To Doula

By: Heidi Biddle

I have been blessed with three babies.  Well, I say ”babies”, but they are nearly 17, 14, and 9.  I remember each one of their births like it was yesterday. Without saying I was naive, when it came to the births of my children, I thought I had it all planned out.

For my first birth, I wrote out a birth plan and looked forward to going through this with my support people.  I assumed the doctor would not only explain everything to us, but would also assist me through my whole labor and birth, all the while talking to me in a soothing voice, and urging me to go on. I thought the nurses would be there to support me and help me through this wonderful time. I knew that I wanted my husband, my sister, and my mom in the room when I had my baby-they would help me, too.  My birth plan was simple: “no drugs unless I am in pain and ask for some.” I prepared myself and my husband for what was surely going to be the most beautiful, sweet, peaceful, and incredible birth ever.

Then, I went into labor. I had an epidural at 3 cm. (as early as you can), but it didn’t work.  I felt it all, including the vacuum that was used to get him out.  My beautiful, perfect, cone-headed baby.

With my second, I got to the hospital at 8 cm. Then she just fell out! There was no doctor, no nurse – just my husband (who was freaking out and saying “is this supposed to be happening?”). Papers flying, husband holding baby in with his hand, my mom looking for help, and my sister -my poor sister -her jaw was on the floor and she looked as if she’d seen a ghost. Where were my support people?

By my third time around, I found a new doctor. I explained that I was a natural at this, and I knew how I wanted it. I wanted no drugs. My babies came fast!  My husband was going to catch this one, he was going to cut the cord, and I would have a mirror so I could watch my baby be born. I wanted my precious baby placed immediately on my chest – skin to skin – and I wanted to breastfeed right away. Period. I reminded my doctor of my plan at every single visit; this is how it was going to be. I explained that my husband was my coach, and we wanted to labor alone. It was going to be beautiful (in hindsight, I was my own doula!).  I wanted NO intervention.

At 43 weeks pregnant (yes, that’s right, world’s longest pregnancy), I had to be induced. The doctor was afraid my baby would be 10 pounds. I cried all the way to the hospital…I didn’t want to be induced! I knew my baby would come when he was ready. I didn’t understand why they wanted me to get him out if he wasn’t ready. So what if he was 10 pounds?  I was sure my body could do it! I sulked all the way through the pitocin drip. I labored away with no pain meds. I was offered drugs frequently, and turned them down every time.  I owed this to my baby. I was 9 cm. dilated and ready to push when my doctor came in and recommended an epidural; he thought it would slow things down a bit and give me some energy for pushing (it turned out he was delivering twins right next door, and they were coming fast). I rolled over to my side, ready to do what he asked, because he recommended it.  Before they had time to administer anything, out came my baby’s head!  The doctor ran back into the room, caught my baby, cut the cord himself, handed him to a nurse to clean him up, dumped my placenta, then left to deliver the twins next door.

My husband missed the whole thing. My husband – who couldn’t wait to catch our baby -missed the whole thing. I missed the whole thing. There was no mirror, no control, no husband cutting the cord, no respect, no birth plan, no empathy, no baby placed skin-to-skin on my chest, and most of all, no 10 pound baby.  He was 7 lbs, 6 oz.

I can’t help but wonder how different these births -especially my third -would have been if I’d had someone knowledgeable in my corner who understood both the medical lingo and the process of labor and birth, someone who knew exactly what I wanted and would help me to achieve that.  Someone not emotionally tied to me, who would have stood up for me -my very own advocate. I vowed immediately after my third and final birth that I was going to do something about that.

When I meet with clients, they are usually only entertaining the thought of a doula.  They mostly want to know why they should hire another person to assist them when they already have a support person – whether it’s a spouse, a friend or a partner.  Furthermore, most couples believe that the doctor (whom they have grown extremely close to), midwife, and nurses will be in the room, by their side, supporting them through their entire labor and explaining everything as it is going on.  Experience has shown me that this is not always the case.  Next to the partner, a doula is the only person looking out for the mother’s best interests 100% of the time.  Whether it is a precipitous (very fast ) labor, or a 70-hour labor, a doula is there the entire time to help the mother achieve the birth experience she wants to have. While the nurses (and I have seen many good ones) do offer support, their primary job is to chart, document, and monitor both mom and baby at all times.

