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Sophie Messager

Author: Sophie Messager

  • 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 and  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 ‘red pill’ (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 blog  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, it’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  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.  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 🙂

    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 can’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.

    “What are you doing?” you ask.

    “Can’t you see?” comes the impatient reply. “I’m sawing down this tree.”

    “You look exhausted!” you exclaim. “How long have you been at it?”

    “Over five hours,” he returns, “and I’m beat! This is hard work.”

    “Well, why don’t you take a break for a few minutes and sharpen that saw?” you inquire. “I’m sure it would go a lot faster.”

    “I don’t have time to sharpen the saw,” the man says emphatically. “I’m too busy sawing!”

    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.

  • Reflections on 2018

    Reflections on 2018

    At the end of 2017 I wrote a review of my year.

    I found this a very useful exercise, because as I wrote telling a story, I gained a lot more insight into what I had done during the year than when I bullet point it like I used to do.

    So I am doing it again, for myself, but also because I hope it will inspire others to do the same and reflect on their year and celebrate their achievements.

    I am breaking it down in sections: my doula year, my teacher/facilitator year, my personal development and self care year.

    My doula year.

    This year I supported 10 families through pregnancy and birth (my busiest year yet) and 4 through the postnatal period. There was a HBAC (homebirth after caesarean), 4 birth centre births (including a VBAC), 2 vaginal births in the delivery unit after induction, and 3 planned caesareans.

    I am sharing some of the stories below with permission from the mothers.

    Two of these births where twins, which was an entirely new experience for me. I felt out of my depth and had impostor syndrome. I remember worrying whether I’d be able to support the mum adequately, especially in the postnatal period, but my worries were unfounded, and I now feel much more confident supporting multiple pregnancies.

    One of the twin mums was a repeat client. It proved a complicated pregnancy with lots of hospital visits, we knew her babies would be born early, but it still came as a shock when she called me telling me they were taking her to theatre, right now, at 32 weeks on the dot. I was packed for a week end away and about to leave the house. Luckily my husband saw how torn I was and immediately told me to go be with her (I love him a lot for this). It was important for me to be there for her. The babies had to spent quite some time in NICU and when they came home, my client had a very challenging journey to breastfeed them. They were both tongue tied, and the local maternity staff didn’t support her breastfeeding, pushing formula and claiming that “breastfeeding was too tiring for them”. We embarked on a several week long journey to help her achieve her goals, which at some point involved 3 doulas providing full time support during the day. Each feed go like this: she would feed one twin first, I would then give that twin an expressed breast milk top up whilst mum fed the second one. I would then put twin 1 inside my stretchy wrap, so I could hold twin 2 and give her her top up, whilst mum expressed her milk. She only got a 30 min break before starting the whole thing all over again, which gave me incredible respect and awe for her determination. She went on to breastfeed them for 8 months after that! Also, for the first time in my life I carried her twins together in a sling which was so special and lovely.

    Births don’t come nicely stacked, they tend to come like buses, and this year there were two sets of 2 births really close to another, one days apart, the other hours apart. I didn’t repeat the 2 births in one day experience of 2017, but I did attend 2 births less than 30h apart, and so once again I am so grateful for shared doula care which made the whole experience so much easier and less stressful.

    Births also tend to come in themes: This year the theme for me was rebozo and spinning babies techniques. Apart from one very quick birth (and obviously the planned caesareans), I used a combination of spinning babies techniques and rebozo work to incredible effects during pretty much every birth. I’m so grateful for this knowledge. In late 2016 and early 2017 I attended 2 spinning babies workshops. But it is only this year, probably through a mix of increased practical and theoretical knowledge (and the fact that I have been teaching rebozo techniques for 2 years, something that has really deepened my knowledge), that I saw miracles happen.

    What made the miracles happen was the using the spinning babies quick reference booklet and rebozo techniques together, and asking midwives very granular questions about the baby’s position and station (then using this to inform which techniques to use).

    One of the birth highlights of the year was a 4 day long HBAC (homebirth after caesarean), the longest birth I have attended. I used many different rebozo and spinning babies techniques during this birth, but the most striking effect was when, after 3 days of labour, mum got stuck at 6cm dilation due to a posterior and asynclitic baby. With the help of her husband and my co-doula Becky, we helped the mother get herself in an inverted position, and during 3 contractions, I vigorously shook her buttocks with my rebozo. When she came back up, she announced that her back didn’t hurt anymore. Her midwife confirmed that baby had rotated, and she had her baby in the pool 4h later. After those 4 days of labour, when she finally birthed her baby boy in the pool in her living room, there wasn’t a dry eye in the room. In fact it was such a joyful relief that I actually cried and laughed at the first time, something that had never happened to me before.

