The Turtle Trance
“You can come see now. No talking. No whispering. Walk quietly behind me, and stop exactly where I show you. Make sure you stay behind her and you don’t get too close.”
The “her” in question was a giant green sea turtle. She was laying her eggs on the very beach where she was born, some 20 or 30 years ago, and we were brimming with anticipation, eager to witness this magical event.
The “we” in question was a small and diverse group of travellers, eight of us, who had signed up for this guided event. Having only just met this evening, we had now been waiting in the dark, right off the beach under the trees for well over an hour. The turtle, we were told, was preparing her nesting spot, and for this ritual she had to remain undisturbed. We had been assembled, chatting energetically amongst ourselves, all of us upbeat and keen, simply awaiting our guide’s signal. Now that we could proceed, we all grinned at each other, exchanging excited encouragement for the adventure ahead. Anticipation had been building, and now we were finally going to behold the famous nesting. This was why we were here.
Our guide shone her red light on the sand a few paces ahead of us, creating a trail for us to follow across the driftwood-strewn beach. We crept as soundlessly as possible to the spot she indicated, and then huddled together in the dim moonlight, so we could all watch this miracle unfolding without disturbing it’s agent.
Giant sea turtles are fussy about laying their eggs. They only return to perform this reproductive ritual every few years, and they return to the exact beach where they were born. They come at night, when there is the least chance of disruption, and if anything scares or distracts them, they return to the sea, mission un-accomplished. They need a sense of safety and solitude to achieve the physiological state that promotes birthing their eggs: the turtle trance.
As our small group approached this particular sea turtle, we had to be very careful not to alarm her. More than that, our aim was to avoid detection altogether, to allow her a semblance of privacy to complete her birthing routine. Its success, we were warned, is extremely vulnerable to interruption.
In the past, according to our guide, no one realized how disruptive onlookers were to the nesting turtle’s needs. Biologists, well-intentioned admirers, researchers, activists, and turtle enthusiasts would crowd around, shining lights and documenting, trying to install tracking tags, medically assessing the turtle, crowding her with their admiration. These well-wishers and scientists accidentally scared many turtles away, while harming the nesting of others. Mother turtles would spin around trying to assess dangers, trampling their own eggs. Or their egg ejection-reflex would falter, their labours would stall, and the reproductive process would be derailed. It took many years of observation, of trial and error, to develop the system they use now: zero intrusion, all observation restricted to the undetectable.
Our guide herded us in a small cluster to approach from the rear, out of the turtle’s line of sight. We were instructed in whispers to stay behind her, to make no noise, to be as motionless as possible, to keep our flashlights off. The only light permitted was the small red beam that our guide now aimed at the turtle’s tail, illuminating her labours at close range.
We watched in silence as the marvel unfolded. Massive, ancient, and slow, reminiscent of a dinosaur, she deposited each egg gently and purposefully into the cavern she had already dug. We had not been allowed to observe the actual digging part of this routine. We were told it was a slow process, laborious and hypnotic, and served to put the mother in a kind of trance, which facilitated the reflex that ejected the eggs. Any disruption during the digging could cause her to abandon her purpose, and return to the sea, reproduction unsuccessful. At all costs, we had to protect the turtle trance.
This was all an exciting, new experience for me, but extremely familiar. Although I had never seen a green sea turtle laying eggs, I have attended many human births. And the similarities struck me at every step of the way.
The turtle needs a sense of privacy, of safety, needs to be absolutely uninhibited, to allow her nesting instincts to follow their ancient script, to allow her body to complete it’s autonomic reflexes. The witness’s mission is simple: Do Not Interfere. But once the laying had begun, it was now possible to approach. As long as we followed the strict protocols honouring her sense of peace and security, she would continue laying until she was done. She was deep in her trance; her focus was absolute.
For humans, too, early labour is extremely vulnerable to interruption. The hormones have to build, slowly, within a complex choreography as hormonal communication between mother, baby, uterus, and placenta builds momentum. Any alarm or stress during early labour can cause the progression to stall, can cause delays to the birth, can even shut down the entire process, forcing the mother’s body to wait until she once again feels safe.
Like the turtles, human mothers settle deeper and deeper into a trance-like state as the birthing hormones slowly infiltrate the brain. The escalating contractions trigger endorphin release, and the mother produces ever increasing levels of oxytocin, both of which soften the edges of her perception, blur her thoughts, and infuse her with coping abilities she would not otherwise possess. The labour hormones make her feel peaceful, drowsy, hypnotic. They loosen her access to the prefrontal cortex, so she is more in touch with the primal part of brain, the part that does not ‘think’ so much as reacts. If the oxytocin reaches it’s potential heights, a labouring mother will have no sense of time passing, little sense of who’s in the room: her focus will be deeply inwards. She will be unable to answer questions. She will crave dim lights, and quiet. She might even doze between contractions.