I help my clients come up with a birthing plan.  The parents outline their perfect birth and together we address the “what-ifs” (”should you end up having a C-section, let’s make the environment as pleasant as we can”).  Most people don’t think about these things on their own.  A doula also helps to remind the parents of the birth plan. When the unforeseen happens, or if chaos arises, the doula is an advocate -the ONLY advocate –for the parents. At a time when women are the most vulnerable, usually in pain, and the oxytocin (often called the ”trust drug”) levels are high, a woman will typically do whatEVER the healthcare providers say is best, which can often veer away (sometimes unnecessarily) from the original plan.

I explain to the partners that one of the many benefits of having a doula is it allows them to do their job –to love and support the mother.  Partners (men in particular) do not realize how hard it is to see the mother in pain;  they want to fix it, take the pain away. With a doula, the partner can focus solely on the mother and be reassured that everything else is being handled.  I remind the support person to eat, drink, and take care of themselves, which is the only way they will be able to take care of a laboring mom.

My most important job as a doula is to remind parents that this is their birth journey. You will never get a do-over on the birth of your baby. Doulas do not speak for the parents – doulas explain the parents’ options as well as the actions of the doctors, midwives, or nurses. We remind the parents to ask all the questions….what are the benefits? What are the risks?  My favorite question to remind my clients to ask: “What happens if I just do nothing?”

Those who know me know that I am very passionate about what I do.  I feel very strongly about women and the healthy function of our bodies.  We were meant to birth.  And I have no regrets about the way I birthed my babies.  The only regret I have is not educating myself about pregnancy, labor, and childbirth. If I could have ten more babies, I would, and I would have a doula every time.   Now, as a doula myself, I am the liaison between parents and their perfect birth. You dream the dream, and I help make it come true.
More on Heidi Biddle at Your Birth Journey

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Not To Doula

By: Ernessa Carter

Here’s the thing about being a woman who knows she wants an epidural, taking pre-natal yoga classes in Silver Lake: You’re the only one.

So here’s me having to listen to a zen-ruining running monologue from every single prenatal yoga teacher about how certain exercises could help you through the worst of the birthing pain and prevent epidurals. And how yoga helped you to really BE in the experience of giving birth, even though I saw no reason at all to really BE one with the pain, just because that’s how my ancestors did it. At a few points I wanted to ask the prenatal yoga instructor to just shut up, so that I could get my stretch on in peace, but that wouldn’t have been very yogi of me, would it?

After class was even worse. I wanted to make friends. I didn’t know any other moms in Silver Lake, and this seemed like a great place to strike up friendships with like-minded people — only they weren’t like-minded. In fact, it was hard for me to join the conversation when it so often went like this:

“How are your doula interviews going?”

“Great! I found this really wonderful woman named so-and-so, but she doesn’t know if she’s going to have my due date open yet.”

“Oh, I’ve heard great stuff about so-and-so. Doesn’t she use a tub?”

“Yes, and she also chants out these primal rhythms…”

“Oh, she sounds nice. Mine does massage, but she doesn’t chant.”

Okay, obviously I can’t join this conversation, because just the idea of a stranger in the room giving me gentle encouragement while I’m in tons of pain makes me want to rip her head off.

Also, deep down inside, I’m just too nice. I would feel bad about snapping at someone who wasn’t married or related to me. Even if they were getting paid to get snapped at.

But most of all, I didn’t want a doula because there was absolutely nothing a doula could do that my husband couldn’t. Also, my husband wouldn’t insist that I do breathing exercises when I didn’t want to. My husband would rub my back just like a doula would — even better: he wouldn’t rub my back, because I don’t like to be touched when I’m in pain. See, he already knows that, whereas a doula doesn’t. No matter how nice she is, she would try to help me when I didn’t want to be helped and push me when I didn’t want to be pushed. And quite frankly, that’s my husband’s job. He already sorta said he would do everything a doula would in his vows, and I wanted him to make good on his promise.