    The effect of the techniques we used during her birth was so instant and amazing that when Becky went to a study day at the hospital the following day, she lost count of how many midwives approached her to ask “but what did you do?” (because of course, everybody had heard about “that” birth.

    I’ve had similar experiences after this birth, probably because seeing for myself how miraculous the techniques could be was what I needed to really drive the message. I’ve also started telling all my clients during pregnancy that if there is any delay in progress, rather than risking some major intervention, I’ll offer them these techniques. I make sure we have practised them together, so they aren’t put off by my offering of these things during labour.

    During another birth, as soon as I turned up I noticed that the mother had the typical one long one short contraction pattern indicative of an OP baby. She also had back pain, so rather than waiting for confirmation, I offered rebozo sifting as a way to help her back ache. After 3 contractions of belly sifting followed by 3 contractions of shaking the apples, boom! the contractions were regular and she birthed 3h later, having only been 2cm dilated prior to the rebozo work.

    In 2017 I became a doula UK mentor. I have now mentored 15 doula, two of which have now become recognised. It’s been such a special journey supporting new doulas as they grow, and again I found myself learning so much from it, that it made me revisit the idea of becoming a doula trainer, something that had been in the back of my mind for a few years.

    I approached Maddie McMahon of Developing doulas. It had been a long time coming because Maddie was my doula and I also attended her first ever developing doulas course in 2008 (and it feels very fitting as she celebrated 10 years of doula courses this year), and started co-facilitating courses with her in September. Having co-facilitated 2 courses with her, I’m being assessed in February and booked to teach my first solo course in London in May. I’m so excited by this new journey!

    I wrote 19 blog posts on topics ranging from birth to motherhood to self care, and I hope what I wrote helped women and birthworkers feeling empowered in making informed decisions. I also started writing a regular column in The Doula magazine.

    My teaching/workshop facilitator year.

    I facilitated 23 workshops in 2018, a mix of Closing the bones, Rebozo, Babywearing and Reiki workshops. I trained over 150 people, including teaching rebozos to NHS midwives for the first time. I travelled up and down the country (from Cambridge, to Norfolk, to Nottingham, to various places in and around London). This year for the first time that I took my teaching outside of the UK, first to Belgium, then to Dubai. I had a blast, especially in Dubai where I combined my trip with a bit of sightseeing, and got to go up the tallest building in the world and swim inside the man-made palm island. I meet some awesome women, and shared some incredible moments of connection with them too.

    This year also saw me launch my online rebozo course. After 18 months of preparation, working with a large group of early adopters, doing a beta version of the course with them, the finished course was launched in July, and I’ve received extremely positive feedback about it since. I’m excited to be able to share this knowledge further afield.

    Maddie McMahon and I celebrated having trained nearly 400 people in the closing the bones massage. We hope this will help play a role in changing our culture’s attitude towards supporting women during the postpartum, to be more women centred. Our dream is that all women know about this treatment and why it’s so needed, and that people buy them this and really support, like home-cooked food and offers of doing chores instead of bouquets of flowers and gifts for the baby.

    Over the last couple of years, many people started approaching me asking me to develop a massage table version of the closing the bones. Closing the bones is usually done on the floor, and many people with knee or back problems found it too painful or difficult to do. In September 2017 I had approached my osteopath friend Teddy Brookes asking him if he would be interested in helping develop it. It took us 18 months to develop it, and it morphed into something really quite different from the floor work. We called it the postnatal recovery massage, and trialled it out on a small group of guinea pigs in October, and they loved. You can read more about it here. I am incredibly proud of this new technique, and excited to be teaching it together with Teddy in 2019.

     

    My healer year

    Giving healing treatments, whether it is using closing the bones and/or Reiki and drumming is something I love to do, and this year I did plenty of this. I used my energy management skills to a whole new level at births this year, seeing the mother’s energy field open to let the baby’s soul in for the first time. This is such a powerful and beautiful image that I am planning to have it tattooed on my arm.

    I closed the bones of several clients post birth, some more than once, and also used it outside of the birth setting, to support loss in particular, and difficult life transitions. I just love how healing this treatment can be.

