Podcast: Men in Birth: Evolution to Politics with Guest, Midwife Mark Harris
Men in Birth: Evolution to Politics with Guest, Midwife Mark Harris
Season 1, Episode 2
Seeing men in the birth room is a relatively recent occurrence, but something that the vast majority of women have come to expect if they have a male partner. Interestingly, the male hormonal responses to birth can be very different to that of a women. And in this episode we take a look at why that is, and what men can do to make sure they feel calm and confident as they support a women to meet their baby.
This week I am chatting to a very special guest, midwife of over 20 years, Mark Harris.
Personally, having spent much of the past decade working alongside women, supporting women, and studying the physiology of the female body- this has been an eye opening conversation into what goes on for a man during one of the most transformational moments of his life.
This is an episode to listen to with your partner if you can, or send over once you’ve finished! And even if you’re not pregnant, your understanding of how each others’ minds work is about to increase exponentially! It's practically couples' therapy in a podcast.
Please note, we are incredibly inclusive and supportive of ALL birth partners of any gender- whether parents, grandparents, friends, family, doulas or none at all- and are very aware that not all women will go into birth supported by a male (or any) partner. This episode in particular focuses a lot on the specifics of male physiology and the differences that may appear between them and a birthing woman. We look forward to bringing you an episode all about ‘birth partners’ soon!
Transcript
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Okay.
Thank you.
Okay, so welcome back to the next episode of the birth-ed podcast.
Today, I am joined by a very exciting guest.
We've got Mark Harris joining us.
Mark is a registered midwife of 25 years, an author, founder of Birthing 4 Blokes, a trainer in NLP, founder of birthingawareness.com, father to eight and grandfather to 10.
Mark, what a long list of credentials.
Thank you so much for joining me today.
In this episode, we're going to be talking a little bit about men's role in birth and the role of the birth partner.
Obviously, those two things aren't always one and the same.
The reason that I wanted to invite Mark to chat today was because of his approach to caring for women in labor and in pregnancy, and also his in-depth understanding, having been...
Were you at the births of all eight of your children?
Not all eight, because I've got five biological children from my first wife, who died about 12 years ago.
And then I've got an adopted son, and I have two step-children from...
I got married again after my wife died, so...
I was at five births.
Yeah.
So a very kind of varied and in-depth understanding of fatherhood, I would say.
And I was at the birth of my oldest daughter's son.
Oh, amazing.
How lovely.
Yeah, lovely and weird at the same time.
Yeah, a little bit.
More than a little bit.
So I suppose a sort of a good place to kick off would be kind of...
I suppose the kind of history of having men in the birth room, because it's probably in kind of in recent history, probably a kind of more recent introduction rather than something that's kind of happened for generations, would you say?
I would.
I would say, well, Michel Adon would chart the history starting early 70s, mid 70s.
And that would chime with, for example, it wasn't legal for a man to be a midwife until the mid 70s.
Wow.
And it was only European legislation that enabled men to come into the field.
Yeah.
So certainly within early 70s.
So it's the kind of thing that perhaps the generation of women that are giving birth at the moment, potentially their fathers were there, but probably not their grandfathers.
I think that's fair to say.
I think the presence of men in the birth room as birth partners is now embedded in our cultural narrative.
Yeah.
It's something that's quite expected now, isn't it?
Well, yeah.
98% of men are present for the birth of their baby, the couple's baby.
So we've got culturally now, certainly in Europe, I'd say it's expected.
And that has its own issues.
Absolutely, because obviously, so Mark's written a fantastic book called Men, Love & Birth.
And something that you kind of raise in that, that I think is a really important thing to kind of think about is to kind of take away the gender aspect of who a birth partner is.
And you said, you know, is this person going to make a mum, a birthing woman, feel safe and relaxed, or is this person going to make you feel on edge?
I do think from the context of the evolutionary model, we cannot, I don't think we can ignore sex differences.
And I use the term sex rather than gender differences.
I think gender constructs are very much the product of our cultural conditioning.
So there is definitely a cultural aspect when it comes to gender.
In terms of sex, sexual differences, I think we cannot ignore those in the context of the evolutionary model.
Yes, in terms of what's going on inside of every process.
Absolutely.
