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Sophie Messager

Author: Sophie Messager

  • 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

     

  • What do you get when you hire a doula, or why she’s totally worth the money

    What do you get when you hire a doula, or why she’s totally worth the money

    This week I saw this meme.

    It made me want to write about what you get when you hire a doula.

    The birth/wedding spending is a very well known analogy in the birth world. Most people spend A LOT more time and money planning for their wedding day than they do for their birth.

    I’ve written about this before here.

    So why do I feel compelled to write about why doulas are worth the money?

    Because I keep hearing/reading stuff about the fact that doulas are expensive.

    This simply isn’t true.

    The fact that people are reluctant to invest much time and/or money is preparing for their birth is a reflection of the low value our culture places on motherhood, and of a lack of understanding of the impact that birth has on women, and on society as a whole, but this is a topic that deserves its own blog post.

    I’ve written recently about the value of a doula, but this time I’d like to explore and explain what you really get when you hire one and why it’s worth every penny.

    My friend Maddie McMahon also wrote a brilliant blog about doulas and money this week.

    And doula SallyAnn Beresford also wrote about budgeting for your birth.

    I’d like to correct some misconceptions about doula work and its worth.

    I think the biggest misconception is that you hire a doula to support you through the birth of your baby and that’s all that matters.

    Recently a colleague was asked how much she’d charge to only come to the birth, and do no antenatals.

    This has happened to me too and I had to explain it just doesn’t work like that.

    Much of the work we do is in the preparation, the getting to know you and the support and information we give prior to the birth.

    I saw another meme last week that summed it up very well “the power of a birth plan isn’t the actual plan. It’s the process of becoming educated about all your options”.

    It’s a big myth that there is no point writing a birth plan because birth is unpredictable (and I encourage all my clients to write 3 births plans (Read about this here)

    So back to what you get from your doula, and I’m in the thick of it at the moment as I’m supporting a woman pregnant with twins and one planning a VBAC , one having her first baby, one having her 2nd baby and one having her 3rd (they are not all due at the same time!).

    The minute you hire a doula, she’s completely dedicated to you.

    Whilst most of us have letters of agreement that cover a certain number of antenatal appointments, we also state that you get unlimited phone and email support from us.

    These days I’m in contact with my clients via email, text, phone and whatsapp groups.

    All this work can seem invisible because it’s not face to face, but I spend hours for each client beside the face to face meetings, researching information for them, on whichever topic they need information about.

    I send them various signposts, from online articles, examples of birth plans I’ve collected through the years, books etc. I contact other people for information when I’m facing a situation that is new to me (this happens all the time by the way as everybody is unique).

    I help them write their birth plans, reading through and making suggestions about things they haven’t thought about.

    I send them up to date hospital policies that I’ve managed to collect through my knowing of the right person to contact at the hospital.

    I lend them books and DVDs, slings and other pieces of equipment.

    I signpost them to the huge network of midwives, doctors, osteopaths, massage therapists, and other complementary practitioners that I trust and with whom I’ve built links over the years in my community.

    I suggest they meet with a different consultant or with the consultant midwife, and I often accompany them to the appointment.

    I’m truly passionate about this (and all the doulas I know are too), so I put absolutely no limit on the time I spend doing this.

    With more complex pregnancies,  it can mean an incredibly high number of hours.

    And of course I meet face to face with my clients at least twice antenatally (not including the first time we meet for an interview).

    I prepare extensively for these appointments, discussing what they want ahead of time and preparing the right props to take with me.

    I listen deeply to their wishes, their concerns and worries, and I try to provide the information that maximises the chances of them achieving these wishes.

    This is the antenatal prep.

    Then there is the on call period. Most of the time we go on call from 38 to 42 weeks pregnancy, or until the baby is born which can be longer than 42 weeks.

    This means that for up to a month (it’s pretty rate that it’s shorter than 2/3 weeks especially for first time mums, and I’ve been on call for 5 weeks in the past), we are on standby 24/7.

    We literally put our life on hold. We don’t go away more than an hour from our house. Most of us have young children ourselves so we have to make very complex childcare arrangements to be able to drop everything and come to your whenever labour starts (including at night). We can’t drink alcohol, even at a party. We can’t let our hair down. We tell all our other professional engagements that we’re on call and may need to cancel at short notice (“unless I’m at a birth” becomes a recurrent sentence).

