Please visit our sister website to read Midwife Virginia Valli’s account of closing the bones
Closing the bones, a journey in-between worlds-by Virginia Valli
Author: Sophie Messager
Closing the bones, a journey in-between worlds-by Virginia Valli
Why being a doula is a zen-like practice
As I have moved from learning to teaching, I have always been blown away by how much deeper one’s knowledge becomes when you start to teach something to others, rather than just using it for yourself.
I recently became a doula mentor.
As I support new doulas through their journeys, of course this too is deepening my understanding of what being a doula is all about.
As a new doula and I discussed the process of supporting a couple through the beginning of their labour, it suddenly dawned on me:
Being a doula is a zen-like practice.
Why?
There are many reasons.
The first one is that birth, by essence, is totally unpredictable.
You don’t know when labour will start.
You don’t know how long it will last.
You don’t know how it will unfold.
So just like giving birth requires you to surrender to the process, being a doula too requires the doula to surrender to the unpredictability of childbirth.
This means that, for an ex control freak like me, it is the ultimate lesson in letting go of control and acceptance of “what is”.
In the early days of my doula journey I was so excited, bright eyed and bushy tailed about attending births, that I never gave this much thought.
Five years and many births later, I have achieved a certain state of acceptance and relaxation that allows me to cope with the unpredictability in a much more relaxed manner.
First, there is the on-call period. The time around the “due date” (we should really call it a “guess date”), during which my phone never leaves my side, and sits on my beside table at night. As I have young children this requires a lot of organisation and backup plans for the “just in case” scenarios. For example, right now I am waiting for a client to go into labour and my husband is abroad for a week, so I have a couple of doula friends also on call for me, just in case I need to call them at 3 am to come to my house and mind my children (I look forward to the time when my kids are old enough so they no longer need childcare). Similarly, my social life is on hold, I can’t drink alcohol, and I am never far away from home (If you want to find out more about what being on call entails, I have written about this here and here, and I really like doula Lindsey Middlemiss’s view on the topic too).
Becoming a doula is a calling, something that women do out of passion, not motivated by money. Yet the unpredictability and the intensity of this time, the on call, requires a certain zen state of mind, in order to be able to cope with the intensity of that period. Many doulas give up after a few years. Fellow doulas who have been doulaing for more than 10 years, such as London doula Lauren Mishcon, tell me they can count on one hand which of their colleagues who started at the same time as them are still doulaing.
And when I say unpredictability I don’t just mean waiting for the labour to starting within the 4 to 5 weeks window between 37 and 42 weeks. This is long enough by any means but I have had many experiences outside this window.
Take for example the client who stayed pregnant until 43 weeks had passed. Or the one whose waters broke at 34 weeks, followed by a speedy labour. Or the one who unexpectedly went into labour (thankfully, easily and quickly) at 37 weeks, 48h before I was due to attend my mum’s 70’s birthday abroad. Or the client who texted me with signs of early labour a month early when I was hours drive away, committed to teaching a course and just couldn’t come home (she waited for me to return, thankfully). Or the week-end when 3 different clients, with 3 completely different due dates, where all threatening to go into labour at the same time (they ended up birthing a week apart-one was late, one was on time, one was very early). Or the time a fellow doula called me on Christmas day to ask if I could attend the beginning of the labour of her client who had unexpectedly gone into labour 6 weeks early-the doula is question was over 6 hour’s drive away.
As I reflect on how far I have come since I started doulaing, I remind myself that in the early days of my doula career, I didn’t even dare bake a cake in case my client called whilst it was baking. I had since learnt that, with a few rare exceptions of extremely speedy labours, with most labours you get plenty of warning and time to get all your ducks in a row. These days I seem to take a lot more in my stride, and things which would sent me into a frienzed state of stress barely raise my heartbeat.
I also bow to the doula community, which is incredible when it comes to supporting a sister in need in times like these!
Second there is the early labour. For a first time mother, this may last many hours, and when I am asked by parents or mentees when should their doula join them, my answer is always the same : when they need her.
During this stage of labour, everybody is at home, even couples planning a hospital birth, because hospitals tend to send you back home if labour hasn’t become established yet. Some couples just let you know that they are in labour and don’t require your support yet. So you just sit there knowing that you may be called anytime, and it might be a short time or it might be hours, or even more than a day for you to wait. In the early days I was very twitchy during this time, not knowing what to do with myself. I remember a particular time when a couple’s waters had gone earlier that day, and I didn’t dare go to bed in case they called. My husband found me trying to snooze fully dressed on the sofa and marched me to get into my pj’s and to bed. I’m so glad he did, because they didn’t get into labour until the next day at lunchtime!
