Trinida­di­an-born Laila Sul­tan-Khan Valere has been a promi­nent coun­selling psy­chol­o­gist, diplo­mat, con­fer­ence leader and ed­u­ca­tor. Be­ing a moth­er, how­ev­er, has af­ford­ed her her most prized lega­cy. When she be­came preg­nant at 45, af­ter hav­ing ex­pe­ri­enced menopause, she set out to prove a be­lief she had al­ways held–that child­birth is a beau­ti­ful, di­vine gift which is meant to be nat­ur­al and pain­less. She seeks to pass on her rev­e­la­tions to oth­er women in her re­cent book, The Birthing God­dess–Re­claim­ing the Lega­cy of Nat­ur­al, Pain-free Child­birth.

"I’m 83 and very proud of it. I'm al­so proud of this book. While I'm here I must have some­thing to con­tribute. God has me here be­cause He wants me to con­tribute. I want to pass this on to oth­er women. If I could do it, oth­er women can do it," she told Guardian Me­dia from her Flori­da home.

Thir­ty-sev­en years ago, Valere and her hus­band, Mike, sat blankly in a doc­tor’s of­fice in Flori­da. They were shell-shocked af­ter be­ing told that Valere, 45 and al­ready in­to ear­ly menopause, was two-and-a-half-months preg­nant.

Her first three chil­dren–Mar­cus, Emile and An­gelique–were al­ready in their ear­ly teens, so con­ceiv­ing 13 years af­ter her youngest child while com­plet­ing her Mas­ter’s de­gree was fur­thest from her mind.

For years, she had longed for a sec­ond daugh­ter–a fourth child, but had giv­en up try­ing af­ter hav­ing suf­fered a mis­car­riage. She had fo­cused her en­er­gy on nur­tur­ing her first three chil­dren and on pur­su­ing her Mas­ters in Psy­chol­o­gy at No­va South­east­ern Uni­ver­si­ty in Fort Laud­erdale, Flori­da. She had even com­plet­ed a few cours­es to­wards her doc­tor­ate.

Faced with the prospect of a "mir­a­cle" preg­nan­cy, how­ev­er, Valere de­cid­ed to sac­ri­fice her aca­d­e­m­ic dream of com­plet­ing her PhD to have her daugh­ter.

Ini­tial­ly, her de­ci­sion to have the high-risk preg­nan­cy caused ten­sion in her mar­riage. Still, Valere was adamant that the preg­nan­cy was a chance to "get it right," to ex­pe­ri­ence the birthing process in the wor­ry-free, pain­less way God in­tend­ed.

"I had al­ways felt it should be pain-free. I had al­ways felt that if God made us as women and graced us with the abil­i­ty to con­ceive and co-cre­ate, then birthing had to be a nat­ur­al beau­ti­ful, nor­mal, healthy func­tion," she re­vealed.

She had her first three chil­dren at nurs­ing homes in Trinidad. De­spite hav­ing at­tend­ed child­birth ed­u­ca­tion class­es, those birthing ex­pe­ri­ences had been quite ag­o­nis­ing; with her first labour at age 26 hav­ing last­ed at least 12 hours.

"It wears you out. I'm sure many women won­der whether God in­tend­ed us to have all that pain," she said.

Her fourth time around, "tak­ing things one day at a time" be­came the mantra of the once-again ex­pec­tant moth­er. She found her­self of­ten singing the old gospel song and de­vel­oped a heavy re­liance on God for di­rec­tion. Grad­u­al­ly, Valere built her con­fi­dence and em­barked on a phys­i­cal, men­tal, emo­tion­al and spir­i­tu­al jour­ney which in­volved in­tense re­search, a dis­ci­plined regime of phys­i­cal and men­tal ex­er­cis­es, good nu­tri­tion and prayer. As her preg­nan­cy pro­gressed, she deep­ened her re­la­tion­ship with God, cul­ti­vat­ing great men­tal strength, de­ter­mi­na­tion and willpow­er.

