I hope the following articles are of
interest to you. The first article about
my services appeared in the Daily Record on
Monday, July 7, 2006, and the second article is
one I have written for the Winter 2007 edition
of Midwifery Today.
========================================
MUM'S THE
WORD: An army of doula helpers
are here for new mothers, by Lorna
MacLaren
Young mum Susan Roan took a long time
to recover from the arrival of her first
baby. Daughter Lola was perfect, but her
birth was an experience Susan describes as
phytsically and mentally traumatic. That
was four years ago and, as the art lecturer
prepares to give birth for the seconed time, she
has called on the services of a doula to make
sure things will be different . . .
From her home in Glasgow, Susan, 31,
has over the past months been getting to know
her doula, Leah. Leah will be on call now
24 hours a day, seven days a week, until her
client's labour pains begin.
Susan says: "My gorgeous
daughter Lola arrived in the world safe and well
but I feel I missed out on enjoying her first
few weeks because I was such a mess after the
birth. I had needed a blood transfusion
and was left badly battered and bruised.
Although the medical staff did what they could,
the birth had been full of panic and fear.
My partner Gareth and I had no idea what was
going on. There was no communication at
all. It was all about the medical
procedures on my body and I didn't feel like a
person. It wasn't until a while afterwards
I realised I'd been left traumatised by the
whole experience and suffered post-natal
depression as a result."
When Susan and her partner decided to
have another child, friends in London suggested
they take on the services of a private
doula. They felt it might help Susan to
have a knowledgeable, experienced person at the
birth who knew exactly what she wanted . . .
"I found the Doula UK site on the
Internet and contacted Leah from there," Susan
says. "I thought it would cost thousands
of pounds but it was much less. Leah will
be on constant call for me in the later stages
up to the birth. I think both Gareth and I
wanted someone there for us. Midwives are
often so busy they don't have time for the
emotional support you really need at that
time. That's where Leah comes
in."
A university graduate, Leah Hazard
turned her back on a promising career as a BBC
researcher to learn the art of being a
doula. She, too, had had a difficult first
birth with her daughter and decided to make it
her mission to provide a unique support for
pregnant women. She was inspired by the
skills of the doula who throughout history has
been present in towns, villages and communities
to aid and comfort women in childbirth. It
was an important support she thought was being
lost.
Through Doula UK Leah gained advice
on training and has gone on to gain skills
including aromatherapy, hypnobirthing, massage,
and breastfeeding . . .
Despite being pregnant herself, Leah
is looking after Susan and over the next six
weeks is awaiting the birth of another three
Scottish babies. "I love my job," she smiles. "I
am on call 24/7 for at least four weeks and
ready to chat at 2am if you feel anxious.
I give emotional and practical advice and an
important continuity of care during what is the
most important few hours of women's lives.
I am not a midwife but I like to think that me
being there lets them get on with their job
while I take care of the emotional needs of the
mum. So much of giving birth is remvoing
the fear." She adds, "I'm there to help
parents feel they have the space to make their
own decisions, but no doula would ever interfere
with the actual delivery . . . "
Leah points out that no doula does
this kind of work to get rich. Often
payments barely cover expenses. She has
even taken on clients who cannot afford her full
fee. "Some people may think that doulas are only
hired by wealthy, middle-class suburban
mums. That couldn't be further from the
truth. My clients have come from
remarkably diverse situations, some with
partners, some without. Some want home
births, others to be in hospital. I think
that the desire for consistent, compassionate
support during pregnancy and birth is a
universal one."
Meanwhile, Susan feels safe enough to
look forward to the birth of her new baby.
"I don't have an idealistic view of childbirth
and Leah isn't some hippy earth mother," she
smiles. "It will be hard work but I'm not
scared any more and I know deep down it can be
the lovely, rewarding experience we missed out
on first time around."
[Note: Susan gave birth to daughter
Ines on the day this article
appeared. She laboured in a birth
pool at home and Ines was born at the Queen
Mother's Hospital shortly thereafter.
Mother and baby were -- and continue to be --
well.]
SIDEBAR: 'I needed to
hear I was doing really well' -- As Caroline
Gordon cuddles her baby boy Eddie, she describes
herself as a satisfied customer when it comes to
having a doula. The Glasgow mum contacted Leah
Hazard after she and husband Colin realised he
couldn't be at the birth.
