The story so far
Jo Dunn
The story so far…
In June 2008 a dear friend asked me to be her birth companion, queue cringeworthy hospital antenatals that amounted to minimal birth preparation which lead to a thirty six hour induction, that fortunately resulted in a wonderful water birth. I witnessed incredible and supportive midwives in action, whose simple question “how long have you been a doula” inspired a u-turn in career direction and a personal transformational shift. In 2009 I embarked upon my first doula training, sparking a thirst for all things birth and opening my eyes to women’s experience of pregnancy and birth in modern maternity systems, both in the UK and America.
As a consequence of supporting many people to birth their babies, the gradual realisation set in that I was consistently witnessing low risk healthy women experience heavily medicalised, largely coerced and often traumatic births. I had become a professional bystander to the medical conveyor belt that is birth in the UK today. ‘Delivery’ is the term used by the NHS to explain birth at least there is transparency about their responsibility to you - a live delivery and very little else.
When a woman experiences a powerful, raw, primal, moving, immersive birth, she experiences a seismic shift in her being that cultivates her emergence into motherhood. Physiological birth has the potential to alter brain chemistry to accord with newly acquired maternal responsibility, bonding, milk production and individual satisfaction of the birth experience. Imagine if every birthing person was experiencing fully embodied life affirming joyful births?!
Take a moment to consider how many women you know, that have had a positive hospital birth experience?
Like many of my doula peers I embarked upon this calling, knowing it would be challenging nonetheless feeling I could help change the system from the inside. It would be simple I would educate parents-to-be to make smart birth choices and by being there in person I could ensure positive birth experiences in a hospital setting. How naive?! It is impossible to stop the juggernaut that is the modern maternity system, especially when we believe this system provides us with safety.
Covid blessed me with a pregnant pause to asses how I wanted to support families going forward. In 2020 I stopped supporting hospital births. I stopped regurgitating the narrative that women could have a good birth experience ‘anywhere’ and stopped centring myself as the doula saviour. I began to heal from the trauma I witnessed and so, my journey into working authentically as a birthkeeper unfolded, holding space for people as they birth their babies at home.
Birth works perfectly when physiology is understood and respected by those in the birthing environment and when a labouring woman is not disturbed. From the moment a woman engages with the maternity system she is bombarded by consistent messaging that undermine her growing instinct and serve to inform her that her pregnant body is unsafe and that only medicine can save her from her dangerous body and unpredictable baby. Surveillance from scans, screening, appointments and monitoring, all under the banner of ‘safety’ and the impossible quest of eliminating ‘risk’ have created a landscape of unanswerable questions. Women are lumped into categories according to perceivable risk, these categories are vast and cover pretty much anyone who is pregnant. With the only conceivable option to avoid said risk is to choose from the menu of medical intervention. Forsaking any meaningful counsel about the risks that the ‘recommended’ intervention proposes on mother and baby both short and long term. Through the obstetric lens, pregnancy is a disease waiting to go awry and birth something to be feared and remedied.
We have moved into a paradigm were healthy birthing populations are unconsciously choosing medicine to support a normal physiological event and coming out of the experience physically and emotionally harmed. ‘Trauma informed care’ is the current buzz word in a system, that perpetually causes the trauma it intends to inform its practitioners all about. Chicken meet egg.
Midwives, the experts in birth are increasingly unable to practice in full autonomy as they are now professional subordinates to their obstetric counterparts. Medicine and skilled clinicians will always have its place in pregnancy and birth and I am very grateful for the accessibility to obstetrics and surgery that has saved the lives of many mothers and babies.
Birth has moved into a phenomena that always requires medical assistance and sometimes (accidentally?) occurs naturally and in this we are harming mother baby dyads for generations. The fait accompli of the industrial medical complex is spearheading a legacy where humans are born and die on drugs.
Giving birth unfettered by the constraints of hospital systems, fear and the stories of others is a woman’s birthright. Today I support people to birth their babies in their power at home.
Peace on earth starts with birth.