Author: Sophie Messager

I’m just back from a long birth with little sleep. One that didn’t end the way that the parents had hoped for.

They seem OK and are very grateful for the support.

But I feel very raw and open, and for some reason I also feel the need to “stay” with that feeling for now-I don’t want to heal it, I don’t want to move on. At least not yet. I feel I need to honour the feeling somehow, maybe so I can fully process it.

Over the next few days I know I will-I will meditate and do some Reiki on it-I have booked myself a couple of bodywork treatments to restore myself to my grounded, more balanced self. I probably will cry, and I will heal.

But for now I want to stay with the raw openness feeling. After a birth, I often find myself on the edge of tears without warning. Today that feeling engulfed me and I felt tears of gratitude and sadness mixed together whilst watching my kids dancing. Gratitude for I have two beautiful, healthy and joyful children. Sadness because the birth was long and challenging and I worry about the mother I supported.

I know some of the feelings are partly caused by lack of sleep. But that is not the whole explanation.

I know a woman’s energy system needs to open for her to give birth and I find myself wondering whether that of birth supporters does too. Hence the feeling of being so open after a birth.

Figuratively, we birth supporters give a lot of ourselves to support a woman has she birth-so our hearts are wide open to we can give freely.

Spiritually I think something deeper happens. I think we mesh with the birthing woman’s energy field.

Sometimes the birth is easy and straightforward and all the attendants are kind and supportive.

Sometimes the birth isn’t easy and straightforward but the mother feels supported and respected and the experience is beautiful still.

I still feel very emotional and open but after those births I drive home with tears of joy and gratitude.

Sometimes the birth takes unexpected turns-veering away from the parent’s hopes and wishes-and sometimes the people supporting her aren’t kind or respectful, and she finds herself coerced into interventions she didn’t want. I try to protect her space and her choices as best I can. But it’s hard.

Those are the births when I drive home with tears of sadness and frustration and of what might have been.

Those are the births after which I spend too much time over analysing what happened and whether I might have helped influence the outcome in a more positive way had I done this or said that or suggested an alternative comfort measure at a different time.

Deep down, I know I did the best I could. But I can’t help and worry that somehow, I failed her.

That things could have been different. That I could have helped her more. That I could have made more of a difference. That I could have protected her more.

Only I didn’t fail her. I didn’t fail myself.

Just by being there, I made a difference.

When I support a birth I have very strong protective feelings towards the birthing mother.

I feel like a fierce mama bear.

I protect her space.

I’m a warrior.

So when things don’t happen as she hoped, when the power gets taken away from her, sometimes I also feel powerless myself. Powerless at protecting her.

Only it isn’t quite like that.

Because it isn’t at the easy births that doulas really show their strength.

Because it is when things get the most challenging, when the going gets tough, when there are lots of interventions and upset and exhaustion and pain, this is when we make the most difference.

The mother remembers above all how we massaged her back for hours during contractions, even when we were exhausted from two nights without sleep.

She remembers that we held her, that she wasn’t alone.

That when interventions were suggested, we made sure she had all the information and time she needed to make her own decisions.

That’s what matters. That’s what makes the difference

Not how it looks on paper but HOW SHE WAS MADE TO FEEL during the birth.

That’s what makes the difference between a good and a bad birth experience.

That’s what we do. And that’s why it is so difficult to quantify and measure.

I run workshops for doulas and birth professionals-if you feel drawn to work with me, head over here

I am accustomed to making drastic career changes. As you may already know, 3.5 years ago I left a 20 year career in biology research to follow my heart’s calling by becoming a doula, antenatal educator and babywearing instructor (read why I did that here).

By becoming a doula, being at births and hanging out with like minded spirits, I experienced many deep spiritual changes which led me to take further steps in the spiritual journey I started 15 years ago and to further my Reiki healing training and developing training for birthworkers in postpartum healing techniques like closing the bones.

I now sense that I am at the cusp of yet another massive change. It’s like I am at the bottom of an enormous mountain-I can’t quite see what the view will look like from the summit but I know I have to climb it.

I have spent a lot of time recently reflecting of where I to go professionally. Something had to give because by the end of last year/the beginning of this one, I felt as if my life was running me, not the other way round. It was tricky because I love what I do, and I also knew that I wanted to develop new things and keep on learning too.