    Whilst treating clients with Reiki, I had the new experience of feeling my arms and hands vibrating strongly (enough for my clients to feel it) which kind of freaked me out because I didn’t understand why it was happening. After I learnt that this was simply caused by a very large amount of energy coming through to very depleted people (like when too much water tries to come through a narrow pipe), I became excited when it happened, as I knew it would be doing good to my client.

    I learnt a new trauma release technique called the Rewind technique this year and had some very effective experiences with it.

    I also organised 2 mother blessings for 2 local doula sisters, and it was especially lovely. You can read about one of them here . I’ve now been booked by women who want this AND a group closing the bones ritual for next year, and I am so excited about offering this.

    I also got booked by a client who wants me to drum at her birth, something that has been on my bucket list for a while! It will be interesting to see the hospital staff reaction to it.

    In September I got my first tattoo. If you told me even a couple of years ago I would get one I would have laughed. But whilst making a drum at the doula retreat last year I was introduced to the idea of having a tattoo done in ceremony. The idea grew on me, I delayed it as I wasn’t ready and hadn’t found the right design. But when I committed to it I found the design the same day (an intricate female wolf face, which is inspired by henna tattoo designs. The wolf is my spirit animal, something I discovered during a guided drum journey at the doula retreat about 4 years ago) and I loved having it done in ceremony with my doula sisters holding me and drumming for me. It feels very significant and special.

    My personal development year

    I’m an eternal student and love to learn new skills more than anything so this year was no different.

    I attended 2 conferences (doula UK and Birthlight) and 8 study days (Rewind training, Slingababy CPD week end, 2 workshops at the doula retreat, safeguarding, bump wrapping workshop, and AIMS consent workshop).

    I guess what was new this year is I learnt a lot of new skills by myself.

    Launching the rebozo online course led me to learn lots of new skills, from shooting videos to taking pictures, and how to translate live into e-learning., and developing the postnatal recovery massage course really increased my bodywork knowledge too.

    In the past I have written about the importance of listening  to your inner guidance instead of always looking for answers outside of yourself. I guess this year, for the first time I feel that I am really integrating the concept of developing my knowledge from inside rather than outside.

    Yet, the year didn’t start so well for me, in February I was in a quite a negative mindset and feeling kind of stuck, stressed and overworked.

    I met an awesome coach called Bonny Williams and embarked on a 3 months coaching programme with her, based on the One of Many female archetype system. Bonny explained that always trying to achieve at a constant rate is a very male way of working, whereas we women, with our menstrual cycle, have cyclical energy, and that working in such a masculine lead to depletion and wasn’t sustainable. This proved to be totally transformative for me, and thanks to her I discovered a more flowy, fluid, fun, and more feminine and intuitive way of working, and stopped beating myself up when I wasn’t constantly working at the same pace, like a man. I even started to give myself permission to do very little at the beginning of my cycle, something I wrote about it here.

    I finally let go of the idea that I ought to be productive all the time. I felt like I was shedding 40 plus years of conditioning, from school to Uni to corporate life. Miracles happened once I started using this new way of working and I feel that for the first time since I left employment 6 years ago, I have finally found the right way of working for me. I’m much happier and relaxed for it too. And guess what, true miracles have happened since because I have had a more successful year both personally and financially than ever before.

    This helped me “come out” even more as my scientist cum healer self, and in July I had a photoshoot with my friend Ali Dover , and completely rewamped the look of my website to reflect my new self.

    My self care year

    I kept my rule of having a body work treatment after every birth, from my osteopath friend Teddy Brookes, who has a unique way of resetting my nervous system, something that is much needed after a birth. I tried two new treatments too, thanks to amazing therapists friends with whom I do skill swaps: I had a Watsu session with my friend Kamilla Bombeiros  and it was incredible, like the most relaxing and enjoyable thing ever. I also had a new type of deep tissue massage from my friend Emma Kenny , perfectly timed to recover from facilitating my first doula course!

    Of course the 4 days doula retreat in magical Cae Mabon in North Wales in May, away from the hustle and bustle of the world, was the highlight of my self care year, and this time involved me having a rather mind blowing healing experience as I attended a grief workshop, and also shed another layer of “not being good enough” in a workshop which wasn’t part of the plan, you can read about that here.

    Last year I re-joined a choir, something that I find incredibly good for the soul. I’ve carried on singing with them and we had two incredibly magical moments : singing at the top of Castle Hill at dusk in the summer, I felt this experience touched the divine. Another wonderful event was spending an evening punting up and down the Cam river whilst singing, with the whole choir on 6 punts hooked together!