So sex differences, if you like, are an issue when it comes to who's present in the birth room.
The whole gender stuff is another matter and makes things very difficult to piece through.
But before we had a neocortex, Megan, which is fairly recently...
And this is the thinking part of our brain, isn't it?
The higher brain, forebrain, whatever you want to call it, the part of our brain that has distinguished us from other males.
Mammals, not males.
You know, we've only had that forebrain for 200,000 years about, and we've only had the ability to talk to each other through symbol, language and music for about 25,000 years, depending on who you believe.
So prior to that, first of all, we didn't have a concept of time.
We couldn't create a narrative about what we were doing.
We were instinctively responding to threats and advantages within our ecology.
So as a male and a female of the species, we seem to develop different responses to threat in our environment.
And understanding that, I think, is crucial now we've got men in the birth room.
What would you say those differences are?
Well, they're disputed.
Isn't everything in the world of birth?
But the great thing about this is you can test it in our collective experience.
You can say, well, hold on a minute.
Do there appear to be differences in how we respond to stress?
And there do.
There does.
So some endocrinologists would say that the female neurophysiology and endocrine system, when it's stressed, is craving oxytocin.
Yeah.
As predominantly, more so, more stuff.
But if we're going to make it simple, oxytocin.
So oxytocin is the kind of the love hormone, isn't it?
The one that kind of makes you feel relaxed and safe.
Yeah, it's the hormone responsible for full sexual release.
It's the hormone responsible for feeling good, particularly in a female neurophysiological system.
So, you know, when the female of our species generally is feeling stressed, they will pursue behaviors that will generate an oxytocin rush.
Very important point.
Because, you know, when I ask a big group of women, what do you do when you're feeling pissed off?
I get very consistent behavioral type stuff.
Yeah, yeah.
Have a bath, have a shower.
Have a bath, have a shower, eat chocolate, dance.
Drink a glass of wine.
Yeah, glass of wine.
Move the furniture around for no apparent reason.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
I get very consistent answers.
Now, the male of the species, it seems, when stressed, is seeking a testosterone hit.
Very different hormone, which leads to very different behaviors.
So, you know, if I ask a group of men, generally, what do you do when you're feeling pissed off?
I get very consistent answers.
What do I get?
I get take myself off somewhere, where I don't have to talk to anyone.
I get flip through the TV channels with no destination in mind.
I get play a first person shooter or driver game.
I get do some kind of intense sporting activity.
Yeah, that's my husband's go-to.
Yeah, right.
And in the context of problems, if a problem is stressing him, he's going to try and sort that problem out quickly.
Yeah.
Or if he can't take any action or doesn't want to take any action, he's going to put it on the back burner and not think about it.
Yeah, and so how would you say that that is applicable to the birth room or the labour and the birth?
It's not only applicable to the birth room, it's applicable to relationships between males and females.
So, for example, some evolutionary biologists suggest that the female of the species has the thickest corpus callosum, which is the dividing point between the two hemispheres, and that the female of our species, on average, has upwards of 14 connecting points, right?
The male of the species, on average, has a thinner corpus callosum and two connecting points.
Well, so that would have served us well if the assumption is correct, because the male of the species has different muscle mass proportions and all that kind of stuff that have evolved over many thousands, if not millions of years, we can assume that the male of the species was more likely to hunt, not exclusively, but more likely.
So his ability to jump to a conclusion about risk kept him alive.
So he comes from a long line of jumpers to conclusions about risk.
All right.
Now, the female of the species, her ability to make connections across the hemispheres, raise oxytocin and feeling connected to others, that would have protected her in a larger group against a stronger aggressor.
The ability to be in a group and make connections in that way.
And I guess this is particularly important.
I'm sure everybody listening understands how much the word risk is thrown around when it comes to birth.
It's the most incredibly risky thing in the entire world.
When it comes to decision making, that's probably something that's quite important to bear in mind.
And that's a question that dads often have.
If a mum suggests, I think I want to have a home birth or I want to do this or that or the other.
You know, the question that comes up is, Oh God, what about, what about, what about?
You know, we jump immediately to the kind of risk.
And to a point, women do exactly that as well.
Of course they do.
And this is going to sound like stereotypical bullshit to the average listener.
But we have to put it, for me, inside an evolutionary context.
