Ma Doula Read online

  Author with one of her many babies.

  Ma Doula

  A Story Tour of Birth

  Stephanie Sorensen

  North Star Press of St. Cloud, Inc.

  St. Cloud, Minnesota

  Copyright © 2015 Stephanie Sorensen

  Cover image © iStock/Getty Images

  All rights reserved.

  Print ISBN: 978-0-87839-821-8

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-68201-004-4

  First edition: June 2015

  Medical Disclaimer: This book is not intended as a substitute for the medical advice of your midwife, obstetrician, physician, pediatrician, lactation consultant, or other care provider, but rather is meant to supplement, not replace, your primary health care person(s).The reader should regularly consult with one of the above care providers in matters relating to his/her health or your baby’s health, particularly with respect to any symptoms that may require diagnosis or medical attention. This book has incorporated “best practice” guidelines as much as possible and encourages all parents to continue to research the subjects discussed here as new studies are continually being done both here in the U.S. and abroad.

  Published by

  North Star Press of St. Cloud, Inc.

  P.O. Box 451

  St. Cloud, MN 56302

  www.northstarpress.com

  “All over the world there exists in every society a small group of women who feel themselves strongly attracted to giving care to other women during pregnancy and childbirth. Failure to make use of this group of highly motivated people is regrettable and a sin. . . .”

  ~Dr. Kloosterman

  Chief of OB/GYN,

  University of Amsterdam, Holland

  Dedication

  I wish to honor the memory of Dr. John H. Kennell, who died on August 27, 2013, at age ninety-one. When Dr. Kennell was a hospital pediatrician in the 1950s, newborns were typically whisked away within minutes of delivery, washed, weighed, blood-tested, and plunked into bassinets under the nursery’s fluorescent lights. Their mothers were not permitted to hold them for twelve hours, sometimes longer. Dr. Kennell liked to say that “ . . . it was the full-throated complaints about this state of affairs” by his patients that led him to undertake a research project in the 1960s that helped change the world on which most newborns now open their eyes. The babies of the world thank him!

  “If a doula were a drug, it would unethical not to use it.”

  ~John H. Kennell

  Table of Contents

  Preface

  Introduction

  A Note to Grandmothers and Grandmothers-To-Be

  Chapter 1: “Now You Are Our Sister”

  Chapter 2: Sometimes It Does Take a Village

  Chapter 3: A Christmas Baby

  Chapter 4: An Amish Birth

  Chapter 5: A Circus of a Birth

  Chapter 6: Due Dates or Guess Dates

  Chapter 7: Everybody Loves . . . Babies!

  Chapter 8: A Just-In-Time Belly Cast

  Chapter 9: Ma Doula

  Chapter 10: Bonding

  Chapter 11: Nature Makes No Mistakes… Or Does She?

  Chapter 12: “Can I Keep Her Forever and Always?”

  Chapter 13: An Unplanned Natural Birth

  Chapter 14: Birthing a Birth Plan

  Chapter 15: Shoulder Distocia!

  Chapter 16: Doulas and Nurses

  Chapter 17: An Arabian Night

  Chapter 18: Rhoda

  Chapter 19: Doula as Gatekeeper

  Chapter 20: A Doula for a Doula

  Chapter 21: Four Memorable Births

  Chapter 22: “I Don’t Want a Baby!”

  Chapter 23: And Then There Was Rose

  Chapter 24: There’s a Placenta in Our Freezer

  Chapter 25: Tiger Mama

  Chapter 26: Two More Amazing Births

  Chapter 27: Doulas and Dads

  Chapter 28: A Different Dad . . . and Forgiveness

  Chapter 29: Waiting for Radiya

  Chapter 30: A Commune Couple

  Chapter 31: Cherish and Jewel

  Chapter 32: Filsen

  Chapter 33: El Doula Diario

  Doula

  Ina May Gaskin

  Release (By Liz Abbene)

  Everything You’ve Always Wanted to Know About Agpar Scores But Were Too Afraid to Ask

  Resources

  Acknowledgements

  Preface

  My husband and I were living in Pennsylvania in the mid-to-late 1970s when I first helped Amish women give birth in their homes, often by lamplight. Most of the births were uncomplicated. However, I soon realized I didn’t have the training, knowledge, or experience to help as much as I wanted when births didn’t go as planned.

  I did discover, though, that I had the temperament, patience, compassion, curiosity to learn, and not just the desire but a passion to be a part of what I still consider to be the most momentous events on earth. In the following years I became a licensed midwife, a childbirth educator, a lactation (breastfeeding) consultant/educator, then a birth doula. Most importantly, I became a mother of five, including twins, and eventually a grandmother.