    Sports and health wise, I kept to my weekly regime of 2/3 swims a week, and 3 body weight/kettlebell exercise sessions, all of which I do first thing in the morning. In June I started eating a ketogenic diet, mostly for weight loss as the perimenopause meant that I was getting to a size I wasn’t happy with. I achieved my goals and more with this, loosing around 20 pounds since June, but what I didn’t expect was how well this way of eating would make me feel. My mood and energy are much more stable, I’m not just leaner I’m also happier. I find this way of eating incredibly liberating too as I’m never hungry nor need to count any calories.

    But the surprise highlight of my self care year, was discovering the local river swimming club. I had promised myself I’d do some wild swimming in the UK this summer, and thanks to a friend, I was introduced to the local river swimming club. It’s in the most gorgeous, peaceful and secluded wild spot, and as I started going there daily over the glorious summer, it did such wonder for my mental health, very much like if I was washing all my shit off in the river. I loved it so much that I kept going as the weather grew colder, and I’m still going now once a week (with a wetsuit since the water temp dropped below 5 degrees). It makes me feel incredible. I’ve written a whole blog post about it if you’d like to read more.

    Last year I wrote my year review as a blog for the first time and found it an incredibly useful process, because it made me reflect a lot more than when I just wrote bullet points as I used to do. It also helped alleviate the feeling that I’m not doing enough to achieve what used to be my own impossible standards.

    At the end of last year’s review I wrote this : I’m making the promise to myself to spend more time having fun with my work, than trying to stick to a rigid working schedule. Boy did I achieved this and more. I actually totally smashed this goal.

    I’m no longer spending time beating myself up for “not achieving enough”. It sounds crazy but I used to do this all the time. I’ve truly let go of this way of thinking this year.

    I love more than anything learning and doing new things. In 2019 the two things I’m most excited about are facilitating two new courses: the postnatal recovery massage workshop, which I will teach jointly with osteopath Teddy Brookes, and the Developing doulas course which I will co-facilitate with Maddie Mc Mahon in February, then teach my first solo course in Lewisham, London, in May. Do get in touch if you’d like to train with me!

    I hope you enjoyed reading my review and found it inspiring. I’d like to encourage you to do the same for yourself, because it’s easy to focus only on what we aren’t doing and miss the amazing things we have achieved.

  • The amazing effects of wild swimming

    The amazing effects of wild swimming

    I’ve been a swimmer for most of my life.

    I’ve always loved water.

    I started regular swimming as a teen as I never really stopped except for the early years when my children were tiny (I’m an early morning person so I like my swimming first thing, something that was kind of difficult with tiny children. During those years I started running instead but it never made me feel awesome the way swimming does).

    On a typical week I swim 40 lanes of front crawl/drills about 3 times a week in an indoor swimming pool.

    This year for some reason I started getting a yearning for wild swimming here in Cambridge, something I normally only do whilst on holidays in the South of France where it’s warm.

    I developed a kind of fascination with the idea and started asking everybody I knew about wild swimming spots around Cambridge.

    In the running up to the summer this year I promised myself that I would do some wild swimming in Cambridge.

    As I made my intention in my mind, friends started sharing local swimming spots.

    Various places got mentioned, including the Milton Country park, and also the Shelford Recreation ground.

    Then several friends started mentioning the swimming club in Newnham.

    So one gorgeous July morning I went there with a friend and it was a revelation.

    It wasn’t just the river swimming, though this was gorgeous too, it was how peaceful the place was.

    I fell in love with the energy of the place.

    As the summer went on, I started going nearly every day, and it started to feel like I was on holidays, even though I was still working.

    We had many weeks of exceptionally warm weather, and immersing myself in the cool water was a welcome relief at the end of a hot day.

    I took my family there, and introduced a few friends to it too.

    I met lots of lovely fellow wild swimmers. This place seemed to attract like minded people and soon felt like I’d not only found a new hobby, I’d found a whole new bunch of friends too.

    I also noticed was the positive effect it had on my mental health.

    Swimming there just made me feel happier, more balanced, and more content, and able to take things in my stride.

    I read an article about a woman who had managed to stop her depression medication, and chatting to fellow swimmers every single one of them reported similar positive mental effects.

    To put it simply, whenever I went for a swim, I felt like I washed all my shit off, like a mental equivalent to a shower after exercise.

    I started researching the subject online, and found stuff on the effect of swimming on the body, the effect on the immune system etc.