"Colin not only can't stand
the sight of blood but he hates everything about
being in a hospital," said Caroline. "He
felt really guilty about it, but I knew it would
be better for me if he wasn't there as I'd just
worry about him passing out. I think more
couples are being honest about whether it's the
best thing to have the man at the birth if he
can't cope with it."
Caroline, 35, who works in
PR, contacted Leah through the Doula UK
site.
"She was incredibly
supportive to me and Colin . . . It could have
been scary without her as Eddie's heart was
slowing down at some points. But Leah kept
me positive and calm and explained what was
going on around me. I gave birth to Eddie
with just a Tens machine and gas and air for
pain relief. She suggested easier birth
positions and kept telling me I was doing really
well. You need to hear that. At one
point, I squeezed Leah's hand so tight I thought
I'd broken her fingers, but she didn't
flinch. I love the fact we got to know
Leah before the birth. It made it much
more personal and special."
[Note: It was a privilege to
support Caroline again during the birth of her
second child, Lucy, in September 2007.]
====================================================
This is a preprint of an article
accepted for publication in Midwifery
Today, Copyright © 2007 Midwifery
Today,
Inc.
FATHERS
AND HOME BIRTH by Leah
Hazard
“I want a home
birth but my husband’s not too keen on the
idea.”
“I want a home
birth but my husband says it would give his
mother a heart attack.”
“I want a home
birth but my husband says
no.”
These are the
kind of comments that have been repeated to me
time and time again during my work as a doula
for the past three years. The
clients reciting this litany of dashed hopes are
usually intelligent, assertive women who
wouldn’t hesitate to make up their own minds;
they are scientists, artists, teachers,
nurses.
More often than not, they have been let
down by hospitals during previous, traumatic
birth experiences, and a home birth seems to
hold out the promise of autonomy, dignity, and
safety.
So why are these strong, well informed
women backing down from home births simply
because hubby says no? We are
all too familiar with the way in which birth has
become managed (and damaged) by a patriarchal
system, but when we think of the “bad guy” in
this situation, we usually envision a
white-coated consultant who books c-sections in
between golf games and cruises. Since
when did Joe Average Dad, slumbering on the
couch with the remote control in one hand and a
flat beer in the other, become the gatekeeper to
an empowering home birth
experience?
The
Mother-In-Law Question
Janine was a
prime candidate for home birth if ever there was
one.
Several months before she contacted me
regarding doula services, she had miscarried her
first pregnancy at fourteen weeks. Usually
vivacious and chatty, Janine’s voice sank to a
whisper as she curled up in an armchair and told
me about her treatment at the hands of her local
hospital.
“I was bleeding heavily, totally
distraught, and the midwives put me on a ward
with women who were in early labour. They
offered me diamorphine but there was no way I
was going to stick around listening to those
other women having their babies. I
decided I’d rather lose my baby at home, so off
I went.”
Janine stopped to stroke her belly, now
curving deliciously with a new, healthy
pregnancy. “And I
think I’d rather have this baby at home, too,
because just the thought of going into a
hospital gives me a panic attack now. But Les
says his mother would never let him hear the end
of it, because if the hospital was good enough
for her, then it’s good enough for me. And what
if something happened? Les
asked me how I could live with killing his
mother’s only grandchild.” For
Janine, the clear decision to birth at home had
been muddied by her husband’s endorsement of his
mother’s fears.
Of course, it’s
only natural that a man’s first point of
reference – indeed, anyone’s first point of
reference – for birth is his own mother, and all
of the clients I have met were born in the UK in
the 1960s and 1970s, when medical management of
birth was seen as a great advancement and home
birth as a kind of antiquated throwback. Go back
a generation, though, and most women in the west
of Scotland,
where I live and work, had their babies at
home.
Ask any granny at a bus stop where her
“weans” were born, and she’ll likely launch into
a rose-tinted story involving one-room flats,
locally known midwives, and good humour all
around.
Go a bit further back and you’ll reach a
time when the west of
Scotland had
a rich home birth culture served by “howdies” –
lay midwives who were known, trusted, and
respected by their communities. Sadly,
most men (and women) in the country are now
unaware of just how deep their home birth roots
really are.
Complicating
the issue is this question of “ownership” of the
baby – when does your child stop being your
child and become simply your husband’s mother’s
grandchild? And when
do your mother-in-law’s ideas about home birth
subsume your own? Sadly,
it seems that men are sometimes complicit in
allowing the mother-in-law’s often misinformed
opinion to dominate plans for the birth. If the
pregnant mother remains resolute in her wish to
have her baby at home, this often sets up an
uneasy triangle of conflict between mother,
father, and mother-in-law, and the emotional
wounds incurred in this conflict can remain long
after the birth itself has come and gone. One can
easily see how a mother might change her plans
simply to avoid such friction in her
relationship with her partner and, by extension,
her mother-in-law.
