I am embracing my inner granny. With no literal grandbabies on the horizon this is figurative, but if health care professionals can refer to a 35-year-old first time pregnant person as an “elderly primipara”, then at 54 years old I am most certainly a granny doula.

I am a slow learner, it’s true. I needed twenty years to let go of the “helper” in me and embrace the “being”. I no longer believe that it is my job to make a good birth happen. I offer education, a prompt here and there, but mostly I offer the respect of watching my client have their own experience. I have been working with women trying to get pregnant, during pregnancy and postpartum all along, but I didn’t feel ready to be at births again until a couple of years ago.

I began attending births in 1991. I needed to go to a birth to become certified as an independent Bradley Method childbirth educator, and I was blessed with a dear friend who invited me to be present when she gave birth to her son. It was glorious: a vaginal breech birth with the midwife and obstetrician standing in the doorway while my mother/goddess friend did her thing. Her partner and I supported her, but she did it all, including standing on the delivery room table (narrow, metal, cold) with her head in the lights as she pushed her son into the world scrotum first. That was the first of many births I attended over six years.

A couple asked me a question last month that I had never been asked before: “Have you ever attended a birth where the mom took pain meds or had an epidural?” There was a long pause as I thought about it. I recalled the births: home births, hospital births, VBACs, with midwives, with OBs. None with medication. Then I said, with surprise in my voice, “No.” I told the couple I believe there is a place for medical interventions, including surgical procedures, epidurals and pain meds (hey, I had a C-Section), but they haven’t been used at any of the births I’ve attended so far.

One of the labors was traumatic. Not because of the birth itself, but because of how the mother was treated on admission to the hospital. The admitting nurse violated the mother’s privacy in a brutal way. The mother’s labor stalled and I finally left to let the couple regroup.  She couldn’t relax in front of me after what I had witnessed. I was still very young as a doula. I had no idea how to address the situation. Now I have skills to turn that moment around, get her back into her own knowing and personal dignity. I know how to help us laugh it off.

At hospital births I saw other things happening that confounded me: routine monitoring, IVs and episiotomies; badgering and bullying the laboring woman while she tried to figure out how to push; managed third stage featuring pulling on the cord and punching down the woman’s stomach like it was bread dough. Why do we continue to allow care providers to bribe us with their “caring” in return for our compliance? (That’s the phrase medical providers use: “patient compliance”. More sensitive providers inform, then monitor for patient “adherence” to the suggested course of treatment, while allowing for deviation through informed refusal.)

Where did we lose our knowing of our physiological competence? I had no sense of my body’s wisdom before my own first birth. I tried to reach women before childbirth with puberty classes for girls and their moms, and reproductive wellness classes for adult women. I realized that I needed to learn more about how the body deals with trauma and how we heal from traumatic experiences if I wanted to be fully present for pregnant and laboring women. I had processed my own experiences and found great healing in my second birth, but there was more work to be done so I could be present and neutral no matter what was happening. I apprenticed as an herbalist. I studied homeopathy. I took Reiki classes. I heeded the call to become an extremely well-trained craniosacral therapist.

What laboring couples need is a calm, encouraging, birth-knowing extra body in the room (a chill gofer who happens to know a lot about birthin’ babies just in case a helpful piece of info is required), and I’ve taken time to learn how to do that. I’ve let go of feeling it is my job to “do stuff” to be worthy of being present.
I’ve acquired a ton of knowledge and many wonderful bodywork and listening skills, but nothing matters more than being a witness to the glory of the working birthing process, as I was for my friend at that first birth I attended.

I know that, given enough time and space, birth almost always works without intervention. However, many couples aren’t given that time and/or space for lots of good and bad reasons. I don’t have to be invested in the outcome, I’m just here to love what is. Like a granny does.

Originally published in Allens Creek Living, August 2015

Prior to getting pregnant I had no need to interact with health care providers except for annual exams. More than 25 years ago, when I got the ecstatic news that my husband and I were going to have a baby, I was fortunate to be a relatively healthy person doing a very normal thing: growing and giving birth to a baby, but I was unprepared for the choices I needed to make about staying healthy and getting the best care possible during pregnancy.

According to Amy Haas, a Rochester-area independent childbirth educator for almost twenty years, "Pregnancy is a natural alternative state for a woman's body, but it does place stress on us.  So we have to work to stay healthy and low risk.  It is important to focus on what is in our control, such as diet, exercise, avoidance of harmful substances, and education."

Pregnancy and birth are not without their risks. Although deaths are rare, birth is still an event that carries us close to life and death consequences. Obstetric medical doctors and certified nurse midwives are trained to watch for risks and use interventions as needed.

However, unless the mother or baby is diagnosed with a health risk (such as diabetes or congenital malformations) most of the time these interventions are not required. Birth attendants can be trained to practice evidence-based care while they monitor the birthing mother, using interventions only when medically necessary. Avoiding unnecessary episiotomies, epidurals, vacuum extractions and c-sections helps to keep both baby and mother as healthy as possible as they enter the next phase of natural child-rearing: breastfeeding.

Breastfeeding is more successful when mother can move around comfortably and baby is not drowsy. Some interventions (such as routine suctioning) can interfere with the baby’s instincts for sucking properly on the nipple.

Advocating for your baby’s optimal health begins as soon as the mother knows she is pregnant. Choosing a trusted care provider to guide the family through the natural process of bringing a new member into the world is the first of many choices that impact the long term health of the whole family. There is a lot of information to take in about the different styles of obstetric care during pregnancy and delivery.  Here are good places to start:

Rochester Area Birth Network: www.rabn.org

Evidence-Based Birth: evidencebasedbirth.com