    But to me, it felt much deeper than this.

    It felt cleansing on a spiritual level.

    My theory about it goes like this: we live lifestyles which are very removed from nature. One of the side effects of this is, in particular, a lack of direct contact with the earth.

    This means that we often lack grounding.

    There is some cool science behind grounding. It decreases inflammation, pain, and stress, and improves sleep, energy, wound healing, and blood flow in particular (read this paper)

    It has even been shown to increase vagal tone (the activity of the part of the nervous system that keeps us calm).

    You can read a brilliant review paper here.

    The review paper has a statement that particularly tickled me :

    ” One overlooked element in the human environment— the surface of Planet Earth, including its landmasses and bodies of water—may provide a potent and surprising natural remedy for this challenge and the alarming rise in chronic inflammatory-related diseases.”

    This is how I see it myself : when I feel tired or grumpy, walking barefoot on the grass helps me feel instantly better.

    The more I swam in the river, the more I felt like this was like a full body grounding experience.

    I’m an energy worker, I practise Reiki and other healing modalities. This means that I already have tools to improve my well-being and mood. But since doing the wild swimming I’ve noticed that I can boost my well-being within literally seconds of dunking myself in the water, something that takes me a lot longer using self healing.

    So I swam all summer, which was really easy and pleasurable as we had an exceptionally warm summer this year, and the water was a balmy 23 degrees.

    As the summer turned into Autumn I found myself pre-mourning the end of the river days.

    Except I didn’t stop swimming.

    As I chatted to older members of the swimming club I discovered many go all year round, so I started asking them for tips on how to keep going.

    I joined a Facebook group called Outdoor Swimming Society, and asked for more tips there.

    I invested in a wetsuit, neoprene gloves and socks, and a neoprene hat.

    I dug out my old hot water bottle from the cupboard.

    It’s been fairly easy so far as the weather has mostly been mild.

    I had a break in September after getting a tattoo, then another one during a trip to a warm country (Dubai) in November and worried whether I’d be able to get back in afterwards but it was easier than I thought.

    More importantly, I teamed up with a friend and we promised to go together at least once a week. It really helps me feel more motivated and also feels safer.

    At the moment I average a couple of swims a week.

    The wellbeing effect continues despite the cold temperatures.

    Or maybe it is because of it? There are also publications about the positive effects of cold water swimming on the body. It really does boost your immune system and gives you an endorphin high apparently.

    I can relate.

    It’s not just the swim, it’s the whole experience.

    After the swim, as I sit near the river sipping my steaming tea and clutching my hot water bottle, and either chat with my friend or sit in quiet contemplation looking at the peaceful river (often sharing my snack with a robin), I marvel at how wonderful I feel.

    Last week the water temperature dropped to 5 degrees (this officially qualifies as an ice swim), my friend and I only managed a short dip rather than a swim, so when I went on my own a few days later, I used my wetsuit for the first time, as being alone made me a bit more weary.

    I’m proud to say I went swimming today which is my first December swim in my whole life. The water was back to nearly 10 degrees so I had a proper swim (probably about a hundred meters).

    The club has hard going veterans who swim every day all year round.

    I’m hoping to become one of them.

    I’m really looking forward to the new year swim. Last new year apparently there were over 60 swimmers.

    Update January 2020.

    I didn’t stop swimming and made it through the winter, the following summer, and back again. The coldest swim, in January 2019, was minus seven outside, white with frost and glorious sunshine, and with 1.5 degrees water.

    A couple of days ago I attended my second new year swim. I was really looking forward to it and it didn’t disappoint. I went in wearing only a swimsuit and some neoprene booties and gloves.

    I’ve mellowed into it and it no longer feels weird and scary, to swim in cold water. I don’t mind going alone, in fact sometimes I relish the quiet.

    I’ve met a community of like minded people, both in real life and online. It’s a like a weird group of friends who share the same secret, and within witch it’s considered completely normal. I love it.

     

     

     

     

     

  • Postnatal Recovery Massage, a new kind of postnatal massage inspired by closing the bones.

    Postnatal Recovery Massage, a new kind of postnatal massage inspired by closing the bones.

    I’ve been offering and teaching a postnatal massage called closing the bones since 2014.

    I never intended to teach this technique, I just wanted to share it with my community as we had been urged to do.

    But then women started to ask us to show them. So we put together a workshop.

    Since we started we have grown organically and have now trained nearly 400 people in providing this amazing nurturing ritual.

