šŸ„ New Course Alert šŸ„ Join me on ‘The Women Drum Keepers Collective’ Learn More

Sophie Messager

Author: Sophie Messager

  • The Phoenix process

    The Phoenix process

    If you follow my blog you might have felt surprised that I haven’t posted anything since last July, when I typically wrote a monthly or twice monthly post before.

    This is because, early in the summer, I experienced a personal and professional crisis of devastating proportions.

    A midwife made a complaint against me, a handful of people from my local doula collective made the decision to suspend me, removing me from the local website and online forum. I was also suspended from teaching doula courses.

    The severity of my ‘crime’? I, together with another doula, helped a client replace a clamp by a cord tie. In doing so, I used hospital scissors which had just been use to cut the cord by the father, to cut the plastic clamp off.

    I would have expected the doulas in the local community who received the complaint to show me support, to listen to my side of the story, and to involve me in any decision made on my behalf. Instead, I was notified of my suspension by email. I had no idea this was coming. To say I was shocked would be an understatement. I was numb with disbelief. I don’t think In have never felt so ostracised and betrayed in my whole life. I was also dumbfounded that the other doula I had worked with, ns who has suggested the cord replacement, suffered no consequences.

    Disbelief was the overwhelming emotion, as I really struggled to process how a group of people which I had been an active member of for 7 years,Ā  a collective which was supposed to be based on values of support, compassion and non judgement, could cut me off like this, and how someone I thought was a life-long friend could do the same, whilst she knew I would suffer the double blow of being rejected by the community and by her.

    I had thought that this community would rally round to support and protect a member in the face of the vulnerability that a complaint entails. I was wrong.

    I felt like I was a rotten apple in a cart, and, at the time I needed it most, I was kicked out of the cart and told to deal with it by myself.Ā  The emails I was sent made it clear that I was on my own in this process, so I didn’t reach out to anyone. Because of this, I also mistakenly spent several days believing that the whole community knew, and didn’t care.

    Because the email suspending me told me that I might not be welcome in the hospital, I cancelled clients who had just hired me to support them through a birth.

    I embarked on the process of trying to resolve the complaint with the support of the national doula association, doula UK. This process was long-winded, as it happened during the holiday season. It took 3 weeks for doula UK to receive the complaint, and another 3 for a meeting with the midwife to take place. The meeting was an anti-climax. I had worked myself into a state of extreme anxiety about it, expecting to be told I could no longer work inside this hospital. Instead, the midwife accepted my apology and the meeting was over in 20 minutes.

    This left me reeling. Everything around the way the complaint had been handled by my community felt so out of proportion.

    In the meantime I had to cope with the fact that my whole professional life had crumbled, that I no longer knew who I could trust, and that everything I believed to be true about my local doula community has been destroyed.

    I felt that most of what I had build professionally had been reduced to rubble. I lost my sense of identity. I felt like I had been kicked out of the castle, and was alone with the wilderness, surrounded by scary beasts. And, from where I stood, all I could see what my whole life crumbled down to a ruin.

    It was a very dark time. I had very serious suicidal thoughts for many weeks.

    A few weeks later, I got diagnosed, for the first time in my life, with severe anxiety and depression. Getting the diagnostic felt like a relief and an embarrassment at the same time. There is still so much stigma around mental health in our culture.

    I shared about my depression on social media to help others, because I thought that if I, who many considered a strong person, could be diagnosed with mental health issues and feel some level of embarrassment about it, what chances would more fragile or reserved people stand to get help?

    Once upon a time, I used to believe depression was for losers. Then a whole bunch of people I loved and admired, including my own husband, got diagnosed with it. This shook my narrow minded beliefs and for this, I am grateful. I hope I might have helped others in the same way by disclosing my situation.

    The summer passed in a blur of emotional pain. I have never cried so much in my life. I would drive to a client’s house, cry all the way there, put on a brave face and function whilst with the client, then, as soon as I left, the enormity of what had happened fell back onto my shoulders like a ton of bricks, and I would start crying again.

    They say that crises show who you can really count on, and my, was that a harsh truth. I soon realised that very few people were truly available for me, beyond a few bland words of initial support.

    I suppose it’s a reality of life that we are all busy with our own lives and problems, but in the face of this situation, it made me feel extremely alone, and added to my feelings of worthlessness.

    The local doula collective counted nearly 40 members.Ā  I got a few messages of sympathy when the news of my suspension was made public (again I had no say in this), but only a handful actually reached out and gave me support (and I am truly grateful to those who gave me their time and support especially when they were facing crises of their own). I now know that many had no idea what had happened, nor were aware of the severity of the impact it had on me. In the very negative mindset I was in for many months, I imagined that they knew and did not care. It lead me to develop a very negative view of the community.

    The whole situation left me quite paranoid, and with very few people I could trust, but I realised that these people were really solid. My husband in particular, who had just finished his training as a counsellor, was a rock. My parents were amazing too and so were a handful of friends, who made the time to listen to me again and again as I struggled to process my feelings.

    There is evidence that being ostracised is one of the most painful emotions that a human can experience, and that it causes physical pain. This was true for me. Something about belonging has to do with surviving, so being ostracised threatens this.

    There is also evidence around the stages one goes through when grieving, denial, pain, anger and bargaining, depression, acceptance and hope. And god did I grieve. I grieved the loss of a community I had grown to love and that I thought to be amazingly supportive. I grieved the loss of a long term friendship which I never expected to end. I grieved the loss of my sense of identity. I grieved the loss of my professional success.

    For the first few weeks I could barely function. I was forced to drop my work to a bare minimum, only working with clients I had already booked, and my income suffered and took a extreme dive. Being self employed, this added to my anxiety and my feelings of not being good enough. I had spent 7 years building my self employed business and it felt that it had been destroyed.

    I knew I could only survive during this time, and use my limited energy to resolve the complaint.

    I started seeing a counsellor and also had my first experience of the mind-blowing transformative process that is a family constellation workshop.

    Whilst this happened, and whilst I was in the middle of that really dark place, I also knew that this happened to me for a reason.

    In 2007 I was marched out of the biotech company I had been working for 7 years, under false pretences of redundancy. This really accelerated my professional reconversion from scientist to birthworker. I could feel that the current crisis had the same energetic signature (except this time it was much, much worse, because this was being removed from a place I loved, whereas I was relieved to be removed from the toxic biotech company I used to work for).

    I fought very hard against where this process wanted to take me. I even conned myself into believing that I ought to forgive the people who had broken my trust. I was trying to claw the ground I had lost back. I am very grateful for the friend who called me up on it by saying “be careful, because what you are saying is basically : you shat on me, but it doesn’t matter”.

    One of the book I read at the time was called “Broken open, how difficult times can help us grow” by Elizabeth Lesser. The book is full inspiring stories about the good that can come from tragic events. In this book I have found a new metaphor. Elizabeth refers to the process of going through tough experiences as the phoenix process.

    ” I have my own name for the quest. I call it the Phoenix Processā€”in honor of the mythic bird with golden plumage whose story has been told throughout the ages. Knowing that a new way could only be found with the death of his worn-out habits, defenses and beliefs, the Phoenix built a pyre of cinnamon and myrrh, sat in the flames and burned to death. Then he rose from the ashes as a new beingā€”a strange amalgam of who he had been before and who he had become. A new bird, yet ever more himself; changed, and at the same time, the eternal Phoenix.”

    This metaphor appealed to me a lot. A lot more than the lobster growth analogy I used to use.

    I loved it so much I had a phoenix tattooed on my shoulder.

    Despite a series of powerful insights with the various therapists I was working with, by the time I was getting ready to go on my annual holidays in France, I was falling apart. The 2 weeks away from my normal life, did me a world of good. During the last 2 days of my holiday I started feeling the dread, the weight, the enormity of the fallout from the complaint I had faced, fall back onto my shoulders. I was really scared that I was going to go back into the abyss.

    Except that’s not what happened. When I returned I noticed that I felt a lot stronger.

    I realised that the time away had given me one thing: clarity about how I felt about the way the complaint had been handled. I stopped doubting my feelings. I stopped letting other people trying to gaslight me.

    In July, I felt like I had been kicked out of the castle, and that I was alone in the wilderness. I felt unlovable, lonely and scared. I stood in a barren land, and everything I had built was broken. Now, oddly, I felt OK, alone in the wilderness. I was no longer as scared and then, I started to notice new shoots starting to grow on the ground. I had been booted out of the cart, now I realised I didn’t want back in. Since then, I have kept on feeling a lot stronger.

    Don’t get me wrong, I’m still recovering from the crisis, and from time to time, I get triggered and forced to revisit the crisis and when I look at the wreckage, it still hurts. Those times are hard, as I catch myself, despite knowing this is neither possible nor desirable, hoping that things could go back to the way they were.

    There is this beautiful analogy about grief, where someone describe it like a shipwreck: when it just happens, you are floating amidst the debris and 100 foot waves hit you relentlessly, and all you can do is float. With times, the waves become less high and less frequent. But they never really stop. Stuff in your life happens that reminds you of the event, and suddenly the grief hits you again.Ā  You can read the whole thing here

    Another aspect of grief is the permanent change this it brings. Some parts of me died in this process. But they made room for new things. And there have been good things too, that have come from this process. I’m clear that certain people no longer belong in my life, and I’m mostly at peace with it.

