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Women Are Losing the Capacity to Give Birth

Marcy Axness
By: Marcy Axness
Posted 10/27/12 • Last updated 10/30/12 • 23453 views • 15 comments

Breaking news from Michel Odent's conference on Birth & Primal Health Research*: data is clear that we humans are losing the capacity to give birth! How can that be? It is pure evolution in action: when we do not use certain functions of our physiology, the "message" to our always-changing bodymind system -- a message that becomes passed down to future generations through changes in DNA expression -- is, "That function is no longer needed."

 

Oxytocin: Liquid Peace 

Oxytocin has been in the news lately, the hormone of love...the moral molecule..."liquid peace" I like to call it. Oxytocin mediates a massive array of positive effects on humans: decreased stressed response, higher threshold for pain, increased trust, decreased depression, increased social interaction and responsiveness to social cues. It is the chemical of connection. As Michel Odent has synthesized in his Primal Research Database, it mediates the central capacity to love -- to love self, to love others, to love the environment.

 

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Odent was straightforward with his point: "The 'capacity to love' is shaped in the period of birth." Before proceeding, he was emphatic about the point that I also want to make clear: when we're talking about this kind of epidemiological research ("epidemiology: the study of disease and health in populations"), we are NOT talking about any single individual. So please don't read this and immediately think about anyone you know, including your own child. As Odent put it in his enchanting French accent, "Forget individuals, forget your family, forget people you know." This is about our global human family, and our shared future as a species.

 

Impaired capacity to love is central to an array of psycho-social issues such as depression, self-injury, bullying, narcissistically vulnerable personality traits, autism, and suicide. 

 

Birthing a Baby, Birthing A Psyche

 

Childbirth is a time of massive organization of oxytocin circuitry that persists lifelong -- for the child being born, and also for the mother. In yesterday afternoon's session on primal health research and epigenetics, Odent pointed out that dozens of studies from around the world have found autism risk factors around the time of birth. 

 

As I write in my book Parenting for Peace, "Biochemical cascades triggered during an unimpeded mammalian labor and birth (and postpartum) establish in the baby enduring set points for his brain’s self-regulating and social functions. These thresholds will to a great extent forecast how able this individual will be to respond to later influence -- including parental, educational, and spiritual guidance -- aimed at cultivating socially conscious attitudes and behaviors." 

 

Laboring woman with monitorWhile many different variables have been found as risk factors, induction with synthetic oxytocin is emerging as a primary focus for autism risk. One example Odent gave was a study in Japan of outcomes from two hospitals in the same neighborhood (thus same population), which found a much higher incidence of autism in those children born in the hospital whose standard protocol was to induce labor with synthetic oxytocin at 39 weeks.

 

Dissing Oxytocin, Risking Our Healthy Future

 

The rampant use of synthetic oxytocin (Pitocin) to induce or augment labor has led to a loss of physiological function through disuse. Quite bluntly put, we have been chipping away at our oxytocin system, because, as Odent said, "We've lost our physiological need for the oxytocin system, because most women give birth with a drip."

 

At the moment that I'm writing this (Saturday morning in Honolulu), Dr. Kerstin Uvnäs-Moberg is giving a plenary talk entitled "Oxytocin: The Inner Guide to Motherhood." It has been an excellent primer on the role of oxytocin, the amazing effects of oxytocin on a close, connected, more easy attachment between mother and baby. 

 

She also shows very clearly what happens to our natural oxytocin system when synthetic oxytocin is administered in place of our naturally released version. For one thing, synthetic oxytocin comes in one steady stream, whereas our natural, "inner pharmacy" version is pulsatile: it comes in rhythmic waves. 

 

She asks quite directly, "Do we protect and use our oxytocin system as we should?" Oxytocin is centrally related to our natural capacity to give birth. When we have a scheduled C-section, for example, there is no oxytocin release in the mother's brain, and thus a severe interruption in the establishment of the postnatal oxytocin circuitry wiring in the newborn. Similarly, as an epidural blocks nerve impulses of pain, so too does it block the Ferguson reflexes responsible for stimulating the action of the oxytocin system.

 

Michel Odent sums up the sobering conclusion of current research with this chilling observation: after just 3 or 4 generations of highly technological childbirth, it seems very possible that our human oxytocin system is weakening.

 

In other words, our capacity to give birth is weakening. 

 

Spread the word: let us protect our joy, our peace, our ability to be deeply connected humans. Let us protect our species in our most glorious potential. 

 

Advocate for oxytocin!

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About Marcy Axness, PhD

400I'm the author of Parenting for Peace: Raising the Next Generation of Peacemakers, and also the adoption expert on Mothering's expert panel. I write and speak around the world on prenatal, child and parent development, and I have a private practice coaching parents-in-progress. I raised two humans, earned a doctorate, and lived to report back. On the wings of my new book I'm delighted to be speaking at many wonderful conferences all over the world in the coming months, and I'm happy to be sharing dispatches and inside glimpses with you here on Mothering.com! As a special gift to Mothering readers I'm offering "A Unique 7-Step Parenting Tool."

 

[*I'm sitting in the lecture hall in the gorgeous Hawaiian Convention Center in Honolulu.]

 

Image of laboring woman: miguelb under Creative Commons license.