Now I treat this period like a pre-marathon and just chill, meditate, watch soppy films and eat nice food, whilst I wait for the call that I am needed. Recently I even sang in a concert with my choir whilst clients were in early labour. It was lovely, because it really energised me for the long birth that followed (interestingly they called asking me to join them the minute I got home from the concert). Many first time couples welcome the reassuring presence of their doulas in the background during this stage, however, even though they may be coping fine by themselves and not actually need you in the same room, knowing that you are in the house help them feel safer. So I have spent many early labours sleeping in the spare room, dozing on the sofa, or simply sitting down reading a book whilst their laboured in another room.
Again there is a big element of acceptance. Supporting labouring couples is all about what the couple needs, not what the doula needs. This can be hard sometimes. You can be eager to be with them, and they don’t need you there yet, so you just sit there, chomping at the bit. They might say we’ll text you in a couple of hours, and they don’t, and you worry about them, and wonder when it is appropriate to contact them again. They might ask you to go home when you’d rather stay. I once had a couple asked me to wait outside their hospital room for several hours, they needed to be on their own for a while, this was a couple of years into my doulaing and I was totally fine with it, but earlier on I know I would be been really eager to be in the room with them and it would have been frustrating.
As you can see, there is a lot of patience involved, and there is a lot of acceptance of “what is”. And there is no space for ego. It’s not about you.
There is a saying in the doula world that doulas are about being, not doing. And it can indeed be challenging to wait “doing nothing” whilst you wait for a couple to ask you to join them. Except you aren’t doing nothing, you are holding space for them (read about that here), even if you aren’t actually physically present, and this space holding is the most important part of our support.
During the birth itself, time seems to assume an unusual loose pattern, and there is something about being there during that process that feels unique and amazing-like time stands still and you are really “in the moment”, you don’t think about anything else or feel you ought to be somewhere else or doing something else. It feels like some kind of amazingly deep meditative process.
Later on when labour becomes established, there are other aspects still, which require us to have a very flexible attitude.
Labour can take a long time. The shortest time I have been present was about 6h (the birth was only 3h long-but doulas always stay after the birth to make sure you’re well and settled and help you feed your baby for the first time etc). The longest time I have supported a birth was 4 days (I have written a blog about How to survive along birth as a doula ) .
Labour can also be surprisingly faster than expected. I have missed a few births, when things happened so fast the mother didn’t realise this was really labour until she started to push, so they only called me after the baby was born. Again now I am quite philosophical about it because deep down I know that things happened the way they were meant to. But missing a birth is always a sad thing for a doula. There is some grief involved in the process.
These days I do a lot of shared care work, because of my teaching commitments. This means I work in a team with another doula to support a client. This has many advantage, not least the ability to lean onto a doula sister during the whole process, and being able to tag team through a long birth. This is the ultimate lesson is letting go of one’s ego, because, sometimes, the mother develops a deeper relationship with one of the doula team, and choses to call only one of us even when the other is available. Sometimes I only support from afar whilst my co-doula attends the birth.
Many things can happen which makes the birth plan veer off course. And when this happens, we have to keep calm and help the couple navigate these as best as we can. I have written before about how difficult it can be for a doula when birth don’t end up the way the parents had hoped. We becoming very emotionally invested in our clients, and when they are sad, we hurt too.
I have also learnt the hard way not to have expectations. The universe has a knack of teaching us the lessons we need to learn, and for me it has been trying hard not to have expectations about what might happen one way or another. It’s kind of difficult not to, especially when this isn’t a first time labour. With first time labours, I have learnt to expect something long (anything between 24h and 48h), so if it’s shorter I am pleasantly surprised. But with mothers who have given birth before, it’s difficult not to have expectations based on what their first birth was like. Yet every birth is totally unique. So for example when a client of mine birthed early with baby number 2, I expected baby number 3 to be early too. But no, he was born 2 weeks past the due date. I also had a client whose first birth had been relatively quick, but her second birth was a lot longer. I didn’t cope very well with it at first, because of my expectations. I also had a client whose second labour had a lull, and she got sent home from the hospital, again this wasn’t what I expected. So now I give myself a mental kick up the arse when I catch myself having any expectations.
The final lesson doulaing has taught me is that everybody is different, unique, and full of unexpected quirks.
I didn’t grasp this in the same way prior to becoming a doula.