    I’ve become aware of toxicity in spaces that I thought to be only good. And I also know that this potential exists everywhere. I’ve become unblinded to the fear and darkness that exists in many communities that claim to be based on ‘love and light’, and who are quick to criticise others but slow to appraise their own failings. In fact, as I’ve discovered by talking to a lot of people, such communities are often the worst when the shit hits the fan.

    Edited to add: when this blog was published in January 2021, someone from the local doula community made a formal complaint against me to the national doula association, doula UK, claiming that my blog post was not reflecting the truth and could be damaging to the local doula collective. Doula UK upheld the complaint, and told me that unless I removed the blog, my membership would be terminated. My mental health at this time was still fragile that I didn’t have the energy to fight it. I made the decision to unpublish this blog post at the time. Having left the organisation, I chose to republish it.

    I also went through a cathartic, and still on-going, process of decluttering my home, and letting go of stuff I no longer need, literally, as well as emotionally.

    One thing I noticed is that I am less affected by people’s opinions of me. You know that phrase “other people’s opinions of me is none of my business?”. Well, I knew this on a mental level, but now, because I’ve survived being rejected and ostracised, including by people I lived, I feel able to embody it. I catch myself thinking about people whose opinion mattered to me, people who were part of this exclusion process, and I realise that I no longer care about what they might think of me.

    I no longer feel as responsible for other people’s feelings in the way I was in the past. At a birth I attended recently, the midwife was rather frosty. Rather than wondering what I’d done wrong, I realised she was feeling threatened, and that it had nothing to do with me.

    I feel a lot clearer about of who I am, and what my values are. My two top values are authenticity and integrity. I’m not prepared to pretend these don’t matter to me, even if this means the end of some relationships. It’s difficult to explain fully, because it’s mostly that I keep catching myself not reacting like I used to.

    I no longer feel that I need to justify myself, or that it’s my job to explain my opinions to people who don’t want to listen. I no longer feel the need to enter every fight I’m invited to.

    I stay silent in situations where I would have spoken up in the past, and speak up in situations where I would have remained silent. I feel a restored sense of sovereignty. It’s very liberating.

    To create space and time for this, as well as time to process and reflect, I decided to take a break from working as a doula. My last doula client was in October, and I will wait until the universe gives me a sign that it is time to return.

    And, with that space and with the slow lightening of the darkness, new projects have arisen.

    I have started writing a book on postnatal recovery, which was accepted by publisher Pinter and Martin. My goal is, beyond the book, to create training around supporting the postpartum.

    I have created a new product, a smokeless smudge using Palo Santo essential oil, called the Sacred Sprace Spray.

    I have started training to become a Reiki Drum teacher.

    I have planned to learn the Arvigo Mayan Abdominal massage training in 2020. I signed up for one of the most transformative business mentoring programme I have ever come across, Become your own business advisor, with Hiro Boga.

    I started doing new things in my personal life too, doing healing with horses, learning to crochet, and discovering the practise of TRE (tension release exercise) and of the 5rhythms dance, which I love. This also led me to meet a lot of new people.

    Why did I write this blog? Now that I’m mostly on the other side of the crisis, I wanted to tell my story in the hope that it inspires and helps others.

    I’m not yet at the stage where I can forgive nor feel grateful towards the individuals who caused me so much pain, I feel grateful for the personal growth this crisis has given me.

    So, if you’re in the middle of your own phoenix process, I want you to know that you are not alone. I also want you to know that it’s OK to take your time. I want to encourage you to reach for help, often people how now idea how bad you feel, because most people who feel terrible tend to keep to themselves.

    I also know that, when you’re in the darkest place, it’s kind of impossible to see what will come from the other side when you finally get out.

    And yes when you go through a phoenix process, some part of you will die. It is important to acknowledge that loss, because it is a very significant one. It is also important to take the time to process the hurt, and not rush through the processing. Each of us has their own timing and way to process it, there is no right and wrong. Don’t beat yourself up for the time it takes, and do not listen to people who are telling you to hurry up and be somewhere you are not ready to get to yet.

    I also want to give you a message of hope. Because, at the bottom of the abyss, you will find the diamond that has been carved by the darkness and the pressure, and you will rise from your ashes with a renewed sense of self.

    Not quite the same, but whole.

    There is a poem from Rumi which describes this process so perfectly.

    “This being human is a guest house.
    Every morning a new arrival.

    A joy, a depression, a meanness,
    some momentary awareness comes
    as an unexpected visitor.

    Welcome and entertain them all!
    Even if theyā€™re a crowd of sorrows,
    who violently sweep your house
    empty of its furniture,
    still, treat each guest honourably.
    He may be clearing you out
    for some new delight.

    The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
    meet them at the door laughing,
    and invite them in.

    Be grateful for whoever comes,
    because each has been sent
    as a guide from beyond.”

  • Nurturing postpartum recipes-Chicken and red date soup

    Nurturing postpartum recipes-Chicken and red date soup

    Yesterday I cooked and delivered a traditional Chinese postpartum dish called chicken and red date soup to a new mother.

    It is a tradition I started a few years ago when I supported my first Chinese client as a birth doula. She found me by asking if there was a Chinese doula in the local community, because she wanted to follow the traditional Chinese postpartum tradition, known as “doing the month”.

    There was no Chinese doula in Cambridge, but someone told her there was a doula who was married to a Chinese and she found me.

    My Chinese husband proved unknowledgeable when it came to the dishes in question, so, in my usual birth and postpartum geek fashion, I set out to read as much as I could on the topic, and taught myself to cook a whole new bunch of traditional Chinese recipes (much to my husband’s delight).

    The first time I made the soup, my husband tasted it, looked delighted, and declared that it was “proper soup”. Then my client told me that it tasted just like what her grandma used to make. This felt like the ultimate compliment.

    I have been making that soup for some years now. I’ve made it for several new mums, who have all loved it. I’ve made it for friends post surgery as well as it’s very good for recovery and healing.

    As I made it again yesterday, I thought it would be nice to share, so others can benefit too. I also experimented for the first time making it in my instant pot (an electric pressure cooker), because it normally takes a couple of hours to make and I was pressed for time. I’m pleased to report the instant pot version tastes just as nice, so I’ll be sharing how I made that too.

    It’s made from very simple ingredients, yet it tastes delicious, and feels cleansing too.

    It has 6 ingredients: Chicken, onion, carrots, ginger, red dates (also known as jujubes-you can find these online or in Asian supermarkets), and goji berries.

    In my usual fashion, I also set out to find some science behind the ingredients, especially the red dates and goji berries. My research left me somewhat disappointed because I’ve found lots of references to traditional Chinese medicine, and also some published research showing what nutrients are available in them, but nothing bridging the gap, i.e. explaining how those nutrients affect hormones and blood flow and healing.

    The Chinese medicine states that red dates are known to increase Qi (life energy), and help nourish  the blood and bring relaxation. Another important aspect of the Chinese postpartum (which I have found to be a worldwide practise), is to keep the new mother warm, and the ginger, red dates and goji berries do just that, as they are considered to be warming to the body. The traditional Chinese postpartum guidelines stress the importance of avoiding cold (literally, no cold drinks), as well as foods considered “cold” after birth.

    Here is an article explaining their health benefits from the Chinese medicine perspective

    I’ve also found some published research that red dates are sedative, anti-oxidant, and anti-inflammatory

    How to make the soup

    I use a modified version of the recipe from the book “The first 40 days” by Heng Ou.  You can also find it in my book Why Postnatal Recovery Matters

    Ingredients

    • 2 pounds whole chicken or chicken parts (I like to use thighs as they are easier to shred than drumsticks, it’s best if they have bones)
    • 1 onion, peeled
    • 2 inches fresh ginger, peeled and halved
    • 3 medium carrots, peeled and thinly sliced
    • 5 Chinese red dates (you can find these online or in Asian supermarkets, you need these to get the benefits as normal dates do not have the same medicinal properties)
    • 3 tablespoons dried goji berries
    • salt to taste

    Preparation (the slow, stovetop way)

    1. Place the chicken in a medium pot, and add enough cold water to cover the meat. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, uncovered.
    2. Once boiling, add the onion and ginger. Season to taste. Reduce the heat to medium, cover, and cook for 40 minutes. Remove the lid occasionally to skim any foam off the top and discard.
    3. Remove from the heat. Move the chicken to a plate to cool. Shred the chicken meat with 2 forks. Place 1-2 cups of the shredded chicken back in the pot.
    4. Add the carrots and dates to the pot, and simmer over low heat, uncovered, for 45 minutes. Add the goji berries and cook an additional 15 minutes. Season with salt to taste.
    5. To serve, remove the chicken, shred the meat, discard the bones and return the shredded meat to the pan. Serve in bowls

    Preparation (the fast, instant pot, or pressure cooker way)

    1. Put all the ingredients in the pot, cover with water
    2. Cook (using soup mode on your instant pot) for 35 min
    3. Do a quick steam release.
    4. Shred the chicken meat, and place back into the soup.
    5. Taste for seasoning as add salt as needed
    6. Serve in bowls, making sure each bowl has a red date in it

    I had a go at making a veggie version too :

    Whilst you cannot quite replace chicken in terms of taste, I experimented with adding several ingredients I knew would add umami flavours so the soup, so it still tasted nourishing and delicious:

    Ingredients (feel free to use diffferent vegs):

    • one leek
    • 3 medium sized carrots
    • 2 onions (1 red, 1 yellow)
    • a few cabbage leaves
    • a tablespoon of miso paste
    • a tablespoon of dark soy sauce
    • a tablespoon of marmite
    • a dash of Worcestershire sauce
    • 5 Chinese red dates
    • 3 tablespoons dried goji berries
    • salt to taste

    Preparation

    1. Peel, prep and chop veggies
    2. Add all ingredients together to a saucepan
    3. Cover with water
    4. Heat up until boiling then cook covered on low for 40 min
    5. You can either serve as is, or you could strain and just serve the broth (in this case put one of the red dates in each bowl)

    If you are a new mum, and you’d like the benefits of the red dates without the time prep of the soup, you can also make red date tea, by placing 2 or 3 red dates (you can add goji berries and ginger too) in a cup of boiling water, and steeping for a few minutes. You can eat them afterwards too.

