This page is a bit of a hodge podge in content. You can:
Check out Letters I've written on various topics to advertisers and broadcasters.
My Belief Statements
I believe that:
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| There are No Rules In Birth | |
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A Bit About Me
So that you may understand where I'm coming from, I'll start with telling you a little about myself.
I'm 23 years old (at the time of this writing), not married, I have no children and therefore have never breastfed.
You may ask what right I have to say anything on the subject at all at this point in my life. I have heard people complain about nurses, lactation consultants or breastfeeding counselors who told them what to do or how to do it "when they had no experience of their own". I feel this is a very valid point. How can I give someone advice on something I've never experienced for myself?
It is my intent to have children naturally and probably unassisted, and once I have them it is my intent to breastfeed them for as long as they need and want. However, I know that at this time I am not ready either situationally or financially to have children of my own.
I've taken courses through Douglas College and will likely continue to do so. Those I've taken have been excellent and informative and, for the most part, presented from the point of view that birth is a normal part of life.
I have also read (and I can say this meaningfully) a GARGANTUAN number of books on birth and labour (check out my Book Lists). In the end though, all courses or books give you is knowledge, not wisdom, and certainly not experience.
I think the main thing I have to offer anyone as a doula is my energy and my empathy.
Energy is one of those things that's hard to quantify... I know for myself that there are some people who I would love to have around me at my own birth, and some who, although I love them, I wouldn't want to have. Some people inspire argumentative feelings. Some people have a very brusque energy that doesn't allow for experimentation or relaxation, both things I know I would need while in labour. Personally, I feel I would choose to give birth unassisted. But I know that not everyone is quite ready or willing to consider that.
I've been told that I have a very "mothering" and "gentle" energy. I hope very much that this is true. If it is true, then this is what I want to give to labouring and new mothers.
A Few Thoughts on Birth Experience
(or "You Won't Get What You Don't Order")
It's become quite common for people in the childbirth educator business to tell women that yes, they should have a few birth requests on paper, that yes, they should think about the sort of things they're willing and unwilling to accept in their birth experience, but that no, they shouldn't want anything too strongly, because if it doesn't work out, they'll end up being disappointed.
In my opinion, this is a bit disappointing in itself, even if it's said with the most good of intentions. Of course it's horrible to be disappointed, but it seems to me (in my brief experience as a birth doula) that people are setting themselves up for disappointment by not allowing themselves to really want the good experiences they deserve.
If you are choosing to give birth in a hospital setting, in many ways it is in the best interests of hospital staff that you not have too many strong wants that might conflict with their standard operating procedure. If you wanted something very strongly that was outside of their operating procedure, they might actually have to go out of their way to provide it.
This would be an inconvenience.
I don't mean to suggest that some nurses and doctors would not go out of their way to provide you with the birth experience that you want, but hospital births are really a game of roulette in many ways. Spin the wheel when you go in, this decides your fate. Who's the next nurse on rotation who will be assigned to you? Is she pro-natural birth? Is she patient or impatient? Friendly or unfriendly? Is she having a good day or a crummy one? Will you get the labour room with the tub or the one with only a shower? Will you get the room with the nice view, or will you get the room with the view (in and out) of the men retarring the roof with the accompanying smell (how pleasant while labouring). I have been in a labour/delivery room with broken blinds and workmen tarring the roof right outside the window.
The game of roulette continues throughout your hospital stay. If you deliver before the woman in room 2A you will get the private room... if she delivers first, she will (the competitive birthing model). Will your postpartum nurse be supportive of your breastfeeding, or will she consider it, as I heard one postpartum nurse call it, "More trouble than it's worth". Will you end up being in the hospital on the day that one student nurse is finishing her rotation in postpartum and is informed she needs experience in performing a gastric lavage (washing out the stomach) on a newborn infant before she goes? NOT, I hasten to add because the baby needs one (this would be extraordinarily rare, if not completely non-existant), but because the nurse needs the practice, and therefore the family will have to be convinced that it is necessary so that she will get to do it.
I could go on and on... but it depresses me, so I won't.
The ONLY defence against any of this, if you choose to give birth in the hospital, is to know what you want. To want what you want. To make conscious, educated choices before you go in there about the things you are willing to accept and the lines that cannot be crossed.
This is one of the ways in which a doula can be of assistance to you in a hospital birth setting. Because labour is not always the best time for standing by your guns, if I know what you want, and where your lines are drawn, I can answer all the idiotic routine questions that nurses feel are best asked in the middle of transition. And I can do it politely at first, so as not to engender any bad feelings on your behalf, then more firmly if need be. And if your wants change, you can tell me, and I can listen to you with the knowledge of where you're coming from (which a nurse won't have).
In fact, without your knowing what you want out of a birth experience, a doula is not able to help you get it.
Of course, I'm also of the opinion that hospitals are not the places for women to be giving birth anyway (yes, that includes pretty much all of you that have been classified as "high risk"). Hospitals cause almost all the problems which they then take credit for solving. There are a lot of studies which show this to be true. There are also a lot of studies that show homebirth to be at least as safe as hospital birth, and several studies show it to be safer.
If you want to learn more about home birth there are a ton of great webpages out there on the world wide web, and also a ton of good books (check the libraries). I've got quite a few that you can check out at my Links Page or my Book Lists.
Just don't be afraid to know what you want. Will you get it? Maybe. But you'll never get what you want if you don't know what you want. It's like going to a restaurant, wanting the steak, but saying "whatever's easiest" to the waiter. Will you get the steak? Possibly.
But not likely.
Activism
I was working nights, and catching a little late-night TV, when I saw an ad on A&E put out by the Propane Council. I had to reply, so I sent them this email. The ad is described therein.
