“The ins and outs of labour – Why the outward physical journey is just as important as the inward emotional journey when it comes to mapping your birth story.” By Melbourne doula and birth photographer, Angela Gallo.
In the last few years I have been privy to some deep conversations with a wide array of perinatal professionals. I have read more inspiring (and educational!) birth books than I can count and joined groups where I have been able to tap into the knowledge of 1000 of the best doulas & midwives I have ever come across. My journey has only just begun and I am particularly grateful because they cumulatively continue to gift me with fresh perspective and a ton of relevant information or resources that I can then take back to my own business.
And seeing as I am in the business of being the best doula I can possibly be, I take my learning experiences very seriously. Especially the kind that come directly from working with different kinds of people from different walks of life, from all corners of this globe.
I have got to be honest though.
Sometimes what I see and feel first hand conflicts with the information I am given by the most brilliant birth educators on this planet.
Sometimes I walk away from my reading material thinking, ‘This is all good in theory but…’
More recently I had a conversation with a midwife I am obsessed with, Alison Bastien. Super intelligent and insightful, she has had (and continues to have) a long and meaningful career supporting women in birth. I read one of her works and we got to talking about birth workers in general, and how she feared that although many birth support people have the right intentions, they also had the potential to completely derail women from the major milestones of their inward journey. (The inward journey being the emotional, spiritual and physical landmarks that a pregnant or labouring woman makes as she journeys into motherhood.)
She discusses how in modern birth culture, we don’t put nearly as much emphasis on the inward journey, even though ‘the new territory a new being must navigate to come into the world is you, via your body‘. And gosh, it makes sense. Especially considering how disconnected many women are from their own bodies & souls as they navigate their birth journey exclusively using outer journey landmarks (like what pram to buy, what nappies to use, epidurals or inductions, water birth, vaginal or Cesarean).
I get it, I do. But here is the problem, the same problem I find in about every single ‘This is all good in theory…’ advice I have ever come across in the birth world (No matter how good it is!).
You can do ALL the soul searching you want…
You can do all the best yoga, practice all the best meditation and mindfulness…
You can nail the best coping techniques…
You can take all of the best childbirth education classes…
You can connect to your body, harness all the powers of every single birthing goddess who came before you and tune into that amazing instinct…
You can be the best & most positive version of yourself...
But if you are choosing a care model or care provider who’s values are not aligned with yours; if you aren’t asking questions; if you aren’t able to confidently communicate your desires or needs; if you aren’t prepared to negotiate the best care for you and your baby; if you aren’t in the loop with your hospital’s protocols, policies and statistics; if you don’t understand the procedures; if you aren’t aware of the risks & benefits of every single level of induction, intervention & form of pain relief; and if you don’t understand that ultimately the people on staff, the day that you birth, their personalities, their beliefs, their baggage, will undoubtedly affect YOUR experience, you are setting yourself up to be disappointed, mama.
This is not about being paranoid, being cynical or being a diva – it is about knowing that the inward & outward journey, the emotional and the physical journey, are just as important as the other. And that planning around the physical milestones is a crucial part of the process because failure to do so can truly derail you in some dramatic ways. I believe preparing accordingly pays off big time in creating a birth experience that feels most fulfilling to YOU.
Every single woman and every single family will be living and entirely different set of emotions and circumstances – that I am aware. For some the inward journey will prove more important, while more others the outward does. Ultimately, for anyone it is about the balance of both worlds. I see it over and over again – women with the best intentions, preparing for all of the inward stuff like nourishing your body & soul, only to become a victim of the system they did not take time to understand.
We need to be telling women the truth. An understanding that attaining the birth you want is hard work, and that modern birth culture demands that all milestones of both the inward and outward birth journey be proactively addressed.
This post originally appeared on Angela Gallo's site. For more from Angela, you can follow her on Facebook and Instagram.
Top Comments
I think i'm very old-school because I tend to think that so long as you and your baby are born safe and healthily, then that's all you need....