    It is also supposed to be a good support to menstruation.

    If you are vegetarian or vegan and fancy trying this soup, you could replace the chicken by some tofu or vegetables of your choice.

    I have found that traditional postpartum practises the world over include rest, support, good nutrition and postpartum specific bodywork. One of my goals is to try and find out what traditional English and French dishes would have been served to new mothers, so please comment if you know, and I’d love to hear about any traditional dishes from around the world too.

    If you would like to learn more about preparing for the postpartum, as well as my book, Why postnatal recovery matters, I have created an online course called How to prepare for a nurturing postpartum.

    Hereā€™s whatā€™s included in How to Prepare for a Nurturing Postpartum:

    • Understanding the postpartum period ā€“ Why this time is crucial for long-term well-being.
    • Essential postpartum needs ā€“ Learn the key elements that support deep recovery.
    • Practical planning ā€“ How to create a postpartum plan that truly nurtures.
    • Food & nourishment ā€“ Discover the best foods and drinks for healing and energy.
    • Physical recovery & rest ā€“ Tips for supporting the bodyā€™s healing journey.
    • Emotional well-being ā€“ Strategies to navigate the emotions of new motherhood.
    • Support network ā€“ How to ask for and receive help with confidence.
    • Honouring cultural traditions ā€“ Insights into postpartum care from around the world.

    This course gives you everything you need to feel held, nourished, and prepared for a truly restorative postpartum.

  • Why I want to change the nature of postnatal support

    Why I want to change the nature of postnatal support

    [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”section” _builder_version=”3.22″][et_pb_row admin_label=”row” _builder_version=”3.25″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.25″ custom_padding=”|||” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” _builder_version=”3.27.4″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”]

    Earlier this week I wrote a blog that’s been playing on my mind for many years. It’s called “why I wish I had hired a postnatal doula“

    In this blog I explain how challenging I found new motherhood, how lonely and upset I felt through those early weeks and how I longed for some support but failed to reach out because of a mix of shame for not loving every minute of being a mother, and feeling like I couldn’t justify the expense.

    As a doula, I witness the same challenge in new mothers. Sometimes I do not even know they are struggling until weeks later, because, whilst they sit in the same pit of discomfort and shame as I did, thinking they are the only one that struggle, they don’t usually reach out for help do they?

    I have written before about the topic of making a postnatal recovery plan, and about what new mothers really need, and you’re not meant to be doing this on your own (hint: it’s not flowers or stuffed bears).

    The wisdom in traditional postpartum practises around the world is very simple really, it boils down to 4 main elements of support for the mother:

    • Rest (someone takes care of the chores)
    • Food ( someone takes care of cooking good, nutritious meals)
    • Social support (the new mother is never alone at home with a baby)
    • Bodywork (someone massages the new mother, along with wrapping her hips/abdomen)

    I have a strong urge to write more about this, to spread the word further, I have a list of blogs as long as my arm about this topic, and in fact I now am thinking I need to write a book, or possibly more than one book, about this topic. Something easy to share, I might start with an ebook, like the one I have already written about rebozo techniques.

    I’m a knowledge junkie, so since I started learning about some postpartum practises, I’ve asked everybody I’ve met about the traditional practices from their country, and you know what, every continent in the world has some form of specific nurturing, specific foods, and bodywork and wrapping.

    After all, you’ve not only grown and birthed a whole new human, your body has accommodated this through tremendous changes.

    During pregnancy, the uterus grows from the size of a pear to the size of a watermelon (pushing abdominal organs out of the way, changing the shape of your muscles, ligaments and spine as it does so), then back again after birth.

    It seems crazy to me that nobody makes sure that all the organs, muscles, joints and ligaments have safely returned where they belong.

    I bake a groaning cake for all mothers I support, and sometimes make a traditional Chinese chicken soup too (my husband is from Hong Kong, and there is still a very strong postpartum nurturing culture there)

    Learning to massage and wrap new mothers had lead me onto a journey of discovery about postpartum practises, got me to work closely with an osteopath, create a new type of massage, and develop my skills in an apprenticeship manner. The two combined led me to develop a deep practical knowledge of what happens to women bodies after birth.

    This has fuelled a fire that makes me want to shout from the rooftops that what we get in the Western world just isn’t good enough, and want to work hard to change that.

    If this resonates with you, and you would like to learn some of these nurturing skills, I am running some Rebozo and Postnatal Recovery Massage courses in July-see https://sophiemessager.com/workshops-birth-professionals/

    [/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section]

  • Why I wish I had hired a postnatal doula

    Why I wish I had hired a postnatal doula

    When I was pregnant with my first child, I hired a birth doula.

    This was the best thing I have ever done and it has had positive effects beyond anything I could have expected, because it didn’t just impact how positive my pregnancy and birth were, it led to a complete transformation of who I was, both personally and professionally (read about that here Ā and here)

    But my biggest regret is that I didn’t hire my birth doula as a postnatal doula.

    Today, these feelings were re-triggered by reading this article called self care with a newborn.

    I wish, and I have wished so many times that I could go back to my newborn mother self and tell her to hire my doula for postnatal support.

    I cannot change that, but at least I can try and help other mothers understand why it’s so worth it.

    You see when my son was born, I struggled massively with the changes having a newborn baby brought to my life.

    I went from being an independent, successful, corporate woman, at the peak of my career in science, to being at home, alone, all day, with a helpless and very needy infant.

    And nothing had prepared me for how challenging this would be.

    My son was one of those “velcro babies”. He wouldn’t be put down without screaming for the first 3 months of his life. Today, I can see how this was helpful, as it was instrumental in my becoming a babywearing instructor, but at the time it was so fucking hard! Not only did he cry every time I tried to put him down, but I also needed to be moving constantly whilst he was in the sling, otherwise he still cried.

    It was exhausting. I couldn’t rest, I couldn’t sit down to eat, I couldn’t look after myself.

    Helping him sleep took hours, and I paced and paced whilst longing to sit down and rest.

    After my husband had gone back to work, I longed for another adult to just take the baby away so I could shower or sleep without worrying about the baby crying. Or simply have my arms baby free for an hour or two, or to have some adult company during the day.

    I felt utterly lonely, because my social circle was at work from 9 to 5, and whilst I did eventually re-create a new mummyhood social circle, this took months, during which I felt miserable, at home all day or walking by myself in parks, feeling pangs of envy when I saw other mums hanging out together.

    I also spent weeks struggling to make my son fit within the constraints of what I thought I “ought to do” (pushing him in a pram which he hated instead of the sling he loved, trying to make him sleep on his own in a moses basket for hours without success etc). This just resulted in a lot of tears and frustration.

    When I look back (hindsight is such a wonderful thing isn’t it?), especially through the lens of my 13 years as a mother, combined with my 8 years as a doula, it’s easy to see that most of the problem stemmed from my being a control freak, from desperately trying to live my life like I did before I had a baby, from a loss of identity, and from a inability to make sense of the whole experience.

    I had a really hard time adjusting to motherhood, and those feelings had nowhere to go, because I wasn’t even able to articulate them and understand what I was going through.

    I also felt somewhat guilty that I wasn’t enjoying being alone with my baby, and that I wasn’t feeling “fulfilled” by motherhood.

    I didn’t know at the time, but there was an element of shame there.

    Now I know how much hiring my birth doula for just a few hours of postnatal support would have made a world of difference.

    Sadly at the time I felt I could not justify the expense.

    It felt selfish, and unjustifiable, somehow, to spend money on myself, especially when I had a much reduced maternity pay salary.

    Yet I bought tons of crap I didn’t need for my baby. That I felt was OK to spend money on. When I look back, all I feel is sadness for my newborn mother self about it. I wish I could go back and tell her.

    Because, when I look back at the cost of raising a child, over the course of the last 13 years, I really wish I had been able to see that spending a bit of money towards a few hours’ worth of postnatal support would have been SO worth it.

    If I had hired my doula as a postnatal doula, she would listened to me deeply, she would have reassured me that it was NORMAL not to enjoy every minute of being a mother.

