Birth affirmations

Birth affirmations. Google these and you will come up with long lists and pinterest-esque photos of birth affirmations hanging under fairylights.

But affirmations are not just for looks, and are not just for the birth either. Ideally they are written by you for you, and for your story. Ideally by the time you get to your birth you hardly need them anyway, because you have used them to prepare your body and mind in pregnancy, and have internalised them.

Some find them helpful to utter to themselves either inwardly or outwardly, a form of ritual (more on this later), and for others they forget all about them. 

Importantly they may also provide guidance to your birth support team about the kinds of reassurances you would like to hear in birth. 

I know a big focus for me and my second birth, in light of the physical and emotional effects (and therefore prep required) following my first, was on releasing pelvic tension and letting my body and breath do the work. my affirmations reflected this — ”breathe my baby down”, “I relax, I release, I open”, “loose lips”, and the like. But I hardly noticed them in labour, as by that stage the kind of physical and emotional letting go I wanted to promote had become instinctive. 

I enjoyed having them up on the wall in those final weeks, allowing me to visualise that dream birth, and was very reluctant to take them down, holding on emotionally to all parts of the birth I was so proud of.