I felt my various activities where too separate, and that I was wearing too many hats. For example I wanted to do more Reiki but I didn’t want to do it in a way that would be just another separate/splitting activity from my birth support work.

Something had to change, but I didn’t quite know how to make it happen.

You see when you run a one woman small business, there is only one of you. And it’s especially important to bear in mind when you run a heart centered business. In my case there just weren’t enough hours in the day and I was getting burned out, plus I couldn’t quite see a clear direction.

So in February I embarked on a business mentoring programme. I wanted to learn to learn to run my business better but I didn’t expect it to cause such a transformation.

The coach encouraged me to come out of my comfort zone. She challenged me to write blog posts in particular, something I thought I was crap at. I used to look at my friends who I thought were better writers than me, and never thought this was something I could do. I also thought of marketing as cold and yucky.

Only when it came to it, I realised that writing came quite easily to me, and so was doing little live videos on Facebook-boy was I nervous about doing those the first time-but then I realised they weren’t that bad, in fact I had fun making them, and realised that my fear of them was much worse than the reality.

I also realised that heart centered businesses are about telling people why you do what you do-not trying to sell stuff to people, cold caller style. They are also about finding your tribe.

What happened was quite tremendous for me-as I wrote these blog posts- I learnt so much about myself-why I do what I do-why I care so much about supporting women through their childbearing time. Stuff even I didn’t know about myself came out.

I learnt to know myself better.

I learnt to value myself more.

I grew.

It wasn’t always comfortable or easy. There were many doubts and fears to confront along the way.

But as I wrote lists of the stuff I offered, I learnt that had skills that I didn’t even know I had-because I just “did it” and didn’t think it mattered.

Have you noticed how we dismiss the stuff we do easily and naturally, the skills we are good at, only to compare ourselves less favourably to others who can do stuff than we can’t? Only our friends don’t see us like that-they see what we are good at.

The business mentoring programme helped me do that for myself.

I learnt that this isn’t about competition and thinking that I am better than others out there-or that others are better than me-it is about showing my uniqueness and what makes my heart sing, and attracting the people who are drawn to me. It was scary too, because as I showed more of my true self, I knew some people would be put off. But I also knew these weren’t the people I wanted to work with.

In particular I wanted to work more spiritually with people-so I wrote my “confession of a hippy scientist” blog-it felt scary, but the responses I got were amazing-and then something quite miraculous happened-I started getting clients who wanted to work with my hippy side. I was delighted, because it finally allowed me to wear all my hats under the same job. I had an epiphany-I could do Reiki and spiritual ceremonies with the people I was already working with. I didn’t have to try splitting myself into different roles again.

I was also encouraged to let go of stuff that didn’t make my heart sing.

To go forward, you have to let go of some stuff and make space for the new stuff.

For me it meant giving up teaching the group antenatal classes I had been running for 5 years-at least for the time being. It was a complex decision, and I procrastinated an awful lot about it. Even though I think I had actually made the decision months ago. Eventually I sat down and wrote a list of pros and cons-I think there were 3 pros and 25 cons. So I decided to stop there and then. I had a few cold feet moments after making the decision but now it’s been made, I feel much lighter and confident and happy to go forward with stuff that really makes my heart sing.

Incidentally, 3 days after making that decision I was offered a unique opportunity to do some training in an area which would have made me jump for joy 6 months ago. Yet I turned it down, because it simply didn’t fit with where I want to go right now. For the first time, I had a very clear vision of where I wanted to go. So saying no was easy (ish!).

I’m learning that as I go forward I have to listen to my heart very carefully before I say yes to new proposals. I have a strong drive to be helpful so my first reaction is to say yes. I’m learning to listen to my instincts more often. To go with my gut.

So where am I right now? Back to the mountain analogy at the beginning of this post, I feel a strong pull to work more spiritually with expectant and new families and birthworkers. One of the first steps of this has been the development of my Rebozo workshop-something that allows me to make use of my unique mix of science and traditions. I have just finished writing the handout for this-it turned out to be a 25 page long document, complete with pictures and tutorial videos of each technique, and in which each technique’s effect on the various joints and organs is explained by my osteopath friend Teddy Brookes. I feel very proud of it and I cannot wait to see what people think of it.