    By actively listening to me, and holding the space for my thoughts and feelings to come out, she have been able to reflect back them back to me, and help me identify them and untangle the complex and conflicting emotions I was feeling.

    She would have helped me understand the delicate process of transition I was undergoing, like a caterpillar becoming a butterfly.

    She would have empathised.

    She would have helped name and validate those emotions.

    She would have helped me understand why it was so hard, and helped me to not feel so guilty about it.

    She would have helped reframe those feelings of not being useful, of not having achieved anything with my day (and that I see so often in other mums).

    She would have encouraged me to rest more and not run around like a headless chicken trying to do all the chores I did before the baby was born.

    She would have explained the wisdom in postpartum rest traditions, and help me see how short changed we are with this in the Western world.

    She would have helped me see that things would get easier and not constantly stay in this unbearable intensity of early motherhood.

    She would have been someone I trusted to look after my baby whilst I slept, or had a much needed moment of me time.

    She would have prepared me something nice to eat, and held the baby whilst I ate it (whilst it was still hot).

    She would have sat down next to me during those endless feeds, and made me a drink and a snack and listened to me, making me feel like me and my feelings mattered.

    She would have helped reframe what normal newborn behaviour was, as opposed to the fear of “bad habits” our screwed up culture had instilled in me, and encouraged me to follow my instincts.

    She would have helped me find ways of managing my time and relax more.

    She would have signposted me to local mother groups, where I could have found other mums to hang out with a lot faster than it happened organically.

    She might even have given me a nurturing and much needed massage designed for new mums like closing the bones.

    In short, I know she would have helped transform my early postpartum weeks from a difficult and uncomfortable period of growth to one of understanding and acceptance.

    She would have helped the transition.

    I know it’s easy for me to say all this, because I’m a doula myself, and often I shy away from telling this to new mums, because I don’t want them to think I’m just doing it to tout my business.

    I just want you to have a better experience than I did.

    I want you to put your needs first, because you matter.

    Because trust me, I know what a difference it would have made.

  • How a doula can support you if you are having a planned cesarean birth

    How a doula can support you if you are having a planned cesarean birth

    It’s a commonly held belief that there is no point having a doula if you are having a planned cesarean, and I want to debunk this myth.

    I too, once believed that I couldn’t justify charging to support a woman who was having a planned caesarean.

    There would be no on call period, no phone call in the middle of the night, no unpredictable length of birth care.

    Or would there?

    Last year I got called unexpectedly (as I was busy packing the car for a week end away) by a client, pregnant with twins, who was only in the 32nd week of her pregnancy. She said “they are taking them out now”. I abandoned my week end plans and made it to the hospital with 15 min to spare.

    I was also called by a woman who unexpectedly found that they were moving her cesarean a week earlier. She asked if I could come to the hospital immediately.

    I have also been hired just to cover the on call period for a mother planning a cesarean, just in case she would go into labour before the scheduled date.

    I have worked as a doula for 7 years, and having supported several planned cesareans births, I’ve learnt that there isn’t such a thing as predictability, and also that doula support can be just as needed, just as useful as it is for a planned vaginal birth.

    I’ve learnt that, as every woman who births vaginally has her own set of individual needs, so do women who are having a planned cesarean birth.

    So, if you are having a planned cesarean birth, you can benefit from the exact same support you get from your doula as you would if you were hiring her for a planned vaginal birth.

    Doula support is a three legged stool of support, emotional, practical and informational support.

    This support applies regardless of the way your baby is born.

    So what can a doula do to help you before, during and after a planned cesarean?

    Pregnancy-the preparation

    When you are having a planned cesarean ,there are still many aspects of what will happen before, during and after the birth to think about.

    Having someone at your side who knows the hospital system in and out and how to navigate it, and help you push for what’s important for you, is very valuable.

    It is very much like going to a restaurant : you need know everything that’s on the menu to make your choice. If you’re a vegetarian and I only offer you meat stew this isn’t a great option for you isn’t it?

    I once supported a friend who was very keen on having what is known as a gentle cesarean. Her local hospital completely refused to support her choices, so I suggested she might want to try another more supportive hospital. I pointed out that, as she was having a planned cesarean birth, she could go where she wanted. She ended up finding the perfect hospital and obstetrician and having a beautiful and empowering birth.

    Sometimes, women who prefer to have a planned cesarean for all sorts of very valid reasons, can find themselves having a battle on their hands to get this choice respected. Having a doula on your side to help you navigate your rights can be invaluable in this situation too.

    So knowing all the options and having help navigating them and knowing how to get what you want is what having a doula is all about.

    A doula can also help prepare you emotionally for what is going to happen which can help you feel more in control.

    She can help you plan for your recovery after the surgery and how best to manage life with a new baby post cesarean.

    She can help you access a whole network of medical and complementary practitioners too.

    Alex Heath, doula

    “Doulas definitely help clients to negotiate an elective cesarean in the first place. Using knowledge of hospital pathways, language and mindset to support them in asking for an elective cesarean if that’s what they want…”

    Pippa Moss, doula

    “Helping with any preferences/alternative birth plan. Letting their clients know there are “gentle” cesarean options they may not know about, optimal cord clamping, gown on back to front to facilitate skin to skin etc. Calming nerves before surgery”

    Kristina McKeown, doula

    “Being aware that as a doula you may be one of few people fully supporting them in their choice. There still a lot of judgement in choosing a cesarean birth and just having someone to talk that through can be really helpful.”

    Ceci Goldaracena, doula

    “My client was booked for a elective cesarean. ā€œPast Due dateā€ and with a preview cesarean. She could not have an induction. We worked a lot in the birth plan for a gentle cesarean. Went together to hospital that morning and started to work in keeping oxytocin and happiness in high levels. Turns out that after a couple of hours when the medical team was ready they did a last monitor and she was having labour contractions. We asked to stop the A plan. Lots of walks , stairs,dancing and laugh…baby was born that night naturally.”

    On the day-waiting for the cesarean

    When you get scheduled for a cesarean birth, you get told to come to the hospital at a certain time, without having eaten any food. It is not uncommon for the wait to be longer than expected-because emergency cesareans can take priority, so having a doula at your side whilst you wait can help you stay as calm and relaxed as possible whilst you wait.

    Sarah Budden, doula

    “My role was all about the before. I spent 5 hours pre surgery distracting – playing cards, talking about Homes under the hammer, looking at pictures of their first born, getting dad involved in some foot massaging. She was scared. I was there to make the wait less intense, to stop her legs from shaking and discharge some adrenalin.”

    During the cesarean

    Having a doula there means that there is a familiar, friendly face to keep you calm in theatre. Your doula can hold you whilst they place the spinal anesthesia. She can hold your hand during the surgery. The birth itself is usually quite quick, but the longest part is the stitching afterwards. Is you are having your baby skin to skin in theatre she can help facilitate this too, and even help you to feed your baby then if you wish to do so.

    Most hospitals have a one partner policy only, however hospital policies are only guidelines and should be adapted to the need of the birthing family.

    I have been present in theatre with a couple.

    I have also been present with the mother when there was no partner, and I have been present with the mother when it felt like the right choice for a couple (for example when the father felt uncomfortable being in theatre, or when the father needed to stay at home to look after other children).

    Nicola Collins, doula

    “I supported an elective as one of my first births and it was so calm and beautiful. I helped with putting birth preferences together and going to appointments. Worked through any worries and concerns she had before the birth. On the day she was fourth down and we just chatted and laughed and I reassured her and reminded her of the golden thread breath when she was a little anxious. She had a bit of a tricky start as couldnā€™t get the spinal working properly for 40mins and all I could be was a voice of reassurance and give her my support. Finally got going and section went great and I just kept talking to her and keeping her informed about what was happening. Then I got to take photos of the baby being lifted out which was amazing and then mama got skin to skin straight away and even baby had latched on just before we left theatre. Back in ward, I helped with anything that mum needed. Breastfeeding support, got her food and drink. Called her parents and kept them updated. Let her have a little rest and just sat with her while she slept”

    Claire Walker, mother

    “When I got pregnant with my twins I knew I would have a planned c-section due to an emergency c-section with my first daughter. I had no hesitation in hiring a doula as the emotional support on the day was what kept me calm and relaxed as I could be. Having someone that is just there to support you before and after who will listen and comfort you is priceless.

    My twins were born 8 weeks early so had to go straight to NICU. I wanted my partner to go with them as I didnā€™t want them to be alone and also to make sure our wishes for them where kept. I also didnā€™t want to be left alone in the theatre so asked for my doula to be around in when my partner left. This really helped me to stay calm as I knew my babies had dad with them and I also had someone to support me as it can be very lonely even in a theatre full of doctors and nurses. Having someone to talk to and hold my hand stopped me panicking. It also meant that when I was taken to recovery I wasnā€™t by myself. It was very hard being wheeled past other mothers with their babies, I donā€™t think I would of have coped if I didnā€™t have my doula with me. She also helped me hand express my colostrum into syringes. Just having someone with my while my partner was with the babies was amazing, she kept me calm just by being by my side and holding my hand.”

    Nuria Pozas, doula, from her client

    “Nuria who accompanied me was very helpful, caring and professional. Even though I had a cesarean she helped me all the way through specially with my fear and later on with my emotion. She was also a great support after the birth and gave me useful advice regarding to breastfeeding and newborn baby.”