    We pack clothes ready for the next day so we are ready to disappear in the middle of the night when needed. We need to be careful what we wear in case we have to hot foot it to the birth. We repack our doula bag, making sure everything we need is in there, and replenishing supplies.

    Our phones are glued to us 24/7, and placed on the bedside table at night (And we’re always making sure the battery is charged).

    We sleep less well (we experience a level of heightened alertness and often wake up at night to check our phone in case we missed a text/call from you). We always make sure we are reachable, are paranoid about phone reception which something means giving someone else’s landline just in case (some clients live in areas with poor mobile reception).

    Our clients are always on our mind. We care deeply for you at this vulnerable time.

    We know that we might need to come to you very quickly when labour starts. We never know when.

    We have to remind our partners of the fact that we may disappear in the night or day, and make sure they know what’s happening with the kids etc.

    Our partners and children find the unpredictability difficult to handle ,especially as they don’t know how long we’ll be gone for.

    We keep telling our friends and family : if my client calls I’ll need to go. I choose to take the car instead of the bus when going to town, incurring extra parking charges, because I want to be as quick as possible in case I get called, plus my doula bag is usually in the car and it’s really big. I have to remind my kids when we go to the park or the cinema, remind my husband when we go for a rare meal out. Several times I have had to tell my choir leader at the beginning of a concert that if I may need to disappear.

    We miss study days and conferences we have paid for because we don’t feel safe going that little bit further away in case labour happens during that time.

    It takes a very special kind of person to cope with this level of unpredictability and low level tension on a constant basis. It gets easier as you become more experienced but it never quite get to the state when you feel completely relaxed.

    The on call period is up to 30 days, 24h a day. This can mean a total of 730h or more. So if you think that my birth package starts at  £950, one third of which is for the on call period, that’s 316 divided by 730, which amounts to 43p per hour. Not exactly minimum wage hey?

    Then there is the birth itself.

    I’ve been a doula for 6 years and the shortest birth I attended was about 3h long (I always stay a few hours after the birth to make sure mother and baby are ok and help with establishing feeding etc, so I was there for 6h). The longest was 4 days. The average was 21h.

    We spend hours supporting you and your partner, holding you, massaging you or whatever other comfort method helps at the time, managing on very little sleep and food.

    We help you navigate unexpected curve balls. We stay strong. We cheer you on.

    We have a firm commitment to the families with support and we’re not going anywhere until the baby has been born.

    When we get home after a birth, we often take days to recover.

    Then there is the post birth support. I offer a minimum of one postnatal visit and unlimited phone and email support for 6 weeks after the birth. I also offer standalone postnatal support for an hourly rate of £25.

    Some parents take to parenthood like a duck to water and require very little support from us. The shortest postnatal job I’ve done was a one-off visit of 3h. The longest one was 2 years.

    Some parents have very complex situations to deal with and this can mean hours of support.

    I recently supported a new mother of premature twins so she could achieve her goals of breastfeeding them and this took much hard work, sweat and heartache, with incredibly rewarding results at the end.

    Some parents struggle with feeding, with adjusting to being parents, with sleepless nights, with conflict with their partner, with being a single parent, with complex medical situations and more.

    We’re there for them and we don’t go anywhere until we have helped them achieve their goals. We move heaven and earth, we reach out to other knowledgeable people, we spend hours talking and researching topics.

    I haven’t written this to moan about it all and I sincerely hope it doesn’t come across this way.

    I do this because it’s all worthwhile and I don’t resent it.

    I do this because it’s a calling and because I care about birth, and about women.

    But I just want you to know what it means to be a doula, and how challenging it can be at times.

    I want you to know that when you hire a doula, she puts her life aside for you for weeks or even months at a time.

    Because you are worth it.

    And your doula is worth it too.

  • On being an independent doula and a proud member of Doula UK

    On being an independent doula and a proud member of Doula UK

    I wrote a blog about what it means to me to be a member of Doula UK

    https://doula.org.uk/on-being-an-independent-doula-and-a-proud-member-of-doula-uk/

  • The miracles that happen when you have no expectations

    The miracles that happen when you have no expectations

    As I write this, I just came back from the annual doula retreat.

    This year was my 6th year there.

    I’ve written about the retreat before here.