Cap­i­tal­is­ing on the re­sources at her uni­ver­si­ty, she read books by fa­mous ob­ste­tri­cian, Dr Grant­ly Dick-Read, who felt that women en­coun­tered pain dur­ing labour be­cause of fear and lack of phys­i­cal and men­tal prepa­ra­tion. She al­so read books by al­ter­na­tive med­i­cine ad­vo­cate Deep­ak Chopra, among oth­ers. Us­ing hyp­nother­a­py (guid­ed re­lax­ation and in­tense con­cen­tra­tion to re­solve is­sues like anx­i­ety and stress) and med­i­ta­tion, Valere trained her birthing mus­cles and fo­cused her mind to re­place fears with pos­i­tive emo­tions so she could feel God’s pres­ence dur­ing the birth.

Once they learnt through an am­nio­cen­te­sis test (us­es am­ni­ot­ic flu­id from the sac around the foe­tus to test for ab­nor­mal­i­ties like Down syn­drome) that the ba­by was nor­mal, her hus­band sup­port­ed the preg­nan­cy.

When you flow with God it works out

Valere felt that her self-train­ing worked as her fourth child, Athena, came safe­ly and pain­less­ly.

"I thank God so much. Oh my Gosh! It was the most beau­ti­ful, nat­ur­al birthing ex­pe­ri­ence. It was beau­ti­ful! I was in con­trol; not the doc­tor, not the nurse."

She said she had to in­sist on giv­ing birth nat­u­ral­ly, with no epidur­al. When it was time to de­liv­er her ba­by, she, her hus­band and a nurse were present in the room. She kept her fo­cus on her men­tal and breath­ing ex­er­cis­es and when the nurse was ready to call the doc­tor, Valere asked her to de­lay do­ing so.

She end­ed up push­ing out the ba­by amidst men­tal and soft ver­bal urg­ings to the un­born child to calm­ly fol­low the birth canal and come out in­to the world. The en­tire process from the start of the con­trac­tions last­ed about six hours, she re­called.

"The nurse was on­ly there to guide me and catch her (the ba­by)," Valere laughed.

"I was aware of what was hap­pen­ing and I felt like it was an Olympic win; like I had won a gold medal. I was able to val­i­date what I be­lieved in; the truth about nat­ur­al birthing. I re­alised the rea­son that I had had so much pain be­fore was be­cause I was pro­grammed to be­lieve that birthing was painful.

"It makes you re­alise that if you are in the flow with God en­er­gy, every­thing works out. You have no fears."

Valere, who be­came a psy­chol­o­gist be­cause she saw a need to help oth­ers deal with their emo­tions with­out harm­ing them­selves or oth­ers, said it was nor­mal for women to ex­pe­ri­ence feel­ings of joy, fear, anx­i­ety and con­cern about whether they can take care of a ba­by’s needs at dif­fer­ent times dur­ing their preg­nan­cy.

Most women suf­fer a dif­fi­cult or painful labour, though, be­cause that is what they are taught to ex­pect. It be­comes a "self-ful­fill­ing proph­esy," ac­cord­ing to the men­tal health ex­pert.

Through her book, Valere aims to quash the be­lief that in or­der to give birth, a woman must feel pain and dis­tress which some­times trau­ma­tis­es the ba­by as it trav­els through the birth canal. She draws on her wide-rang­ing ex­pe­ri­ences and ob­ser­va­tions over her mul­ti­ple pro­fes­sions and lays out meth­ods like quan­tum touch breath­ing (to help en­er­gy fol­low thoughts), pro­gres­sive re­lax­ation and imag­ing and cre­ative vi­su­al­i­sa­tion (to boost men­tal pow­ers, dis­ci­pline and con­fi­dence) in sim­ple steps while re­count­ing her fi­nal preg­nan­cy.

