The Ecology of Birth

The Ecology of Birth

We are all deeply connected to our ecosystems, innately woven in and in communication with life, starting from before we are even born.

If the definition of an ecosystem is the biological connection between organisms in a community and the way they relate to each other, then the journey of pregnancy, birth, and postpartum can be seen as ecology.

The body is a wilderness of interconnected processes, and not just physical ones. The way we experience life through our bodies means that memories and stories of experiences themselves are stored in our cells. These interact with how we use our bodies, how we build relationships, what foods we eat, and of course, how we birth and raise our children. There is much going on, before conception ever even occurs. To me, it reminds me of the layers of forest floor.

In recent studies, it’s now seen that the placenta is what starts the labor process. The placenta, an organ dedicated entirely to pregnancy, has a timeline: it forms in the first trimester and takes over the function of lungs, digestive system, and liver for the babe in the womb. As birth approaches and the placenta ages, it releases proteins and hormones telling the brain “I’m just about complete with my work here.” When that happens, a rush of hormone cocktail tells the cervix to begin softening and effacing, for contractions to begin, and tells the baby to start getting ready for life on the outside.

Just like in a forest ecosystem, something must die in order to live. Leaves fallen in the Autumn become soil that nourishes the tree seeds, herbivores graze and then feed the grass when they die, and so on. I’ve spent many moonlit nights deep in contemplation about this, that it is the death and completion of the cycle of the placenta that transfers life to the baby. And if the birthing person participates in placentophagy (consuming the placenta), also to them.

As babies in the womb grow and become awake to their environment (sounds, light/shadows, emotions of the gestational parent), they are interacting with their ecosystem. They are a part of a larger system that is vastly interconnected with the past and present environment. When they are born and are met with immediate skin to skin with the birthing parent, that is their habitat. If you’ve ever had the sheer joy and awe of witnessing a fresh babe become familiar with their new home, rooting for the breast, tasting their hands, following the voices of their parents, that is them becoming familiar with their new habitat, their ecosystem. Even if they do not get immediate skin to skin, or the parents choose not to bodyfeed or cannot for whatever reasons, the relationship and attachment that an infant builds with their caregivers is the foundation of their life regardless. That is their home and always will be.

Birth is many things. It is all of the things. Wild, calm, terrifying, orgasmic, joyful, traumatic, medicated, unassisted, cesarean, vaginal. Anything that could be said of the human experience can be said of birth. Most of all, to me, birth is primal. Birth is instinct. Instinct does not need a homebirth attended by a natural-leaning midwife to be intact. The very process of becoming pregnant, growing a child, bringing them into the world and raising them is nature, no matter how it comes to be.

There is no such thing as an unnatural pregnancy or birth.

It is the language of interwoven pieces communicating with each other, a complex intermingling of stories and hormones and physiological processes and intuition: and that exists in the birthing room, the operating room, and beyond. It exists in the right to choose to keep a pregnancy, and in miscarriage and loss. Birth is many things; and the more time I spend in the presence of birth, listening to what needs to be heard, I see more and more how it is truly an ecosystem of its own.

https://www.livescience.com/51983-placenta-switch-starts-labor.html