    Organised by doula Selina Wallis, the retreat is a unique space for doulas and birthworkers to gather and recharge. It’s held in the most magical place. Cae Mabon is an eco retreat located near Llanberis, in Snowdonia. It’s a ten min walk down from a car park located at the end of a dirt road.

    Located on the side of a mountain, with a stream running on its side, and a lake at the bottom, the eco village is composed of dwellings that look like they belong in a Tolkien novel. One of them, in fact, is called the hobbit hut. Low ceilinged, and with grass growing on their roofs, the dwellings are dotted around a clearing in the forest.

    The dwellings are basic, containing about 4 beds each, and there is no running water or electricity in most of them (there is a shared washroom and a gas powered shower, and compost toilets). This maybe off putting for some but for me it’s part of the charm of the place, because it encourages us to spend much time outside.

    The place it’s in is just beautiful, with wild, ancient forests, and nature untouched by humans.

    There is a deep feeling of reconnection with nature, and the place is not only beautiful and peaceful, but it has a lovely, benevolent and calming energy too.

    As well as the huts we sleep in, there is a Viking style roundhouse with fire pit in the middle where we gather to sing songs, drum or listen to stories, from our resident storyteller, Rachel O Leary.

    There is a barn/kitchen with electricity and we take our meals and workshops there too. Someone is cooking for us whilst we’re there, which is bliss in itself for a mother like me.

    And the cherry on the cake is the fire heated cedar hot tub on the side of the stream, in which we hang out at night with a glass of white and put the birth world to rights.

    All of this would be blissful enough by itself, but we also have workshops there.

    I can trace almost every single aspect of the work I do today back to the retreat.

    The first year, in 2013 I attended the Closing the Bones workshop with Rocio Alarcon there. If I had been told back then 6 years later, I would have, together with Maddie Mc Mahon, trained nearly 350 people in offering this beautiful ritual, I would have laughed.

    But back to this year’s retreat and the title of this blog.

    This year I wasn’t as excited as I’d been in years past about the workshops planned at the retreat. We had a singing workshop and a Henna workshop booked. Singing is always lovely but I’ve been singing in a choir for over 16 years so it’s not something that’s new to me. Same with the Henna as we had done this already at the retreat in 2014.

    I was still looking forward to hanging out with like minded spirits in Cae Mabon this year, but I was also a bit disappointed about not learning amazing new skills.

    As with many other occasions in my life, when my expectations are low, it’s usually when I end up having a complete life changing experience.

    It wasn’t part of the official plan but when we got there, Alexandra Wilson, a celebrant, doula and end of life doula, offered to do a talking about the end of life doulaing training that she does, followed by a grief ceremony the next day.

    As with many topics and experiences I know little about, I was curious but not overtly excited.

    I went with my usual curiosity though.

    The talk about death doulaing blew my mind, because Alexandra talked about her experience moving from being a death doula to a birth one and talked about the similarities about the grief in birth and in death, and about the joy too. I didn’t get it so I asked a lot of questions and also for examples. I had never seen it through that angle, and by the end I got the concept of the grief in birth (namely the huge changes for both baby and parents), and for the joy in death too. She presented death in a completely different way to my own mindset. She explained that the more she worked with death the more she saw death as a welcoming big mama rather than the grim reaper most of us have in mind.  It made sense to me, after all, if you believe, like I do, that we are all spirits having a human experience, then all we are doing when we die is returning to the lovely place we came from.

    The grief ceremony blew even more of my mind away. After taking us through a guided meditation through the different doorways of death, Alexandra placed 4 objects representing tears, fear, numbness and anger on the floor and invited those of us who felt drawn to come forward to hold the objects and express their feelings. Something very interesting happened as we all shared loud, messy powerful emotions and tears, without the need to speak, each one of us sending and receiving what we needed. I was reminded of Brene Brown’s book, “Braving the wilderness” when she says that we need to share collective joy and collective pain

    ” Funerals, in fact, are one of the most powerful examples of collective pain. They feature in a surprising finding from my research on trust. When I asked participants to identify three to five specific behaviors that their friends, family, and colleagues do that raise their level of trust with them, funerals always emerged in the top three responses. Funerals matter. Showing up to them matters. And funerals matter not just to the people grieving, but to everyone who is there. The collective pain (and sometimes joy) we experience when gathering in any way to celebrate the end of a life is perhaps one of the most powerful experiences of inextricable connection. Death, loss, and grief are the great equalizers.”

