birth without pain and without strong labor?” She said: “Why not, doctor — is the feeling of pain necessary? My mother used to repeat in my hearing, many a time, that she bore three children without pain — indeed, on the last two occasions she completed the delivery of her babies before the midwife arrived. Is there anything strange in a daughter's taking after her mother?”
This old incident was the first, and it was not the last; but it stuck in my memory because it awakened my scientific curiosity, and there settled before my young mind a new picture, different from the one that had been stamped upon me from the mouths of mothers describing the pains of childbirth. It worked deeply upon my imagination, and I would think again and again of the state of that serene, tranquil lady in that critical stage of her life; and the memory would return to me whenever I delivered a woman swept by a state of extreme terror.
After long and continuous thought, the shining truth became clear to me, and I realized that there is in nature no system or arrangement that justifies the existence of pain in the condition of delivery. I have myself seen women give birth naturally, without pain, and others seized at delivery by agonizing pains, which remained for them a fearful and harrowing memory. It became clear to me that the majority of women were subject to all manner of pains at delivery, while a small minority passed through that stage with ease and tranquility, asking for no sedative and showing no unbearable distress.
It was hard for me to account for
this obscure phenomenon: to see one woman suffer during delivery while another woman feels no pain in the very same condition — for both women exert a similar effort and use the same force to pass through the selfsame event, nor do they differ in the length of time they take from the onset of labor to the delivery.
Except that the woman who suffers may take a little longer than the one who gives birth without pain. Medicine in those days was still ignorant of the mechanism of that pain, and so passed over many of its manifestations without giving them any of the attention we give them today, guided by modern views.
My questioning and my reflection went on long; I strained myself in observation, and it appeared to me that the woman's surrender and tranquility at delivery are the salient element that distinguishes a birth without pain, relatively speaking, from a birth with pain: it is the woman's calm — indeed her faith that childbirth is a natural and ordinary thing.
These observations had their profound effect in leading me to study the role the psyche plays on the stage of this natural act. Civilization has been accompanied by a delusion, which became a fixed belief, that delivery is a painful and dangerous event; and the further peoples advanced in the field of civilization, culture, and comfort, the more firmly this belief rooted itself in minds, and that delusion mastered souls and weakened them. For this fear generates in mothers a tension in the muscles which may lead to the closing of the womb and the barring of the infant's exit at the hour of delivery, because muscular tension creates a resistance in
the neck of the womb at the very time when those muscles ought to be relaxed and pliant. The real pain has its source in tension and resistance; and in the womb there are special organs that register the pains arising from increased tension.
Fear, tension, and pain, then, are the three unnatural afflictions of childbirth, created by the ignorance of those upon whose shoulders, throughout history, the care of delivery was cast. And since these three afflictions are united, marching together side by side, it has become necessary to remove tension by conquering fear, so that the avoidance of pain may become easy. The application of my theory, then, is confined to the means calculated to conquer fear and banish tension, that bodily and mental surrender may take their place.
- The charming bride Salwa Kamil al-Saidi — one of the finest of our young women.
- She was wed to the cultured young man Mustafa al-Khalil.
- The wedding stood witness to the standing of the two newlyweds' families and to the taste of the mother, our friend Aliya al-Khalil.
- The bride was the flower among flowers in her gown of splendid beauty, the work of the artist dressmaker "Madame Saliha."
- With her groom she received the well-wishers, and then the two departed for their home in Nigeria.
- To the young bride and groom and to their honorable family, deepest congratulations and best wishes.