Like the turtle, once the hormones are high enough, not just in the mother’s bloodstream (as with IV pitocin) but in the mother’s brain, she too will be in a trance-like enough state that the actual birth of the baby is now possible to observe. First stage labour (the dilation process) is about building the hormonal foundation required to fuel the foetal ejection reflex. This stage, now regarded as sacred for the turtle’s birthing success, is equally integral for us humans. Once the hormonal levels are high enough, the actual birthing can begin.
With an almost imperceptible nod from our guide, we were encouraged to silently approach the turtle, so we could witness the actual laying of the eggs. We were cautioned to stay a couple meters away, and to remain silently behind her, so she would neither see, hear, nor sense us.
The turtle did indeed appear to be in a trance. Her stillness and silence evoked a similar comportment in our group of observers. Our focus was entirely on her, while hers was aimed deeply inward. We watched, rapt and enraptured, as she ejected her eggs in groups of two—one following the other only seconds apart—and then she would wait a few minutes before ejecting another pair. I don’t know how long this went on. We clustered there in the dark, long past our usual bedtimes, damp and chilled from the seasonal mist, utterly engrossed and completely unaware of anything else. Our jocular camaraderie from earlier completely abandoned, we paid no heed to sore joints from crouching, or pins and needles from kneeling. Time stood still. We were witnessing a miracle.
The sensations I experienced as observer here were deeply familiar as well. Being witness to any birth is the most profound honour. Even though I have been present for many, the sense that I am next to something sacred and timeless still prevails. By the end, the human mother’s extreme levels of oxytocin have graced everyone within her close physical circle, so that those of us lucky enough to be near her, silently supportive or holding her hand, are infused with a proximal sense of serenity, a trance by association. For us, too, time stands still.
I don’t know how long we huddled behind the turtle, watching the mesmerizing release of egg after egg. When eventually all her potential progyny were safely placed in the sandy chamber, she began the equally slow process of concealing them. We watched, barely breathing, as this venerable sea-dweller who seems too heavy, too ancient and awkward for land, expertly smoothed layer after layer of sand over her cache, painstakingly sweeping her heavy flippers towards the entrance until it was thoroughly covered. She did this meticulously, the instinct to protect her un-hatched young directing all her attentiveness to this task.
As she then rotated to face the sea, our little cluster of acolytes had to shuffle around to remain behind her, assiduously avoiding her line of sight. We followed quietly at a respectful distance as she heaved herself towards the water’s edge. She paused to rest a couple times, and then gracefully slid into the gentle surf, reflecting silver on black in the moonlight. We got one final glimpse of her head above the foam, and then she was gone.
We all stood for some time after the turtle had disappeared, smiling and exchanging whispered reactions that pretty much boiled down to “wow”. We felt close, bonded through the intensity of the experience, even though only days later I would remember no one’s faces or names. The feeling was pointedly reminiscent of hugging nurses, meaningful looks and smiles with midwives, squeezing hands with brand new fathers and partners, that feeling that we’ve just been through something major, something special: a feeling of elation, a warm glow.
But the warm glow of the witnesses and supporters is nothing compared to the euphoria mothers themselves are able to experience. The cocktail of feel-good hormones, love hormones, endurance hormones, and ecstasy hormones combine to make possible the strongest sensation of joy anyone is ever likely to feel. It’s like if you could blend the feelings of having just won the marathon, climbed the mountain, received the nobel prize, had sex with your true love, and experienced a religious miracle, all rolled into one sensation of success, empowerment, elation, passion, the sacred, and blinding love. It helps mothers fall in love with their babies. It helps deepen the tie between partners, and cement the bonds within families.
But like the turtle, this can only happen if the majority of the birth is undisturbed, if the mother feels safe enough, uninhibited enough, and uninterrupted enough to reach the throes of the hormonal high. Just like an orgasm, or even going to the bathroom, both body and brain struggle with autonomous reflexes when under any kind of scrutiny. The very act of conspicuous observation, not to mention measuring monitoring, timing, and asking questions, is enough to stall the required hormonal cascade. So unlike our turtle that night, most human mothers never get to experience their potential for bliss during birth.