It fits in the “don’t have expectations” category too, because every time I think I have sussed someone out, they do or say something completely out of character.
Like the woman who plans a homebirth but then decides to have an elective cesarean instead. Or the one who was scared of birth and planned to go to hospital as soon as possible, but then decides to stay at home during her labour.
This is also one of the reasons doulas have to be so adaptable. If we are to support a birthing woman and her partner the best way possible, we need to change and adapt really fast as a moment’s notice, like a chameleon.
So these are all the reasons why doulaing is like a zen practise.
We don’t know when things are going to happen, how they are going to happen, what will happen and how long it will last. Yet we manage to stay calm, grounded and hold the space through it all.
If this resonates with you and you feel drawn to working with me, head over here if you’re a birthworker and here if you’re an expectant or new mother.
Why it’s important to sit with the pain
I have just supported another long birth, one that didn’t end up the way the parents were hoping for.
I always find myself raw and open after supporting such a birth.
As a doula I become so emotionally invested in supporting the parents, when thing don’t go the way they had hoped for, I feel sad and powerless.
So usually I sit with that feeling, and I leave my heart cracked open for a few days.
Because I need to sit with it, to honour it to absorb it to process it.
This poem from Michael Leunig sums up exactly how I feel:
“When the heart
Is cut or cracked or broken
Do not clutch it
Let the wound lie open
Let the wind
From the good old sea blow in
To bathe the wound with salt
And let it sting.
Let a stray dog lick it
Let a bird lean in the hole and sing
A simple song like a tiny bell
And let it ring
Let it go.
Let it out.
Let it all unravel.
Let it free and it can be
A path on which to travel.”It’s taken me several years to understand this process. At first when I experienced this feeling I felt bereft and I tried to “fix” it. I discussed it with friends who suggested various self-care tools. And yes, whilst self care is an important part of the process, so is sitting with the pain and the discomfort. I have learnt to make peace with it, welcome it even.
I have the skills to heal myself, and yet every time this happens, I choose not to for a few days, because I feel I have to sit with the raw feeling for a while so I can process it and learn from it.
Sitting with the feeling helps me I am going to reflect on what I was meant to learn from the experience.
I have an appointment booked to see a bodyworker friend who knows how to reset my nervous system after a birth. I often sob on the massage couch and I also often get the most amazing insight as I do so.
So I guess my message is, look after yourself (I have written about self-care before here , and also about how I use Reiki to manage my energy and those of others in the birth room-you can read about this here), but do not necessarily rush to do so, because you may miss out on insight if you do.
If you feel drawn to sit with the pain for a while then there is probably a reason why you’re meant to do so.
Are you full of should?
This week I had a very interesting coaching session with Charlie from Your Time to Grow.
I wanted to talk about how I’ve been feeling like I’ve got too much to do, and how to manage my time better.
It is a recurrent problem for me, I am a busy self employed person with many hats, and many people relying on my support. I am also the mother of 2 young kids, and a wife. There are A LOT of things to fit in my day, and I was wondering how to make it fit better, because I felt that I just didn’t have enough time.
In the past, before I became a mother, I was scarily organised. I was one of those people who planned everything, never forgot anything, and had no tolerance for people who didn’t plan or who forgot stuff.
I was a control freak.
Motherhood rewired my brain completely and I slowly morphed into a less organised but much more creative version of myself.
I wouldn’t trade my more laid back, less organised self for my old control freak self, because I feel much happier and relaxed as I am today.
But I guess some of that control freak mentality is still ruling me a little.
Through the coaching session, Charlie pointed out that when I talked about my day and my workload, there were a lot of “should”. I should be more organised, procrastinate less, do more of this, less of that. You get the picture.
I was full of “should”, and with the should, also full of guilt about the stuff I wasn’t doing.
The thing is, guilt doesn’t serve any useful purpose, in this situation does it? It doesn’t help me do my work any faster, it just makes me feel crappy.
I also realised that I am spending far too much time focusing on what I’m not doing, where I’m falling short of my own standards, rather than focusing on what I’m doing well.
At the end of each year, I tally up what I’ve achieved professionally, and trust me, the list is usually pretty impressive. But at the time, in the trenches, I often forget to celebrate my own achievements, and instead I tend to focus solely on my shortcomings.
Charlie pointed out that I’m actually achieving most of what I set out to achieve. It was very useful to have that pointed out, because I realised that not only I’m actually getting things done, but also that I don’t like to work with a rigid schedule, so that the mindset I had, that I ought to stick to rigid rules and planning, simply is never going to work for me . It got me thinking that it’s OK to work with more flow in my day, and this actually works better for me.