My next step will be to develop a healing workshop for Birthworkers. When I started to think about training people to do Reiki, after I took my Reiki master teacher course, I only had expectant parents in mind. Recently, after discussions with other birth workers, and in particular birth trauma specialist Alex Heath, and after treating a lot of people who care for others and learning to care for myself, I had another light bulb moment. I feel it’s more important to offer this skill to birth workers FOR THEMSELVES, before them being able to treat their clients. This fits with the filling your fuel tank analogy I wrote about recently. You cannot fill the tank of another person if yours is empty.

I don’t know where else my journey is going to take me. I am looking forward to climbing that mountain-I just know the view at the top will be amazing 🙂

If you are a birthworker and you feel drawn to work with me-have a look here 

I’m just back from the annual doula retreat in North Wales.

Every year for the last 4 years I have joined a group of like minded doulas and birthworkers at the magical place that is Cae Mabon.

I am ever so grateful to doula Selina Wallis for organising it 🙂

Cae Mabon is an eco retreat located near LLanberis, in Snowdonia.

It looks like a cross between a Hobbit and a Viking village on the side of a mountain. There is a bubbling stream that runs down the side of the village, and leads into a lake.

It is by no mean luxury accommodation: the huts we share for sleeping have very basic beds and no running water or electricity. There are compost toilets, and a couple of washbasins and a gas heated shower which is pretty much outside (under a hut with minimal protection from the elements).

So why, you are probably asking yourself, do I look forward to this as one of the highlights of my year?

Well it’s several things.

The place is truly beautiful, with the mountain and the river and the lake and the ancient forest with moss and ferns. We spend most of our time outside near nature there, which feels very good when the rest of the time we live mostly in an urban environment.

Cae Mabon also happens to have a incredibly calming and nurturing energy to it. The place just feels very good. It’s difficult to describe to those who haven’t experienced it.

There is no internet access there at all, not even 3G, so this is the only time of the year where I am truly unplugged from the internet. In the busy connected world we live in, I believe we all need enforced internet breaks from time to time.

I am the mother of two young children, so this is the only time of the year when I am not needed to nurture my family, when there isn’t a little person calling for me one way or another from dawn to dusk. Someone cooks for us at the retreat (this year the gorgeous Alexandra Wilson whipped up amazing vegetarian feasts for us), so it is also one of the rare times of the year when I am not cooking myself (this in itself is worth the cost of the retreat!). I am also a doula, and so this is also one of those rare times of the year when I am not nurturing another family as well as my own.

Then there is the community. Each year the retreat is attended by a group of women I have come to know and love as my sisters. I look forward to seeing them again each time. We feel comfortable in each other’s presence, we share lovely big group meals, we hang out remaking the world in the outdoor wood fired hot tub (bliss!).

There is also the learning: the retreat has a couple of full day workshops, usually involving some kind of deep spiritual work and some kind of craft, sometimes mixed together. I have learnt a lot of new skills at these workshops (some of which I now teach, like closing the bones). I am especially grateful for being given the opportunity to experience stuff I would have dismissed completely (like sound healing-read more about that here) if I hadn’t happened to be there at the retreat and given it a go.

This year I deepened my learning about closing the bones with Rocio Alarcon, and there was a workshop on the Goddess Bridget, complete with shamanic journeying. I loved both of these workshops. They fed my soul.

In the evening we gather in the roundhouse around a fire for storytelling.

I go to bed earlier than I do any other times of the year because there is no electricity or screen keeping artificially awake.

We nurture each other and share skills and swap knowledge in a very natural and flowy way. This year, my doula friend Jo Gough organised the most beautiful opening ceremony in the roundhouse (this would deserve a whole blog post by itself-Jo specialises amongst other things in creating sacred space ceremonies), we did some story telling sharing using our own lives stories to create a powerful myth, we sang in groups,  and I had the best reflexology treatment from doula Karen Williams and gave her a Reiki treatment in return.

There is no pressure to attend or do anything-you can find time alone whenever you need it.