    I hope to use this media to help change the face of the postnatal support in the UK with this, towards a mother centered one.

    Over the last couple of years more and more people who had trained to do the massage started contacting me, asking if it would be possible to provide a version of the massage on a massage table instead of on the floor (we normally practise on yoga mats), because they had bad knees, or bad backs, and found working on the floor difficult.

    I have a bit of a theme in my professional life, that I seem to always end up teaching stuff because people ask me to!

    So I had a chat with my lovely local osteopath friend Teddy (who had already provided all the anatomical and effectiveness knowledge for the workshop handout, and therefore already knew the technique inside out), if he fancied the idea of developing a massage table version of the technique with me.

    He liked the idea a lot so we started working on it. This was about 18 months ago, in summer 2017.

    This was a true work of love, and in the end it took us over a year and many sessions of practise and hours of trial and error to get it working.

    This is how each session would go: I would setup both a massage table and a yoga mat on the floor. Teddy and I would try each technique on the floor then on the table, taking turns giving and receiving each technique.

    I would record the session and make some notes. After each session I’d listen to the recording paying attention to what Teddy said, and write down questions and make more notes for what to practise/change at the next session.

    At the beginning we did get plenty of stuff wrong. I think I was so intent of getting the exact same treatment on the table as on the floor, that this got in the way. Teddy has much deeper knowledge of body function than I do, so he had to explain to me repeatedly why some of the stuff that was done standing up or crouching over a person lying down simply couldn’t be done from the side of a table, due to biomechanics.

    We tried and tried. The most challenging part were the rebozo rocking and the hip squeezing. It was challenging because of the biomechanics (you can’t produce much force when you’re on the side compare to standing above a person), and because I wanted the technique to do the same thing to the body, but also to feel good.

    Teddy wanted to make sure the technique was safe and effective but also easy on the body of the therapist (a basic rule for bodyworkers).

    It proved extremely frustrating at time. Many times we thought we had got it but when we revisited it didn’t feel right and so we were back to square one. Some techniques worked mechanistically but just didn’t feel nice so they were discarded.

    It was also a fun experience and a huge learning curve for me, especially as Teddy educated me on how to position my body for maximum power and effectiveness around the table, something I am still learning to master.

    The real magic happened when I finally let go of it being exactly the same. Teddy had tried to explain to me repeatedly that it wasn’t necessary (that we were aiming for the same effect) but I am a perfectionist and like things to be “just right”

    One day we finally worked out a way to make the rocking work from the side.

    From then on everything seemed to flow magically.

    As we progressed we also ended up modifying and adding several elements to the massage.

    Some were based on discussion about the effectiveness of a technique and how to make it work more easily.

    Some were based on the changes in the pregnant body that weren’t treated as part of the original massage, namely treating the ribs (which flare during pregnancy), and the shoulders (which hunch during pregnancy and often during breastfeeding as well).

    Some just happened because it felt logical to add them to the flow of the movements we had created.

    In the end we ended up with a massage which is inspired from the original technique but is really quite different. I did it for the first time on a doula friend and she loved it. We added a few more movements after that. I also practised on my massage therapists friend Emma Kenny, a massage therapist, who loved it too.

    We named it the Postnatal Recovery Massage (PRM).

    We finished our individual practise work at the beginning of October, and we then went on teaching it to a small group of guinea pigs, composed of 2 doulas and 2 massage therapists.

    We all had a very fun morning of practise teaching this new techniques, and all our guinea pigs loved it.

    This is what they said:

    “Knowing Sophie and Teddy as I do, I knew they would design something that is both relaxing and effective. I was not prepared for how beautifully the movements flow into each other, and how true to the spirit of Closing the Bones they have stayed. For people who find floor work tiring or painful, I highly recommend learning these new techniques” Maddie, Doula.

    ” This new version of the postnatal ceremony blends effective rebozo (shawl) massage techniques and lymphatic drainage massage to support post natal mamas. Rather fabulous it is too!” Emma Kenny, Massage therapist.

    “I think one if the reasons I like the massage that you have developed for the table as it feels like a modern way of adapting the traditional massage. It feels like a new technique, a therapists technique. I also like being able to connect to the anatomical benefits. I want to practise giving the massage and feel newly inspired.” Katie, Doula

    We are now putting the final touches to the handout for this new technique, complete with my signature set of description, pictures, videos, and an explanation of the effect of each movement on the body by Teddy.

    This should be ready by sometimes in December and we are looking forward to teaching this workshop together in the new year.