And then we're going to talk about the politics of birth, because historically a male neurophysiology has designed our birth structures, because men have been in control and in power.
So we have birth structures designed by a masculine intuitive response to risk.
So we have artificial measurement of a narrative that can't be measured.
We have a commitment to repeat vaginal examinations.
When the evidence shows that a vaginal examination tells you nothing.
I know, about as a predictive tool.
Exactly.
But the institution has been designed by a caring male.
I don't think the institution has evolved in the way it has because men don't care.
I think this is intuitively the way a man is seeking to care.
But it's not serving birth at the moment.
So when you think about those hemisphere connections, they served us well when we were hunter-gatherers.
But now I'm sat down talking to my wife, right?
Yeah.
And she's telling me about a problem.
Now, as she's telling me about that problem, she's making connections across her hemispheres.
She's making connections between disparate kind of subjects.
And the problem is morphing before my very ears.
It's changing.
Because in the talking, she is feeling better.
Yeah.
Oxytocin is rising.
I'm sat over here.
I come from a long line of effective jumpers to conclusions.
And I'm stressed because the woman I love is seeming to be suffering.
Yeah.
So I jump to a conclusion about what the problem is.
And I also jump to a conclusion about what the remedy is.
And that is instinctively an evolutionary phenomena.
When I know that's happening, I then have the power to listen until she's finished.
And that's one of the tasks on our video program.
We say to men, go home and listen to her until she's finished.
Yeah.
And it's so easy, you know, as a birth partner or anyone supporting somebody in labor, and you mentioned this in your books and things as well, saying that you're desperate to kind of fix it or to come up with the solution for it.
And in labor, most of the time, there isn't a solution.
It's like a journey that has to happen.
It's an unfolding narrative, Megan.
And you see, the thing is, though, when the male neurophysiology arrives at a conclusion, he gets the testosterone here, which relieves his stress.
So the whole limbo, being in limbo, the whole allowing a narrative to unfold is alien to the masculine neurophysiology.
There is a desire to fix, to get it sorted, because when that happens, his testosterone rises and he feels better.
So there the challenge is we've got an ancient neurophysiological system functioning in the modern era.
And so what would you, you know, if there's a dad to be listening to this and maybe he's never supported anyone in labour before, he's never even seen anybody in labour, and sort of nodding along going, yeah, I do that, that's kind of what I would want to do.
I'm desperate in labour to be able to kind of do stuff to help.
What kind of, what on a practical level would you say that their role is in labour?
What are they there for?
What can they do that is going to be helpful, that isn't, right, let's get the baby out right now?
Yeah, well, I think there's two aspects to this, and preparation is the key.
In many ways, preparation is the key.
The first thing a man, I think, has to acknowledge is, does he want to be in the room?
And that's an important question to ask himself.
Is being in the room what he wants?
And if it isn't what he wants, is he willing to be open about his fears with his partner to hear her in terms of what she wants?
If he doesn't want to be in the room, that's fine if she doesn't want him in the room.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, absolutely.
And actually, in preparation for this episode, I sat my husband down and I was like, before we had our baby, tell me as a birth partner, going into birth for the very first time, what were your biggest concerns and what did you feel helped?
And he said exactly that.
He was saying the ability to feel like he could be completely open and honest with me about how he was feeling.
And actually, he didn't feel completely 100% comfortable in the same way that anybody would the first time you're ever going to see somebody giving birth.
Even the first time I saw somebody give birth, and I knew quite a lot about birth by that point.
And he was saying, you know, knowing that, and then also just being able to kind of ask for support for him, so that he felt supported in that.
I would say when I'm working with sort of couples preparing for birth, that normally for a dad or for a partner of anybody that's giving birth, if they feel anxious or worried or nervous, normally the person they would turn to would be their wife, their partner, their girlfriend, whoever.
But in labour, they're not going to be able to do that.
So kind of who, in our instance, we also had my mum there, so she was kind of there as that support, but it might be a doula or it might be kind of somebody at the end of a phone, but to be that reassurance, I guess, for a birth partner.
Yeah, now I get that.
You see, we'd be very quick as birth professionals to say that when a woman is in the throes of the birthing process, ancient structures of the brain are beginning to take over.
