When you look up natural birth, one of the arguments you will hear in favor of natural birth is that birth is natural and we should all trust in birth. Those proponents will say that women's bodies are designed to give birth and it just requires trust in the process.

Now that your due date is approaching, are you questioning whether you can really trust birth?

Actually, it is not about trusting birth at all, but about trusting yourself. If it was only about trusting birth, then everyone would try natural birth before opting for interventions, but statistics show that this is not the trend, most women plan to have an epidural, and often even unnecessary inductions or c-sections are planned ahead of time.

Why is that? Not all women have trust in themselves.

If that is the case, how do you know if you can trust yourself? What does that even mean?

Today, it's not as intuitive as it may have been at one time. With modern diets and lifestyles, most people are not as attuned with their physical or emotional needs as their ancestors were. At one time, humans had no choice but to rely on nature, but now the world is full of processed, synthetic options, marketing messages, "scientific studies" that go against "scientific studies" (e.g. coffee is good for you today but bad for you tomorrow, but don't worry, those eggs you shouldn't be eating today, you can enjoy tomorrow!).

All of this information overload, combined with the process, synthetic foods and supplements are causing mixed messages in your body as you read this, so how can you be expected to trust your body?

First, you have to see past the noise and clutter of the day-to-day and find what is fundamentally important to your health, to your pregnancy, your birth and your life as a whole.

But how, you might be wondering?

It might sound overwhelming at first, but it's actually right below the surface of your day-to-day life, you just have to learn how to start recognizing it. Here's how to get started.

Think about the cycles that occur in your life everyday, every month, every year. We have 24 hours in a day, and different parts of those 24 hours express differently - the amount of light, the temperature, the activity in your surroundings, the sounds, and so on. It so happens that your body mimics these same patterns - you sleep when it's dark, and wake when it's light; your body's temperature fluctuates depending on the time of day, whether you are asleep or waking, whether you have eaten or are hungry.

How many of these signals do you notice in your day? You probably notice when you are tired or energized, hungry or satiated, but do you notice the signs in between, the transition between energized and tired? Or between satiated and hungry?

You have probably seen a sunrise and a sunset, these are the transitions between light and dark, day and night, your body also has these transitions and it is noticing these transitions that helps you build trust in your body. Learning to read the cues that are not obvious.

For example, if you don't react to your body's early hunger cues, this may result in delaying nutrients and energy to your body, and this can lead to that dreaded state of "hangry" or being so hungry that you are grumpy.

The other risk of not eating until you are beyond hungry is that you are less able to make good decisions and more likely to reach for something bad for you, something with too much sugar because your brain is trained to want the quick sugar fix.

If you are attuned with your body, you notice the cues early enough to feed your body right, to reach for the veggies and healthy fats and proteins before you need the quick sugar fix.

Now, to labor and birth and trust in the process. If you have been working on attuning to your body's cues, this will come more naturally to you when labor is near. You will sense the early cues your body is expressing that baby's due date is near.

In the days before technology, when even cervical checks were not the norm, a pregnant woman's friends and family, her midwives or doctors would watch for her cues that labor was near, they would see it in her behavior, her mannerisms, she would naturally change in response to her body's signals and everyone would prepare for the upcoming labor.

Today, you are at risk of the noise of day-to-day life distracting you from the early cues of labor, and between this noise and the number of interventions introduced into birth in the last 100 years, teaching and identifying the early cues has almost become a lost art, but it is not lost yet.

You can learn more about the cycles that influence birth in the free guide Three Sacred Cycles You Must Know for a More Confident and Intuitive Homebirth, grab your free copy by clicking here!

Now, go out there are start noticing the day beyond the noise and distraction!