The Boys at
Work
It was coming
up to Christmas, and I’d just negotiated
twenty-odd miles of iced roads and pitch-black
darkness to get to Bob and Carrie’s house. Carrie,
now six months pregnant, had been fighting tooth
and nail to have a home water birth after a
previous (and extremely traumatic) caesarean
section.
Bob was sceptical; as well as the most
recent baby, his two children from a previous
marriage had been born by emergency caesarean,
and he had come to associate birth with
disaster.
I was hoping to help Carrie talk him
round to a home birth, but as I took off my hat
and gloves in the warmth of their kitchen, Bob
scuppered my plans. “I’ve
told the boys at work that Carrie’s planning a
home birth, and they think I’m crazy,” he
announced with cheery finality, as if that would
send me scurrying back into the cold Scottish
night.
What does Bob’s
statement really mean? Does it
mean that the “boys at work” think he’s crazy to
be planning something as allegedly dangerous and
unpredictable as a home birth, or – more
odiously – does it mean that the “boys” think
he’s crazy to allow his wife to make such
a reckless decision herself? Either
way, one has to question why the opinions of a
man’s workmates should even enter into a
conversation about his partner’s birth
plans.
Admittedly, none of us is immune to the
need for peer approval, and it would be naïve to
suggest that men won’t seek such approval from
their colleagues on a variety of topics, both
professional and personal. However,
one must remember that when the day of birth
comes in all of its laborious, bloody glory, the
“boys at work” will be nowhere to be seen. They
won’t be filling the birth pool, or breathing
through the toughest contractions, or reasoning
with a scalpel-happy consultant. So it
is, and so it should be – those
workmates should be kept out of birth, and out
of the discussions leading up to it.
Rachel and
Co.
When I was pregnant
for the first time, Rachel (Jennifer Aniston’s
character from the TV show Friends) was
pregnant too. In spite
of lying flat on her back in a hospital bed mere
feet away from another labouring woman, Rachel
still managed to pop out a baby in half an hour
– with her immaculate makeup, perfectly sleek
hair, and witty repartee unharmed.
I
knew when I watched Friends that Rachel’s
glamorous hospital birth was unrealistic, but
would most men come to the same conclusion? Women
are bombarded by these false images too, but
many women at least have access to more
realistic birth stories from female friends,
relatives, and coworkers.
Inevitably, a few of these women will
have figured out that the hospital is not always
the bastion of safety and comfort that
Hollywood
would have us believe it to be. Some
women may have even been present at a birth
themselves, but for most men, TV characters like
Rachel may be the only labouring women they have
ever come across. Safely
ensconced in hospitals, with their legs firmly
planted in stirrups and machines beeping
“reassuringly” in the background, these
fictional women show men some of the only
representations of birth they may ever have
seen.
Personally, the only home birth I’ve ever
seen onscreen was in a Western drama, when a
white-nightied heroine flailed hysterically on
her four-poster bed while her husband was off
“fighting the Injuns”. With
such painfully outdated portrayals, can we blame
the average male viewer for thinking that home
birth is a thing of the past?
Changing
Attitudes
When we think about
some men’s negative attitude towards home birth,
it’s all too easy to fall into a round of
man-bashing, which is neither positive nor
productive. After
all, the men who object to home birth usually do
so out of concern for their partners’ safety
rather than any wish to be uncooperative or
malicious.
This concern may be misguided, but it is
valid nonetheless.
As birth
practitioners, it is our duty to respect the
fears of the diverse families we serve. These
fears multiply freely in the vacuum left by our
society’s general ignorance of gentle birth at
home, and this is where we can make a difference
– by providing information. Whether
we are speaking to our clients, partners,
friends, brothers, or fathers, we have a duty to
welcome men as potential keepers of the sacred
birthing space. Ideally,
we can even inspire them. It may
take a cultural sea change to increase the
number of home births in the medicalised West,
but a few enlightened men could help us make
some serious waves. I
anticipate with joy the day when a client says
to me, “I really want a home birth . . . and my
husband thinks it’s a fantastic idea!”
** Please note: All
names have been changed.
