Why the Negative Birth Story?
Posted by doularama | Filed under Birth Stories
I think most of the people scanning the pages of Midwifery Today understand the potential of the positive birth story—how empowering it is to know from someone else’s experience how beautiful birth can be, the trial and triumph. It is also important, however, to understand the power of the negative birth story and why it is told.
Perhaps many of the women who share stories of woe need validation or closure. It could be that they are still trying to understand what actually happened during their births. It is also possible that they are all about the spectacle. In a culture that doesn’t value women and their powerful role as mothers, a good sob story can be a source of pride.
I sadly admit that I told my negative birth story, too. I tearfully offer my public apology to the dark-haired woman at the Hale and Hearty soup shop. Honestly, I think I was jealous. I think I needed to convince myself that I hadn’t missed out. I regretted it almost immediately but it was too late. She, with her big belly, sat next to the table I shared with my baby girl and told me that she was having a homebirth.
“I wanted a homebirth,” I said, “but my husband and my mother weren’t comfortable with it. It’s good thing, too, because I think I would have died if I had been at home. I hemorrhaged right after she was born and again the next day.”
The words flowed effortlessly. At the time, I believed everything I had said, but why did I need to say it? Before the woman started eating, she put her hands together and prayed. I can guess what she was likely praying for. After, she gazed dreamily out the window while she ate. I hope she tells a beautiful birth story, and maybe includes a bit about the horrible woman she met one day at lunch.
For a long time after my daughter was born, I mourned the loss of the birth I had envisioned. There were so many things I didn’t know when I was pregnant, and only discovered after giving birth. That is why I became a doula, to help give other women in our society the chance to know.
Last year, I was saddened to receive an e-mail from a client who, at 39 weeks, perfectly comfortable in her strong, robustly pregnant, yet delicate, petite body, wrote:
Lately I have been bombarded by women who want to share with me all their negative stories, how much pain I will feel, how I will want to give up, how I don’t know what pain is until I try to labor without an epidural. All of it really disturbs me. Why would they want to transmit such images into my mind right before I birth? It seems like they think they are being helpful. Yesterday I was meditating and thought of all the thousands of women who’ve been passed these images of pain and who pass them on to others in kind. I felt so sorry that it goes like that for most of us. I want to see this as having potential to be anything, and like that woman in the video you showed us, view it like a celebration.
I apologize on behalf of this culture for the way pregnant women are being treated. I don’t know why so many women choose to share such stories. Maybe they feel a need to justify for themselves why they chose to labor as they did. Do not doubt your decisions or your body. For all the women who can tell you their horror stories, so many more have tales of victory and empowerment.
That particular client’s birth turned out to be one of the most beautiful I have ever experienced. It seems to me that, as much as we need to help spread the good birth stories, we also need to listen to the bad ones with a helping spirit. Maybe we can listen with compassion and offer to explain why so many of these births are typical, but far from normal. Mostly, though, we need to continue to help make the positive birth story the only one there is to tell.
This is a preprint of Why the Negative Birth Story?, an article published in Midwifery Today Issue #99, p. 19 Copyright © 2011 Midwifery Today, Inc. http://www.midwiferytoday.com/
Tags: Birth Story, Homebirth
The Birth You Need
Posted by doularama | Filed under Recommendations
When I was new to my doula practice, I made up some marketing materials that said, “Helping you have the birth you want.” I even ended some e-mails by sending people best wishes for the birth they want. I was trying to convey that, my agenda as a doula is not to inflict my beliefs on clients’ births.
I still feel this way. I try to give people the knowledge they need to make informed decisions without my biases. I’ve supported families in a variety of settings and scenarios that I would not choose myself. I’ve attended many births that were far from my ideal happily, knowing that the women had their own choices to make.
I’d like to think that I even still wish a little that people get to have the birth they want, especially my clients. It would be great if, after their births, everyone said, “Thanks, doula, that’s just what I wanted.” It might be great on some level, but what I really wish for people is that they have the birth that they need. Unfortunately, we don’t usually know what that might look like until afterwards, sometimes for a long time.
After all, I wouldn’t even be a doula if I had gotten the birth I had wanted. I got a very different birth, the one I needed to bring me to this beautiful place in my life. Every decision I made during those three days of birthing brought me further away from what I wanted and closer to what I needed. In the weeks that followed I had to release my misguided ideals and face the realities of the birthing world, eventually finding that I had a place in it.
Many women wish for fast labors. I’ve seen a couple of fast labors that left the women needing to catch up emotionally. These women often wish things had gone more slowly and need much more time to process. I wouldn’t wish a fast labor on anyone, even if it means overtime for me.
Some women have the coveted “easy” labors. They often overwork their bodies in the postpartum period and pass blood clots or faint in the middle of the street. Worse though, they aren’t connected with their power as women. It’s easy to feel that you can do anything after experiencing the amazing things your body can do in labor.
As a doula, I too have attended births that were, not so much what I wanted, but what I needed. I’ve learned things from every birth, some more than others, and I always need that, to learn and to grow.
It is an honor to be with families as they go through their journeys and grow. It isn’t always easy and it often involves some unexpected things, but it is truly a gift of life in more ways than one.
Tags: childbirth, doula, labor