 

Comments (15)

Tjej 10/29/12 at 10:31am
FWIW, I would think that oxytocin exposure during BFing would be more frequent and more of an issue over the long term. I would think research should consider that aspect (perhaps it does, but the article here does not).
emily1976 10/29/12 at 2:25pm
I was wondering too about the role of oxytocin and breastfeeding and how it relates to all of this. Seems strange it is not addressed.
auntbea 10/29/12 at 3:30pm
How does one get from "it seems very possible that our human oxytocin system is weakening" to "in other words, our capacity to give birth is weakening"?
Also, since oxytocin and pitocin are the exact same molecule -- bioidentical, in fact -- what is your explanation for how our bodies can tell the difference?
MomH 10/29/12 at 6:45pm
It is important to set aside our technologies when people are talking to us, to focus, listen, love. ...To connect with love during pregnancy, no matter what other circumstances, receive love, and pass it to our babies. To connect in love during birth, no matter what the circumstances to help ourselves through, and help the little loved one through. Breastfeeding needs, as often as possible to be a time to rest with the baby, without interruptions other than the truths of siblings of live conversation.
Not saying this was always achieved, but "let your first thought be love," is a step in the right direction. We weren't made for selfishness and strife.

Blessings
Marcy Axness 10/30/12 at 2:49am
I appreciate all the engagement, and let me see if I can address a few things:
--Kerstin indeed talked a LOT about breastfeeding and oxytocin, and there is a lot of excellent and fascinating data from her research on that. Blogging "in real time" is not a very exacting way to do things, but rather a "wow, this is being said *right now* kind of affair, so not everything is included, by a long shot.
-- I was sharing Michel Odent's sensibilities on our capacity to birth weakening; the data is there to support this. A recently concluded massive epidemiological study was done, which included 40,000 births in two cohorts: one group who gave birth between 1959 and 1965 and the other group between 2002 and 2008. These were all first births. After controlling for an array of confounding factors, the average labor time for the later group was 2.5 hours longer.
The hypothetical piece there was the notion that our oxytocin system is weakening, which Odent also backed up with various snapshots of disparate research findings--such as growing rates of sexual dysfunction (such that JAMA recently declared it a public health issue); and data showing that college students' capacity for empathy has dropped by 40% over the past 30 years.
-- One of the big problems with synthetic v. endogenous oxytocin, and indeed, how our bodies know the difference, is the delivery system: our natural system administers it in pulsatile fashion (rhythmically), whereas Pitocin and other synthetics are delivered in a linear dose.
I hope & intend to spotlight more of Kerstin's fascinating, important oxytocin research in the future. Thanks for letting me know you're interested!
greenhands 10/30/12 at 10:32am
Synthetic oxytocin (pitocon, syntocinon), administered via IV, does not cross the maternal blood-brain barrier. But its presence in the bloodstream does provide negative feedback to the brain to deregulate endogenous oxytocin release from the pituitary gland. Thus you lose all the effects of endogenous oxytocin on behavior and mood.
Marcy Axness 10/30/12 at 11:45am
Thank you, greenhands, for articulating well what I couldn't quite get out at midnight here in post-almost-tsunami Honolulu. Well said.
justimaginelove 10/30/12 at 6:54pm
@auntbea- Just because a hormone replacement is made in a lab and termed bioidential, does not mean that hormone is released in the same way the body would release its own endogenous hormones. That is the difference. Not to mention other ingredients in it, that are not natural to the human body. Remember this article is the viewpoint of the author.
leilasmama 10/31/12 at 2:57pm
I'm interested in the location of the case studies - "we" are losing the capacity to give birth would seem to refer to the human species, however, surely it is not a worldwide phenomenon, particularly in terms of population percentages, that births are so medicalized & inducements are so common
Frumpymama 11/1/12 at 2:44pm
It's interesting to read this and then compare this research to the number of child abuse cases, which seem on the rise. As others have stated, breastfeeding does produce a bond between mother and child. But this article is more so addressing the issue of the immediate bond that is formed between mother and child in birth. The bond that is hard-wired into our animal brains. That is what is weakening and even though we might not have to fight of vikings after giving birth or whatever. This birth bond is being weakened and the question really is "At What Cost?".
langdonslady 12/15/12 at 6:53pm
I wonder when someone is going to look into the fact that we are saturated in hormone-disrupting chemicals in far greater concentrations than were mothers of the previous few generations, and that hormone function is vital in childbirth as well as many other areas which have seen dramatically increasing pathology. Epigenetics is a fascinating new field of study, but there is so much evidence of hormone malfunction becoming more widespread: widespread vitamin D deficiencies (it's a hormone, not actually a vitamin, although called such); what was once called precocious puberty and a cause for medical concern has become "the new normal" (puberty as young as 8 has been reclassified out of pathology due to its new prevalence); thyroid dysfunction has become fairly commonplace; insulin resistance has become fairly commonplace. There may indeed have been a dramatic shift in what happens during labor for the populace at large, even in unhindered labors, but if that is so, why not also look at the state of our hormones today as opposed to previous generations? Hormones matter, and hormones are being disrupted across the board.
Marcy Axness 12/16/12 at 12:21pm
Thanks for bringing up this important dimension. I do address this piece of the complex tapestry in "Parenting for Peace," including a significant discussion of the decreasing age of puberty.
MarleneCPM 1/14/13 at 7:46am
Pardon, I'm trying to speed read, here & may have missed something, but has anyone mentioned (I know Dr. Odent has said in the past) the important detail that when we get synthetic oxytocin, it is not accompanied by serantonin, like when it is produced naturally?
Marcy Axness 1/14/13 at 9:00pm
Good point, Marlene. I actually haven't heard Michel mention that point specifically, about serotonin occurring as a natural co-factor w/ oxytocin. Thanks for adding that important piece!
shijin13 2/11/13 at 10:31am
Dr. Jack Kruse has been talking about how the incorrect diet, hormone disruption, epigenetics and technonology are impacting health for the past 2 years. He's got some interesting insight from the perspective of a neurosurgeon, what's needed to not only build a human brain, but what's needed for it to run properly from a hormonal perspective. This didn't just happen over night, its been steadily progressing over several generations.
check out his site http://www.jackkruse.com/ and be prepared to have your paradigm shift.
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