How birth changed my life…again

This is part 2 of 3 of my doula journey - if you missed part 1, check it out here!

After I had been a postpartum doula for almost 8 years, I took birth doula training. My goal was only to learn more about birth and what parents needed to know from the non-medical side - I had no plans to actually be a birth doula! That course changed my life and completely reshaped how I practiced. It finally clicked how much there was that was new parents didn’t know. Many of us were taught about birth only through what we saw on TV or stories from friends that often highlighted the scariest and worst case scenarios! That course lit a fire in me to share my knowledge, making me not only a better teacher for my postpartum clients, but to teach and work with my families while they were still preparing to welcome their little loves.

In 2016, days after relocating to California from Virginia, I started my internship with South Coast Midwifery. The midwives I worked with taught me so much about physiological birth - listening to your body and following your instincts and reflexes. No more “flat on your back” or “pushing until the count of 10” - I learned just how important it is for the person giving birth to listen to their body, not relying on just the person who was waiting to catch their baby. I saw parents being the first ones to touch their baby, pulling them close instead of being whisked off to a warming bed. Most importantly, I was honored to witness the absolute joy of this new family. All of the blood, sweat, and tears giving way to exclamations of “look at their toes!” and “they opened their eyes!”.

As beautiful as my midwifery experiences were, when I began attending hospital births, I was in for a whole new world of learning. I quickly realized just how much more advocating my clients had to do in this big system. There are many challenges to the scale of hospitals and the systemic issues that need to be addressed within them. I began to realize that teaching my clients about birth was only the beginning - I also had to teach them to advocate for themselves and birth how they wanted to - not how it was most convenient for the system.

For the final stage of my doula journey, please check out part 3 here.