    Alexandra then held the object herself and expressed her emotions loudly and powerfully. I had the realisation that it didn’t matter that I hadn’t gone to hold the objects myself (I had been drawn to so but had hesitated : something had held me back and I had come to understand that others needed it more that day), because when she cried, she cried for all of us, when she screamed in anger, she screamed for all of us.

    I’m 48 years old. I’ve never seen a dead person, because as a child when people died my family sheltered me from it, believing it was the best.

    The grief ceremony felt like it was the most powerful experience of shared grief I had ever had in my life.

    The following day still we had yet another unplanned workshop. A woman called Samina who works at Cae Mabon did a movement/dance workshop for us. Again I didn’t expect much but it was another incredibly powerful experience as we moved silently and in an undirected manner as a group. I shed a deep layer of lack of self love during that experience. We all have deep rooted fears of not belonging and not being loved, so when during the danced we had to pair, fears around lack of self love I have been working on for well over 2 years (since I took my Reiki Master training) resurfaced, and once again I was the little girl who was worried about not being picked and not having a partner. Only this time it didn’t happen and I had a deep realisation that a layer had been peeled away. Just like that. Difficult to put into simple words, but it was instant and deep, yet the culmination of many months of work.

    I came away from this retreat a different person, feeling I’d healed deep wounds and peeled away layers of myself I no longer needed.

    Once again I was shown the magic that can happen when you have no expectations

     

     

     

  • Your postnatal recovery isn’t about how soon you can start doing chores

    Your postnatal recovery isn’t about how soon you can start doing chores

    This morning, a antenatal teacher friend  shared the local hospital’s leaflet about the timeline of physical recovery after a cesarean.

    It’s been a while since something in the birth world has triggered me as much as this leaflet did.

    The leaflet, whilst I’m sure is well meaning, appears to be something straight from a 1950’s housewife manual.

    It mostly states when, following a cesarean, you can start ironing, dusting, pushing a shopping trolley and doing various chores.

    You can read it here

    It triggered me for two main reasons.

    First, I seriously doubt that a leaflet about post op recovery after major abdominal surgery for men would include how soon he would be able start ironing.

    So this leaflet, whilst well meaning, illustrates so blatantly how patriarchy and sexism is still alive and well in the medical world (not that I didn’t know that already…)

    picture by Jacqueline Grimsley

    Secondly, it also illustrates how terribly wrong the focus of our society is when it comes to postnatal recovery, and it’s made even worse by the fact that this leaflet is about postnatal recovery following a cesarean birth, which means that the new mother needs to recover from both growing and birthing a new human, meet said new human needs 24/7, AND recover from major abdominal surgery all at the same time.

    Imagine for a minute : if a man was told he’d have to have a major op, and someone said “oh and you’ll have to have 24/7 responsibility to make sure this tiny, helpless infant is fed and happy”, I’m pretty sure most would reply in outrage “I can’t do that, I’ll be recovering from major abdominal surgery!”

    Now, I need to do a disclaimer here: I don’t live in  fairyland and I know that what’s described in the leaflet is likely to be a reality for most new mothers.

    I know that our country only gives partners 2 weeks leave after the birth of their baby (compare that to the 6 months they get in Norway!).

    I know that many families haven’t got support from local family, and that many cannot afford any other forms of support, including doula support.

    And I’ve been supporting families through the transition to parenthood for over 8 years now, and I am fully cognisant in the reality of new motherhood.

    However, IT DOESNT MEAN THAT THIS IS RIGHT.

    This leaflet epitomises everything I hate about our culture’s lack of focus on newborn mothers.

    It implies that the most important thing after the birth of their baby is to go back to doing household chores.

    It implies that they should “go back to normal” (whatever the fuck this normal is supposed to mean), ASAP after birth, prioritising chores over their own and their baby’s well being, because that’s what’s revered in our world.

    It completely ignores the real needs of a new mother (I’ve written about this here, here and here before)

    It ignores how fragile a new mother is, physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

    How she needs tender, loving support.

