Introduction to Birthing From Within

Birth brings you face to face with your tigers.

Birthing From Within founder, midwife and world renowned childbirth educator Pam England, aptly teaches that in labor, none of your worldly knowledge, possessions or statuses will help you.

Instead, at key thresholds in your birth journey — referred to as “gates” — you will be stripped bare of these things and left to fend for yourself without them.

At each gate, you will meet a proverbial gatekeeper, who will exact a price from you in order to pass. This price is frequently a loss of some kind.

Loss of expectations.

Loss of ability to cope.

Loss of tools you were relying upon.

You do not get to choose what is taken.

Instead, it is chosen for you.

And you are left to adapt.

But what we learn, in Pam’s model of childbirth education, is that really the gatekeeper is YOU.

Your deepest fears.

Your own internal narratives and beliefs.

The discrepancy between what you envisioned and reality.

Your deeply held values.

When we encounter barriers in labor, we must recognize our own gatekeeper. Recognize what false idol we are being asked to give up, so that we can surrender to what is, and move forward.

Rather than retreating from her and clinging to our temples, we can stand firm.

We can do the impossible thing.

We can stare down the unimaginable.

We can proceed against our own limitations.

We can abandon our temples and let them die.

We can walk through the flames of our ordeal and come out the other side, whatever that is, a changed person.

Do not retreat, let the thing that you fear retreat.