Book Launch at Donna Karen’s Urban Zen NYC | Launched in 2009 | Endorsed by Celebrities, Doctors & Experts
FEATURED ON
Peacefully. Powerfully. Beautifully.
A unique childbirth preparation course based on the mindbody connection and revolutionary in dispelling the fears and mystery around birth.
"Nothing I have accomplished has given me more confidence than birthing my children at home naturally. I was so high after delivering my children-not just because I had a new baby, but because I was so proud of what my body (and mind) were able to do.
I strongly encourage women not to give this power away. "Better Birth, The Ultimate Guide to Childbirth from Home Births to Hospitals" is a great way to prepare women for the most beautiful and raw experience and to remind us all that on a very primal level, birthing is as natural to us as women as breathing.”
Cindy Crawford, Supermodel
Your Questions, Answered
-
BornClear’s methodology rests on the principle of the mind/body connection—your thoughts affect/control your body and your physical experience. With regard to the body, BornClear teaches the physiology of labor (stages of labor, the internal chemicals available to us, which are our body’s natural pain relievers).
With this knowledge you learn to work with your body through the process rather than being distracted or working against the natural unfolding of labor. With regard to the mind, BornClear teaches tools which include visualization, meditation, manifestation and deep relaxation exercises as well as exercises to help eliminate fears and concerns, create cohesion in your birth team and devise and execute your birth plan- wish list. We have educated and inspired scores of women in this methodology, leaving them fully prepared and ready for birthing, trusting their bodies and instincts and fully connected to their power and wisdom. If this were the only course you took. you would be fully prepared. In addition, through this methodolgy, you learn so much about yourself, for it is also a journey of self-growth that can be enlightening and very empowering. Through exercises, we also uncover buried fears and concerns that that would limit the possibility of the experience as well as limit one’s body from opening naturally as designed.
It does not matter where our clients give birth—a birthing center, a hospital, at home—but that they are educated and empowered about all their choices and conversations.
-
I think there are a few reasons for this problem. The first one is that the main conversation in America around birth is about fear—and there's a “hope you make it” kind of energy around it. That fear permeates all conversations, including the births we watch on TV, stories we read, stories people tell, etc. I had two beautiful, peaceful births and would give birth many times over—that is not what people normally hear. In addition to fear, people are very uneducated about all facets of the birthing process. They don't take the time to educate themselves on the options and decide what would work best for them, where they would feel safest and most taken care of.
This journey can be created: in the beginning of the BornClear course, we distinguish that the main conversation on the planet is one of fear around birth and discuss each person's own conversation about it. From there, we create the context and foster a conversation establishing that they do truly want to have for their births, which is their commitment to themselves. The rest of the course is taught inside of that context that they fostered for themselves. It's all about getting educated, being empowered, understanding the path, finding out what questions to ask and alignment of your team. Alignment of your birth team is crucial. Often times, a woman or a couple don’t align their birth team or get all questions answered before the experience happens—the lack of this kind of preparation is staggering.
Another reason for negative birth experiences happens when a woman is interrupted during birth because of fear. When this happens, her body emits stress hormones called cathecolmines, which can counteract any sense of peace or pain relief via your natural endorphins which are 400 times more powerful than morphine. In fact, the release of this hormone can stall a labor or stop it entirely. This point is where medical intervention can create a bad experience: often doctors immediately start thinking that something is wrong, which causes more stress. Then medical procedures begin which normally take the birth on a wrong turn. If the baby is not in distress, it doesn't matter how long a woman takes to dialate. If she is left alone in these cases to relax again and go inward and feel safe, she can release her natural endorphins, which will kick in the oxytocin to allow for labor to begin again.
There are also other natural ways to release endorphins like stimulating the erogenous zones, being in the shower, light touch message, all done in a quiet, unobtrusive way. In the cases of all the people with whom I have worked who have had a bad experience, I can trace back to the point where there was this kind of interruption, fear or concern that interrupted the natural process and the woman was not left to naturally correct or re-initiate the process naturally on her own time.
One couple, in particular, told me that if they had not taken the BornClear course, there is no question the woman would have had a C-section based on the course of events that went down with their birth team— specifically their doctor—during the birth.
-
By taking courses like BornClear the enable you to understand options. This knowledge-based empowerment affects the mental and emotional states. Other ways to prepare are pre-natal yoga, of which I am a huge advocate. Relaxation methods of any kind quiet the mind, allowing endorphins to be released into the body. To learn how to relax and go inward on your own command and the hear and feel the signals of the body is priceless. Walking, messages, quiet time listening to visualizations that resonate with you (in the bath, if you can) and anything that nurtures and connects you with yourself and the baby all prepare you for the big event.
-
It is your wish list of how you would like it to go, including questions about your practitioners or institution's procedures, policies and standards. It's a powerful road map to allow everyone on your birth team to speak the same language and align before the birth—all knowing what to expect and honoring the wishes of the couple/mother. This plan lines up beautifully with what they first create in the course, their context or conversation/wishes for their birth.