    Beau, mother

    “I had planned a home birth but knew if my labour was anything less than ‘perfect’, I would need another c-section, so the presence of a doula was necessary (no other support was possible as both our families are far away). There was meconium in my trickling waters so I was sent to the hospital. There was no question about it – my doula, who had been with me since 2h after labour started, came with me (my husband stayed at home to be with our first daughter) and it was the most amazing experience because, unlike my husband, my doula wasn’t squeamish (obviously!) so I asked for the drape to be lowered and saw my baby come out. I didn’t have to keep chatting to my doula to prevent her from fainting, as I had done with my husband with our first daughter. She took pictures and films. Having a doula was a no-brainer in pregnancy, and it was the best decision ever considering how my birth panned outĀ šŸ™‚

    Emilia, mother

    “My decision to seek the support of a doula was driven by the fact that I wanted a vbac in the face of a number of ā€œrisk factorsā€ and to help me navigate and to support me through a medically complex pregnancy. The anomaly scan revealed that my son would be born with a complex health condition. After the diagnosis, my pregnancy became enormously stressful, requiring regular monitoring and checks, and involving the healthcare professionals who would be involved in my sonā€™s postnatal care strongly advocating a range of birth interventions that I had always intended to avoid. In the final month leading up to the birth, we came across more complications, which led to me reluctantly deciding that an elective cesarean birth was the safest mode of arrival for both me and my baby. My birth doula was incredible. She helped me research my ā€œrisk factorsā€ and the options open to me, knowing how important to me it was that my birth choices were well informed. I felt empowered and heard out, and although I was sad to abandon my vbac plans, with her help I felt at peace with my decision.”

    Immediately after the cesarean

    In the recovery room, your doula can help support you to to feel comfortable, look after you and help you to feed your baby. You will be having cannula in your hand still, and be hooked to equipment like fluid delivery, blood pressure monitors etc which can make handling a newborn a little trickier.

    If your baby has to go to the NICU (which can be more common with elective cesareans as they often occur earlier in pregnancy), then your partner can go with the baby, and this means that you aren’t alone in recovery. In this situation, your doula can also help support you to express colostrum to feed your baby.

    Recovery nurses will look after your vitals etc, but they won’t stay with you every minute of the few hours post surgery, and they won’t be a familiar face, someone you know and feel safe with. Your doula’s presence can help you feel more comfortable and safer. I have had women hiring me for this reason alone.

    Bryony Vickers, doula

    “Calming nerves after surgery. Having someone to sit with you in a dedicated way after you have had surgery is invaluable. I think women forget that they can feel not great after surgery. We can help to hold the baby, get skin to skin, help other parent with learning baby care – dressing, nappies, holding etc. Helping with getting food, drinks, with knowing what is normal, what will happen next.”

    Jo McCracken, doula

    “I was touched once when a client of mine had to have a section and, once she was in recovery, she did nothing but moan for me to be there. Finally a midwife came to get me and said, ‘We need you in recovery. She won’t listen to any of us’. When I arrived, she burst into tears and said, ‘thank goodness you are here now’. So, maybe, calming nerves after surgery too.”

    Emilia, mother

    On the day, we knew that only one birth partner would be able to accompany me into the theatre. Nonetheless, my doula was waiting for us in the lobby at the crack of dawn. Her presence helped to diffuse and lighten the atmosphere. I was nervously anticipating and looking forward to the birth rather than dreading it. Knowing what was really important to me, she was able to prompt discussions on the day. It had previously been agreed that my newborn would be taken away to nicu. We agreed that my partner would accompany him. The team agreed that my doula could enter once my partner left to take his place and to keep me company. She remained with me in recovery when I otherwise would have been left alone. She maintained contact with my partner and gave me regular updates on how my baby was getting on. She advocated for me with the midwives in recovery, passed me drink and food, talked to me, made me laugh. Having my birth doula made my pregnancy and my caesarean birth a very positive experience, despite it being complex, stressful, and not what I had wanted it to be, and I am completely convinced that it would not have been so positive if it wasnā€™t for her wonderful support and friendship.

    In the postnatal ward

    A few hours after the birth, once your vitals have stabilised, you will be transferred to the postnatal ward, where you will stay usually a minimum of 24h or so.

    Postnatal wards are often understaffed, especially at night, and it can feel very frustrating if your baby is crying and you can’t pick her up (you’re still immobile due to the spinal or epidural anaesthesia for a few hours), and if you ring the bell, it can take a while for someone to come.

    Having a doula supporting you there means that someone can help you with simple tasks like getting you a drink or a snack, passing your baby to you, changing your baby’s nappy, helping with feeding, and generally making sure you are comfortable.

    Sometimes the partner can do this, but sometimes the woman has no partner, or the partner may need a rest, or need to go home to look after other children etc, so having a doula there means that you won’t be alone whilst you cannot move whilst the spinal or epidural wears off. It also means that someone can be there to support you whilst you take your first wobbly steps or have your first shower.

    If you end up staying in the postnatal ward for a few days, then having a doula can also mean that someone can give your partner a much needed break, that your doula can hold your baby whilst you have a nap, or even bring you some much needed home cooked food.

    After the cesarean-at home

    When you get home, your doula can help you with settling in at home with your new baby (or babies!), helping you with feeding, with finding positions that feel comfortable to do so (feeding lying down can be a godsend for some post cesarean mums), and generally being a much needed extra pair of hands around the house,Ā  so you can rest, get to know your baby, and recover from the surgery.

    I have supported many mothers post cesarean, both as a birth and as a postnatal doula. This has taught me that, similarly to a vaginal birth, everybody’s experience of recovery is very widely varied. I have seen mums bounce around 3 days for cesarean looking pink and healthy, and also at the other end of the spectrum, mums having issues with retained placentas and/or scar infections which meant that their recovery journey was long and protracted.

    Partners usually only get a couple of week’s parental leave, and post cesarean mums are more likely to need antibiotics and have a longer stay in the hospital. On many occasions I have seen mums stay in the hospital for 3 to 5 days, so by the time they got home their partner only had about a week’s leave left. It can feel very scary indeed to be alone at home with a new baby when you are not only recovering from surgery, learning to look after a new baby, but also are more limited in your ability to get around (I’ve seen mums who lived in a remote areas getting very lonely as they couldn’t drive their cars for several weeks).

    Ultimately no new mum should ever be alone coping by herself in the first few weeks post birth, she needs aĀ  community around her to support her, and this is even more true for post cesarean mums.

    Kate wilson, mother

    Our doula, Candie, provided us with a huge amount of support both before and after the birth. She was with us in recovery and helped us to initiate breast feeding – which was so important after a traumatic experience with our first child. She then visited us at home and provided lots of support in helping us to adjust to life as a family of four. She supported me with breast feeding as Charlie had a tongue tie, she played with my older children and made sure I rested.”

    Georgia Wakins, doula

    “I supported a third time mum after a cesearean recently and there were lots of practical things I could help with for all three kids, but the most satisfying thing was the blissed out expression she had after I gave her a back and shoulder massage. The oxytocin and endorphins released with physical touch can be amazing for post-op discomfort, just like for labour.”

    If this resonates with you and you would like to work with me, head over here if you’re an expectant or new mum, or here if you are a birthworker

    Also feel free to signup to my mailing list to receive my newsletters by using the signup form at the bottom of this page

  • Taking the red pill: why I became a doula course leader

    The Developing Doulas course, and its founder, Maddie McMahon, have a special history for me.

    Back in 2005, when I was pregnant with my son, I hired Maddie as my doula.

    The experience was so incredibly empowering and life transforming that it started me on the path of a complete career conversion, and I went from being a scientist to becoming a doula and childbirth educator.

    Three years later, when Maddie ran the first ever Developing doulas course, she asked me to attend as a guinea pig.

    I absolutely loved the course, the course facilitators, and the amazing women I met.

    Fast forwards ten years andĀ  I’ve been a doula for nearly 7 years, a doula mentor for 2 years, and it feels right and fitting that I should start to facilitate Developing doulas courses myself.

    I’ve felt for myself the power of being supported unconditionally through one’s pregnancy and birth choices and I feel it has the power to change the world we live in. So it feels right, and important, to help more women embark on their journey to become a doula.

    Whilst I went into doulaing to help make the world a better place and to serve parents (and to help families have the same positive, supported experience I had), I’ve personally benefited from becoming a doula in ways that I could never have envisaged. It has been such an amazing journey of self discovery, and has given me such joy, such personal growth, and such incredible self belief.

    As I’m reflecting on this journey, I’m finding it quite hard to pinpoint exactly what is it about becoming a doula that had such a positive effect on me.

    I’ve found that it’s a multilayered combination of several factors.

    Firstly, supporting women through birth and the postpartum is incredibly rewarding. I’ve joked several times that when I was a scientist, I had many exciting moments, but I never cried tears of joy like I have many times since becoming a doula. Also as a scientist, I hoped that my research may lead to advances in medical care someday. With doulaing, the positive effects one has on families is immediately visible. On more occasions than I can count, I’ve been sitting in my car after a birth or a postnatal support session, and I’ve burst into tears of joy and gratitude. I feel that I am incredibly lucky to be able to do such a fulfilling job.