    How she needs rest and good food and knowing that the chores are taken care of, at least for while, whilst she gets to know her new baby, establishes feeding, recuperates from growing and birthing her baby (or god forbid, multiple babies!), and has some time to make sense of her experience and her new sense of self and identity.

    It’s not rocket science.

    Women need a village around them.

    They need to be revered like the goddesses that they are.

    They do not need to be told when it’s time to start doing the fucking ironing.

     

  • Why a rebozo, shawl or scarf might be the most powerful tool in your toolbox

    Why a rebozo, shawl or scarf might be the most powerful tool in your toolbox

    Why a shawl or scarf might be the most powerful tool in your tool box

    Over the last 8 years, since I started my reconversion in the world of science to that of a birthworker, the one tool that has amazed me the most is the humble shawl or scarf.

    You might know it foremost as a rebozo, which is a Mexican shawl, traditionally used by Mexican midwives to provide comfort and support to pregnant and birthing mothers.

    But to me, it’s much more universal than that.

    All through history, women have traditionally used shawls and scarves for all sort of purposes, from clothing to carrying and indeed providing comfort, but not just for the childbearing year.

    Lately I have felt a drive, actually a real sense of duty, to pass on this skill.

    This is because I have been having one amazing experience after the other using shawls of scarves.

    “Recently, I supported an amazing woman through a very long birth at home, which also happened to be a VBAC. She laboured for 4 whole days. Through the early parts of her labour, I used my trusted rebozo scarf to relax her belly and help engage her baby. On the last day, when she got the dreaded “stuck at 6cm” situation (her cervix seemed to remain dilated at 6cm for several hours, with no further progress), a simple inversion with sifting on the buttocks through a few contractions, completely changed the pattern of her contractions for the better. In fact, when she got back her from her inversion, she said “My back doesn’t hurt anymore”, the midwife confirmed shortly afterwards that her baby had turned in a more optimal position, and she roared her baby out in the pool a few hours later. There wasn’t a dry eye in the room when that baby was born. I have no doubt that the rebozo technique made a big difference to her labour progress.”

    I had heard of amazing stories like this one at the various rebozo and Spinning Babies trainings I had attended, but this was the first time  I had my own experience of a miraculous difference like this, and it really drove the message home.

    Since I starting showing families how to use a shawl or scarf for their own comfort, I have received many more testimonials of the same nature.

    Jess used a shawl to great use to comfort herself during labour

    ” I was in labour recently, homebirth, my husband squeezing my hips was helping so much to keep me grounded. At one point our younger son woke up, this was late at night, and my husband had to go to him to settle him. Right at the same time I had a massive contraction while I was bouncing away on the ball and desperately thought, “OMG, I need pressure on my hips now!” I also happened to be sitting next to a box of wraps, so I grabbed one out and did the hip squeeze on myself. It was super helpful and really empowering at that point to remember I had so many tools in my tool kit to draw on and I totally could rock this birth”

    Recently, after sending a rebozo to a mum who suffered from PGP, I got the following message the next day ” It’s the second time I’ve had pgp. I was induced early because it was so bad and this time is even worse! Your videos were the first time I had ever heard of rebozo or using the shawls to wrap your hips and thought that anything was worth a try as I am in such horrendous pain. Since using the wrap I have been able to do shopping and walk around without crying in pain, it makes a huge difference, so easy to use, looks pretty and I love that I can use it during labour and after the birth as a sling!” Hannah

    I also offer and teach a postnatal ritual called closing the bones, which involves some hip rocking with a rebozo shawl (or a manta as it is called in Ecuador, which is where this particular massage comes from) a massage of the abdomen and wrapping.  The experiences women have with this ritual can be life changing.

     

     

    Here are some examples of what women have said after receiving it:

    “The massage felt incredibly calming and nurturing and I felt very relaxed (almost went to sleep!) I felt a lot of tension which I was holding from the birth just disappear. “

    “Amazing, emotional and cleansing. I feel very supported as a new mum and feel hugged by the love this ceremony brings.”

     The massage and rebozo wraps not only felt absolutely amazing, they also helped remind me of the importance of caring for myself. During the ceremony, I felt so safe and comfortable and at peace, and I was aware of how strong, resilient and loved I am. “

    You can read more here 

    In terms of using it to carry and calm babies, I have also lost count of how many times I’ve seen parents with this wonderful look on their face when they realise they can meet their baby’s needs for closeness AND get their hands back. And, as a doula myself, I recently supported a mum of twins,and I found it pretty elating to be able to carry both twins together in a stretchy wrap!

