular, linear trajectory. There were places along the way where a contraction wasn’t as strong as the one before or I could get more rest than at others, to stay with the climbing analogy. More importantly, don’t think that if you didn’t handle one contraction as smoothly as you would have liked that things will just go downhill from there. You can recover “on route” so take it one contraction at a time.

5.When you get to the crux, you’ve just gotta punch it through.
I wish I had appreciated this the first time around. I had watched the movie about Lynn Hill climbing the Nose free. In it, she says that in order to prepare for the challenge of climbing the Nose free, she practiced an attitude of acceptance. Whatever came her way, she would deal with it without fluster, panic, disappointment, or other negative emotional responses as she moved towards her goal. That sounded like a great approach to me and I decided I’d adopt it for my childbirth. I pretty much did. I stayed positive when after about 7 hours of what I considered full-on labor, the midwife checked me for the first time and said, ‘you are fully effaced, and about 1 cm dilated.’ I pretty much took it in stride that I had been in active labor about 18 hours when I was fully dilated (It took about 18 hours to get up the Nose on toprope, which was a huge effort for me, so I was hoping labor and delivery would come of sooner, but it didn’t, so be it. (The only thing I do quickly is fall behind schedule.)) But when it came to that crowning stage, it hurt so much that I found myself thinking, “Dear God, for a process that has happened so many billions of times, you’d think it would be a bit more evolutionarily refined by now! Something must be going wrong; I feel like this will break me.’ If only I’d really gotten it that you just have to go through that pain, and that immediately on the other side of it, the pain is gone and you have a baby, perhaps I could have done a better job punching through the crux. This is exactly what I did the second time around. Whereas the first time around I pushed for 5-1/2 hours, the second time around, the midwife suggested more than a few times to begin pushing. I wouldn’t, because I was afraid of what had happened the last time (perhaps there’s another tip in here about bringing wisdom, but not demons from a past climb/experience to the one you are currently on). But I was gathering my reserves, and when I did start pushing, I dare say it was maniacal and that baby was out in 6 minutes.

6.Climbing, along with the occasional suffering, can be enjoyable in and of itself, and even if the summit is often the ostensible goal, it is the process that is no less rewarding for most. As far as labor goes, there is no reason to go through that except to end up with a baby.

Mike Bolte

Trad climber

Planet Earth

Mar 26, 2014 - 06:17pm PT

ha! pretty fitting comparison. Thanks

hobo_dan

Social climber

Minnesota

Mar 26, 2014 - 06:39pm PT

My role was to belay but it was still the best day ever of my life

Clint Cummins

Trad climber

SF Bay area, CA

Mar 26, 2014 - 07:10pm PT

Cool, Erika.
It makes climbing epics look kinda light.

My wife had an epidural for the first, and the other 2 went fairly fast at home with a midwife.
My wife found the contractions after the birth more painful each time,
which was part of the reason we didn't go for more than 3.

Another parallel with climbing is the risk.
Watching your wife and potential child in this epic,
without being able to do much, is a bit scary.
Of course, the risk is less with modern medicine, but it's still real.
I know people who have lost babies during birth and in late-term.
And sometimes the baby is not the normal healthy one we all hope for.
Not to mention the miscarriages that happen along the way,
that most people don't like to talk about.
It's one of life's biggest adventures, even for people who don't get out on the rocks.

kwit

climber

california

Mar 27, 2014 - 12:49pm PT

oh excellent post. i would add a 7th, maybe an 8th:

7. when you're facing down a lightning storm, hail, sleet, a cloud of wasps, a state of the union with your irate partner, a raised fetal heart rate, prolonged back labor, or just getting really stuck, don't be afraid to aid. walk your number six up the mungy offwidth, grab your draws, make aiders out of sling and the straps from your day pack, pretend you suddenly don't understand whatever language your partner speaks, get your knees and your belly involved, get an epidural, call for forceps, do whatever you have to do. just get to the top. no amount of pride, spray, or mystical commitment to your new-age mood-lit birth plan is worth your life of the life of your child.

8. after thirty six hours riding the snake in full-on back labor, dilated only half as far as i should have been, and with a baby in clear distress, i was fully ready to do the c-section myself with a nut tool and a bottle of whisky. fortunately, california hospitals provide trained help for such things--and it's really okay to let somebody else take the sharp end for a pitch. maybe a few. possibly all of them.

*also, envisioning climbing the wide section of Gripper and/or Hyptertension from Nightmare Rock in squamish can help you get through the part of the caesarean where your child relieves himself into your open abdomen and you have to be vacuumed internally. greasy chicken wings and footstacks really prepare you for stuff.

Emon

Trad climber

Topic Author's Reply - Apr 2, 2014 - 04:18am PT

kwit, I couldn't have said it better! That's sort of what I was trying to get at in points 1 and 6, but you put it so much more lucidly. (Makes me want to go find some footstacks and greasy chicken wings with you.)

Clint--for sure! As usual, all your points are good ones. This parenting thing is not for the faint-hearted. There's so much that's not in our control, and there is no bailing. (I also found the after birth contractions more painful the second time around.)