    Second, becoming a doula has broadened my mind beyond belief. When I was a scientist, I hung out all day with other scientists. Yes they were all different people, but they all operated within a similar mindset. As a doula I’ve met the most incredibly range of people, doing jobs I didn’t even know existed. Supporting families through such a vulnerable time as pregnancy and birth, the relationship we develop with our clients over the course of several weeks or months means that we get to know people really well. And what has amazed me the most, is, the longer I do this job, the more people keep amazing me. We are all so different, with different life stories and different needs. You start to realise that nothing is black and white, and just many different shades of grey. and that what’s right for one isn’t for another. Nothing exposes you to breadth of this difference as supporting women through birth.

    I have likened becoming a doula to taking the ā€˜red pillā€™ (as in the Matrix movie). Once you start doing this job, it opens your eyes, your heart and your mind beyond what you thought possible, in a way that I find hard to articulate with words, especially to people who are outside the doula world. You cannot unsee what you’ve seen.

    Everything in your life starts to change too, because what you learn is so opening and so deep, you cannot stop it from percolating to the rest of your life.

    Take questioning everything. Something that we discuss in depth during the doula course. The world, especially the medical maternity care system, isn’t as evidence based as you believe. Once you start digging into the evidence for that, and you realise it’s all a house of cards, you start questioning other aspects of medical care, you start questioning parenting, you start questioning education, the list goes on and on.

    Take unconditional support. This is the cornerstone of doulaing. We’re here to work alongside women and support their choices, and help them discover what’s right for them. Often we might be the first person in their life do to this for them. Just listening with no agenda. There is incredible power in doing this. Once you start doing that for clients, it also becomes a part of who you are. You judge people less, you ask open questions instead of making statements, you stop projecting your own beliefs on other. Your close ones, your family and friends benefit immensely from this. I am proud to say that becoming a doula has made me a better mother, and that I am raising kids who will take no shit from the system.

    Take becoming self employed. I don’t know if this applies to any self employment because I haven’t tried anything but doulaing, but since becoming self employed nearly 7 years ago, I’ve realised that I was pigeon holed without knowing it, in my previous job. Within science, there was a common, quite judgemental, and narrow minded way of thinking and an unspoken rule that if you didn’t know everything, you were incompetent. I used to feel very vulnerable after giving a talk at a conference, in case I didn’t know the answer to all the questions. Becoming a doula taught me that you don’t need to have all the answers, and that it’s ok to say “I don’t know, but I’m going to try and find out”. It’s incredibly liberating, and has built my self confidence no end.

    Take entering the most amazing community of women I’ve ever encountered. The doula world is almost entirely composed of women who are passionate about supporting women, and each other. It kicks the patriarchy in the teeth. My local doula community is simply the most amazing, non competitive, non judgmental, supportive community of awesome, kick-ass women I have ever entered. We lift each other up. We laugh and we cry with each other. So not only did I gain a job I adore, but I have also gained a local and UK wide community of women I love and admire. And, after many years of buying into the patriarchal model of competition between women, I’ve discovered the joys of sisterhood.

    Take all the opportunities for learning new skills that comes with this job. Since entering the world of doulaing I have attended countless study days on topics I didn’t even know existed before. Many of these I have enjoyed so much that I’ve honed my skills, and ended up teaching others. For an eternal student and knowledge freak like me, it’s incredibly exciting.

    Take the self esteem boost. It’s so good for the soul to follow your calling and do a job that you love. Beyond that, not having to know everything also led me to start believing I was good enough, so the effects on my sense of self (along with the incredible rewards of this job) have been very far reaching indeed.

    Take breaking the mold and becoming truly myself. Doulaing has allowed me to explore what I love doing and learning beyond the confines of what’s considered “ok” by society. I’m a scientist AND an energy worker, and it’s completely ok! When you spend your days encouraging others to trust their instincts, it rubs off! So the biggest gain for me as a person has been able to grow into who I really am, and embracing my weird quirks and blend of science and woo unashamedly. I feel I’ve really grown into the person I am meant to be. I no longer fit into a nice neat box and I love it.

    As Brene Brown says

    ” Belonging is the innate human desire to be part of something larger than us. Because this yearning is so primal, we often try to acquire it by fitting in and by seeking approval, which are not only hollow substitutes for belonging, but often barriers to it. Because true belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance.”

    Becoming a doula has been instrumental in my journey of self growth and self acceptance.

    These are all the reasons I’m grateful that I have become a doula. These are also the reasons I’ve become a doula course facilitator.

    I’m teaching my first course in North East London in May. Visit the Developing Doulas website to find out more.

    Would you like to join me in taking the red pill? What are you waiting for?

     

  • Confessions of a hippy scientist : 3 years on.

    Confessions of a hippy scientist : 3 years on.

    Three years ago today, I published a blog call “confessions of a hippy scientist“.

    In this blog, I came out as a science meets woo person, something I had shied away from for a couple of years.

    You see I’ve got a PhD in biology and spend 20 years working as a research scientist.

    When I left my scientific career to become a doula (back in 2012), being at births and feeling the incredible powerful energy in the room, combined with hanging out with a lot of spiritual birthworkers, led me to want to develop my energy healing abilities further.

    Back in 2003 I had undergone Reiki Level 1 training. In 2015 I took it to level 2 then master teacher level.

    After training and starting to offer healing to people on a regular basis, I agonised over showing this side of myself to the world.

    Doula clients told me they’d picked me because of my scientific background, which wasn’t surprising as Cambridge is full of medics and scientists. They felt reassured by it and I understood that.

    I worried a lot about putting people off if I chose to show my woo underbelly.

    I even went as far as considering a separate website for my Reiki work!

    Luckily someone challenged me to “come out”, and I wrote the blog I mention above.

    It felt very vulnerable to publish it, yet the post only got amazing responses, mostly from people who felt the same as me and thanked for it. It helped others on their way to embracing their full selves.

    Something magical happened in my work too, as I started getting clients who were more aligned with my true self.

    Because you see, when you show your true self, it puts some people off, but these aren’t the people you want to work with.

    Instead, you start attracting people who are much more aligned with who you are.

    For instance, a birth client who had told me she didn’t want any hippy stuff, asked for several Reiki treatments after birth. When I asked her what had made her change her mind, she said “before the birth I didn’t get it, but now I do”, which was a complete reflection of my own journey.

    So where am I now 3 years after this “coming out” blog?

    First of all, I have now embraced who I am so much that I cannot believe that I used to feel the need to hide this side of myself.

    I still work with a lot of scientists and medics (I’m still in Cambridge after all), but somehow my alternative side is never an issue.

    I’m getting a lot more woo clients too, which I love. This year I have finally ticked my bucket list wish of drumming during a birth, and I have also been hired specifically by someone who wants me to drum at their birth. It feels very good and exciting.

    I’m also being hired to organise mother blessings and group closing the bones ceremonies, as opposed to just doing them for friends.

    I’m still a scientist, and always will be be. I love nothing more than providing clients with evidence based links, especially when those help them make truly informed decisions about their care, and challenge population based hospital policies.

    Last year, I spent several months reviewing the research on the aging of the placenta and wrote this blogĀ  mostly because I got fed up of seeing non scientific birthworkers friends being bamboozled by jargon, and to show that things aren’t quite a simple as the “experts” say.

    To write it I had to put my old scientist hat firmly back on and spend many hours reading the research. I realised I found doing this, that I found it tedious and dry. This is no longer who I am, and I’m really glad I’m not working in academia anymore. Today I’m able to unapologetically embrace who I am, and no longer feel that I need to know everything.

    As I write this, I realise that I already felt this way when I was a budding scientist, early during my PhD. I remember my supervisor implying that I had to know everything and that I was incompetent if I didn’t. What a load of tosh! Something in me already knew this wasn’t true. I also remember questioning the way scientific papers were written under the same rigid rules and not liking it. I found reading papers for the sake it really tedious even then. I guess I always was a bit of a maverick, and someone who questions everything.

    Between 2008 and 2012, as I trained for my diploma in antenatal education, I learnt about the way we learn, and it makes so much more sense to me. You simply cannot force knowledge into people, by pouring it into their heads.

    Interestingly, I feel that my scientific knowledge is now kept fresh and alive by the multitude of clients I supports and all their wide and varied needs. Because I love nothing more than finding scientific evidence for clients, I find myself reading avidly on their behalf, and the knowledge sticks because there is a positive and emotionally investment behind my looking for it.

    I’m still a hippy, in fact more than ever! I’ve carried on developing my more spiritual skills since I wrote the original blog. In 2017, made a shamanic drum at a very spiritual workshop, for the purpose of healing around pregnancy and birth. I then took a Reiki Drum training course shortly after that, and using my drum for healing and holding groups etc has become completely normal and natural to me. I’ve had two Reiki training upgrades. I have even stopped shying away from using my drum as standard in my closing the bones treatments (I used to give people the option to have it or not, now I just tell them it’s part of the treatment). Using Reiki treatment is part of my everyday life.

    What I’ve found has happened is my energy work offering, which started being a neat Reiki thing, has morphed into my own style of blended healing, which is completely intuitive, and doesn’t actually have a proper name or fit in a box, but it’s mine and I love it.