Like throwing out the proverbial baby with the bath water, our efforts to make birth safer, more comfortable, more modern, may have unintentionally robbed women of one of its best rewards. Like the turtles, human births have suffered over the centuries from well-intentioned interference. Our obstetrical profession is now attempting to tease apart the relative risks of assistance versus intervention on a case-by-case basis, examining different medical procedures to gage their actual value. Often, a medical intervention has been adopted, normalized, and widespread before anyone thought to questions its use: does its inclusion actually improve outcomes? And more to the point, does it prevent or derail anything else? After decades of doing things a certain way, it can be hard to even notice entrenched practices, and harder still to challenge them.
But as with the turtle, there might be a larger picture that we fail to see through the clouded lens of our current birth culture, which is arguably the biggest intervention of all: Does birth, in the absence of specific risk factors, really need to be situated within a medical framework?
Of course, some births are high risk, and some births require specific medical assistance. But do we sacrifice something when we treat all births as equally potential medical emergencies? After all, technological interventions do not guarantee safer births.
We know that birth is not an illness or injury, but rather a healthy and normal life event. We know that all births were home births until relatively recently, and globally many still are. You might think that women used to die in childbirth regularly, and the move into hospitals lowered the risk. But, no. The truth is almost the opposite. While more women did indeed used to die in childbirth, it was largely from rickets, bad hygiene, and malnutrition, easily preventable conditions in our modern country. And when births first moved into the hospital, the death rate went up. Not down: up. The culprit was mainly puerperal fever (also known as deathbed fever), which was caused by the spreading of germs from doctors to patients. Midwives, who were equally ignorant of germs, simply didn’t come into contact with illness the way doctors did, so ran a much lower risk of spreading infection from one patient to the next. Also, since midwives as a rule practiced a more ‘hands off’ approach to birth, with more sitting and waiting and less intervening, they were less likely to contaminate their clients with germy hands or unwashed instruments.
We also know that no other animal births garner the medical attention we assign our own, and that animals appear to birth more easily, with fewer mishaps. There are many theories as to why human births are more difficult: longer, more painful, much more chance of things going wrong. There are theories about the bipedal posture, the upright pelvis, the energy to grow big brains, and many more. But the theory lacking is perhaps the most obvious, the one we can’t even see through our occluded lens: Does the very act of situating birth within a medical paradigm, with the mother under constant observation and monitoring, create the very problems it seeks to treat? Are the difficulties we think are endemic to human birth actually iatrogenic?
We never got to see the baby turtles hatching. We were told that when they do, they have to be left to find the sea for themselves.
In the past, good Samaritans have tried to carry the little reptiles to the water’s edge, but this seeming favour is actually harmful. During their hazardous trek to the surf, the baby turtles memorize their route: the position of the moon and the stars, the smells, other indicators that we don’t necessarily perceive. It is this harrowing journey that imprints the memory—and the map—of how to return to this very beach someday when it’s time to lay their own eggs. It flicks some kind of “on” switch for their own directional system.
Without completing this mission, they get disoriented, they have difficulty navigating, and they don’t know how to reproduce. If they have not followed their invisible trail to the water, our guide explained, they spin in circles without any sense of orientation. Well-wishers can help keep them safe by warding off the many, lurking dangers such as dogs, crabs, and shorebirds, but the hatchlings have to complete their seaward journey unassisted. Onlookers have to give them room and time to complete their journey.
Again, I thought of human babies, how birth has at times been framed as rescuing the baby from the mother’s body. For decades we thought it wise to whisk the baby away from the mother right at birth, to clean and warm, to measure and weigh, and then to hand baby back to mother fully swaddled and fast asleep, hours or even days later. We thought it was too much trouble, or too slow, or perhaps unsanitary, to let a newly born, wet and gooey baby go straight to the mother’s chest, skin on skin. By the time we placed babies there, all clean, fluffed and dried, the instincts had been forever marred. And like the baby turtles, essential brain sequencing had been corrupted.
The damage is hard to recognize since, like seeing the forest through the trees. It’s like seeing air, or space. It’s tricky to become aware of something when we’re right in the middle of it, and we’ve never known its absence. As Marsden Wagner famously explains, Fish Can’t See Water.
As I learned about how turtle hatchlings have to make their own way to the sea, my thoughts turned immediately to breastfeeding initiation. Like the turtles, humans are born with strong survival instincts that can easily be derailed.