I think that because we're in a first world country and we have just about the best statistics when it comes to the safe delivery of mother and baby that it's not unfair to want to move past that and have a birth that leaves you with a feeling of being strong and empowered and not, 'Whew, that could have gone a lot worse!'
I'd say that an equal analogy might be that people who have to scrape and scrounge for food and water don't give a toss about whether or not their bowls are made out of porcelain or plastic. But once they do have adequate food and water, then perhaps their circle of things that would make them happy widens a little. Perhaps they would like some nicer bowls and glasses to eat and drink out of.
Having a baby and mother be safe and healthy after a delivery has in the past (and still now) given a hell of a lot of leeway for really awful things to happen. Okay, so your baby was born healthy and you are feeling tired and sore, but are equally healthy. Doesn't mean that you should have had to put up with bullying, scare tactics and outright lies from people who have taken care of you, does it? My younger sister was born healthy, and my Mum was healthy after her birth. But that doesn't excuse the doctor who came in and yelled, 'She's not even close to delivering!' at the midwives and then swiping an entire tray of sterile instruments across the room and scaring the hell out of everyone and making my mother buest into tears.
The 'safe and healthy' line is one that is trotted out to women and can completely and totally invalidate every single negative feeling they might have had during their birth. 'So what if you had an unnecessary internal exam, without your consent [which if I may say so constitutes digital rape]? Your baby is healthy, that's all that matters.' Well, no it doesn't.
Safe and healthy is the absolute bare minimum in a first world country. We can, and should be doing a hell of a lot better than that.
Hear hear! I work in healthcare and the arrogance that runs through my industry (fuelled by a lack of competition, the source of all poor customer service) is shocking. "But you and bubb are healthy!" is rolled out as an excuse for terrible customer service and patient experiences. Medicine should be about continuous improvement - who knows, maybe we could do slightly better than "well, we didn't kill you or your baby - be grateful wench!'
I agree - I think it's because I've spent so much time in least-developed countries. I've developed a "it could be worse!" attitude to a lot of things. Rudeness and being a crap professional have no role in maternal health and could certainly ruin the experience for most people, let alone vulnerable women.
Wow, I couldn't agree more with this article, especially about whether or not your values are in accordance with that of your care provider. I also think that women should know, or at least be given access, to the hospital's protocols and procedures. I've seen heaps and heaps of women who are really keen on labouring in water, only to be told that they're not allowed to do that when they're having an induction. One hospital I worked at went one worse than that: even though their protocols said that women whose waters had broken were allowed to labour in a bath, there wasn't a single doctor who would actually agree to that. So even though our 'rule book' said it was fine, if the doctor didn't like that rule they could just overule it, and that was that.
All one of the many, many reasons that I suggest that women take external antenatal classes. Hospitals tell you what they want you to know, they're not going to tell you anything that they don't!
For example, if I ever had to have an induction, I know which hospital I'd be going to. That hospital gets you going very slowly (at a rate of 6mls of synthetic oxytocin per hour going through your IV to produce contractions, and this doubles every hour), and it's only once labour is established do you have to have continuous monitoring. They also have telemetry, which is monitoring without being physically attached to a CTG with wires. This is opposed to another hospital that requires continuous monitoring from the very get go, with wires, and gives you 30mls per hour that is doubled every hour through your IV. Now, of those two rates of hormone being pumped into you to produce contractions, which of the two do you think might result in the mother immediately having contractions that are so strong that she feels like she's been hit by a freight truck? Hint: it's not the first one. And guess which hospital has a way higher rate of women wanting epidurals, and higher rates of caesareans due to foetal distress? You guessed it - the second one.
But women aren't told those protocols and procedures, not unless they specifically ask, and why would a woman know to ask what the rate of syntocinon going into the IV is going to be?
It's this sort of passive hiding of information that makes it almost impossible for women to know what they're getting into, and then to feel so powerless once they discover that it's a heck of a lot more than they'd bargained or wished for.