This year I walked the labyrinth by myself in the forest and I swam in the (freezing) lake. I also found time to read, to whittle a walking stick and to practise my drumming. On the last day I climbed up the mountain to visit the 3 gorgeous waterfalls there.

This is the only time of the year when I have no obligations to do anything but do what my heart tells me to do, and no other people’s needs to meet. This is the only time of the year when I feel I can just “be”.

It feels incredibly resourcing.

I feel like my fuel tank has been refilled up to the brim, on both a physical, emotional and spiritual level. My friend Maddie McMahon wrote a beautiful poem about this year’s retreat-it really sums it up.

As I walked into the forest on the last day I promised myself to bring more of this stillness and “just being” time into my life and also spend more time in nature with my family. To spend more time to meditate and play my drum and treat myself with Reiki.

How do you bring more “just being” into in your life?

A couple of days ago I was given a beautiful self care analogy. I was treating my friend Teddy with Reiki. He is an osteopath. For some reason, that day, I was drawn to treat his hands, something I haven’t been trained to do. But when I was treating a new mother recently, she mentioned her hands were aching from holding her newborn so much, so I treated them and it was lovely. Somehow it made sense to treat Teddy’s hands too because, as his main working tools, I figured out they could do with some recharging.

It produced very interesting effects. As soon as I started treating his hands, I felt a great amount of tingling energy flowing through my hands. Teddy became aware that his hands had felt empty and then  said that it felt like a petrol pump or a fuelling station refilling them with energy.

I treated him until it felt like the Reiki has done its job. It took a good 20 min, which, in my personal experience, is quite a long time. Especially for him as he is one of the fastest responders to Reiki I know.

It was a very interesting learning experience for me on several levels.

Firstly from my own Reiki angle-I found myself wondering why treating hands isn’t part of the standard positions suggested as part of Reiki training. We do so much with our hands, all of us, even those of us who aren’t body workers. We touch with them, we give with them, we express love with them. From now on this is something I will remember to offer to my clients. When I treated my new mother client, the treatment was very significant for her. She said it felt like it was acknowledging the hard work her hands were doing.

Secondly, it reminded me of the importance of self care, and the fuel pump was a beautiful analogy. It is a well known fact that people who work in professions that involve healing or caring for others are usually pretty bad at looking after themselves, because they tend to put the needs of others ahead of their own.

I learnt this the hard way myself during my first year as a doula. When I was working as a scientist, my self-care routine involved eating well, getting enough sleep and running 3 times a week. That seemed to do the trick.

Then I left science to pursue my heart’s calling (read more about this here).

I LOVED every minute of my first year as a doula: the births, supporting postnatal families, everything. I felt so blessed to the able to do this special job.

Then towards the end of my first year I suffered massive burnout. I remember at the end of two long weeks looking after several postnatal clients, I felt physically, emotionally, and (that was new to me) spiritually empty. I had never experienced anything like this before and I didn’t know what to do.

I called my wonderful doula mentor Suzanne, and she explained to me that, due to the giving nature of doulaing, I needed to develop a new kind of self-care routine.

You see when you have a job that involves giving to others, day in day out, and especially if you happen to also be a parent, so you have to do it all over again for your family in the evenings, your fuel tank can get empty without you even noticing. So have to find new ways of refilling your own tank.

This is important because you simply cannot fill somebody else’s tank if your own tank in empty.

So ultimately, by looking after yourself, you are also looking after your loved ones and clients.

In the months following months after that burnout experience, I tried out a lot of different self care approaches. I had treatments with different practitioners: massages, reflexology, osteopathy. I learnt to religiously book myself a treatment after a birth. I tried mindfulness and meditation. I developed a liking for something I call a “birth hangover”-if I can after a birth I have a sofa day at home in my pj’s watching DVDs and eating lovely food. I also learnt to pace myself, and that I could only take so many clients at once. Eventually this, helped by the wisdom of other doulas who were further in their journeys than me, led me to continuing the Reiki training I had started 15 years ago and completing my level 2 and then my reiki master level. This is something I did first and foremost for myself and my own self development. Today I am beyond grateful for the caring gifts it has imparted me, my family, friends and clients. Self treatment with Reiki is my go-to treatment of choice. If I feel off-balance nothing works as well as that. My kids come asking for it whenever they hurt themselves or are upset. I still have regular body treatments too.