While her teach­ings are pri­mar­i­ly geared to­wards women, she said that men too can train their minds and spir­its to ben­e­fit if they ap­ply her con­cepts.

De­scrib­ing the un­con­scious mind as the "en­gine room," Valere ex­plained that the in­ten­tions one wish­es to ful­fil must be first ad­dressed in the sub­con­scious be­fore they can ma­te­ri­alise in the con­scious mind. She added, "As long as women have no un­der­ly­ing med­ical is­sues it can work for them. A lot of women have births that are pain-free and with­out fear. Some are in the rice fields and they are squat­ting all the time. Their birthing mus­cles are strength­ened and they go through life with­out the fear­ful­ness that we in the West­ern world build up."

Valere point­ed out that there were nu­mer­ous oth­er ma­te­r­i­al on hyp­no­birthing, the new trend in labour and child­birth, as it pro­motes pain man­age­ment. She, how­ev­er, felt that her ap­proach was more holis­tic and gave a de­tailed fe­male per­spec­tive.

The sec­ond of six chil­dren, Valere grew up in San Fer­nan­do and cred­its her par­ents, Am­ral and Zan­i­moon Sul­tan-Khan for fos­ter­ing her love for com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice and her de­sire to en­ter psy­chol­o­gy. She and her fam­i­ly orig­i­nal­ly mi­grat­ed to Flori­da around 1983 and re­turned to T&T af­ter hav­ing Athena and be­gan an il­lus­tri­ous ca­reer in psy­chol­o­gy and as a diplo­mat. A found­ing mem­ber and first ever pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go As­so­ci­a­tion of Psy­chol­o­gists (TTAP), Valere lob­bied tire­less­ly for the es­tab­lish­ment of a Na­tion­al Psy­cho­log­i­cal Trau­ma Cen­tre and still hopes one will ma­te­ri­alise. At present she lives with her hus­band and close to her chil­dren and grand­chil­dren in Flori­da where she works as a vol­un­teer, teach­ing Eng­lish as a sec­ond lan­guage.

Athena now holds a PhD in Con­flict Res­o­lu­tion and Peace Ne­go­ti­a­tion. She has ful­filled Valere’s own long lost dream of earn­ing a doc­tor­ate. She al­ways laughs as she is teased by oth­ers as the ba­by with whom Valere "got it right," her moth­er said.

BOX please

Psy­chol­o­gist and for­mer top diplo­mat, Laila Sul­tan-Khan Valere in­sists that women were or­dained to have a pos­i­tive, pleas­ant, pain-free ex­pe­ri­ence while giv­ing birth. She delves deep­er in­to her be­lief in an in­ter­view with GILLIAN CAL­ISTE.

Mrs Sul­tan-Khan Valere was the first Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go As­so­ci­a­tion of Psy­chol­o­gists (TTAP) and served as High Com­mis­sion­er to Bar­ba­dos (1987-1990) and lat­er to Cana­da (1990-1992). She was recog­nised by the Cana­da Diplo­mat Mag­a­zine as be­ing one of their top ten diplo­mats while she served there.

What qual­i­ties do you be­lieve pro­pelled you to be­come one of T&T’s most promi­nent psy­chol­o­gists and lat­er, diplo­mat?

I was for­tu­nate to have been brought up by par­ents who were very com­mu­ni­ty-ori­ent­ed. They were very in­volved in com­mu­ni­ty life in San Fer­nan­do; in giv­ing and shar­ing. Vol­un­teerism was a part of life in our fam­i­ly. My par­ents al­ways en­cour­aged us to share what we have. If ever there was a saint, I think my moth­er was it. She taught me to for­give and to love peo­ple.

Be­ing a diplo­mat was an­oth­er chal­lenge, but an ex­cit­ing one be­cause it had to do with build­ing re­la­tion­ships, and be­ing a psy­chol­o­gist, I knew how to be sen­si­tive and em­pa­thet­ic. With my train­ing in Neu­ro-Lin­guis­tic Pro­gram­ming (NLP) which teach­es how to un­der­stand peo­ple and their be­hav­iour, I was able to be sen­si­tive and know how to ne­go­ti­ate for a win-win out­come.

