Your skills-based approach to your labour and vaginal birth will empower. There's nothing else to say really. Pregnancy and birth is both a normal life experience and full of any health issues you or your baby bring or develop at any time during pregnancy or the birth. Presently the childbirth conversation tries to separate low risk, normal pregnancies from high risk ones. Why? What does that serve? Nothing really. With birth and birth coaching skills you can work through your baby's birth journey whether there are 'problems' or not that. Using the words 'normal or natural' around pregnancy and birth as though the words mean: safe, easy and manageable causes confusion. Birth is the natural conclusion of pregnancy. Pregnancy occurs natural as a result of conception no matter how that occurs. However, it's natural to have health issues and some of them do impact either pregnancy or birth. It's natural to have medical care in countries where that is available. It's natural to want a type of birth and it's natural to have a birth unlike anything you've imagined. If you're going to do labour to get to a vaginal birth then learn the skills to prepare your pregnant body to become a birthing body then learn, practice and use birth and coaching skills to cope with the natural occurring pain of contractions whether you hate every moment or enjoy the experience. And for goodness sake use your skills with all types of medical assessments, monitoring and procedures if these occur. No amount of medical care should stop you from naturally using your skills to better your experience. We'd love you to look at the Pink Kit skills http://www.birthingbetter.com/products/the-pink-kit-package.html These skills were developed by people like you for people like you ... ordinary families giving birth to their children.

1. From Labor to a
Vaginal Birth
Birthing Better with The Pink Kit Method®
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2. Road Map
• Hard Work = labour
• What kind of birth do women want?
• Is one birth better than another?
• Shouldn’t all births be valued?
• Is birth safe or risky?
• Both
• Two people involved: you and your baby
• Someone can help you and be skilled too
• Skills
• A celebration of your own capability
• Common sense approach to birth
Birthing Better with The Pink Kit Method®
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3. Hard Work
• A change from the last few
generations
• Used to only be labour ending with
vaginal birth.
Now three types of births:
Labor leading to vaginal birth.
Labor with an emergency Caesarean,
A non-laboring Caesarean, and
Vaginal birth after a Caesarean will
be one of those three.
Birthing Better with The Pink Kit Method®
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4. What Kind of Birth Do Women Want?
• First birth
• That your effort (time & energy)
will lead to incredible success.
• That you’ll feel relief it’s over with
you and baby healthy.
• That you won’t feel angry with
things that you didn’t like or want.
• Subsequent birth
• You want to refine how you behave,
respond to, react to, cope with and
manage the birth.
Birthing Better with The Pink Kit Method®
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5. • Is one birth better than another? At the
moment you’d think there is one good
birth and lots of bad ones.
a) Insensitivity
b) Superiority
c) Competition
d) Judgment
e) Blaming everyone else
•) Society must value ALL births.
• Through our ability and commitment to
prepare during pregnancy then birth
better in any situation we experience we
will stop pitting one birth against
another.
Birthing Better with The Pink Kit Method®
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6. Is Birth Safe or Risky?
• Consider Scene #1
• There are 400 women sitting in a room. Let’s pretend none
of them are pregnant; they’re just gathering to discuss some
common interest. They’ve gathered at 10am and will leave
in 24 hours. Many will have various medical issues. Is it
likely any will have a major ‘problem’ in that 24 hours?
• Actually, the likelihood is in the “rare and infrequent”
category, and it is perfectly normal and natural to assume all
400 women (even those with health issues, under medical
care, or taking some form of medication) will leave by 24
hours later pretty much the same as they arrived. Nothing
dramatic is likely to happen.
Birthing Better with The Pink Kit Method®
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7. • Consider Scene #2
• Take the same 400 women and they go into labor around
10am. Well, all sorts of problems can or might happen. That is
perfectly normal and natural. Don’t jump to the conclusion
that the number of problems is infinite. Problems can range
from inability to cope with the natural occurring pain of
contractions to health issues before or arising.
• In reality, the likelihood of a number of simple or complex
problems occurring in 24 hours is high, common, and to be
expected. Not many will be life-threatening, but their mere
existence will elicit increased medical assessment,
monitoring, and procedures.
• Birth is safe and most of the problems will not lead to death
or injury to either mother or baby. On the other hand, there is
a high likelihood that a number of the 400 women and babies
will bring some issue into the birth or have one or more arise
during labor or delivery.
Birthing Better with The Pink Kit Method®
www.thepinkkit.com and www.birthingbetter.com

