What are the benefits of following nature’s design for childbirth? Want to know about the bonding that takes place between the mother and baby at birth?

Nature created this entire birthing process and every step of the way is instrumental and effective in creating a natural, normal development of a human. When we try to bypass the process or interfere with the use of chemicals and drugs, we are diverting a very natural process of evolution. And again, every step is an important contribution to the development of the child. For example, in order for a child to do very well in life, he really has to have a crawling period before he starts to walk. If you try to bypass the crawling stage and get the child to walk right away, you miss a very important developmental phase. We now find this is true for birthing as well. Going through the birth canal is a developmental process, which influences the fate and future of this child, the whole experience. When we interfere with this process, we are interfering with the natural relationship and the millions of years it took to create the process. Every step was relevant to nature, otherwise nature wouldn’t have done it. Nature is very efficient. It does everything for a reason. It’s humans that think, “Oh well, that wasn’t necessary, we can change that.” And that’s where the problems start. This is especially true in regard to the critical bonding which takes place at the moment of birth. A child has been in one world and then is coming into a new world. If you were an astronaut very safely ensconced inside your capsule with everything you need, you would be very healthy. What if all of a sudden you are told, “Okay, you have to get out on a space walk, jump outside of the capsule and start floating in space.” You would say, “Well okay, I’ve got my umbilical cord on and I’m still pretty connected.” But what would happen to an astronaut if the umbilical cord was severed and now the astronaut is floating in space? Lost and abandoned like that, the fear of this disconnection would affect him profoundly. And fear kills; people can be scared to death. Imagine a child that has been connected during its entire developmental period and all of a sudden he’s thrust out into the world; the umbilical cord is cut, and now the child is floating. When a child is taken away from the mother during the birth process, it is the ultimate fear that a child will ever experience. It has profound physiological consequences on the hormonal system and belief system of the child and his trust in the world.

However, when a child is born and laid on his mother’s stomach and the child comes naturally up to the breast, then the baby’s head is on the mother’s chest and the heartbeat that was there for the entire developmental period is restored to the child. The safety, the touch, the comfort and the bonding that occurs during this time is more than just physical bonding — it’s an energy bonding. It’s fulfilling the natural developmental process, assuring a happiness and a health to this child, letting him know that he is being welcomed and loved. When we make birth a medical procedure, we throw a monkey wrench into the entire system. Now we’re beginning to find, for example, that the events at the birthing process itself will determine the fate of the child for the rest of his life. If the birth is difficult with all kinds of complications, the newborn learns from this experience. It is the first impression of what this new world is like. So we have to know that this child is a lot more than just a bundle of cells being born. It is an intelligent human being quite aware of the environment. The baby has many needs at this moment. When we interfere with that, we’re interfering not just with the immediate birthing process, but we are interfering with the rest of that child’s life. It’s time for us to stop and reconsider what we are doing, especially when we bypass normal birth processes.