What Louis CK can teach us about natural childbirth

Louis makes some pretty profound observations in this clip. He talks about how, in our attempt to avoid sadness and loneliness, we actually miss out on an important human experience, and hold ourselves back from experiencing the beauty of allowing ourselves to feel the depth of our emotions and from the incredible joy we can feel on the other side.

He talks about a time where he ignored the impulse to reach for his phone to avoid a moment of sadness. He says, “I was grateful to feel sad, and then I met it with true, profound happiness. It was such a trip. And because we don’t want that first bit of sad, we push it away…. [and so] we never feel completely sad or completely happy.” In essence, we are holding ourselves back by trying to avoid our fear of having a completely natural and important human experience.

Although it’s tempting in the short-term to reach for ways to avoid what we think might be “negative” emotions or sensations, the truth is that these experiences are a part of what makes us human. They allow us to experience the best in human emotion and sensation as well.

And this is one of the biggest reasons behind the importance of natural childbirth. Can birth be physically challenging? Can it have moments where you might feel scared or uncertain? It doesn’t have to, but it definitely can.  But a profound experience can come from allowing yourself to feel the physical and emotional sensations of birth, moving through them towards the possibility of one of the biggest natural highs you may ever get.

There are a lot of things you might fear about birth: that it will be too painful, that it will get too hard, that you won’t be able to do it. Birthers and the people around who are meant to be “supporting” them, are often so programmed to be afraid to really feel the depth of big experiences. But by setting in to the power of birth, the depth of it, sometimes the fear of it, you can set yourself up for one of the most amazing experiences you could hope for: the rush of pulling up your baby on to your skin after birth, feeling as strong, powerful, and amazed as you could ever feel, saying to yourself “Woah, I just DID that!”

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