Most people do not create a birth plan nor review these important questions and conversations; they let the practitioner lead the way. Imagine if you were building your dream house and you let the architect, builder designer do everything they want with absolutely no input from you. You're the one living your life in that home, so why would you let someone else design it for you to their needs?
-
I define the birth team as your doctor/midwife, doula (if you have one), partner and extended birth team, which may be people around you that day helping like mother, father friends, etc. This team is the couple's team, with the couple and baby being the main key voice and center. The team definitely needs to be aligned based on the main key voice, which should be clear.
-
I think there are a few reasons for this problem. The first one is that the main conversation in America around birth is about fear-and there's a "hope you make it" kind of energy around it. That fear permeates all conversations, including the births we watch on TV, stories we read, stories people tell, etc. I had two beautiful, peaceful births and would give birth many times
practitioners or institutions procedures, policies and standards. It's a powerful road map to allow everyone on your birth team to speak the same language and align before the birth-all knowing what to expect and honoring the wishes of the couple/mother.
This plan lines up beautifully with what they first create in the course, their context or conversation/wishes for their birth.
Most people do not create a birth plan nor review these important questions and con-versations; they let the practitioner lead the way. Imagine if you were building your dream house and you let the architect. builder designer do everything they want with absolutely no input from you. You're the one living your life in that home, so why would you let someone else design it for you to their needs?
-
There are amazing choices. Trust yourself and your body and the experience can be beautiful and profoundly powerful for yourself, your partner and your baby. My children watch their beautiful births on their birthdays. Their births were a great way to start their lives and my birthing as a mother.
“Finally, someone has taken the science of the mind-body connection and applied it to the experience of childbirth.”
Preface by Candace B. Pert, PhD
The era of medical birthprimacy and its treatment of women as bodies without mind, emotion or spirit, is over.
Thanks to Denise Spatafora, a new era of smart birth—women and their partners being fully empowered to design birthing experiences of their choice—is upon us. Denise is a woman with a mission, and with Better Birth she launches a movement to alter forever how we approach and conduct ourselves through conception, pregnancy, birthing and parenting. She is up to no less than a revolution in consciousness.
Knowledge is access, and the access Denise is offering through BornClear is grounded in the scientific discoveries I and my colleagues made in the 1970’s while I was first at Johns Hopkins and later at the National Institutes of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland. As described in my book, Molecules of Emotion, I laid the foundation for the discovery of endorphin, the body’s natural morphine and the brain chemical responsible for the exhilarating emotion of bliss and pain-free childbirth, among other effects. That ground-breaking research led to the even more astounding finding in the 1980’s that each of us is a communication network of chemical information. The mind and body are constantly in communication, a process highly regulated by the molecules of emotion, the peptides, of which endorphin is one.
In the work I did with my team to establish the mind-body connection, I showed how conscious breathing, a technique employed by both the yogi during meditation and the woman in labor, can alter the experience of pain. There is a wealth of data showing that changes in the rate and depth of breathing produce changes in the quantity and kind of chemicals that are released from the brain—and vice versa. You can cause those chemicals, by consciously controlling your breath—a principle used in Lamaze and other birthing techniques — to diffuse rapidly throughout the cerebrospinal fluid and thus diminish your pain. The endorphin- respiratory link is well documented: Virtually any endorphin molecule found anywhere else can be found in the respiratory center, providing the scientific rationale for the powerful healing effects of consciously controlled breath patterns.
My science led me to trust my body as I went through becoming pregnant and giving birth to my own children. After one high-tech, heavily drugged hospital delivery, and a second natural childbirth, again in the environment of a hospital, I’d decided to have my third child at home. At that time, I was constantly being my own best laboratory rat, experimenting on myself to prove or disprove my theses. I wanted to be emotionally present for the birth and fully in control of the process.
I knew about the breathing connection to endorphin release, and so I used conscious controlled breathing, a surefire, proven strategy for releasing endorphins and quelling pain to experience a natural, pain-diminished delivery of my child. I trusted my instincts and the wisdom of my body, something I’d been prevented from doing in the hospital environment with its emphasis on high-tech machinery over mind-body wisdom. It was an experience that won me over to natural childbirth.
Another aspect I love about the Better Birth's approach is Denise’s understanding of how knowledge dispels fear. In this book, Denise arms women and their partners with an incredible amount of knowledge—not just about development of the fetus as so many books do, but about the relationship of our thoughts, feelings, and beliefs to the experiences of being pregnant, giving birth and parenting.
My work has shown that we all filter our perceptions of reality through a network of emotional chemicals, highly coloring what we see as “out there,” or objective reality. The quality and freedom of those emotions— whether they are stuck and suppressed or flowing and alive—can profoundly impact that experience. Preparing for childbirth and parenting has everything to do with our thoughts and feelings, and knowing this can give you» an advantage in having a beautiful, joyful experience rather than a frightening and painful one.
Denise has walked her talk—been a mother like myself, and used her own experience of birthing two children to empower others and further her own personal growth and evolution. She has supported countless women and their partners, children and families to choose freely, armed with the latest knowledge science has to offer. In Better Birth, she makes her vast experience available, and for that we can all be thankful.