So connection to the higher brain is diminishing, and a woman is being lost to the hormones of birth.
Those of us who are birth workers have all seen that.
A woman who is in the amygdala dance, lost, lost.
My favorite quote from, I can't remember who said it.
You quoted it in your book and it said, in labor, a woman's got to lose her mind and come to her senses.
Yeah, that's Fitzpearls.
And that's the process that's going on.
And we would embrace the fact that that's an ancient process, and it works perfectly because if it didn't, we wouldn't be here.
But what we have to now factor in is that a man is responding in that context to ancient physiological structures.
And from an ancient perspective, Michelle Odont is probably right.
The role of the male was to guard privacy and to keep a woman safe from actual physical threats of violence.
So I've had men in the birth room, opposite ends of the extreme.
I've had men watching House of Cards on their iPad.
And because of the raging hormonal response in the body causing fear, they sought to withdraw themselves from the fear stimulus.
And we see Robbie Williams dancing and making flipping Snapchat videos.
What we see is a raging hormonal response being managed in the normal way that he manages stress.
And then I had a guy, we had to call the police because he had putted a pediatrician.
What was happening was the hormones were raging in his body, and he was handling that stress in a way that he probably normally handles stress.
He moved towards the aggressor.
So we have to acknowledge that the woman is responding intuitively in an evolutionary context, and so is the man.
So this is why it's so common for men to get caught up in the kind of technology of the birth room.
So you have a man kind of engrossed in the CTG machine, saying stupid things like, you're having a contraction now, you know, no shit, Sherlock, you know, or you'll have a man totally absorbed with the partogram, because all of that stuff feels intuitively like home to him.
Yeah.
And it would, because it was designed by a man.
Yeah, yeah.
And so what can they do to let go of that?
All right, so for me, there are two aspects.
One is preparation.
So being aware that in the room, you feeling grounded and present is going to be tough because your hormones are going to be raging.
So on the program, we take men through various exercises related to the breath, because there's no better way to ground yourself than being in touch with your breathing, you know, because breathing is happening right now.
And a man in the throes of fear is being lost in his imaginations of how badly it can go.
So first of all, is practicing stuff around grounding himself in the present moment.
That's the first thing.
The second thing is to, I think, do various exercises that create a context where a woman's oxytocin levels are more likely to be raised.
Yeah.
So on the program, we give men some exercises to do that seem counter-intuitive to a man.
So we say, right, pick a job that you can see needs doing around the house and do it without being asked and without looking for praise.
And see what happens.
You see, what we're doing is creating a context where oxytocin is more likely to rise in the woman.
You get that?
Yeah, absolutely.
I'm just smiling to myself imagining it.
Yeah, right.
It would be a dream, right?
And the other thing is we say, pick an area of your life that you've been weeding about over several months or even years.
It could be you've been saying you're going to stop smoking, you've been saying you hate your job, you've been saying you're going to lose weight.
So pick an area that you've been kind of wittering away at but doing nothing about and take massive action without looking, without saying anything, without looking for praise.
And see what happens.
We say offer your partner a massage three times a week.
Oh yeah, good tip.
You know, she can decline.
So what we're doing in those exercises is creating the context where oxytocin is more likely to be raised and for the man to have an experience of the level of connection that occurs when oxytocin is raised in her.
I suppose I should probably point out, I don't think we've sort of mentioned this, but oxytocin is basically, of a few, the most important hormone that women need on their birth.
Yeah, it's the queen of hormones.
It's the hormone responsible for a woman for the birthing process, starting, continuing, and very importantly for the percent of being delivered and for breastfeeding to be established.
It's also the hormone fundamentally responsible for a woman releasing herself sexually.
Which is why Michelle Ladonte would say that sexual release in a woman and birth are one event separated by time.
Yeah, that's a really good way to think of it, isn't it?
Well, the hormones required, sorry, the context required for a woman to feel that she can release herself fully sexually is probably the context that birth is best going to work in.
So when a man has an intuitive response to how certain ways of behaving can increase the connection he feels with his partner, when he has an experience of that, he knows what his goal is in the birth room.
Because his goal in the birth room is to have a sense of her knowing that he is there for her only.
And that's the only thing that needs fixing in the birth room, in my opinion.