It was a bit of a lightbulb moment to say the least.
I realised that I am doing OK. That although not everything on my to do list gets done (does it ever?), and that it can take me a while to reply to emails, the important things get done and that I work better under a deadline than when I have plenty of time ahead.
And, most importantly, it’s ok to work like that.
Having this discussing freed me of guilt, and left me feeling quite liberated.
It was like someone had just given me permission to be myself ,rather than trying to work by other people’s standards.
I’m going to be experimenting with a new, more flowy way of planning, one that feels good and true to me, instead of forever seeking the magic tool that will fix my workload problems. Because let’s be honest, it doesn’t exist.
What about you, are you full of should?
How do we make decisions (especially difficult ones during pregnancy and birth)?
I’ve been reflecting on the complexity of decision making lately.
How do we make decisions , especially difficult ones, and how does this apply to pregnancy and birth?
Let’s debunk some myths first.
I think we naively like to believe that we make decisions in a step by step, rational, logical, maybe even scientific basis.
You know, gathering all the facts, all the “evidence”, making sure it’s process driven etc.
Nope.
Our decisions are first and foremost shaped by our experience and our emotions (fear being a big one and I’ll come back to that in a minute).
Think about it this way: your decision is like the tip of an iceberg. All you see if the decision. What you don’t see is the iceberg below, which is made of EVERY SINGLE EXPERIENCE you’ve had in your life so far.
That’s right, everything you have experienced until now plays a role in your decision making.
People do not make decisions ignoring their experiences, only often this isn’t a conscious process.
Let’s say for example, something really scary happened to a friend of yours during her birth, or you witnessed a very negative experience (this includes stuff you’ve seen/read in the media).
This is what you now associate this experience with.
Being presented with scientific evidence showing that is not necessarily going to shift this belief.
It takes a lot more work than this, because exploring your own belief system isn’t a quick and easy job.
That is why, by the way, so many women are scared about childbirth-because the media only ever portrays birth as a scary, mightily painful, life threatening like emergency. This message has been passed onto you and built into your subconscious without you even noticing it.
In an antenatal class I taught, there was a father who was a medical doctor. He got very heated up when we talked about co-sleeping, stating that it was dangerous.
The thing is, science tell us that when you remove risks factors such as consuming alcohol, taking alertness altering drugs, smoking (and as long as you make sure that the co-sleeping environment is safe and the baby is exclusively breastfed), then having a baby in your bed carries no more risks of SIDS than having your baby sleep on a separate surface-read more about it here (ISIS).
I chatted to this dad during the coffee break and asked him what he had witnessed. He said during his training he saw 4 babies who (allegedly) died of SIDS due to co-sleeping.
So he had integrated this belief through his experience and no amount of evidence was going to change this.
That’s what I mean when I say experiences shape our decision making.
What doesn’t help is that we live in a culture that has put science on some kind of impossible pedestal, and create dogmatic beliefs rather than fluid thinking.
We also completely dismiss emotions, and instinct especially, in favour of “rational” thinking.
Interestingly, evidence even shows that under pressure of time for example, even experts revert to gut instincts when making decisions.
And we are more guided by our experience and emotion than by logic.
I was chatting to male midwife Mark Harris earlier and he reminded me of a favourite topic of his: that everything we see, the world we live in, is an hallucination, because it is the product of the mental construct we have developed as children.
If decisions about where to give birth were based on facts and logic, the majority of women would be planning to have their babies at home or in a birth centre. Not in a hospital obstetrics led unit. Because, for healthy women with uncomplicated pregnancies, there can be more risks in giving birth in an obstetric unit than in the other two settings. The odds of having a straightforward vaginal birth, for the same low risk population, are roughly 90% at home, 80% in a birth centre, and only 58% in an obstetrics unit (this was demonstrated by the birth place study).
And yet most women are scared into believing that birth is inherently dangerous and that they must give birth next to doctors, just in case something goes wrong. Not realising that much of the “going wrong” is actually perpetuated by a risk averse, fear based, maternity system.
Now before you start clamouring that sometimes, thing DO go wrong, let me explain this : my most important value as a doula is to make sure you feel supported in your decisions.
My work as a doula has completely changed the way I perceive the world and people.
As a scientist, I mostly interacted with scientists, and although they were all different, they kind of shared a lot of ways of thinking.
Plus being a doula means I get to discuss people’s emotions and feelings a lot-something you don’t tend to do as much in a day to day science job.
