Shivam Rachana - Lotus Birth: Leaving the Umbilical Cord Intact

LOTUS BIRTH

Leaving the umbilical cord intact

At last Shivam Rachana has gathered together the Lotus Birth lore from around the world so that we might welcome babies more fully by honouring the fourth stage of labour. This book is destined to be a classic in the conscious birth literature and will re-earth the evolution of humanity by its invitation to explore Eros museum, the placenta. Being a grandmother and a midwife, I am by nature quite patient yet I think 6,000 years is long enough to remember the original Tree of Life. I am grateful to Rachana for co-creating this volume of wisdom, so that we can become the families the Earth wants now. I hope anyone who is called to heal the Earth by healing birth, as well as anyone who was born and who cares about our future, will read and share the beauty of this book.

Jeannine Parvati Baker about the first edition of Lotus Birth, 2000

Baby holding the umbilical cord

Photo: Shellie Drysdale

Leaving the umbilical cord intact

compiled by Shivam Rachana

Good Creation Publications, Melbourne, Australia

First published 2011
by Good Creation Publications
PO Box 5065, Middle Park, VIC 3206, Australia

Lotus Birth - Leaving the umbilical cord intact
Second edition, revised and expanded
ISBN 978-0-646-56565-1

Edited and produced by Soni Stecker, Literal Ink
Design and layout by Bill Potter and Pasquale Siclari
Cover design by Leanne Kirkman (based on an idea by Isolde Malga)
Cover photo of Madeleine by Simone Lukacs
Printed in Australia by Bluestar Print, Clayton,Victoria

Copyright this collection Shivam Rachana 2011
Copyright in individual pieces remains with the authors

CiP
1. Natural childbirth 2. Childbirth 3. Umbilical cord
I. Rachana, Shivam
618.45

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the publisher.

Every effort has been made to trace copyright owners of previously published material. Please write to the publisher if we have been unable to contact you.

The method of postpartum care presented in this book should be viewed as an option for careful consideration. Any application of the ideas, suggestions, and procedures described are at the readers own discretion.

This edition of Lotus Birth is dedicated to the memory and work of Jeannine Parvati Baker, midwife and medicine woman, who brought the wisdom of Lotus Birth to so many

and
to the children of the future.

The term Lotus Birth was coined by Clair Lotus Day who, when pregnant and living in California, questioned many doctors about the need to cut the cord. Finding an obstetrician sympathetic to her quest, she gave birth to her son Trimurti in San Francisco in 1974 and took him home soon after with his cord uncut.

Since then, many babies in many countries have been born in this way, including babies born at home, in hospital and even by Caesarean section.

Dr Sarah Buckley, Pregnancy magazine, Spring 1998

Lotus Birth is the practice of leaving the umbilical cord uncut, so that the baby remains attached to the placenta until the cord naturally separates at the navel exactly as a cut cord does at three to ten days after birth. This prolonged contact can be seen as a time of transition, allowing the baby to slowly and gently let go of the attachment to the mothers body.

Dr Sarah Buckley, Pregnancy magazine, Spring 1998

Lotus Birth is part of the continuum in the development and unfolding of the human organism.

Lotus Birth is also part of the continuum of awakening consciousness expressing itself via the birth process.

Shivam Rachana

W HEN Shivam Rachana first told me about the concept of Lotus Birth, I was intrigued by such an unexpected association of words. After a while I started to visualise lotus flowers blooming on calm water. I then understood why the lotus has always been deemed the primary flower and the symbol of the appearance of life. Suddenly I had access to an interpretation of the concept of Lotus Birth.

We are at a time in the history of humankind when human groups need to invent radically new strategies for survival. For millennia all cultures have shared the same basic strategies: to dominate nature and to dominate, or even to eliminate, other human groups. It was an advantage to develop the human potential for aggressiveness, to develop a certain capacity to destroy life, and therefore to control the capacity to love. In the age of the scientification of love we are learning how the capacity to love develops. By weaving together data offered by multiple scientific perspectives, we can reach the conclusion that the period surrounding birth is critical. Today we are in a position to interpret the evolutionary advantages of the countless rituals and beliefs (e.g. the colostrum is bad) that have been transmitted over millennia and that tend to disturb the birth itself and the first contact between mother and baby.

The limits of such strategies are obvious in the age of ecological awareness. We need to raise radically new questions such as: How do we develop respect for Mother Earth? The unification of humanity is a necessary step for a dialogue with Mother Earth. We need the energies of Love. All the beliefs and rituals interfering with the physiological processes in the critical period surrounding birth are losing their evolutionary advantages. We need to re-learn what a birth can be like when it is not disturbed by the cultural milieu. We need a reference point from which we should try not to deviate too much. Lotus Birth is such a reference point.

There are two complementary ways to go back to the roots where childbirth is concerned. One is to penetrate ancient womens knowledge, which is still alive in spite of millennia of culture. Shivam Rachana and her friends of the International College of Spiritual Midwifery are well advanced in exploring that way. The other one is to use the perspective of modern physiologists in order to identify what is really universal and to rediscover the basic needs of labouring women.

If we visualise a labouring woman with the eyes of a physiologist, we visualise the deep part of her brain as the most active part of her body: old structures we share with all other mammals (hypothalamus, pituitary gland, etc.) must release the necessary hormones. If there are inhibitions, they originate in that part of the brain that is so highly developed among humans: the neocortex. The cultural conditioning is imprinted in this new brain, which can be presented also as the brain of the intellect. From the perspective of a physiologist it is easy to interpret a phenomenon which is well known by spiritual midwives. When a woman is in undisturbed labour, she is is in a specific state of consciousness, as if cutting herself from our world and going to another planet. She dares to do what would be unacceptable in her daily life: for example she might scream or swear, or she might be in a posture she had never anticipated. This means that her neocortex is reducing its activity. This reduction of the neocortical control is the only important aspect of birth physiology from a practical point of view. It implies that the basic need of a labouring woman is to be protected against any sort of neocortical stimulation. For physiologists the watchword is: do not stimulate the neocortex of a labouring woman.