Now, he might guard privacy.
He might give feedback about the CTG.
He might support her choices.
All of those things he might do.
But fundamentally, his goal is for her to know that he is there for her only.
Yeah, and that's something that I suppose, as a partner, a romantic partner, that is something that only they can, in that way, that only they can be.
And that's a really important thing to, like a really important quality to know that you've got, that you are the best person for that job.
Yes, and that applies to same-sex relationships as well.
Yeah, absolutely.
That applies to same-sex relationships.
It applies in my, it's more important for a man to get it, because a woman's intuitive response to the world is counter-intuitive to a man's.
So I do not have the ability to intuate, that's not a word, is it?
Sure, we'll go with that.
We can put it there.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
As a woman would, it's what stops me from being the very best midwife that I can be.
I will never be as good as the very best females when it comes to being with a woman as she births.
Yeah.
That's my opinion.
Because it's counter-intuitive to me.
Now that has served me as a man, because when I walked into the birth room, I was astounded by the mystery of birth, and it stayed with me and is still with me as a mystery.
And that has made me a better male midwife, because I know this is a mystery to me.
You know, I haven't worked it out, and I never will.
And that's useful, I think, for a birth worker to have that sense.
Yeah.
So sort of being 100% with your partner in labour is kind of what we've established as the most important thing.
And that takes, for a lot of people, that takes quite a lot of letting go of.
And something that I always talk about is how, you know, women, when they're in labour, because they're living in the kind of mammal part of their brain, like all kind of constructs in terms of time and day and night, it all goes out the window.
Five minutes could be five hours, five hours could be five minutes.
But as a birth partner or anyone else that's in that room, who is not in labour, you live in real time, and five minutes is five minutes, and five hours is five hours.
So being with somebody in that, it does take practice, and it can take a kind of, quite a lot of focus and stuff.
But sometimes people, you know, they like to know what can they do on kind of like a practical level.
And so sometimes we talk about what can they do to kind of make this, because the spaces, unless you're kind of giving birth in your home environment, the space is unlikely to be automatically set up to kind of facilitate birth.
And unless you've got a doula or kind of a midwife who's kind of particularly supportive of it, this job might fall to birth partners as well.
Definitely.
And, you know, we do an exercise with men that relates to sexual release and birth being one event separated.
And we ask them what kind of environment make it more likely that your partner will be able to release herself sexually in a general sense.
Of course, there are always variables, given time and context.
I had one guy in a group say, blur out, that his partner liked him to take her in boots.
Well, I said to him, you must have been banned from loads of chemists.
And he said, no, no, no, she likes me to wear Dr.
Mart in boots.
Thinking that was less weird.
But generally, men get it.
She is going to be more likely to release herself if we're private.
She is going to be more likely to release herself if the lighting is dim.
These are just general factors.
More likely if the smells in the environment are attractive.
So they kind of get it.
And then they say, well, hold on a minute, the environment for birth is very important then.
Because they make a connection to that.
So a man can...
There's a fantastic video on YouTube called If Birth is Like Sex, I can't remember which way around it is.
A couple that they kind of tell them how to do it.
They turn the lights on.
They kind of give them injections and things.
And you're like, yeah, you're not going to have sex in that context.
So you're really going to be able to give birth.
That video is brilliant.
It's got Italian.
Yeah, yeah, that's it.
You post to that.
Yeah, I'll put a link to that so that everyone can have a little watch.
It's very funny.
It's really cool.
So, you know, a man in the birth room or a birth partner can be responsible for environment.
So they can guard privacy.
They can make sure that a pillow or some kind of clothing from home is bought.
Yeah.
You know, they can make sure that the woman has a soundtrack that they've used throughout pregnancy to play while she's in the birthing process.
You know, they can take responsibility for all of that.
But that's not primary.
You know, because when a man gets lost to his own hormonal response, he's in danger of evoking a mothering response in his partner.
So she becomes focused on mothering him.
And it keeps her in the neocortex.
And it's so important for a woman to basically remain completely undisturbed in labour.
That's the kind of thing they do.
Absolutely.
And you see, I've witnessed countless times, you know, when birthing process seems to be stalling or not going as we'd expect.
And then a man leaves the room and a woman becomes transitional.