  My own birth journey began when, after years of infertility testing, I became joyfully pregnant. Though there were several books on the market in 1980 about raising children, there wasn’t much about giving birth. When I discovered the first edition of Spiritual Midwifery by Ina May Gaskin, I devoured it. I can do this, I thought. And I did, giving birth to my almost-ten-pound Abraham without drugs, in a little hospital birthing room before the doctor even arrived. We went home six hours later.

  I wanted to do the same thing when I became pregnant again. We knew it was twins before the doctor did. I scheduled my own ultrasound to convince him. Though protocols were beginning to change, the only way I could deliver them in Minnesota in 1982 was in an operating room after being prepped for surgery. They said they would let me try to have a natural birth—but it terrified them. So I called Ina May Gaskin for advice and she invited me to The Farm Midwifery Center in Summertown, Tennessee. I moved to Tennessee that autumn and had a beautiful experience birthing two healthy babies. One weighed seven pounds, fifteen ounces; the other was seven pounds, seven ounces. Their births were filmed (See Twin Vertex Birth in Resources) and the video has been used as a teaching tool for many years.

  Stephanie with her twins.

  After our twins we had two more babies, three years apart. They were both unassisted home births. Though I had planned to have a midwife both times, they didn’t make it in time because though I thought I had planned well, I forgot to calculate how long it would take the midwives to reach our small log home in rural Wisconsin.

  By the time we had five children I had taken a few courses and began to seriously think about become a licensed midwife. It all came together when I received a Bush Leadership Fellowship in 1989, which enabled me to complete an internship in midwifery at a freestanding birthing clinic in El Paso, Texas, which also served the neighboring city of Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. It allowed me to complete the final requirements needed to take the state midwifery boards that same year. I received my midwifery license in 1989.

  Fast forward to 2010. We had just returned to Minnesota after living in England for several years. Our children were grown and on their own. I was in my fifties and knew that I did not want to work in a hospital or clinic as a midwife where I would be assigned two, three, or more families per shift and would have to leave them at the end of my shift. I also
did not want to take my midwifery board examinations all over again, which could take up to two years of preparation. I wasn’t sure it would be worth all the work; besides, I was not too keen to learn all the new electronic charting and the rocket science monitoring systems now in place since I left.

  I looked up my old mentor from long ago and we put together a plan to bring some of my credentials current by taking a few continuing education courses. Several months later I was ready to look for work teaching childbirth education classes and as a lactation consultant.

  One day I was taking some Somali women on a tour of a free-standing birthing center to show them some of their options in this country. The director asked for my phone number should they need a teacher in the future. A month later, on the eve of the Fourth of July, with every room in the birthing center full, I received a call, begging me to come in as an extra pair of hands to help them out.

  I was soon hired as a childbirth education teacher, lactation educator and consultant, and birth assistant, working under one of the other midwives. It was great fun and an honor to be back in birth work. During my year there I also became certified as a postpartum doula and was able to help couples at home, too, after their births. Soon I became a birth doula, which allows me to accompany a woman to the hospital when her labor begins and stay with her for the whole birth. I don’t have to leave at shift change. I don’t have to be concerned about the paperwork or if the machines are working properly. I don’t have to leave to be with another family.

  Being a doula is my dream job. In the last few years I have helped moms of every size, shape, color, almost every religion under the sun, first-time moms, fourth-time moms, moms who wanted no drugs, at least one who wanted an epidural in her eighth month of pregnancy, uncomplicated vaginal births, C-sections, multiples, breech—almost every scenario you can imagine. Two decades ago I lost count after helping with my two-hundredth baby. I am still honored and humbled when I can witness each magnificent, mystifying miracle of birth.

  “Natural childbirth has evolved to suit the species, and if mankind chooses to ignore her advice and interfere with her workings we must not complain about the consequences. We have only ourselves to blame.”

  ~Margaret Jowitt

  Introduction

  I’ll briefly explain the similarities and the differences between a midwife and a doula. A midwife is a medical professional who has gone through extensive training, education, and supervised clinical experience before being licensed. Midwives can perform gynecological exams, orders tests, and prescribe some medications. Depending on state requirements, they can deliver babies in homes, birthing centers, and hospitals, with or without a physician’s participation. They practice under the particular state’s protocols for low-risk births.

  Doula, pronounced DOO-la, originated from the Ancient Greek word meaning “servant to women,” a non-medical person who assists a woman, her partner and/or family before, during, and after childbirth, providing information and physical and emotional support. A doula is not considered a medical professional, though we hope we’re seen as a part of the birthing team.

  As I see it, my job as a doula is primarily to listen to the moms-to-be, and to be their personal advocate for their wishes for their births. I can help them decide what they want and do not want during their pregnancies and deliveries. I can help them write a birth plan, though I cannot and will not make any decisions for them but I will support them should they have to change course.

  I need to listen and understand who this woman before me is and ask myself, What is she thinking? How far does her understanding go? What does she want to try? What is she saying just to please me and what does she really want? What are her fears?

