Birthing From Within

One of the oldest universal symbols found the world over, the labyrinth has been discovered on cave walls, on pottery, in weavings, and in centuries-old European churches.

The labyrinth is a sacred symbol of Life. It represents the roller coaster drama in our lives, our neurotic decision-making process, and the body itself. Our brain, intestines, and circulatory system, and even the first journey we make from our father to our mother, and from the center of our mother's body into the world are labyrinthine.

A woman's psychic and physical journey from maidenhood-to-motherhood during labor, and again postpartum, is surely a labyrinth.

Years ago, I coined the word “LabOrinth” when I began using this ancient symbol to illustrate a woman’s inner experience of labor and postpartum. Instead of teaching parents how birth attendants see labor, e.g., the linear “stages of labor,” I taught them how to make a labyrinth in pastels or clay, a LabOrinth, that they could hang on their wall during labor. (Instructions for this process are given below.)

How Labor is Like a LabOrinth
Mothers experience labor as a labyrinth, a LabOrinth. “Ready” or not, with the first contraction, or when the water breaks, a mother is catapulted across an invisible, but felt, threshold. Once in the LabOrinth, she will find herself taking one step at a time until she reaches the Center. The Center represents the birth of the child, the birth of the mother and father, the birth of the family.

A mother could be blindfolded and still reach the Center by feeling her way through the path. She doesn't need to study the path before she enters it. She doesn't need a birth plan or a cell phone to call for help! There is no time-line.

Unlike in a maze, you cannot get lost in a labyrinth. You can get lost in a maze, which has more than one entrance or exit; there are choices to make and dead-ends. You have to plan, remember, and think to avoid getting lost (not unlike the medical model of birth).

Two Contemporary Labor “Map” Symbols
To better appreciate the LabOrinth, take a look at two contemporary labor map symbols.

First, there is the ever-popular cervical dilation chart representing progress in labor. This chart is seen in books, and also in childbirth classrooms and labor rooms, as a clinically white, shiny hard plastic chart with raised rigid circles to show 2 cm to 10 cm dilation.

In truth, the cervix is neither blanched white nor a perfectly round rigid circle; a cervix is the blood-rich colors of life—shades of pink, red, and purple. In labor (unless a woman is induced before she is ready), the cervix is juicy and soft like overripe fruit that can't resist slipping and sliding over the baby's head. Painted Cervix

Another way to embed a positive, felt-image of labor in parents is to illustrate the dilating cervix with a big wet brush, dipped in watery paint, making widening circles on a big sheet of wet paper, dripping rivulets of color.

(Do you feel this image, versus think it rationally? Does opening in labor seem a little more do-able with this softer, wetter image of opening in labor?)

The second symbol I show parents, before we make our LabOrinths, is my version of another popular medical model's symbol for labor progress. It is a labor graph or partograph, sometimes called Friedman's Graph named for its designer, Dr. Emmanuel Friedman. This graph illustrates the average hourly rates of dilation during first and subsequent labors. Although some birth professionals deliberate the value of this tool, it is a part of our collective western psyche, so we have to take a look at it as a symbol.

The bottom, horizontal line is a time line; each notch represents an hour or two or three in labor. The curved line represents cervical dilation. I added successively larger circles to represent the cervix, beginning at 1-2 cm dilation and opening gradually, until at the end of the line, the cervix is completely dilated: the baby falls out and the mother is discharged, and that's that!

Friedman's Graph is, more or less, how most medical people objectively see labor from the outside. However, parents, especially mothers in labor, do not experience labor as a linear hill, nor do they experience "stages of labor," and, unless they are examined and told about their dilation progress or lack thereof, they are rarely concerned about it either!

z A big sheet of paper, 18” x 24" (for each parent: dads & partners like to make LabOrinths, too!)

z Soft chalk pastels, because they are pretty, soft (like the cervix), and forgiving if a mistake is made (you can rub out or blend a line, unlike the permanence of a marker).

Suggest that parents choose two colors of pastels: one to draw the template and the other to draw the corridor lines. Having two colors helps to see the next step, or to see where a mistake was made so it can be easily corrected.

In a childbirth classes, I draw the template pattern first, then all the parents draw their template. Because a labyrinth grows upward when you draw it, the template has to be centered on the page, about a third of the way up from the bottom of the page, which can be oriented either vertically or horizontally.