It's kind of like he's walked out of the room.
She doesn't have to care for him anymore.
And she she's released.
So that can happen.
And this is why a man being present in the truest sense, you know, any any mug with legs can be in the room.
But to be in the room and present takes some work and focus.
And, you know, grounding exercises will will give him more chance of not being ragged about by his hormones.
Yeah, he is going to get ragged about.
But being aware and prepared will make it less likely.
Yeah, that's the first thing, I guess, just simply being aware of what could potentially happen and then kind of looking out for it.
So one one other thing that kind of often falls on to the shoulders of a birth partner, unless you've got a doula or somebody else that kind of feels confident being this, is, you know, being an advocate for a woman who is in labour, if she's got kind of birth preferences or choices or kind of decisions that need making, often kind of a lot of the asking questions and things say that a woman can remain undisturbed.
Sometimes that falls on to the shoulders of a birth partner.
And often this is the bit that people feel most anxious about, or that's the bit that they're like, oh, I don't know if I can if I can do that or if I can be that.
Do you have any kind of tips on that?
I do.
I think a man's default response in the context of stress will come out.
So his awareness of how, you know, how he handles what he perceives as conflict at work, or even when he's taking something back to the shop for a return.
Having some self awareness about how he handles those situations is quite important.
Because, you know, he doesn't want to be impacting the relationship that he and his partner has with his professionals.
Yeah.
So that's important.
But more important than that is some kind of discussion together about the birth story that they prefer before a woman goes into the birthing process.
I shy away from birth planning.
I know Millie, my mate, likes the word birth plan in her book.
I don't like plan because it puts too much emphasis on having any power over the outcome.
So for me, I like to talk about, you know, the birth story or the birth narrative or birth preferences.
Yeah.
And being clear, there's stuff that you can decide together ahead of time that you can be really clear about together and have it written down.
Yeah.
And refer it to the birth professional straight away.
There's always a risk in that, that the birth professional, depending on how good they are, will jump to a conclusion about what kind of person you are.
But that's, you know, a risk you have to take.
And you can present that in any way, can't you?
You don't have to.
It can be quite a friendly note.
It can be a list of bullet points, whatever, you know, whatever you come up with.
Basic things like, how do you feel about vitamin K?
How do you feel about centos, centimetrin for birth of placenta?
Do you have strong feelings about skin to skin straight after birth?
What do you think about cord clamping?
Have you strong feelings about lithotomy and positions for birth?
All of those things can be talked about beforehand and written down or a pictorial thing, anything, all that stuff.
The other thing I would say, and this, I don't know what you think, I would always have a birth professional box of things I can share with them.
So I would be planning to have some things, snacky things that I can offer the person who's working with us.
Okay, yeah, that's nice.
The reason being that the vast majority of midwives are women.
So the vast majority of midwives are craving oxytocin in order to feel good.
And they're in an environment that's testosterone ridden, that's inhibiting their access to oxytocin.
So anything I can do that facilitates the connection between me and the birth professional is worth doing, whether it's some hand lotion or whatever.
A little gift.
Yeah, that's really nice.
I would say anything that you can do.
The one thing I would say to everybody that's wonderful about almost all midwives is that they're kind of like chameleons and they can be whatever you need them to be.
And for some people that is sort of sitting very quietly in the corner as if they're not there and only coming in if there's a kind of a need for them.
And for other people, it is literally somebody cheerleading them the whole way through labour.
And kind of being able to communicate that and being able to share what you need from them.
And it doesn't matter if you don't know what you need from them until you're there.
But I suppose that goes for birth partners and for women.
If birth partners are like, I feel like I really need a bit of support, ask for it.
And that's one of the roles of what a midwife is there for, is to support women and also kind of make sure that the women are supported by their partners.
Yeah, very good.
And the vast majority of midwives are able to do that.
We would be wrong to communicate that that's universal.
And I think that's an important point.
If at any point your caregiver or your midwife is a problem to you in your experience, he can ask for another.
Yeah.
Not easy.
But again, it doesn't have to be confrontational.
That's your right as a consumer of a service.
Yeah.
People always say to me, but it's the NHS, it's free.
I'm like, do you pay taxes?
It's not free.
We pay for the NHS.
