At last night’s Ina May Gaskin talk (were you there? what did you take away from it?), she showed a video of an elephant birth. (Yes, it’s graphic.)
The animal’s keepers at the safari park leave the elephant alone to move and birth as she feels most comfortable. Reminding us that we are animals, too, Ina May suggests that we also tap into our intuition while laboring, pay attention to our bodies and move in ways that feel best to us during labor.
Ina May pointed out how the mama elephant opens her jaw wide when baby is being born (at 1:44). Ring any bells? You’ve probably heard during your prenatal yoga classes that allowing your jaw to be open and loose helps your bottom to relax, too! (Note: If you get nervous when baby elephant isn’t breathing, stay with it…)
Want more? Ina May also recommended that we watch a specific chimpanzee birth (see below).
What’s so interesting about this birth are the position changes the birthing chimpanzee does. She’s mostly upside down (as if in shoulder stand!), but she moves into other positions during pushing, too.
It’s common for women having a normal physiological birth to also change positions while pushing — in and out of squatting, side-lying, hands and knees, etc. If we allow our animal brains to take over, our bodies intuitively know how to move to help baby out in the best/easiest way possible.
What do you think of as you watch these videos? Do they bring up any specific thoughts or emotional reactions?
Love,
Alisa, Sarah & the women of Blooma
Absolutely AMAZING!!!!! Makes me want to ban the circus even more (they take the babies away). Elephants are awesome!
WOW! We have so much to learn from the way animals birth. Both amazing moments caught on video (just wish they weren’t in captivity!)
I watched both of the animal births – and while they were both amazing what made me sad about the elephant mama – was that she was ALONE. In the wild – elephants give birth with a heard of “midwife” elephants surrounding her and rocking back and forth with her. It is SO beautiful.
Bridget, that’s AMAZING to hear about how elephants birth in the wild! Hm… I wonder if there’s a video of that out there somewhere?
Incredible how both animals just knew what to do, and how calm they were! The elephant mom was amazing and gave me a lump in my throat. Wish her baby didn’t have a cement floor to land on, though.
I, too, understood Ina May’s intent for the videos – but saddened me that both the elephant and chimp were out of their natural habitats while birthing on concrete floors…
The chimp one is amazing because the implied proud papa actually beats his chest after the babe is born and he trails along behind mama for his time with the newborn!
Beautiful! Thanks for sharing! I was at Ina May’s talk and had seen the elephant video before, but the chimpanzee one was new to me. It was amazing seeing her body work like that! And I was interested to find my own mama instincts kicking in: as soon as baby chimp was born, my whole heart started crying out, “Pick her up! Hold her! Nurse her!” Amazing how string our instincts can be.