    Rather than offering energy work as a standalone I now weave it in and out of my birth and postnatal practise as and when feels appropriate.

    The call to embrace and develop my inner healer is extremely strong. It feels without a shadow of a doubt that this is where I’m headed.

    To make room for this I ended up dropping hats that no longer fitted me, that I felt I had outgrown. For instance I left my role as an NCT teacher.

    I’m also slowly letting go of my teaching of babywearing. I still love supporting parents using slings, but I dropped running a sling clinic and I’m also letting go to actively teaching babywearing peer supporter courses-because whilst I still enjoy it, it doesn’t fill my soul with joy the way facilitating more spiritual work like closing the bones does.

    The thing I love above all is blending my own cocktail of science and woo.

    I trained with Spinning babies since I wrote the blog, twice, and I use a combination of their techniques which I apply in a very scientific way, together with tuning in to what I feel and see happens energetically to the mother during labour. I have experienced true miracles in using this unusual mix.

    Perhaps the one thing that exemplifies this above all, is that I just finished developing an entirely new massage technique inspired by closing the bones, together with Teddy Brookes the osteopath. We called it the postnatal recovery massage. It combines massage, energy work and osteopathy. We teach it together, and the feedback we have received reflects exactly that. To quote Charlotte, a doula who attended our first training :

    ” Sophie and Teddy have taken all that is special about it and fused her energy-work approach with his osteopathic technique to create something extraordinary.”

    Openly embracing who I am with all my paradoxes and quirks has been the most liberating journey ever.

    I am a scientist but I am also an energy healer. I am proud of it. It’s what makes me unique.

    If being a doula has taught me one thing, itā€™s that we are ALL full of paradoxes and quirks and uniqueness.

    Nobody fits nicely into a neat little box.

    I want to support others in this journey of embracing themselves, and this is a massive reason being my recently becoming a doula course leader.

    When we celebrate rather than shame our uniqueness, this has tremendous power, both for ourselves and everybody around us.

  • The vision board, an alternative way to plan what you want

    The vision board, an alternative way to plan what you want

    Today I’ve spent the whole morning making a vision board for this year.

    It feels Ā that I’ve been procrastinating doing this for over 2 weeks now, and suddenly felt the urge this morning, which is the first full moon of the year, and a powerful one at that, a good time to set intentions.

    I’ve been doing this for 4 years now.

    I started doing this as an alternative, no actually, as a rebellion against the typical masculine-orientated process of making a list/bullet point/gannt charts and suchlike.

    Once upon a time I was a control freak scientist who adored excel and Gannt charts. I was extremely process driven, I never forgot a thing, and was irritated beyond belief by people who didn’t prepare and plan things in advance or forgot stuff.

    The birth of my first child rewired my brain, and led to my leaving my scientist career to become a doula. You can read about that here.

    My creativity went through the roof and my organisation skills kind of decreased at the same time. I’m am so much happier for it!

    The only problem was, I didn’t know how to organise things except in the way I had been taught.

    The first couple of years of my self employed life I rode on the wave of excitement and novelty, so things were effortless and easy.

    Then a couple of years later, I felt overworked and out of control.

    What I didn’t realise at the time, was that the process I was using was a male one, a linear one, and that it didn’t suit who I was anymore.

    So I started experimenting with more fluid, intuitive, creative, and feminine ways of working.

    Making a vision board was such a process.

    Here’s how I do it:

    I gather a bunch of old magazines (I need quite a lot so I accumulate them over the years, many being free magazines I grab in local cafes etc).

    I set my intention of what I want this vision board to be for (for me, it’s what I’d like more of in my life this year, but you could use it for something entirely different).

    It’s nice to meditate before you start, especially about how you’d like to feel, rather than setting targets for now.

    Then I sit at my kitchen table with a cup of coffee, and flick through the magazine and rip any page that has a picture that appeals to me. I am completely intuitive about this, I’m not analysing it.

    After I’ve got enough pictures, I then cut them nicely using a rotary trimmer and scissors. As I do this I discard some pictures already.

    I lay a large piece of flipchart paper on the table, then arrange all by themes. Some pictures don’t make the cut.

    I visualise what each picture means for me as I set them in place. It’s quite vague at this stage but it feels important to do that. It doesn’t have to be logical or fully fledged either, usually at this stage it’s just an idea.

    Finally I glue all the pictures in place, and set the finished vision board in a prominent place in my house.

    Over the last 3 years I’ve been doing this, as I look at the board from time to time, it’s fascinating to see how what I visualised has manifested itself, often in different ways to what I had imagined, but manifested itself nevertheless.

    I wrote this to encourage others to try it and I’d love to hear, or even better, see, what you come up with and what effects it has for you.

    Here’s what the one I made today looks like.

     

  • A four day long HBAC

    A four day long HBAC

    Caro and Santi (both from Argentina) had hired me and my co-doula Becky as their doulas.Ā  They were planning a HBAC (home birth after cesarean) after having had what they knew to be an unnecessary elective caesarean with their first child.

    We met several times during Caro’s pregnancy, and built a lovely rapport together, getting to know them and their toddler son Max. They were both delightful and warm and friendly, and very well informed and researched. As Santi stayed at home to look after Max, I accompanied Caro to her hypnobirthing classes. This is the story of their birth, shared with their permission. It lasted 4 days, the longest birth I have ever attended in my 6 years as a doula.

    Day 1

    Caro texted us on Saturday morning (40 weeks and 5 days) to let us know that her waters had just broken. We kept in touch throughout the day.

    She lost some mucus around 10am, and started having mild, period cramp like contractions, soon after. She napped and ate, and rested throughout the day, keeping us updated.

    On their request I provided Caro and Santiago with evidence based papers to read about the risks of induction versus caesarean should they go beyond the 48h deadline after her waters had broken. Caro called the hospital around 10pm. They asked her to go in, which she declined. The hospitals send midwives to her home to listen to the baby’s heart instead.

    Caro declined a vaginal examination at this stage. The midwives booked an appointment for her on Monday afternoon at the hospital.

    Day 2

    Sunday morning around 2:30 am Caro texted us a screen shot of her contraction timer showing 40 sec to 1 min long contractions about 3 to 6 min apart. I called her. We agreed I should come and support her. I arrived at her house around 3am.

    She was having quite regular contractions but she was very “with it” and alert and I could tell this was early labour still. We filled the pool. Caro got in but things slowed down so she got out.

    Becky joined us around 7am. At day break things slowed right down. Max and Caro’s mother got up and join us . We shared a lovely breakfast of scones and jam.

    We hung out in the house/garden throughout the morning. It was a gorgeous, warm and sunny spring day.

    Caro was still having regular contractions but there were only 5/10 min apart. Santi and I went to get a takeaway lunch from a local South American restaurant.

    I went home around 3pm to get some sleep and spend some time with my family (it was my husband’s birthday that day). Becky spent some time lying in the garden with Caro, and rubbing her back during contractions.

    Caro messaged me around 9pm, contractions still irregular, and about one min long. I went to sleep after that. Becky had gone back home by then to rest too.

    Caro texted us around 10pm as her contractions were about 1 min long and 5/7 min apart. She found them harder to cope with. She messaged again around 11pm,by then her contractions were 4/6 min apart and 1 min long.

    Day 3

    Becky and I came back to her house around midnight. We spent another night of supporting her, both in and out of the pool. At some point in the night Caro experienced a lot of pressure in her bottom, and we got quite excited believing that baby was on his way, but it wasn’t time yet.

    I was amazed that Caro wasn’t exhausted at this stage, but somehow she managed to sleep between contractions and recover enough to cope. In the morning Becky went to sleep upstairs and I had a nap on the sofa.

    A midwife came in the morning to assess things. Caro agreed to a vaginal examination (she had been in labour for nearly 48h by now) and was found to be only 2/3cm dilated. I had a big wobble at this point. I also believed her baby to be back to back, hence the pressure in her bottom. The midwife also said that her baby was only 3/5 engaged.

    I suggested to Caro that she does some engagement spinning babies techniques, namely a technique called the bump lift, consisting in flattening her back against the wall and lifting her bump, and we also did some rebozo sifting on her belly. It seemed to help a bit, and her contractions got stronger. Becky and I had a chat and agree we should tag team and she sent me home to rest. At home I had some food then a nap, then came back at 2pm.

    I brought some loo roll with me as I’d noticed they’d run out, and I knew they wouldn’t find the time to go out shopping for some!

    Caro and Santi were snoozing upstairs when I got back. Becky told me they have agreed to a visit from the midwives, but that they only wanted to check the baby’s heart rate and mum’s vitals but not have any vaginal examinations, nor hear any talk about risks.

    Becky left and the midwives arrived. I met them downstairs and explained Caro’s wishes. They weren’t pleased by my request, and one of them said sharply that she had to tell her (about the risks) as she had a duty to protect the baby. I explained that after the previous talk of risks, Caro’s contractions stopped for over 2h, and therefore it really wasn’t a good idea. The midwives came upstairs. I crouched on the floor feeling like a mama bear, ready to pounce if the talk of risks rears its ugly head. Surprisingly, they did the checks and only mentioned to Caro and Santi that they needed to know that they are going against medical advice.