What doulaing has taught me above all, is how amazingly, fascinatingly and wonderfully different we all are.
And that every time I think I have “sussed” someone, they throw me a curveball that goes against everything I thought I knew about them.
Nobody fits nicely in little boxes.
And we should celebrate out quirks.
I have supported women who were terrified of hospitals, and for whom being at home felt like the safest option. I have also supported women who were terrified of giving birth vaginally and for whom having an elective cesarean was the safest option.
See where I’m getting to, here?
We are all SO DIFFERENT. I’m still learning about this and still being amazed by it every day.
What worked for your friend might not (and most likely isn’t) necessarily the best choice for you.
How does all of this relate to the decision making process?
It means that each person has their own, individual way of making decisions.
It means that the process is incredibly complex.
And it means, when it comes to childbirth, that only YOU know what are the right decisions for you.
It doesn’t mean that you mustn’t look at facts and debunk myths.
But it means that supporting you, REALLY supporting you, without an agenda, through making such important, life changing decision such as how to birth your baby, requires an incredibly sensitive, skilled person, who can help you tease out what you really want, rather than what others have led you to believe what is right for you.
But at the end of the day, because of your personal circumstances, some options are going to feel safer than others, regardless of what the evidence says.
And I fiercely defend your right to make your own decisions, however odd and quirky they end up being.
Today I was healed-a closing the bones story
We recently asked for stories from the people trained in offering closing the bones. We ran a competition to celebrate our 200th member. We wanted their experiences of both giving and receiving. We had many marvellous entries and will be sharing the winning entries over the coming weeks. Here is our runner-up winner, Rosie, with her beautifully touching story, which illustrate perfectly how healing closing the bones can be.
Please visit our sister website to read it
Sacral release : the most powerful of all spinning babies techniques?
This week I attended the advanced spinning babies workshop with Gail Tully and Debra Mc Laughlin. I already knew many of the techniques, having learnt them with other birthworkers, and having refined them by attending the first spinning babies workshop in 2016.
Spinning babies, the brain child of American midwife Gail Tully, is a set of techniques designed to ” optimize the physical relationship between the bodies of the mother and baby for the easing of childbirth. Spinning Babies is a new paradigm that takes clues from baby’s position and station for natural, physiological solutions. “
It has achieved mythical status amongst birth workers worldwide and for good reasons. Spinning babies has 4 core techniques, called the fantastic four. I was already fairly skilled in the first 3 techniques (Rebozo sifting, forward leaning inversion, and side lying release), having used them with my clients for a few years.
But the 4th technique, known as the standing sacral release, was new to me. I suspected it required a degree of touch and skill I simply didn’t have. I also kind of expected a static technique. I was wrong.
The technique is both more subtle and more simple than I expected. It was also more powerful.
It was developed by Dr Carol Philips, a cranio-sacral and fascia therapist, as an alternative to abdominal fascia release, because she found that the lying down position it required wasn’t comfortable for pregnant women.
First Debra had us realising the extend of our proprioception by laying a long cloth on a massage table and had us taking turns holding one end of the cloth between our fingers with our eyes closed, and gently pulling on it, whilst someone else put their finger somewhere on the cloth. We had to guess where the person had put their finger on the cloth, and much to everybody’s amazement, we all could determine easily where the person’s finger was located on the fabric.
Next she had us holding inflated balloons so we could practise how gentle the touch needed to be for fascia release to avoid blocking the fascia. We had to hold the balloon gently enough to stop it from falling down, but without deforming it.
Then Debra demonstrated the instinctive and involuntary movements that came when she held and gently pressed the balloon whilst someone else held it. The woman holding the balloon proceeded to do some kind of gentle spontaneous dance, which was both beautiful and unexpected.
We all had a go at the balloon dance, and it was fascinating, because we didn’t quite believed that it would work but it did-and the sensations and movements it produced where completely intuitive and unpredictable, as well as different for everyone.
Finally Debra showed us how to place our hand on the pubic bone and the sacrum, to encourage the same spontaneous dance, known as fascia unwinding. It was a fascinating experience, both receiving and giving it, as each of us started doing these amazing involuntary unwinding movements. It was a slightly surreal and also a very lulling and soothing experience.
My mind was blown away and I couldn’t quite believe the process, yet I experienced how powerful it was. I found the idea of this technique incredibly empowering. Usually manual therapy involves someone actively doing something to your body, which somewhat implies that you cannot do it yourself. With the standing sacral release, the receiver is doing their own fascia release, rather than it being done by the giver. The giver just acts as a trigger for the process.
