What Birth Stories Have You Heard?
The birth stories we grow up hearing impact the ones we end up having ourselves.
It’s no secret that the things we see, hear, feel, and do as children affect who we become as adults. If we are brought up being told that flowers are for girls and cars are for boys, we have that implicit association - it’s near impossible to break the bias.
People who are raised with the belief that eating meat is animal cruelty, sometimes physically have trouble looking at raw meat as adults. And, if we are told in our youth that homosexuality is a sin, it might take a lot of therapy to break this belief.
The same is true for birth stories. If our parents’ dialogue around birth is one of fear, trauma, and disempowerment, and this is the story we are raised hearing, then for many this can become a self-fulfilling prophecy; this is the story we too will live out. Birth trauma passes down through generations.
As a doula, I want to break this cycle. I want people to have birth experiences they can come away from feeling powerful - not ones they feel they must “suffer through.”
My mother had vaginal births. I was the firstborn, and I was born in a hospital. My two younger brothers were both born at home. The youngest was born late at night, as I slept peacefully in the room next door. I was three and half when he was born. I woke up the next morning and wandered into my parents’ bedroom like any other Tuesday, and there he was.
I remember asking my mother when I was around 10 if having babies hurt. “Yes” she replied, “but it’s worth it for how much I love you. That’s why I did it three times. It hurt a lot, but it’s pain where you know something really good is coming. You don’t suffer with that type of pain.” For more information about the differences between pain and suffering, please see this blog post from earlier this year.
As a direct result of the positive birth stories I heard as a child, there was never a question in my mind that my body couldn’t birth a baby. Of course, I had some fear of birth—the unknown, the pain, the possibility of something not going as “planned”—but I always returned to my mother’s words. I believed that if I had had an uncomplicated pregnancy, I could birth my children without suffering. I knew my own mother had done it and this led to me feeling I could do it too. It was empowering.
Upon growing up and starting to talk to others about birth, I came to learn that not everyone was gifted positive stories. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that my overwhelmingly positive internalized beliefs about birth are akin to the beliefs of a very small minority of people. Many people exist in the middle ground- where birth is something they are willing to “suffer” through for the end goal. Many just see it as a means to an end, but not something they feel they can come away from feeling fundamentally positively altered and empowered. And then, there are the people who’ve been told horror stories about the day they were born, stories fraught with panic, confusion, and distress. The recurrent emotional message woven throughout these stories is that birth is something traumatic, and something to fear and dread.
I came away from all these conversations wishing everyone could feel the way I did about birth. I wanted to help people feel that it was possible to have positive birth stories. So, I became a doula.
There is a common misconception that birth doulas only support unmedicated vaginal births. This is far from the truth. My number one goal as a doula is to ensure people come away feeling empowered no matter what type of birth they are planning and no matter what events transpire during the labour and birth. I believe that birth empowerment comes from ensuring families are made to feel supported with something I call “The Five Pillars of Empowerment”. I wrote about this in a previous blog post, you can read that here.
I believe that generational traumatic birth stories do not have to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. I believe that as an adult, you can re-write the way you see birth. I can help you surround yourself with people whose stories are non-traumatic; I can help you understand the anatomy of birth; I can share studies showing the positive outcomes of certain birth practices; I can lend you books and recommend podcasts containing positive stories.
I will listen and advocate for you; I will connec you with the resources you need; I will make sure you feel safe, cherished, and secure with your birth team. Above all, I will ensure you feel heard and understood, that you are informed every step of the way, and that you feel empowered to make decisions that are best for your and your baby. This will help you see birth differently, and create the conditions for a calm, powerful, positive birth experience.
By unlearning the negative dialogue, and adopting a different understanding of birth, we can change the generational birth trauma. We can empower ourselves, our children, and future generations, to see birth as a powerful and life-altering experience.