    At this stage, Caro and Santi agreed that they would go for a caesarean early the next morning (Tuesday) should she not have given birth yet. The midwives left.

    I carried on supporting Caro through the afternoon. Her contractions were still spaced out. Santi had a good long nap with Max Late afternoon I spoke to Becky and she told me to go home. We agreed we could have another night and day, possibly in hospital with a caesarean, after today.

    When I relayed our plan to Caro and Santi, Caro got upset and told me that I had lost faith in her, and she was right. I was by this point extremely weary and tired, and this affected my emotions a lot. I apologised profusely. Santi was also worried about doing bedtime without our support. I explained that we were happy to help but really need some sleep ourselves and Caro’s mum could support her during that time. I went home to sleep around 8pm.

    Day 4

    Becky called me around 1h30 am saying Caro was pushing. I got dressed and drove very quickly as I was worried I might miss the birth! When I got there I could tell Caro was nowhere near birthing yet. Her contractions were still not quite strong enough.

    Two midwives arrived at around 2am, both really lovely community midwives, calm and compassionate. One of them examined Caro and she was 5/6 cm dilated. This was hard for me to hear as I was really hoping she was ready to push her baby out! Caro carried on labouring through the night.

    When shift change was due to happen I explained to the midwives how important it was to have a supportive, confident midwife just like them replacing them. I asked for a particular community midwife whom I knew, and who Caro liked a lot. They organised for her to come :-). She was incredibly calm and supportive.

    We had a chat with Santi explaining that Caro’s mother needed to take Max out of the house for the day because Caro really needs some peace and quiet to get on with her labour. She left for the day soon after that. I went shopping for some food as we hadn’t got much left in the house.

    Sometimes in the morning, the midwife did another vaginal examination (in the pool!) and Caro was still only 6cm dilated and hadn’t progressed. This was a down point. I asked specific questions to the midwife, especially if baby was back to back and asynclitic, and she confirmed this. Her baby seemed to have completely more than one turn around the pelvis several times already, from being OP, then OA then OP again.

    I took my spinning babies handbook out of my bag again, and with Becky’s help (and Caro’s consent!) we helped Caro into an inversion. During about 3 contractions, I used my rebozo to do vigorously do shaking the apples on her bottom. It took all of us to support her through it, as you can imagine this wasn’t the comfiest thing to do at this stage. Then I did a sacro-tuberous ligament release and also a standing sacral release. Caro immediately said that she has felt the baby turn and that her back pain was gone. Her contractions cranked up big time and I knew we had changed things for the better.

    A vaginal examination around 3pm showed that she was 7cm dilated. Caro got back into the pool and carried on labouring. Contractions were really powerful at this stage, and I was feeling very hopeful.

    Becky supported Caro by saying ” longgg deeep slowwww breaths” as she had a few wobbles. Eventually Caro started to show signs of pushing šŸ™‚

    Around 5 pm there was another shift change, I am worried because one of the midwives is the one who talked about risks the day before. I was worried that the change of midwives at such a crucial time could upset Caro’s labour. The midwife in question hadn’t given me a good vibe the day before. By then Caro has been pushing for a while.

    I suggested to Santi that he supports her pushing by standing on the edge of the pool with a rebozo around his shoulders for her to pull on. Becky tried to make sure that the other midwife, not the one we had a bad gut feeling about, came into the room instead but that didn’t work.

    So I worked hard on changing my feelings towards her to positive ones. Luckily she turned out to be much more relaxed than I thought. Caro carried on pushing.

    At some point she shouted “I’m fucking doing it”, and she sure was! She soon started feeling some stinging.

    Caro’s baby son Leo was born in the pool in her living room around 6h30 pm, after 4 days of labour. When he was born, the emotion in the room was incredible. There wasn’t a dry eye in the room, even the midwives were crying.

    I cried and laughed at the same time for the first time in my life, with the cheer joy and relief. It was the most incredible feeling. Becky and I hugged each other like loonies. I sobbed some more. I literally shook with it. This was one of the most emotional births I have ever been at.

    After the birth I suggested to Becky that she goes home to sleep straight away as she was still on call for someone else. I stayed to support Caro and make sure she and baby were comfy

    I help her take a shower, and she was elated by the fact that she could walk around straight after the birth- a stark contrast to her previous caesarean.

    Caro was soon tucked up in bed with her new son Leo, and a nice chunk of groaning cake.

    I left around 9pm with a huge smile on my face.

    Reflection

    When I reflect on this birth several months later, I am still amazed at Caro’s resilience, at her belief in herself, and at the unwavering support of her husband.

    I also can’t believe I managed to support them for that long, with so little sleep, if I had been told that the birth would have been this long in advance I’m not sure I could have coped with it. But in the middle of it you just dig deep and get on with it.

    This is also the first birth where I experienced my first true miracle with the spinning babies and rebozo techniques.

    I teach rebozo techniques workshops, and Caro’s birth completely changed my outlook and the way I teach. It really anchored in my heart that this simple tool can really work miracles.

    I went on to have several similar miracles with such techniques at other births (though not quite at long!) since. This birth also illustrates to the extreme the commitment doulas make to their clients, and how much emotional investment be put in this job.

    I asked Caro to share her incredible birth story because I hope it will give other women the belief that they too can have an incredibly empowering birth after caesarean. For doulas, this birth illustrates how awesome shared care doula support can be. I canā€™t imagine how I would have survived without Becky, both in the fact that we supported each other, and the ability to tag team and get some rest!

    The day after the birth, Becky went to a study day at the hospital, and she lost count of how many midwives approached her and asked “what did you do?” about the amazing effect of the inversion with the rebozo. I am hoping to train the midwives in my local hospital to do this too. Caro is now a life long friend and is planning to become a doula. When I think back about her birth, all I feel is tremendous gratitude and joy.

    Becky and I shortly after the birth

     

  • January : a time for rest and reflection

    January : a time for rest and reflection

    I’ve just had a lovely catchup with fellow doula Hazel Acland Tree with whom I have fortnightly accountability calls (I can’t recommend doing this enough by the way).

    During our call I expressed how frustrated I am with my desire to go forward and make plans now that we’re at the beginning of the year, and the energy I’m feeling instead, which is quite inward and not at all forward at the moment.

    Whilst chatting to Hazel I had a realisation that the energies right now, during the winter time, are indeed inwards, and that it doesn’t make sense that we are expected to make our yearly plans in January. We ought to make them in spring or summer, when our energy is high, and outwards looking.

    When I was a biology student, I went to a lecture on chronobiology, the science of “when” rather than “why” and “what”. This made so much sense to me and attracted me so much I ended up specialising in it, and doing my PhD and 2 postdocs on the genes the regulate our seasonal reproductive clock.

    I remember during the introduction lecture, the speaker explained that since we are regulated by daylight, our energy is naturally higher in the summer when days are longer, and that in the past, as most people farmed the land, they worked much harder during spring and summer than during the winter months when nothing grew. When school became obligatory, the farmers agreed to send their kids to school but said they’d need them back for the harvest, which is how the tradition of summer holidays started.

    Yet, even in our modern world, we still experience this annual peak and through of energy.

    Like trees losing their leaves and returning their energies inwards before the new growth can occur, we too, during winter, need this inwards and more restful time.

    As I talked about my plans and my frustration in trying to push through, but also about my knowledge that I want to lay down some feelings for the year ahead, meditate and make a vision board before I start getting down to the nitty gritty of what I’m going to do in 2019, my friend suggested very wisely suggested that rather than looking for the fruit I needed to tend to my roots first.

    I loved this very powerful image, especially as our culture is all focused on results, ie the fruits.

    But you can bear no fruits if you do not tend to, or nourish the roots.

    This also reminded me of another powerful story in the (surprisingly spiritual) book “The 7 habits of highly effective people” by Stephen Covey.

    ” Suppose you were to come upon someone in the woods working feverishly to saw down a tree.

    ā€œWhat are you doing?ā€ you ask.

    ā€œCanā€™t you see?ā€ comes the impatient reply. ā€œIā€™m sawing down this tree.ā€

    ā€œYou look exhausted!ā€ you exclaim. ā€œHow long have you been at it?ā€

    ā€œOver five hours,ā€ he returns, ā€œand Iā€™m beat! This is hard work.ā€

    ā€œWell, why donā€™t you take a break for a few minutes and sharpen that saw?ā€ you inquire. ā€œIā€™m sure it would go a lot faster.ā€

    ā€œI donā€™t have time to sharpen the saw,ā€ the man says emphatically. ā€œIā€™m too busy sawing!ā€

    Stephen Covey goes further in saying that

    ” Sharpen the Saw means preserving and enhancing the greatest asset you have–you. It means having a balanced program for self-renewal in the four areas of your life: physical, social/emotional, mental, and spiritual.”

    You can read example of such activities here

    There is true magic in stopping, resting and taking stock and seeing the forest for the trees.

    I have written about this topic before, but today I feel that I have embedded this knowledge at a deeper level.

    So I’m going to take my own counsel today and only attend to what really needs to be done, so I can rest and retreat inside myself a little, so I can tend to my roots.

    I know that doing this will allow for more beautiful flowers and fruits in the future.