Debra talked about the hands of the giver producing an electric circuit which allowed the process to happen. Some of it really felt like energy work to me. If you want to see what it looks like, this is the closest I have found online, though it isn’t quite the technique we did, which was done standing up, but you’ll get the idea
Being my usual curious self, as soon as I got home I hit google and found this article on the topic. The theory behind the technique is that “The therapist working on a client will introduce touch or stretching onto the tissue. Touch stimulates the fascia’s mechanoreceptors and, in turn, arouses a parasympathetic nervous system response. As a result, the client is in a state of deep relaxation and calm. In this state, the conscious mind is relaxed and off guard. The central nervous system responds to this proprioceptive input by allowing the muscles to perform actions that decrease tone or that create movement in a joint or limb, making it move into an area of ease.”
The next day I got to try it whilst combining it with a closing the bones massage session, and the two techniques complimented each other beautifully. The day after that I did it on a doula friend, and she loved it
Today I tried it on my kids-they moved less than adults and finished it a lot faster-kids have a faster moving energy. I cannot wait to try on pregnant women and during births in particular.
And I am also much looking forward to showing it to birth partners. From what I can tell, it might be both the most gentle yet most effective of the 4 main spinning babies techniques.
a male doula’s experience of closing the bones
Please visit our sister website to read Dr Attila Jonas’s account of closing the bones
Reflections on four years as a doula
This week is world doula week and I thought it would be the perfect occasion to reflect on what I have learnt since I became a doula.
I kind of fell into doulaing when Maddie McMahon invited me to attend her first ever Developing Doulas course, back in 2008. Four years later, Maddie also precipitated my decision to leave my scientific career when she asked me to attend a birth as her backup (I attended the birth on my day off as I was still working 4 days a week as a research scientist).
I remember this birth vividly. It was a long induction, and 3 of us tag teamed to support this couple. On the early morning when I made my way to the hospital, I was both excited and scared. Would I know what to do? Would the hospital staff sussed that I was a newbie and treat me differently?
Once I joined the couple in the hospital room, however, everything fell into place and I found my role to be very instinctive and natural.
I had my eyes and ears wide open and learnt an awful lot that day. As someone who was a staunch proponent of natural birth, I was quite surprised to find that when the couple chose to go for a caesarean, I knew in my bones that this was the right choice for them, and wholeheartedly supported their decision. They were going to end down that route anyway, and it was wise to do it sooner than later because it would be a lot more traumatic later on after many more exhausting hours on the synthetic oxytocin drip.
The mother had a strong instinct that something about the cord was preventing descent. I watched her express this repeatedly to 4 different staff members, only to have her instincts dismissed each time.
Baby wasn’t engaged, and at some point the mum had a wobble and asked me to massage her shoulders. With an epidural in place it wasn’t easy, so I just put my hand on her shoulders and gave her some Reiki instead.
As soon as I did this, her baby dropped into the pelvis ( the change in her bump shape was very noticeable), she opened her eyes in wonder asking what I had done, then we noticed the baby’s heart rate dropped very significantly. The baby then popped back up, and the heart rate resumed its normal rhythm.
I felt very strongly that this baby needed to give me a message.
This is why I felt totally in agreement with the parents when an obstetrician suggested to either keep going with the induction, or stop and go for a caesarean. I knew this baby couldn’t be born vaginally.
During the caesarean they found the cord tightly wrapped around the baby’s body, preventing descent (a very rare occurrence).
This day I learnt two valuable lessons: always listen to mum’s instincts, and that what makes a good birth experience isn’t what happens on paper, but how the parents felt supported and respected through the process.
I went home feeling completely elated, and it felt fascinating to me, because if I had been told a few years earlier than my first birth as a doula would be an emergency caesarean and I would feel happy about it, I would have laughed.
A few days later I went back to my science job, and as I sat at my computer I thought ” what am I doing there? Doulaing is so much more exciting”.
A couple of months later I handed out my resignation. I started doulaing officially a few months later, at the beginning of 2012.
The universe must have heard me loud and clear because I kept being booked by clients both birth and postnatal, and became a recognised birth doula by the middle of the year, and postnatal a few months later.
It was a very exciting but also a very challenging first year.
During this first year I supported glorious, straightforward physiological births, which left me on a high for days. I also witnessed obstetric violence for the first time and spend several days bursting into tears after some of the births.