It is a service that we all pay for.
Absolutely.
It's a service like any other.
Absolutely.
And when I talk to midwives and student midwives, which I do hundreds of them every year, I'll often talk about the language of invitation.
The core language of a birth professional, in my opinion, should, in inverted commas, be the language of invitation.
I'm always inviting people to do things.
Yeah.
And I'm giving them reasons for the invitation.
But I'm not telling them what to do.
No.
Yeah.
It's an invite, right?
Something actually that's kind of brought to mind is the kind of the birthplace choice and the impact that that has on birth.
And that just kind of reminded me that the kind of dynamic that switches from if you are in your own home and you are inviting a midwife as a guest into your home to support you in labour, that can be a kind of big emotional difference between you turning up on their ground, so to speak, and you feeling like a guest in that space rather than you feeling like you're welcoming a guest into your personal environment.
Absolutely.
And you mentioned this early on in the interview that the default position of the masculine neurophysiology to where should we have the baby is in a fucking hospital surrounded by doctors with a neonatal unit 10 feet away.
Yeah.
So part of that video program that's totally free, there's loads of e-books as part of it, and one of them is Place of Birth e-book.
Because what that e-book does is introduce the place of birth study and introduces men to the statistics around where is it safer to have a baby.
And for women with uncomplicated pregnancies, home, particularly for a second birth, is not only as safe but safer than hospital if you're taking into consideration unnecessary interventions.
So when a man is exposed to that kind of information, it uses his intuitive response to risk, and suddenly home becomes safer.
So sort of final question, I guess, and this is one that comes up, probably the most asked question.
So I obviously work with, you know, mums and dads kind of in preparation for birth.
And this is the one, it always comes from a dad, and it always comes up in almost every single class that we teach is, should they count contractions?
When should they go to the hospital?
When should they leave work?
And these are the kind of probably the three biggest anxieties for men in my experience.
I suppose it's because it's the bit of labour when they're potentially on their own.
Yeah, and they can't control it at all.
So they're going to need some kind of framework around that.
And the basic advice that we've given, as long as I've been a midwife about counting contractions, is not bad advice.
You know, it's good advice to say to them, you know, when the tightenings are coming, they're coming consistently and not going off, and you're getting three tightenings.
Is that right?
Three in ten minutes?
Three in ten, I think, is the kind of rule of thumb, but I suppose that's what it goes in hand in hand with a few other things as well, hasn't it?
But you see, that's the trouble.
That's the trouble with this kind of blanket.
Because, you know, I've worked with women, countless women over the years, whose experience of menstruation has been very painful.
Yeah.
So one of the first things I would ask when I was on the labour ward taking a phone call, I'd ask about the tightening.
And then I would say, first of all, when I'm on the phone, I'm waiting.
I'm talking, but I'm waiting for a tightening to happen.
Yeah.
Because I can hear the changes in a woman's voice tone and breathing, and that gives me a clue.
But if I'm hearing nothing, I'll always ask the question, have you received medication, pain relief medication, for period pain?
Right, always.
And if they have been prescribed an analgesic for period pain, you know, DF118 or some dysalgesic, I would always invite them to come in if their tightening are coming regularly, but they're not being perceived as very painful.
And in my 20-odd years' experience, this is anecdotal, no research, is that women that have received pain relief on prescription for menstruation do not put the birthing process experience into the same pain category.
Interesting.
And it makes sense.
Because their context and frame of reference for pain related to their uterus is period pain.
And the birth experience does not get filed in the same area.
So they're actually thinking, well, this is uncomfortable, but this can't be it.
Just comparing it with very painful menstruation.
And my experience over the 20 years, when a woman is in that category, often they'll arrive at the birth center, eight centimeters.
Further along, yeah.
I wouldn't dismiss counting contractions, because it gives him something to do.
And the issue around when does he leave work and when do they phone the hospital is totally dependent on the woman's response to where she is.
So anytime a woman does not feel safe, he should respond by doing something.
So if she's telling him to leave work, that's when he leaves.
If she's saying ring the hospital, that's when he rings.
Yeah, it's not necessarily an outward thing that you kind of have to put onto it.
No, because we know that any fear response in her will release a neuroadrenaline, which will inhibit the flow of oxytocin.