Next, I slowly draw the connecting lines that make the corridors, step-by-step, so the parents can make their own LabOrinth. The first loop is from the vertical center line (in the +) to the first vertical line in the “picture frame corner” on the right.

One must be mindful to make a labyrinth; connecting the lines and dots so the corridors form the continuous, unicursal path takes concentration. So, the room becomes quiet, people glance from their labyrinth to the one I am making, and back again. Only the sound of pastels rubbing on paper and my voice softly explaining which dot connects with which line and, now and then, about the rich history of labyrinths.

For example, did you know that Hindu midwives in India offer laboring women a Yantra? A yantra is a labyrinth that hangs on the wall in a labor room, so during contractions (or between contractions) the mother can follow the path from beginning to center…and out again…with her eyes.
How does this help a woman in labor?

When her eyes go back and forth, left-to-right, right-to-left, following hairpin turns, her brain waves change from fast-thinking beta waves to slower, meditative, intuitive theta or alpha waves. Women in labor do not need to think. They need to feel and intuit their way through labor.

Following a labyrinth’s path, whether we are walking one, or finger-tracing a handheld labyrinth, or using our eyes, is deeply relaxing and lowers the blood pressure and heart rate. A labyrinth brings our body and mind into balance.

Now parents draw a threshold stone in front of the labyrinth’s opening. The one at New Grange (right) is an awesome million-ton (plus or minus) rock beautifully inscribed with spirals and symbols. I like to think the Neolithic peoples placed the massive rock in front of the door to help them pause in the threshold between their ordinary world and the sacred space they were about to enter.

Finally, draw two little footprints in front of the threshold stone. I tell parents, “These footprints represent you standing on the ground of everything you know before you Labor. You can learn a lot from books, but you can't learn from books or classes what you will learn in the LabOrinth. Labor takes you from what you know and who you are now to what you will become and know as a mother. . . or a father.”

A LabOrinth can also be made out of clay or other materials. Some of us draw them in sidewalk chalk in a parking lot or use stones or sticks to make the paths. Then we can walk a full-size labyrinth in mindfulness and introspection.

Ancient LabOrinth Rules
1. No unnecessary talking in a labyrinth. Hold your question, intention or prayer in mind. No laptops or phones, especially cell phones.

2. You can rest in the corridors. Catch your breath. Smell the earth. Even cry, tears falling into the thirsty earth. In the labyrinths of old Europe, there were benches in the hairpin turns for people to stop and contemplate.

3. There are no clocks or shortcuts in a labyrinth. Once you enter a labyrinth, never cross lines to get to the Center or to get out quickly; if you do, you will get lost.

Once I was in a seven-day winter Zen training; it was grueling. With only five hours to go, I decided to "jump over a few lines" and get out of the pan before I was cooked. I packed up and tried to leave quickly before my Zen teacher saw me. I was sneaking up the hill heading toward the parking lot with my backpack, thinking I'd gotten away unnoticed. Down the hill he comes, Seiju in his black robes, walking like a brick in sandals. I told him my rationale for “crossing the lines” and leaving early. He listened. I doubt he heard a word I said. When I finished, he said,

With this, he nodded and kept on walking. I just stood there. I didn't know where the lines were. I didn't know whether to go up the hill or down the hill, because I stepped out of the labyrinth. You can share this same lesson of the labyrinth with parents:

Before you freak out and step out of your LabOrinth, stop! Remember, "Wherever you go you still have to breathe."

I remind parents that this means that even if their labor is not what they expected or wanted, even if it's taking too long, or there are interventions that might make them feel like they've lost control, or a cesarean becomes the “next best thing”...the one thing that can't be "taken" from them is their determination to be loving and mindful.

Even in normal labor, they may feel they are trudging through the trenches of their LabOrinth and living their determination in breath awareness. In doing what needs to be done next, and nothing extra, again and again, they are birthing as a Love Warrior. This ancient-new way of understanding how labor and postpartum can unfold allows parents a way to come to terms with and integrate their own individual experience of birth. A feeling of acceptance and self-love can arise when they are no longer comparing their labor with those of others. Their individual jounrey is recognized and honored.