I guess I took for granted that supporting birth would be amazing, so I was surprised how much I loved supporting new parents postnatally too. Although it felt very different, I loved it as much as supporting births.
There is a kind of intimacy about being in someone’s home in those first early days after the birth, where everybody is open and tender, which feels like a real privilege.
I discovered that I felt just as passionate supporting parents choices after the birth than before and during the birth.
I also experienced doula burn out, and I learnt to develop a completely new kind of way of looking after myself (I wrote about this here). These days, I am religiously having some kind of body work treatment after a birth.
In my early days I experienced trepidation when meeting parents for the first time, and I also used to turn up at antenatal appointments with a teaching plan. I have longed stopped doing this, much preferring a go with the flow approach.
I also experienced rejection, not being the chosen doula after an interview, and even though I knew this was the right choice for the parents, it did hurt a little.
In my first year, I embraced every job that came my way with boundless excitement, whereas now I am a lot more picky.
I have learnt a lot about my own boundaries. And I also have learnt about what makes my heart sing and what doesn’t.
In my first two years as a doula, I had several long term clients whom I supported postnatally for several months. I have since realised that I enjoy much more supporting couples for just the first few weeks postpartum until they find their feet, rather than for months.
I have also learnt that I much prefer supporting first time parents postnatally because I love the emotional support that comes with those first few weeks, whereas with second (or more) time parents, the support tends to be leaning more towards practical stuff and I don’t find this quite as fulfilling.
I have developed a thicker skin when it comes to witnessing difficult moments at births. I still have the odd tear fest though!
There is never a dull moment in the life of a doula, and whilst I have cried tears of sadness and frustration on many occasions, I have also experienced incredible highs, and often cried tears of joy and gratitude, something I have never experienced in any other job.
I am humbled and immensely grateful for how much personal development being a doula has brought me.
Being a doula exposes me to a much wider range of people and lifestyles than my old job did. I often joke that as a scientist I only met other scientists, and sure, they were all different, but as a doula I regularly met people who have jobs that I didn’t even know existed!
Being a doula has broadened my mind beyond belief. There are so many different dynamics, so many different lifestyles and families, and so many different good ways to be a couple, to be parents or a family. I am humbled by it all. Not many other jobs give you such an intimate insight into other people’s lives.
People keep surprising me, and I love it. In this job we get to really know people for who they are and not what their job is. Every time I think I have someone sussed they surprise me with something unexpected. We are all so full of fascinating quirks, and nobody fits into a box.
I have learnt to try not to have any expectations. I used to sit in my car before driving off to a birth, sending well wishes to the mum and her baby. Now I sit, and I just trust and surrender to the process, and I guess, a higher wisdom, that all will unfold as it is meant to. I find this incredibly liberating.
I have learnt so much from the doula community. From new skills to new friendships, nowhere else have I found such an incredibly supportive tribe of like minded women.
I am so grateful for the all the gifts the being a doula has brought me.
I would like to dedicate this post to my gorgeous and wise friend Maddie Mc Mahon, who started me on this journey 12 years ago when she agreed to be my doula.
Do you find it hard to charge for your services?
I have been meaning to write this for a while. This week I had a couple of conversations with people which finally gave me the impetus to write it
I have 4 hats: doula, antenatal and postnatal educator, babywearing instructor and healer, and therefore interact with a lot of people in these fields. Every single of these professions involves nurturing others.
Many of my colleagues find it difficult to charge for what their services are worth. I see a lot of guilt around money, I see people not valueing themselves and the amazing work they do.
So if you’re a doula, a babywearing instructor, an antenatal or postnatal educator, a healer, or if you work in a profession that involves giving a lot of yourself and you find it hard to charge for your services, please read on, because this is important.
First I would like you to ask yourself: why am I doing this?
Set some time aside and really think about what motivates you to do this, what is the drive behind your decision to pursue this job. Chances is you aren’t in it to make big bucks, but because you care deeply about people and you want to help change the world. I find that most people who choose this field don’t usually do it because of the earning potential! (and I should know because I left a prestigious and lucrative 20 years long career in scientific research to do this myself and I sure as hell didn’t do it for the money).
But there is a sneaky, underlying unspoken implication somewhere that if you have a job that you love and that you find completely fulfilling, somehow it’s not OK to earn money from it. This is just wrong.
To make an analogy, my brother is a professional musician. Artists often gets asked to do things for free, or for “the exposure” or because people don’t see their work as “work” they think they are just having fun so shouldn’t expect to be paid for it. This is bullshit. This article explains it well
Next, I would also like to invite you to think deeply about the underlying reasons behind why you feel that you can’t charge a decent amount for your work.
