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Birthwork for me was never something that was on my radar when I was younger. There were many possibilities over the years but never Doula or Birthworker. 

 

And yet here I am… flourishing as a person and Birthworker more and more everyday. So, how did I get here? 

When I was pregnant with my son in 2013, I told my boyfriend (now husband) that we would opt for a Midwife and that I was having a homebirth; I left very little room for discussion as I was the one really going through the experience and really wanted it this way. Forever grateful that he didn’t question me or let his fear control him. 

Like every other first time parents, we knew nothing! So we spent the whole pregnancy learning about birth and everything we needed to know to prepare for homebirth. 

And finally at 41+6d, I did it! Many hours and a couple of overnights later, it happened – my son was born, at home. 

What. A. Feeling. 

That feeling of euphoria, bliss and badassery that I felt after; feeling that empowered, that strong, feeling like some primal warrior was so life-changing… 

A feeling I had never felt before. A confidence I had never felt. It’s somewhat difficult for me to find the right words to convey that feeling. 

Naturally, my first thought is to share it with the world! I wanted to so badly, and then I did… And was met with a lot of disagreements and skeptical reactions. I found it strange – like hello! I’m telling you, it can be SO amazingly different! But people just shrugged their shoulders and continued on. 

Different than what, you ask? 

Different from the birth horror stories you so often hear about – which sound dreadful. In my experience women didn’t share positive things about their experience, they’d share the scary moments but end with “but all worth it for this baby” which is true, anything for our babies! But at what cost? 

Isn’t there anything positive to share? I mean yes, of course, your baby is born, great! But that’s not all the experience is about, it’s so much bigger than a baby being born – an emergence of TWO new beings and there is very little room for recognition or appreciation of that huge fact! 

So that’s what led me to Birthwork, the deep desire to share all that it can be and IS; positive, empowering, uplifting and transformational. 

When I first decided to work as a Doula, I thought I was going to come in and “save” women from the snowball effect of interventions. That I would somehow shield the woman from the heavily managed births that occur in a hospital setting. 

I would meet with them and we’d discuss advocacy, weigh out the risks, we’d discuss their visions, how they wanted their experience to unfold, how they wanted to feel during and after, any fears that may come up, They would both do so much work and prepare individually and as a couple.

They were prepared. But eventually, their birth would be hijacked by the care provider, and most of the time, very unnecessarily. I wanted to protect their space and vision so deeply and have their best birth vision come to life, but in those moments, in the fear-inducing environment, it’s tough to fight the maternity system. 

Here’s the thing: we know how to do it, our bodies know, our babies know. It’s one of those inexplicable things that you just intuitively know and believe in.

The biggest issue is the patience part, really. In this impatient world combined with a profit driven maternity system, there is no time to wait for mom and baby to work together and do their thing. Instead it is approached with a standard of care that is used with all patients and assumes that babies and women’s bodies are mechanistic and work on absurd deadlines. So, some ’emergencies’ are actually created as a result of the interventions and now this looming fear is imposed onto the parents resulting in the snowball effect of Interventions. Once you’ve started with one, it’s usually impossible to avoid the others. 

It’s clear in my experience as a mother of two, and in my work that women are often not heard, they are bullied, not respected, or made to feel irrelevant during their birth. 

Our current maternity system is the result of hundreds of years of rich powerful men taking over birth, terrifying women about their rite of passage and increasing their profits. The lies, the manipulation, the deceit, the embellished ‘emergencies’,  it’s truly something that I can no longer witness. 

What I imagined life as a Doula would be really wasn’t. 

Working as a Doula often left an empty feeling, a void, because so many times, I couldn’t protect my client! And when you’re in the birth world and experience things over and over again, you make connections and start to see the patterns and similarities. 

Working within the confines of the medical system felt the same every time – the same fear, the same scares, the same fearful tactics, and I quickly learned that there truly is no place for physiologic birth. Physiologic birth. True, uninterrupted, mother-led, let nature take its course, birth. It’s a beautiful thing to witness. And that is what I was hoping to witness, but more often than not it just didn’t happen. More and more births are so managed and very obviously not trusted. Mentally preparing for the worst and not spending enough time thinking about all the beauty. 

When I work with families and they explain to me what their birth vision is, I try to arrange our prenatals to really go over the information and have the conversations needed to prepare the family mentally and emotionally. I love that they feel amazing after their birth. 

 

Naturally, feeling raw is part of the process, but what I am referring to is the feeling you get inside your stomach when you think back to your journey. I am referring to the way you are left feeling. Much of how you enter your postpartum period is a reflection of your birth experience and that piece of information is something that is so often kept from women during their visits to their care provider. 

Wanting to shift to the role of a Traditional Birth Attendant is pretty in line with the journey I have been on as a Birthworker. If you are or were in my close circle at any point in the last 10 years – this road is the accumulation of everything I have loved, desired, and wanted for my role as a Birthworker and supporting families. 

I hope that I am able to help encourage and empower the Mama’s I work with because I know they can do it. Any woman can have a beautiful birth experience because we are all designed for it. Even if we don’t know what to do, if you just settle back and relax and let your body and baby run its course, you’ll be fine. Your body just knows! 

How can you help? Share this! I’m not for everyone and that’s ok! But by spreading the word, you never know where the seed will plant itself! 

So Much Love. 

Nicolle V