For generations, our hospital practices around birth unintentionally misdirected and even concealed one of mammal babies’ most basic drives. All mammals are born with an instinct to self-attach to the mother’s nipple. Humans are no exception. If allowed the opportunity, a newly born infant will use several of its inborn reflexes to travel to the mother’s breast and latch on: step/crawl, rooting, suckling, grasping and more. Neonates can actually chart their own way there, up the mother’s body, navigating by smell, feel, and instinct. If permitted to do this unassisted, the latch is usually perfect, and most of the common breastfeeding challenges that plague new mothers are averted.
Like all mammals, there is intended brain sequencing inherent to this task. If we try to help by latching the baby on ourselves, we circumvent a deeply important process. Or worse, if we separate the nursing dyad, the strong drive to self-attach dulls and fades as exhaustion in both parties takes over. An hour later, the crucial opportunity is already lost, and we have inadvertently courted all manner of breastfeeding difficulties.
As Nils Bergman has taught us, we know, too, that bonding can be facilitated by allowing the mother and baby some undisturbed time right after the birth, skin on skin, with no interruptions. There are numerous studies showing this, yet we still deny the majority of mothers and babies the benefits of a completely hands-off experience. If the caregivers stand back and observe only, allowing the mother to catch her own baby, and allow the baby to find its own way to the breast, completely uninterrupted, are measurable bonding behaviours increased? Is breastfeeding easier? Are postpartum issues less?
However, the success of this part of baby’s journey also relies on the presence of huge quantities of labour hormones. According to nature’s design, the hormones first serve the mother and then thoroughly infuse the baby, triggering a sequence of specific instincts. The undisturbed labour continues to affect the mother/baby dyad long after the birth, as the level of hormones achieved dictates how many neurological pathways light up in both the infant and mother’s brains. The birth can be like a series of ‘on’ switches that pave the transition into parenthood, enabling instincts and programming for mothers and babies alike.
I suspect we’re much more like the turtles than we think. We know birth is equally safe for low risk women at home as in a hospital, but the existing studies may be operating from too far within the medical model to note its far-reaching and possibly insidious effects. Even at a home birth, the very acts of measuring, monitoring and timing may be what undermine the process, not to mention the lurking threat of a hospital transfer if the birth doesn’t track as absolutely average. These minimally invasive measures of assessment might be enough to weaken or derail the hormonal cascade, thereby inviting the very problems and risks we so desperately seek to avoid.
Of course, it’s this very paradox that keeps us in our current trench. How we assess safety and danger with birth requires measuring, timing, and monitoring. The very idea of removing those basic evaluation tools is terrifying, and screams of irresponsibility. We don’t want to put mothers and babies at unnecessary risk. To research the effects of truly undisturbed birth, we would need to back off more than our sense of care and caution might ever allow.
At this point, we simply don’t have proof that our high-tech approach to birth is or isn’t causing harm, since we have no large-scale contrary examples. We’ve lost touch entirely with what a non-medical model of birth would even resemble. If we use the turtles as a guide, it’s possible that some day we may discover there are benefits to letting birth unfold along its age-old script, undisturbed, maybe even benefits that we don’t anticipate. It’s possible that this could make birth safer, easier, more pleasurable, and more successful that what we currently assume is normal for humans. It could answer the plaguing quandary of why human birth seems so much more complicated and painful than that of other animals. As with the turtle hatchlings, our role might be more guardian than guide, protecting the mother and baby’s safe space, with no delusions of improving it, or rescuing them from it.
Certainly, it was clear to all of us reverently watching the turtle lay her eggs, that one single act of measurement would be too many. Even standing too close would propel the turtle askew, out of her perfect trance. The approach of a thermometer or foetal doppler, or even a reference to the clock, not to mention an invasive vaginal exam, would knock her process off course irreparably. But luckily we knew better. We understood that her safety and that of her babies was at stake. So we gave her space. We respected the sanctity of her task. We did nothing that might break her spell.
When our small group of assembled strangers finally parted ways that night, we all felt changed, like we had been through something transformative. Even though we were a diverse group, representing a range of ages, nationalities, and travelling profiles, we all felt the power of the shared experience. We exchanged long looks, nods, squeezed hands. There were eyes with tears, and grateful smiles. Regardless of anyone’s interpretation of the events, we all came away with the sense that we had witnessed something special, spiritual, even sacred. And it left me to wonder if such things simply can’t be measured, if perhaps when it comes to safety, we’ve been approaching birth all wrong. If perhaps we could extend a similar sense of sanctity to the human birth trance.
Stephanie Ondrack has been with The Childbearing Society since 2003. She lives in East Van with her partner, 4 children, 5 cats, 3 chickens and the recent addition of 2 rats. You can read her thoughts on child development and learning at thesmallsteph.com