I can’t answer it for you because it’s a very individual thing. What I can tell you is that I consider myself to have fairly good self esteem, but when I started as a babywearing instructor 7 years ago, I had massive impostor syndrome (I’ve blogged about this topic here ), and even though I had spent quite a lot of time and money training and buying equipment, I still felt embarrassed to ask for money for my work.
When you think about it, it is ridiculous. I had spent well over £1500 on training, equipment and insurance (I since went on 2 more training courses, and bought many many other slings and dolls but that’s another story), and many hours reading and researching stuff, and yet there I was thinking I was a fraud.
It really does add up, by the way, I invite you to sit down and do the sums for yourself too, because it helped me value what I did more.
You may find that deep down, the issue is that you don’t value yourself and what you do enough (the impostor syndrome again), and that this is a major block to feeling that your services aren’t worth anything.
I haven’t got a magic bullet answer to this, but I found that writing down what I do when I support people helped me realise that I do A LOT, including things that I didn’t even realised I did, because when you’re good at something, you just do it and find it easy and don’t tend to even realise that it’s a skill and you are doing it, and doing it well at that.
I also found asking for feedback from clients went a long way to help me realise the value of what I do. I keep a file in which I copy and paste ALL the positive feedback I get from clients (and yes I ask for feedback and testimonials because most of the time I wouldn’t get it otherwise). Reading the file really lifts me up when I’m low or doubting myself.
Finally, comparing your prices to local practitioners offering similar services (say, bodyworkers like massage therapists or osteopaths), also goes a long way in realising that many of us do not charge enough money for what we do.
But that’s not the most important message here. This is:
Why do you owe it to yourself and your community to earn a decent living out of your passion?
So, and keeping your “why” in mind, I would like to invite you to think about what’s going to happen if you can’t support yourself and your family and earn a living out of it.
Ultimately, if you can’t afford to earn a living out of your craft, chances are, you won’t be able to keep doing it. So your amazing service may disappear, and you won’t be able to serve your community anymore. That’s right.
If you think about it this way: charging a reasonable fee isn’t selfish, it is something you owe it to your community so you can keep doing it.
Finally, and we’re coming back to the “artists shouldn’t do it for free” topic-if you don’t charge for your work, you are also doing other workers in your community a disservice because you are contributing to the idea that this service should be available for free.
Most of the professions I’m in at quite new, in the sense that few people have heard of them (this is particularly true for babywearing instructor, which didn’t exist as a formal profession in the UK until 2011). So whilst people expect to pay a hairdresser or a plumber (because these are recognised professions and people know their value), they can be puzzled at having to pay for something they haven’t heard about, and therefore do not know of its value.
By charging a reasonable price for your work, you are also helping the community value your work and build up its reputation, because people tend to value more what they pay for. I really like this article by Selena Rezvani, and these quotes in particular:
” As women, whether entrepreneurs, corporettes, or community leaders, we often expect our fellow sisters to do a task for some unclear or nonexistent future benefit.”
“Whatever the reason, if you are asked to pitch in your research, skills, or accumulated experience without some type of compensation now or in the future, I hope you will consider the request very carefully, with a bent toward saying “no.”
“If you have a problem asking for compensation, realize that the effect of not getting paid extends beyond you. If I give a speech to a student-run college club of women for example, and I tell them my expertise costs nothing, what am I teaching them about themselves? What am I saying about how they should conduct themselves in the future or estimate their own worth? Of course, I’m not talking about charity and pro bono type work, which is an exception; I am talking about freely giving away our expertise that we’ve worked hard to build. “
I’m not saying that there is anything wrong with volunteering by the way, because drop-ins do amazing work in the community, and I also believe that the people who cannot afford support services often need it the most.
But I have also seen too many of my colleagues giving discounts to people who earn way more than they do, and that’s just wrong (interestingly it is rarely the people who can’t afford services who haggle prices down). I’m also not saying that you can’t offer your services for a discount or even for free when someone cannot afford it and you feel drawn to helping them. I also love skills swaps and bartering. But by all means, make sure you do it for the right reasons and not at the expense of your wellbeing.
I’ve heard people say “I feel I can charge for my one to one work because I volunteer at this free drop-in”. You don’t have to justify your prices. It’s OK to charge AND it’s OK to volunteer. But you don’t HAVE to volunteer in order to charge for your work.
You owe it to both yourself and your community to charge a decent price for the amazing supportive, life saving, community building work that you do.