He did everything right. He retreated when he was supposed to and though we had attended birthing classes, unlike my first charge nurse, he didn’t try to force me to do the stupid breathing exercises, when I told him I didn’t want to.  He didn’t question my need to blog through my contractions, but he did forcibly take the iPhone away after my epidural, so that I could get some sleep. He didn’t sleep, though. And he was by my side as soon as I woke up. He held my hand and changed the TV station and fed me ice chips and promised me Fig Newtons as soon as I was done with the labor. “You’re doing so well, honey” he answered, when I told him “I can’t! I can’t!” And then he cried when our daughter Betty finally came bursting into this world. Now would a doula have done that?

I watched him over at the scale, giving Betty soothing words as she screamed about getting weighed. And though I did most of the heavy lifting, I knew he was just as happy as I to finally meet her. That’s when I realized something for the first time in nine months: It was his pregnancy, too. And his support during my labor had created a bond that would never be undone. Be it Death or Divorce or Disaster, we would always have these hours holding us together, a forever memory. And I’m so happy I didn’t let a doula cheat me out of that.

Ernessa T. Carter is the author of the novel, 32 CANDLES, which will be released by HarperCollins/Amistad on June 22, 2010. Pre-order your copy on Amazon here.

More on Ernessa Carter at Fierce and Nerdy

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Email us your birth story and we may post it the week of Mother’s Day

momsday@thenextfamily.com

This is a blog post taken from the Fabulous blog site Fierce and Nerdy
By: Ernessa Carter

One of the reasons I’ve been avoiding talking about being in an interracial relationship is because to me it’s no big deal, which is maybe the most surprising thing about being in an interracial relationship. Though neither CH nor I are average, our courtship wasn’t outside of the ordinary.

We met at a bar, then talked for a few moments at few different events, he asked me on a date, we fell in love, I moved in with him, and then he asked me to marry him in the privacy of our home after about a year of dating. Millions of people throughout history and across the world have this exact same courtship story.

Only thing is I’m black and he’s white.

However, I’ve noticed that the media and many black bloggers who both support and don’t support interracial relationships want to give my relationship a script that it simply does not have, so I wanted to spend the first day or our series dispelling three of those myths.

1. I don’t hate black men. I think a lot of people assume that if a black woman marries a white man that she must have been terribly hurt by a black man. For the record all of the black men I have dated have been lovely. A couple of them have also been on the marriage track. But none of them have been CH. I like CH better than any man of any color that I have ever dated. Period.

2. I didn’t settle because I was desperate for a husband. Now this is the myth that irritates me the most. Black men aren’t considered desperate for marriage when they marry white women. Asian women aren’t considered desperate for marriage when they marry white men. But somehow the media spins this story that black women who want to get married settle for white men because they can’t find a black man. Please don’t get it twisted; CH is awesome, and I am deeply in love with him. If you ask me who the best man I have ever known is, I will answer, CH. Without blinking. I have a lot in common, we have similar goals, and he is completely supportive of me. My friends have straight-up told me that I’ve become a better and 10x happier woman since meeting CH, and I am so excited to spend the rest of my life with him, it’s scary. I think this myth is insulting to both black women and white men, who if the media and certain bloggers are to be believed, can’t simply fall in love for the usual romantic reasons.

3. I’m not less black because I’m in an IR relationship. I wish people would retire this notion all together. If you really think of black people in terms of “acting black” or “acting white,” then you probably haven’t met very many black people throughout the diaspora. Get a passport, hit a few countries, then come back and tell me I “act white.” Otherwise, I’m not even engaging in conversation with people who insist on thinking that if you marry outside your race, speak English as taught in school, and have white friends, then you “want to be white.” That’s just a frustrating and ignorant viewpoint.

Having spoken on those myths, I am aware that there are two big elephants in the room that I haven’t tackled: We’ll get into “Black Love” on Wednesday. And though I’ve spoken here about how straight forward being in an IR is, I’m not going to lie, it is different from same-race relationships in a lot of ways — we’ll get into that on Thursday.