    So you see I have accumulated many more stories like these, more than I can share here.

    I have a innate desire to share knowledge (funnily, it’s even in my name, Messager means Messenger in French) so others can benefits from it too.

    I started teaching live rebozo workshops a couple of years ago but there is only one of me and whilst I travel up and down the UK to offer it, I wanted it to be available to a wider audience.

    Today I am proud to announce that my rebozo, shawls and scarves course is now available as an online course-which you can find here.

    This means that I am now offering 3 different levels of training, an ebook,  the online course, and a live course (link coming up at 9pm tonight!). (and of course, I also have a my online rebozo shop too)

    If you’d like a short taster of what’s available in my training, just sign up to receive a free guide with 3 different rebozos techniques on my website here

     

  • 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

     

    I was introduced to the art of using the traditional Mexican shawl called the rebozo back in 2013 when I attended a workshop by doula Stacia Smales Hill on rebozo use for labour and birth. During the same year I also attended a workshop by Dr Rocio Alarcon, who taught us a postnatal massage technique called closing the bones, some elements of which included rocking and binding with a rebozo.

    Over the course of the following years I pursued my knowledge further by doing several more workshops with Rocio, and several other rebozo workshops with different focuses, such as the rebozo for labour progress and malposition with Selina Wallis, micromovements with Francoise Freedman, and 2 iterations of spinning babies with Jennifer Walker and Gail Tully, and a workshop on healing diastasis recti  with Birthlight which included many rebozo techniques, and training with Mexican midwife Naoli Vinaver.

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

    When I started teaching workshops around closing the bones and rebozo work as well as babywearing, the incredible versatility of the cloth really blew my mind.

    As I met people through teaching, I constantly ask questions to 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 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 met a Somalian midwife who told me how they use their traditional shawl, called a garbasar, in a similar way during labour. I also had a birth client from Somalia who confirmed this, and her mother showed me how to wrap her belly with the garbasar after birth.

    I trained a Moroccan birth worker in doing closing the bones, and when she started offering the massage, women came forward and told her they’d had a similar treatment in the local hammam  (using a 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, 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 to do it with a towel.

    It’s also quite fascinating to see how contact with foreign cultures can influence each other. For example I 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.

    Hip carry with a rebozo

    What can you do with a rebozo (or a 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 West we used to have this practise called “churching” you can read about it here.

    She then would have start 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.

    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 skills to both expectant and new mothers, and to anybody who works with expectant and new mothers. It is our birthright!

    You can learn more about Rebozo and its many wonderful uses in my online courses: Rebozo for an Easier Birth and Postnatal Rebozo Massage and Closing Ritual.

     

  • The gentle warrior-how to support women through a broken maternity system

    The gentle warrior-how to support women through a broken maternity system

    During the first year I worked as a doula, I suffered massively burnout, and I had t learn to develop a new way to look after myself.

    One of the things I do, is try to always have some kind of bodywork treatment after each birth I support.

    I do this because supporting a woman through a pregnancy and birth takes a lot out of me, so it’s important to regenerate myself.

    I have a handful of favourite therapists who really get me, work on an energetic level, and know how to reset me after a birth (and best of all, we do skills swaps together!).

    I usually get some insight about what I was meant to learn from the birth during the treatment. I think the deeply relaxed state facilitates that.

    Recently as I was receiving such a treatment from wonderful osteopath Teddy, I had this huge insight about how difficult it is to do what I do as a doula.

    First I saw myself as a mother wolf protecting her cubs, growling fiercely.  This represents how I feel when supporting a women through birth.

    Then I saw some kind of enlightened being. I saw how important it is to stay in a state of love, something I know deep down is the right way to go, and which I have written about before here.

    Finally, I saw a tightrope walker. It symbolised the challenges of protecting my client whilst staying in a state of love.

    This struggle is very real for most of the doulas I know.

    I remember when I was a new doula, and I poured my heart out to my wonderful mentor Suzanne, after a very challenging birth, and Suzanne used this expression of being a gentle warrior.

    Very early on in my doula career I had to face these kind of choices, there is a particular story that happened, which I talk about in this post, that keeps reminding me of this.