So if you look after others in one way or another, I would like to encourage you to think about ways you can fill your own fuel tank. I like the SPICES acronym for this. S is for social, P is for Physical,  I is for intellectual,  C for creativity, E for emotional, S for spirituality.

How are YOU going to look after your fuel tank?

I have just had a realisation that attending antenatal classes in the third trimester of your pregnancy might be leaving it too late.

Part of it is based on my own experience during my first pregnancy, part is based on my experience supporting women as a doula and antenatal teacher.

When I was pregnant with my first child, I had the choice of going to antenatal classes when I was 5 months pregnant, or when I was 8 months pregnant. I am so grateful to the kind booking lady who when I asked her which ones I should book said that by 8 months I would be more tired and probably would feel less like going out in the evenings. Now I reckon she was wise and just used it as an excuse, because she knew how I would benefit from it.

You see, starting antenatal classes earlier allowed me to really think and mature my decision about what I wanted (and not wanted) for the birth. It opened my mind to think about aspects of birth I didn’t even know existed. It made me want to find out more, and to read more and to talk to more people., and completely changed the course of my experience for the better. I now know almost for certain that I would have had a completely different (and less positive) experience had I waited until the later part of my pregnancy.

But this isn’t about me really. It’s about you and making decisions about an experience that is going to impact you for the rest of your life. Because what makes a good birth experience isn’t so much what happened during the birth, but how you were made to feel about it, and how much decision making you had in the process. What you don’t know about, haven’t thought about, is very difficult make decision about if you are confronted with it during your labour and birth.

Trust me, this is important.

I know we are all very busy, and I hate to break it to you, but just attending a handful of evening classes is barely scratching the surface of what you need to know. You need not only to know all the options, but you need time to ponder and mature your decisions. Weigh up the pros and cons of each option. Risk perception is a very individual thing, and to make a truly informed decision, you need to know all the options and have time to think about it. Nobody can do this overnight.

I think that deep down, you know this.

So why wait?

Here are several reasons why having antenatal education in your second trimester might be one hell of a good idea:

• You’ll be less tired. Yes, believe me, if this is your first pregnancy, you have NO IDEA, now that you are in the blooming phase of your pregnancy, how knackered you’re going to be after you hit 32 weeks.
• You’ll have more time to ponder, to reflect, to plan and think and mature your options. You might end up realising that you want something completely different from what you thought you would. If this was your wedding day, would you wait until 6 weeks before it to start planning and organising it? Would you say “I’m just going to wing it?”. Now, guess which of these days is going to have the longest lasting impact on your future wellbeing?
• You will feel more confident and less anxious about your labour and birth-this is because you’ll have had more time to explore what scares you, debunk some myths and explore some strategies to alleviate the fear.

It isn’t just about the birth either-it’s about finding out about postnatal recovery (I’ve written two blog posts about this, one about recovery, and one about why starting your maternity leave earlier might be a good idea), and about becoming a parent. There is a minefield of conflicting advice out there, and you need time to access information and debunk the many myths that our culture pushes upon us. You also need time to think about what feels right for YOU, to peel the onions layers of “should” laid upon us by our culture, and also have the time to reflect on your own experiences of being parented.

Does it feel like it’s a bit too much right now? It’s a lot of time and work to dedicate right? Again, coming back to the wedding analogy, that’s lot of time and work too. But it is really worth it! How would you react if someone told you that you’d spent too much time preparing your wedding? Ridiculous, right? Well, it’s the same for your birth.

The good news is that you don’t have to do it alone-a doula can be a bit like a wedding planner for your birth and parenting journey-she knows all the right people in the field, she can save you a huge amount of time and stress when it comes to finding out the info and signposts for you. She will listen to you and handpick the books, DVDs, articles and website links etc, that resonate with YOU.

If you are reading this, you are half way there and I would like to say well done for thinking of investing in yourself. This isn’t just about your baby, it’s about you, now and the future you once your baby has been born. You deserve this. It isn’t indulgent and it isn’t too early.

I’ve done a podcast with Alexia Leachman, on babywearing and postnatal traditions-you can listen to it below