You Do You and I Will Doula Close Behind

A quick blog post to follow up on my recent birth story. After writing my story I began to think about the births I have attended and how unique and powerful each woman was in their own way. This could be a Facebook post, but then it wouldn’t be permanently available, and this needs to be permanent. It is important for me, especially as a doula, to express how the choices I have made for myself in no way shape how I feel you or anyone else should birth. I might have had the right cocktail of circumstances to achieve the unmedicated birth I desired, but my story does not dictate how others should go, far from it. Who am I to tell you who you are and how to write your story?

Full discloser: When I first became a doula I was motivated by my desire to show everyone they could do it too, to believe in their bodies, and to fight the mindset of birth being too painful to bear. To a degree, I will always still feel that way, however, it only took my first three births to realize birth’s humbling and complex ways. Not only is birth complicated, but so is the way society, the medical system, nature and our human minds, emotions, and lives interact with it. It is a cocktail of scenarios, choices and emotions which shape how we feel before, during and after our birth. How we give birth in the end does not define us. What makes us feel proud, and empowered is not how we give birth in the end, but how we choose to embrace our story, how much love and support we feel surrounding us and our role within it. Whether you give birth at home, in a hospital, unmedicated, with medications, or via cesarean you are having YOUR experience and your experience matters more than anyone else’s. Some of the most beautiful, powerful and mezmerizing births I have attended were induced, medicated or ended in a cesarean section. The women involved made choices that were right for them during labor and were confident their story was just that, their, very special, and unique story. They felt empowered, supported and completely in control. You do you, and as a person and a doula Ill either follow close behind or get you higher if you need a lift.