    How do we stay kind, supportive and compassionate in a maternity system which lacks humanity (how on earth can birthing women form trusting relationships with people they have never met before?), and in the face of sometimes, harsh, unkind behaviour?

    I can think of several examples in my doula life.

    The time were an obstetrician walked into the room and proceeded to examine my client vaginally without introducing herself, treating my client like a piece of meat (I no longer let this happen, which means that I sometimes have to place myself between my client and the doctor in question, plaster a big smile on my face and say “Hello this is John and Sarah, and your name is?”).

    The time when an anaesthetist walked into the room, talked to my client mid contraction, and when she didn’t get an immediate reply, said “What’s wrong with her, she doesn’t speak English?”

    The time when a client who discharged herself against medical advice got told ” Well I hope you don’t get a stillbirth during the night”

    The countless times when fear, coercion and unkindness were used against my client in order to make her comply. I wish this was a rare occurrence but sadly it’s not (read this).

    How do we stay calm and compassionate in such a broken, dehumanised system? How do we defend our clients right to choose and feel supported in their choices? How do we hold space for all involved?

    And most importantly, how do we stay in a state of love?

    It is challenging because the answer is NOT to respond to the lack of humanity by behaving in the same way (however tempting it might be).

    And how do we navigate the unpredictability?

    Because, within our unfit for purpose, broken maternity system, I also witness incredible kindness and humanity, all within the same hospital.

    A few weeks ago I supported a woman through an elective caesarean. For medical reasons, the birth had to happen much earlier than term. Whilst my client was in theatre, the nurses in recovery were just incredible. Normally I find myself sitting alone in a room whilst waiting, sometimes even outside the unit. This time the nurses chatted to me, gave me coffee and biscuits, and kept me updated of the surgery process (I normally get very worried for my client if the caesarean takes longer than usual, which was the case here). Then, when the babies had been born and had to go to the neonatal unit, they took me to get changed into scrubs so I could support my client during the rest of the surgery whilst her partner was with the babies. Later on, they wheeled her, on her bed, to the neonatal unit so she could see her babies. And they even made sure that she would go to the antenatal ward instead of the postnatal one so she wouldn’t be surrounded by crying babies whilst her own was not there. I was touched and humbled by the kindness and humanity I saw.

    I can remember many other examples like this, and that this kind of behaviour mattered especially when the birth didn’t unfold as hoped, for example the anaesthetist who kneeled next to a woman who couldn’t have an epidural, to talk to her gently about what other options were available.

    Or the obstetrician who took the time to talk through the options, and to read my client’s caesarean birth preferences, when she ended up needing to go to theatre after a very long labour, and then let me accompany the couple in theatre for the birth.

    Recently, I was denied access to the local NICU whilst trying to support a client in tears, because it wasn’t visitor time. I had a difficult time holding it together not bursting into tears myself. I left the hospital feeling bereft and powerless, not knowing what to do with myself, and feeling sad and angry at a system which applies inflexible rules in the name of “safety” and leave no place for humanity.

    I am walking on my own tightrope because I feel angry at a maternity system that applies rules blindly and leave no space for women’s unique circumstances.

    I am listening to what’s happening inside myself and it’s not pretty.

    Yet I know, deep down, that anger isn’t the answer, that staying in these angry feelings doesn’t make change happen and only hurts me.

    I feel frustrated, and I feel like I’m failing to protect the women I support and I feel like I’m failing to change the system.

    I’ve been in the birth field for ten years now, and when I started, I thought in the time I would work I would see the system improve.

    It’s been the opposite. Lack of staff, lack of funding, means that women rarely see the same midwife more than once throughout their pregnancy and therefore fail to build trust with their caregivers. It’s not satisfying for midwives either.

    Women no longer have a named midwife they can call when they are worried, and I’ve seen a really worrying trend towards medical questions being directed at me instead.

    I’ve seen a general tightening of rules and women’s choices. Less access to homebirths, more inductions, more caesareans, and generally more interventions, increases which aren’t backed up by any solid evidence.

    Famous obstetrician Michel Odent one said “I used to say we’re at a crossroad, but now I believe we’re at the bottom of the abyss”

    I believe we have reached the bottom of the abyss and started to dig.

