PART 1: RESEARCH
How We Come Into This World Matters
Traumagenic* events may cause a trauma response in some people and not in others.
98.4 percent of births in the USA took place in a hospital, 2017 (MacDorman and Declercq, 2019)
1.6 percent of all US births are home births.
70% of all US births included epidurals (Macmillian, 2023)
32% of all US births are C-sections (Macmillian, 2023)
31% of all US births are given Pitocin to speed up labor (Lothian, 2014)
20% of all US births had their membranes artificially ruptured (Lothian, 2014)
17% of all US births included episiotomy for the woman (Lothian, 2014)
* [1] Traumagenic: an adjective describing an event or situation that has the potential to generate a trauma response (in body, brains, beliefs, behaviors) in individuals and collectives.
From Mryna Martin’s Study Guide to Pre and Perinatal Psychology (2012)
“Very often with an anesthesia imprint, the client will relate to the drug state like being in a bubble of consciousness. Because they are relating to the world from within their drug-imprinted bubble, the other people in their surround may have a very difficult time relating to what is going on with them. They may feel, to others, unreachable.
The drug state is an exclusive state. Is not a shared communicative state. In this example, the person has the world figured out. They think they are fine, because they have the illusion that they are seeing everything clearly. They will perceive their world, assess it, and assume they have it together.
Other people will have a difficult time relating to them, or penetrating their bubble, from the outside in. In terms of connection from this sensory direction, (the outside in), other people will wonder what is going on with that person. This is an insidious form of isolation.
The person with a strong drug overlay will be in the center of it, and not know that their good intentions, their assessment of what has occurred, is not perceived by others around them. They are not aware of the impact they have on others. They do not perceive that others do not see the world in the same way they do.
This can be crazy making for the drug-imprinted person as well as the people around them. Chemicals have been the primary way we have used in this century to attempt to heal, escape pain, and bring pleasure to ourselves.
In a drug imprinted world, people do not relate with presence and contact. Instead, people are relating to themselves and then projecting that self onto others. If their projections match, then they have the illusion of relationship.
William Emerson points out that the person with anesthesia imprinting often has a sense that they are living life apart from or removed from their own experience. He has also observed that anesthesia trauma can invite long-term dissociative strategies for life.
Effects of common western medical technology on the developing fetal nervous system, newborn nursing patterns, ability of the newborn to orient and establish conscious presence in their bodies, newborn movement patterns and communication capabilities are becoming more obvious” (Martin, 2012).
These concepts have been developed by Ray Castellino, Franklin Sills, William Emerson, and Myrna Martin’s clinical experience with adults and children.
From Robbie Davis-Floyd’s Birth as an American Rite of Passage (2003):
84% of global births were in the presence of skilled health personnel
40% of births in Brazil are C-sections with 80% in private hospitals
40% of births in Mexico are C-sections
50% of births in Taiwan and China are C-sections
“Marcia Good Maust (2000) has written a study about Yucatecan physicians' beliefs about the dangerous and dysfunctional nature of birth”.
“There is a vast qualitative difference between births in which the woman’s own rhythms hold sway compared to which institutional rhythms are constantly superimposed” (Davis-Floyd, 2003)
To be born by c-section — some effects of the birth technocracy:
-Negative impact on the child’s sense of touch, smell and visual ability.
-Negative effect on the ability to establish healthy parent-child attachment
-It greatly harms the psychological development of a child
-It causes behavioral problems in children (Di, 2009).
Resources
Chen H. Tan D (2019). Cesarean Section or Natural Childbirth? Cesarean Birth May
Damage Your Health. Front Psychol. 2019 Feb 21;10:351.
Lanius, R., Terpou, B. & McKinnon, M. (2020). The sense of self in the aftermath of trauma: lessons from the default mode network in posttraumatic stress disorder.
National Library of Medicine: National Center for Biotechnology Information
Macmillian, C. (March 16, 2023)Epidurals During Childbirth: What Women Should
Know, Yale Medicine
Epidurals During Childbirth: What Women Should Know > News > Yale Medicine.
Martin, M. (2012). Welcome to the World: A Guide to Pre and Perinatal Psychology.