8. • Pregnant women fall into Scene #2
• Skills create multiple opportunities for you to
control how you respond to both the internal
sensations of labor and delivery as well as to what
is happening to and around you.
• Skills can be used with all ‘problems’.
• You may have no control over anything except how
you respond, cope, manage, behave, and handle
yourself.
• Skills work with all medical assessments,
monitoring and procedures.
• Woman
• Prepare your body to let a big object out
• Work with your baby’s effort to come out
• Coach
• Help your partner prepare her pregnant body to let
this big object out
• Work together with your partner
Birthing Better with The Pink Kit Method®
www.thepinkkit.com and www.birthingbetter.com

9. Two People Involved: You and Your Baby
• Prepare as if you will do it alone
• Fact is that labor and giving birth are
activities ONLY you will do.
• You can trust birth or be afraid –
prepare yourself by learning necessary
skills that will empower you with
confidence and ability to help the
process along.
• Best to prepare your body and learn the
skills, so that if you do plan to or
accidentally have your baby alone,
you’ll know how.
Birthing Better with The Pink Kit Method®
www.thepinkkit.com and www.birthingbetter.com

10. • Imagination and Reality Collide
• A huge emphasis on imagining and planning your birth
can lead to confusion between what you’d like, what
you expect others to provide, and what actually
happens to you.
• Having labor & vaginal birth is what;
• You plan
• You want
• You hope for
• Others desire for you
• You believe strongly in
• You what you actually have
• No matter what you plan, want, hope for, others desire
for you or you strongly believe in birth and birth
coaching skills will improve the birth you have.
Birthing Better with The Pink Kit Method®
www.thepinkkit.com and www.birthingbetter.com

11. • If you chose unassisted birth, do two things;
1. Accept that unassisted birth can be complex and not always
as you imagine. Take the responsibility for accepting what
happens.
2. Try to prevent and reduce any potential risks that are
specific to you and your baby.
• If you can’t imagine birthing on your own and want labor
and have a vaginal birth within medical system, do two
things;
1. Work with and around the care instead of spending your
energy fighting.
2. Try to prevent and reduce any potential risks that are
specific to you and your baby and that require medical
interventions you consider unnecessary.
Birthing Better with The Pink Kit Method®
www.thepinkkit.com and www.birthingbetter.com

12. • The greatest gift you can give your children
is to cultivate an ability to rise above what
they don’t want, don’t like, and don’t think
they deserve.
• Your birth may be nothing like you
imagined – just use your skills.
• Without skills you are likely to find your
child-self rising and inciting you to feel
confused or negative about your birthing
experience.
• If you don’t like your birth, all your
negative emotions surround your child.
• Change your attitude about giving birth
from a making a Plan to having skills to do
the Activity.
• Change Birth Plans from wish-list items to
what you intend to do to make it happen.
Birthing Better with The Pink Kit Method®
www.thepinkkit.com and www.birthingbetter.com

13. Skills: A Celebration
• You will have the skills to “do” the
labor and “do” the birth.
• Labor is not something you passively
wait to get through in order to arrive
at “the birth.”
• Your Pink Kit skills are a celebration of
birth. Although you are a one-of-a
kind person and your Birth Plans and
situation are unique to you, focusing
on one type of birth only excludes too
many women, which is why the Pink
Kit was developed by families to
accommodate every type of birth.
Birthing Better with The Pink Kit Method®
www.thepinkkit.com and www.birthingbetter.com