    As well as worrying that I’m failing my clients, I also feel somewhat responsible for my powerlessness to change the system for the better.

    I feel like I’m going at it the wrong way, and that I ought to do more, to fight more, and to do more campaigning or stuff like that.

    Only this is not what I am about (and this isn’t how change happens either-I take solace in this model about how ideas spread-through small groups of innovators and early adopters, not through the majority of the population, see here)

    And deep down, I know that the negative changes in the system aren’t my doing (or lack of doing).

    Coming back to the analogies I made at the beginning of this post, I believe the challenge of the gentle warrior is to harness the fierce energy of the mother wolf protecting her cubs, whilst staying in a state of gentleness, benevolence, and love. Yes, even towards those unkind, coercive professionals.

    In her book, “eat, pray doula“, midwife Robin Lim reminds us that some health care professionals have built a cage of ice around their hearts to protect themselves, and that our job is to try and gently melt it.  You can’t go at it with a pickaxe.

    It sounds corny, but it really is a case what Gandhi said: of “be the change you want to be in the world”

    Wayne Dyer compares us to an orange: what do we have inside, and what comes out when someone squeezes us? (you can read the whole story here )

     “Let’s assume that this orange isn’t an orange, but it’s you. And someone squeezes you, puts pressure on you, says something you don’t like, offends you. And out of you comes anger, hatred, bitterness, fear. Why? The answer, as our young friend has told us, is because that’s what’s inside.

    It’s one of the great lessons of life. What comes out when life squeezes you? When someone hurts or offends you? If anger, pain and fear come out of you, it’s because that’s what’s inside. It doesn’t matter who does the squeezing—your mother, your brother, your children, your boss, the government. If someone says something about you that you don’t like, what comes out of you is what’s inside. And what’s inside is up to you, it’s your choice.”

    So it starts with me, how I treat others, and how I treat myself. How I look after myself, and my immediate circle of family and friends.

    It’s about what I move towards, and not what I move away from.

    The reason it is a tightrope act is because it’s always a challenge not to fall off the rope and also to manage fierce protection whilst remaining kind at all times.

  • Today I give myself permission to do nothing

    Today I give myself permission to do nothing

    Today is the first day of my cycle.

    Since attending a menstrual cycle workshop with Alexandra Pope of Red School a couple of years ago, I have come to understand that that the first couple of days of my cycle are days when I need to retreat into myself and do very little.

    Last month I started writing a blog like this and didn’t finish it. Then I wasted my day not getting much done all but not really giving myself when I had promised myself not to, and not feeling great of it.

    So today I am giving myself permission to do nothing.

    In a world that glorifies busy, it’s nothing short of revolutionary.

    I have a to do list as long as my arm and frankly tons of shit to do (who doesn’t?), but I know that by giving myself time to retreat inwards, look after myself in nurturing ways and ignoring most of what doesn’t absolutely needs to be done today, will help me recharge and actually be more productive in the next few days.

    Just like I’m usually full of ideas after a holiday (only whilst on holiday I don’t actually realise how much good the relaxation is doing me until I return to work and all these new ideas come flowing).

    Today, I need to shut myself from the world and go inside my cave.

    I’m going to do stuff that makes me feel good, like sit and meditate and self treat with Reiki, have a long bath with a special blend of essential oils that I like to use during my cycle (I also massage my tummy with it every day whilst I’m bleeding- my favourite blend is the sacral chakra blend from Katseye blends), I might wrap my hips and abdomen with a rebozo, and pack a heated wheat bag in it too. I’ll make myself some comforting and nourishing foods and probably watch a feel good movie.

    I’m not technically really going to do nothing, but I’ll only do what absolutely needs to be done today and ignore the rest, just for today.

    In the menstrual cycle workshop, Alexandra compared the menstrual cycle to the 4 seasons of the year, and the bleeding time is very much like winter: the trees are bare, the soil is bare, so it looks like everything is dead and nothing good is happening. But this all needs to happen, and whilst it looks barren, potent stuff is happening underneath, to prepare for new growth.

    That time, going inwards whilst it looks like nothing is happening on the outside, is a very powerful time.

    Our culture doesn’t want to see the winter woman, it only wants to see the sunny spring and summer woman.

    And yet so much power lies in the dark, retreating times.

    You can choose to see this time as a pile of poo, or you can choose to see it as manure.