    The first workshop will take place in Cambridge on Saturday the 5th of January.

    I can’t wait to introduce more people to this amazing technique!

    Update January 2019.

    Teddy and I taught our first course last Saturday. The course was extremely well received by our trainees. Here is some of the feedback they gave us

    “What a wonderful, professional, well constructed and instructive course with plenty of time for step by step practical, complemented by Teddy’s expertise and Sophie’s organic shamanism and such a wonderful community of like minded body workers. Thank you. Thoroughly recommended” Jenni Tribe, Therapist

    “Thank you so much for an informative and inspiring day. I can’t wait to use the techniques on my clients and support women more effectively. You are doing an amazing work and I’m so grateful ad excited to be part of it!” Grace Lillywhite, Pilates teacher.

    “I loved this course. It is just as nurturing as the closing the bones massage but much easier to do. Sophie and Teddy worked amazingly well together” Michelle Parkin, doula.

    “The course was well organised, very informative and easy to follow. The level of practical support was fantastic and I feel confident to take what I  have learnt and help local women postnatally. Thank you!” Becki Scott, doula and massage therapist.

    “Amazing workshop! Loved being in a small group to work through techniques in enough details. As an osteopath this experience has been invaluable in improving my practise if postnatal patient , in fact all of my patients!” Rob Ballard, osteopath

    “Amazing. Thank you both so much. More than the sum of the parts. Just lovely” Charlotte Filcek, doula.

    “The tutoring, the technique, the group, just exceptional!” Alison Duff, therapist and therapy centre owner.

     

  • Rebozos, shawls and scarves : the lost art of supporting women through the childbearing years

    Rebozos, shawls and scarves : the lost art of supporting women through the childbearing years

    RebozosI was introduced to the art of using a traditional Mexican shawl called a rebozo to comfort birthing women at my doula course by Maddie McMahon in 2008.

    Whilst I developed my antenatal and doula career, in my usual, knowledge junkie style, whislst I learn to use the tool for myself, I decided to learn as much as I could about this magic tool by attending training.

    Over the my first few years as a doula, I pursued my knowledge further by learning from several doula colleagues (I am especially grateful to doula Bridget Baker who showed me how to properly wrap a rebozo around a pregnant woman’s belly during a doula UK AGM).

    I attended my first formal workshop with Stacia Smales Hill on rebozo use for labour and birth in 2013. In the same year I also attended a workshop by Rocio Alarcon called closing the bones, a postnatal massage technique  which included rocking and binding with a rebozo.

    Frustration over long and difficult labours, and especially malpositioned babies led me to seek more specialist training,  such as the rebozo for labour progress and malposition with Selina Wallis, micromovements with Francoise Freedman, and 2 iterations of different levels of spinning babies with Jennifer Walker and Gail Tully.

    As my experienced developed I also brought more focus towards postpartum support, and recently attended a workshop on healing diastasis recti with Birthlight which included many rebozo techniques.

    I am also a babywearing instructor and tutor, and as such use rebozos and wraps to carry babies too.

    I started facilitating workshops around this topic because people asked me to. Repeatedly.  At first, I refused, as I didn’t feel qualified or experienced enough. But after a few years of constantly using this amazing tool in my birth work and my antenatal and babywearing classes, and seeing how the incredibly versatile such a simple piece cloth could be, and the miraculous experiences that ensued, I finally felt ready to start teaching workshops around this topic, because I had so many positive experiences I felt I needed to share this skill with others.

    As I met people through teaching, I constantly questioned people I met about their culture’s practises, I started to build a picture in my mind of something much more universal than the rebozo.

    It seems that every culture has (or had) a piece of cloth of some kind, call it a shawl, a sarong, a scarf, or a wrap.

    Cold countries have thick, woollen fabrics (think Welsh Shawl or Scottish plaid), and warmer countries, cooler, thin, cotton fabric (think African Kanga or Indonesian Sarong).

    There are almost too many fabrics to count, but one thing is for sure, women have used all sorts of cloths in incredibly versatile ways, and what I’m going to say below about the rebozo is true for many other cultures too. It’s a truly universal practise.

    I spent a few years believing that the rebozo use for labour was uniquely South American but I have since met a Somalian midwife who told me how they use their traditional shawl, called a Garbasar, in a similar way during labour.