Until then, please weigh in on these myths that I’ve listed above and feel free to add some of your own if you’re also in an IR.

Fierce and Nerdy

From Time.com
By: John Cloud

Americans like answers in black and white, a cultural trait we confirmed last year when the biracial man running for President was routinely called “black”

The flattening of Barack Obama’s complex racial background shouldn’t have been surprising. Many multiracial historical figures in the U.S. have been reduced (or have reduced themselves) to a single aspect of their racial identities: Booker T. Washington, Tina Turner, and Greg Louganis are three examples. This phenomenon isn’t entirely pernicious; it is at least partly rooted in our concern that growing up with a fractured identity is hard on kids. The psychologist J.D. Teicher summarized this view in a 1968 paper: “Although the burden of the Negro child is recognized as a heavy one, that of the Negro-White child is seen to be even heavier.”

But new research says this old, problematized view of multiracial identity is outdated. In fact, a new paper in the Journal of Social Issues shows that multiracial adolescents who identify proudly as multiracial fare as well as — and, in many cases, better than — kids who identify with a single group, even if that group is considered high-status (like, say, Asians or whites). This finding was surprising because psychologists have argued for years that mixed-race kids will be better adjusted if they pick a single race as their own.

The population of multiracial kids in the U.S. has soared from approximately 500,000 in 1970 to more than 6.8 million in 2000, according to Census data quoted in this pdf. In the early years, research on these kids highlighted their difficulties: the disapproval they faced from neighbors and members of their extended families; the sense that they weren’t “full” members in any racial community; the insecurity and self-loathing that often resulted from feeling marginalized on all sides. That simple but harsh playground question — “What are you?” — torments many multiracial kids. Psychologists call this a “forced-choice dilemma” that compels children to claim some kind of identity — even if only a half-identity — in return for social acceptance.

But the new Journal of Social Issues paper suggests this dilemma has become less burdensome in the age of Tiger Woods and Barack Obama. The paper’s authors, a team led by Kevin Binning of the Stanford Graduate School of Business and Miguel Unzueta of the UCLA Anderson School of Management, studied 182 multiracial high schoolers in Long Beach, Calif. Binning, Unzueta and their colleagues write that those kids who identified with multiple racial groups reported significantly less psychological stress than those who identified with a single group, whether a “low-status” group like African-Americans or a “high-status” group like whites. The multiracial identifiers were less alienated from peers than monoracial identifiers, and they were no more likely to report having engaged in problem behaviors, such as substance use or persistent school absence.

The writers theorize that multiracial kids who choose to associate with a single race are troubled by their attempts to “pass,” whereas those who choose to give voice to their own uniqueness find pride in that act. “Rather than being ‘caught’ between two worlds,” the authors write, “it might be that individuals who identify with multiple groups are better able to navigate both racially homogeneous and heterogeneous environments than individuals who primarily identify with one racial group.” The multiracial kids are able to “place one foot in the majority and one in the minority group, and in this way might be buffered against the negative consequences of feeling tokenized.”

In short, multiracial kids seem to create their own definitions for fitting in, and they show more psychological flexibility than those mixed-race kids who feel bound to one choice or another.

Fortunately, all these questions of racial identity are becoming less important, as we inch ever closer to the day when the U.S. has no racial majority. One of these days, after all, we will all be celebrating our multiracial pride.

Time.com

It’s interracial week on Fierce and Nerdy

Hey Rosy,

I did IVF when I was 31. It doesn’t really have an age minimum. But my thoughts are with you and though I know the first cycle had to get pushed back, my fingers are crossed for the second cycle. Try this blog: Babysmiling

It’s by a woman who was trying for 7 years and just now conceived twins. Having followed the last year of her struggle to these two miracles, I’m a believer in the policy of never giving up on your dreams, even if your body doesn’t seem to be cooperating

This is a shout out to etc@fierceandnerdy.com. Thank you for the support and for the great link babysmiling. I checked out the blogs at fierceandnerdy.com and enjoyed those too.

Thanks!
Rosy