In your book, The Birthing God­dess–Re­claim­ing the Lega­cy of Nat­ur­al Pain-free Child­birth, you de­scribe hav­ing pain-free labour as women re­claim­ing their di­vine lega­cy. Can you elab­o­rate on this?

We as women have been giv­en spe­cial pow­ers and abil­i­ties and one of them is to co-cre­ate life. We do it as a co-cre­ator; to­geth­er with our God. Our Di­vine Cre­ator has giv­en us that pow­er. We are god­dess­es– spir­i­tu­al be­ings in a phys­i­cal body–and we were meant to ex­pe­ri­ence child­birth as beau­ti­ful and pos­i­tive.

In the West­ern world, women are trained to have ba­bies in the hor­i­zon­tal po­si­tion, where­as in African so­ci­eties, for in­stance, they use a ver­ti­cal method. Which do you pre­fer?

That (hor­i­zon­tal birthing po­si­tion) is ter­ri­ble. For whose con­ve­nience? It was nev­er for my con­ve­nience…for the birthing woman’s con­ve­nience. And I asked that ques­tion: why should my legs be in stir­rups? I have been to sev­er­al nat­ur­al birthing cen­tres (in the US) to pro­mote my book and I am very en­cour­aged by how well it has been re­ceived. They en­cour­age women to do the wa­ter birth or the ver­ti­cal po­si­tion.

Hav­ing come from a spir­i­tu­al back­ground, how do you rec­on­cile Chris­t­ian teach­ings of the Bible that women are meant to have painful child­birth as a re­sult of Eve’s sin with your be­lief that women are meant to have pain­less child­birth?

Dr Grant­ley Dick-Reid, the renowned ob­ste­tri­cian in his book, Child­birth With­out Fear, pro­duces com­pelling proof of in­ac­cu­rate trans­la­tions of the He­brew words "it­stsabon" and "et­zev" ini­tial­ly used to de­scribe child­birth. These words that meant ‘toil’ and ‘hard work’ were trans­lat­ed as "pain" in the Au­tho­rised Ver­sion of the Bible. That ef­fec­tive­ly put the stamp on child­birth as a painful tribu­la­tion that women must en­dure. Yes, we do hard work to give birth to a ba­by, but that def­i­nite­ly does not mean it should be painful.

Re­gard­ing your NLP tech­nique of hyp­nother­a­py where you use guid­ed hyp­no­sis to treat anx­i­ety and oth­er is­sues, what would you say to skep­tics?

Hyp­no­sis is a nat­ur­al phe­nom­e­non. We all are hyp­no­tised at some time and we don’t re­alise what hyp­no­tis­es us. We’re look­ing at a movie or lis­ten­ing to mu­sic and we go in­to a dif­fer­ent con­scious state. We move eas­i­ly from the Be­ta (wak­ing con­scious­ness) to the Al­pha (deep re­laxed state). We all do it to our­selves very of­ten, so it’s not ab­nor­mal. What I would say is that it works very ef­fec­tive­ly and it is a com­fort­able ex­pe­ri­ence.

What about pos­i­tive at­ti­tudes or habits with re­spect to child­birth that we in the Caribbean prac­tise? What are some of our good habits as you see them?

Long ago the mid­wives used to de­liv­er the ba­bies. We ac­cept­ed mid­wives and what we have now called doulas; peo­ple who help you through the process. I think that was a good thing that we re­lied more on mid­wives and home births rather than looked up­on the sit­u­a­tion as a med­ical one where you need to be hos­pi­talised. There was less bur­den on the health sys­tem.

I know there is an or­gan­i­sa­tion in Trinidad that does nat­ur­al births now and I am hap­py about that.