Humor as Natural Medicine

by Kate Prendergast

© 2008 Midwifery Today, Inc. All rights reserved.

[Editor's note: This is an excerpt of an article which appears in Midwifery Today Issue 87, Autumn 2008. View other great articles and columns in the table of contents. To read the rest of this article, order your copy of Midwifery Today Issue 87.]
Photo provided by the author

“A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a downcast spirit dries up the bones.” —Proverbs 17:22

I wish I could think of a punch line for this joke: “A midwife, a doula and an obstetrician walk into a bar…” but, I don’t really need one since I’ve gotten plenty of laughs just with that opening. I’m a big fan of using humor. I find laughter useful in my roles as midwife’s assistant, midwifery student and doula.

Ladies and gentleman, without further ado, I bring you my article on comedy and birth. (Drum roll, please.)

I once attended a lecture by the late Norman Cousins, novelist and professor of medical humanities. He told jokes for two hours and informed the audience that only after the two hours of guffawing and giggling would we be able to remember what he had to teach: that laughter makes people feel good and that if our goal is to help people feel good, we should make our clients laugh.

Research at Loma Linda University by Bark and Tan shows that laughing lowers blood pressure, reduces stress hormones, increases muscle flexion and boosts immune function by raising levels of infection-fighting T-cells, disease-fighting proteins called Gamma-interferon and B-cells, which produce disease-destroying antibodies. Laughter also triggers the release of endorphins—the body’s natural painkillers—and produces a general sense of well-being.

At the 2008 Midwifery Today conference in Philadelphia I informally surveyed presenters and attendees for either their favorite joke to tell at a birth or the funniest thing that ever happened at a birth. Ina May Gaskin said she likes poop jokes and Gail Hart likes singing camp songs. Robbie Davis-Floyd told about a friend acting as a doula who became so entranced with the laboring mom that she forgot to breathe and fainted on top of the gal she was there to help. Robbie also told us to look in the index of William’s Obstetrics, Volume 16, under “chauvinism, male.” It will direct you to pages 1–1001.

I collected a whole slew of stories from participants that begin with “Did you hear the one about the doula/midwife who…” and “Did you hear about the placenta that…”

Ina May recommends the following humor assessment story. “Did you ever notice that you can have a stomach pain and then fart, and you feel better? Imagine if people went to the emergency room to fart?”

Kate Prendergast is a certified birth doula with Heart and Hands Midwifery School, a certified postpartum doula with DONA and a graduate of the four-year energy healing program Barbara Brennan School of Healing. She is currently working toward her CPM with the National College of Midwifery in Taos, New Mexico.

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