So in the old days, he protected her from real threats to danger, to health and well-being.
Now he's protecting her from real and perceived threats to her well-being.
So when she asks, he does.
Yeah.
And I suppose the other thing to kind of just quickly throw into that Winterfell in the hospital thing is that the rule of thumb is kind of three and ten minutes lasting for about a minute.
But hand in hand with that goes women being in the kind of part of the kind of mental state of labour where they've kind of gone a little bit more internal and in between the contractions or the surges, they're not just having a quick chat and a kind of conversation.
If they're kind of still in that stage, that tends to be a sign that it's probably earlier on in labour.
But again, there's no harm always for if you're in doubt, always phone.
And of course, the other thing to bear in mind is our colleagues, some of them do not understand the power of language to influence a person's meaning making.
So what I see, the birthing process starts when tightening starts.
Now, those tightening might go on and go off for a day, but the birthing process has started when tightening starts.
So the idea that you get to the hospital and you have some kind of examination and you're three centimetres with an effaced cervix or an effacing cervix and the midwife goes, you're not in labour.
You're only two centimetres.
Well, they're fucking wrong.
It's the birthing process starts as soon as you're aware of tightening.
Yeah, and it's all getting you one step closer to meeting your baby.
We don't know specifically what every single one is doing, but they're all doing something.
And when people make predictions about length of time and all that kind of stuff, all we're seeing is a desire to be in control of a process that cannot be controlled being expressed.
And that sums up our birth institutions at the moment.
Yeah.
So is there anything else that you would want birth partners to know before we kind of wrap up?
Yeah, I think I would.
I mean, I did a six video online course that I used to sell.
Now it's available free.
All you have to do is put capital letters free in.
I would actively recommend that anyone who's preparing to support a woman go and do that program.
It's six videos.
You can binge watch it or you can have it weekly.
There are eight ebooks covering sex in pregnancy, place of birth, pain relief.
There are nine audios, me interviewing Dennis Walsh, Professor Dennis Walsh, giving five minute snippet tips on various things.
And it's all free and there's no marketing gimmick.
It's not to catch you and sell you something else.
It's just a gift.
It's supported via a Patreon page, so various people in the birth work, pay me monthly amounts so that I can keep all the plugins up to date.
So I would definitely do that, because that will prepare you for being in the room.
And as it's free, why wouldn't you do it?
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, I would absolutely recommend it.
And Mark's book, Men, Love & Birth, as well, is just a fantastic read.
I even find it a fantastic read as a woman to kind of understand, not even necessarily anything to do with birth, just to kind of understand a man's perspective and physiology and all of those kinds of things is really kind of quite fascinating.
Thank you.
And the other thing to say is that all of the one-to-one work that I do, I offer free.
Oh, amazing.
So I am directly available to people for one-to-one work, and I never charge for that.
And how would people go about contacting you if they had any questions?
Well, I'm all over Facebook, and Facebook Birthing 4 Blokes.
You'll find my number and my email there.
Wonderful.
Amazing.
So the sort of final question, this is something that we end all of our podcasts on.
We normally ask if you could gift a birthing woman anything or pregnant woman anything, what would it be?
But I'm going to mix up the question a little bit this time since we're talking about birth partners.
So Mark, if you could gift a partner of a birthing woman anything, what would you gift them?
What would I give them?
What would I gift them?
I'm going to get a little bit woo.
Yeah, go for it.
But I'd want to give them the foresight to spend 10 to 15 minutes a day practicing grounding techniques, whether that's breathing or get the Headspace app and do the 10-week free program on the Headspace app.
Just 10 minutes to 15 minutes a day, every day, while she's pregnant.
Because that will be a gift that serves you when your hormones are ragging you about in the birth room.
And it will make it more likely that you'll be present for her.
Lovely.
That's a great gift.
Thank you very much.
And that foresight thing is good because people always look back and they're like, I should have done this or I should have done that.
So if you've heard it here first, that's what you've got to do.
Amazing.
Thank you so much for joining me, Mark.
So that kind of wraps us up for today and people can get in touch with you if they've got any kind of further questions.
And absolutely do the Birthing 4 Blokes course.
I'll post a link to it in the comments as well.
Yeah, so thanks for joining me.
Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode.
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