Animal Instinct and Child Birth

What, then, is the difference between human and other animals?

Are their bodies made differently? As a matter of fact they are remarkably similar. Cat and dog bodies are used in premedical anatomy studies due to the similarity of structures with identical name and function. Is it that they just can't experience pain? Following a natural-childbirth newspaper article, an indignant letter to the editor asserted cats can have kittens without pain because they cannot feel pain as human beings do. I've often wondered if that misguided lady had ever stepped on a cat's tail in a darkened room, or rocked on a cat's paw with a rocking chair?

No, that's not an adequate explanation, for animals otherwise manifest pain when hurt.

Could it be that all other animals instinctively do something that keeps the birth process from hurting? Could it be that they have built-in know-how, called instinctual knowledge, and automatically do the right thing at the right time? Humans, apparently lacking this instinctual knowledge, do the wrong thing; and the wrong thing hurts and prolongs labor

My mind mulled over this thing called animal instinct. What is it? No one knows, but there it is, and there it acts. Not only in labor and birth but also in swimming, or knowing what to do in water. Human beings are the only animals I could think of who drown when dropped in deep water; all other animals I know or could remember from my youth know how to swim, and do so immediately and perfectly when immersed. Also, human animals are the only ones I know who need to take compasses along on hunting trips—so they can find their way back home! All other animals have a "homing instinct"—you can't lose that cat even if you try! It will frequently get home before you.

Does that mean that we should curse our Creator because He apparently shortchanged us and "forgot" to give us this knowledge? No, we are really the superior animals, judging by the fact that when we visit the zoo we are on the outside of the cages and they are on the inside. Cod gave us a magnificent brain capable of abstract thinking, a high level of communicative ability, learning, retention, reasoning, and so forth. The current theory of natural childbirth is that we should study the animals and by intelligent reasoning learn to do, through training and practice, what they do by instinct. Or, to make a blunt comparison, a woman who doesn't know how to swim is given nine months' notice that she will be thrown in deep water. Let's assume that during that nine-month period she does not avail herself of classes where swimming is taught. This is as unreasoning as one who knows she is pregnant, does not know how to act in labor, and then during her nine months dodoes not bother to attend classes in the conduct of labor. The results in both cases would be horrible to behold, particularly by someone who loves the participant.

Natural-childbirth training displaces ignorance, superstition, fear, anxiety, and the resultant bodily tensions that are such obstacles in labor and in swimming. There is nothing more pleasurable to observe than ai an expert human swimmer frolicking in deep water. Similarly there is nothing more marvelous to behold than an expert, educated, trained human mother giving birth.

Humans don't have instincts when it comes to childbirth, but they can train for it.