    I trained a Moroccan birth worker in doing closing the bones, and she was surprised when she started offering the massage that women came forward and told her they’d had a similar treatment in the local hammam after birth (using the traditional Moroccan cloth called a Mendil).  Tunisia offers a similar practise called a fouta massage (the fouta is a hammam towel, which is very similar in nature to the Turkish towel).

    I am lucky to be part of a multicultural family, being French and married to a man from Hong Kong. In Hong Kong I’ve been told they use a long piece of muslin cloth to bind the woman’s hips and abdomen after birth, and my mother in law also showed me how she was taught how to use a towel to bind her hips and abdomen after birth.

    It’s also quite fascinating to see how contact with foreign cultures can influence each other. For example I recently acquired a Dutch postpartum girdle called a Sluitlaken. I couldn’t help but notice how similar to Indonesian postpartum binding it looks, then a friend pointed out than Holland used to have Indonesian colonies!

    So, what can you do with a rebozo, shawl or scarf of shawl?

    Pretty much all cultures on the planet, some kind of cloth is used to cradle and carry a baby. In some cultures is used to rock and soothe the baby too. Rocking is such a primal rhythm we all experienced it in our mother’s womb, that we find it soothing all through our lives.  Even in Europe there are pictures of women wearing their babies in Welsh shawls which date from the 1940s.

    Later, when the baby grew into a toddler and child, she would use the cloth to dress up, pretend play (including carrying toys and/or animals, pretending to carry a baby), make a den etc.

    As the child grew into a young woman she would use the cloth as a shawl to keep warm, as a clothing accessory, a blanket, to carry siblings ( in traditional cultures women learn baby care from a very young age as they tend to live with extended families), and to carry loads on her back or head.

    Later still when she became a woman, she might have been given her own shawl as part of a menarche ceremony. She might have worn a special cloth on her wedding day.

    When she became pregnant, she would have used the shawl to support her belly, and her midwives would have used it to alleviate the aches and pains of pregnancy, and maybe to help the baby move into the best position for birth.

    During labour she would have used the shawl to hang from, to pull on, and her birth attendants would have used it to provide comfort measures, such as sifting, rocking, shaking, and wrapping.

    After the birth she would have had a “baby moon”. Again this is something pretty much universal in the world-women the world around have been alleviated from household tasks and cared for by family members for the first 30 to 40 days postpartum. During this time they would rest so they could recover from growing and birthing their baby and get to know their baby and learn to care for them. Her birth attendants and the community of women would have come to feed her nourishing food, and close her bones and help her body heal from the pregnancy and birth by using  a combination of their hands, massage techniques and using the cloth to help move and bind her hips and abdomen to help them back into place. In the UK we used to have this practise called “churching” you can read about it here 

    She then would have started to use the cloth to carry her baby and start the cycle all over again.

    Later as she grew old, her family members would have used the cloth to rock and soothe aches and pain.

    Women would have been buried with their shawl using it as a shroud.

    So you see, a traditional cloth, rebozo, shawl or cloth can be used to support a woman throughout her whole life. It is a universal phenomenon on our planet.

    As the shawl came out of fashion and modern practises like using pushchairs became seen as more fashionable and desirable, this skill was soon lost, and because like most traditional women-only practises, it was just passed on orally rather than written about, the knowledge was lost very quickly, in one or two generations. We also tend to embrace “modern” practises mindlessly, seeing traditional ones as backwards and old fashioned.

    Mexican and Chinese friends tell me that nobody wants to use the traditional shawl or carrier these days as only remote farmers or beggars still use them. And certainly my recent trip to Hong Kong showed me that it took less than 15 years for the traditional baby carriers to have been almost forgotten and  superseded by more modern, yet less ergonomical, models.

    This is  something that we need to reclaim and teach all women, as it is part of the essence of women circles and supporting women through life transitions.

    This is why I am so passionate about passing this skill to both expectant and new mothers, and to anybody who works with expectant and new mothers. It is our birthright!

    How fitting is it that my friend Awen Clement just wrote this poem, for me it sums up everything the use of the rebozo is about.

    “We are all weavers

    Life is a cloth
    our stories the threads
    carried across the warp by breath 
    and memory
    Every soul
    unique in its tapestry
    with tangles unpicked 
    and rewoven anew
    A rainbow of colour
    where our threads meet others
    and when we take our last breath
    love will weave the ends”

    (C) Awen Clement 2018

    You can learn more about rebozo and its many wonderful uses in my online course

  • rebozo master class

    rebozo master class

    I did a 45 min rebozo master class on facebook yesterday and I have uploaded it so you can watch it here

    Play