  I am called upon to be perceptive, discerning, compassionate, intuitive, maternal, and empathetic. A doula is truly a teacher, guide, coach, sister, mother, and friend all at once. My bag of tools means nothing if I haven’t made her feel respected and trusted. I don’t need to earn her respect or trust here. I need to make her feel safe so that she can access her own wisdom and inner power to the best of her ability.

  I need to make her feel that she was a smashing success after she gives birth, that she did her very best and succeeded. I want her to say “We did it!” and not, “I couldn’t have done it without you.”

  And then I must find the right words to help her connect with her new baby if she doesn’t automatically fall in love with him. Not everyone does. It can take time.

  All of this takes experience. Doulas learn from each and every birth they attend. Our moms teach us. I believe we become more humble in the face of such power and grace, not more knowledgeable or self-assured as time moves on. I feel like I know less now about the vast mysteries of birth and how nature and creation works than when I began this journey.

  I always want to know more. I was blessed with a gigantic curiosity. Throughout my life that curiosity has enticed me to travel the world and learn as much as I can about the humans that inhabit our planet. When we moved back to Minnesota, I starting working with many different immigrant communities who have chosen the Twin Cities, Minneapolis and St. Paul, to be their home after escaping devastation of many kinds in their home countries. I’ve worked with students from all over the world who have come to our universities to study. I also work with teenagers who have no support from partners or families and married yuppies who are followed to the hospital by entourages of anticipatory grandparents-to-be, aunts and uncles, and best friends. I work with non-profit organizations and with private clients.

  In the following birth stories you will read about several of them. Though they may differ in education, customs, cultures, religions, ­beliefs, ideologies, sophistication, and maturity, they all had one thing in common: a desire for a healthy baby.

  I hope this book encourages those of you who are on the path to becoming doulas to continue down that path. I hope others of you will think about becoming doulas, even if you never entertained the thought before. We need you. We need compassionate, giving hearts. In the end it isn’t about knowing about massage or herbs or a bag of tools. It is about love.

  To those of you who are becoming parents, I hope this book gives you courage and confidence, knowing there are women who are ready to accompany you on your journey to the land of birth.

  At the front of this book is a medical disclaimer. Since almost no one will read it, I want to make a one thing clear in non-legal language. This is not a how-to book and should not be read as such. Though there is information, it is not meant to be comprehensive or complete.

  The names of people, places, and other identifying facts have been changed throughout the book to honor each family’s privacy unless specific permission to use their names has been given.

  Rules, regulations, laws, and protocols differ between birthing centers and hospitals, from one hospital and another, city to city, county to county, and state to state. It’s important to know what your options are, whether you’re a mom-to-be or someone thinking about becoming a doula.

  As my friend and colleague Liz Abbene of Enlightened Mama says, “It is important to ask questions because if a woman doesn’t know what her choices are, she simply doesn’t have any.”

  “The whole point of woman-centered birth is the knowledge that a woman is the birth power source. She may need, and deserve, help, but in essence, she always had, currently had, and will always have the power.”

  ~Heather McCue

  A Note to Grandmothers and Grandmothers-To-Be

  My editor emailed me after she read the manuscript, “As I was finishing today, I couldn’t believe my thought: ‘I want two do-overs!’ I think I was allowed to get out of bed once to go to the bathroom when I was laboring with my first baby for thirty-six hours (Chicago, 1978). I don’t remember being allowed out of bed during my second (twenty-four hours—Maine, 1981). I didn’t know there was another way to give
birth other than on my back and in stirrups. I can’t believe how much has changed.”

  Yes, grandmothers, birth protocols have traveled lightyears from what it was in your childbearing years. My first baby was born in 1980, and I can name dozens of things that have changed since then. Not all changes have been good. We have a paradox here. We have more knowledge and know-how than ever before. We can look into a baby’s heart on an ultrasound at only twenty-weeks’ gestation and detect problems. We can save twenty-one-week old babies who will grow up without the side effects we saw only a decade ago due to the lack of technologies that are now in place today.

  But we can also do more C-sections than ever before and introduce more interventions than anyone could have dreamed of, which can and sometimes do come with their own sets of unimagined complications. Now we have an entire subculture of new parents revolting against the space-age medical world we have invented—though with all good intentions—and going so far in this rebellion as to insist on having their babies at home, unassisted by any level of any kind of birth professional.

  What many of us wish for and are working toward isn’t a compromise. We are simply asking, “What have we lost in the confusion that we should have kept (now called ‘best practice’), and what can we learn from how human mothers were meant to give birth?” Yes, C-sections and other interventions are there to save mothers and babies, and there are times and circumstances for both, but now that we have seen the ravages that have been wrecked on both sides of the pendulum, can we all just be a little humbler (and respect Mother Nature more) and find a way to agree and better serve the next generations —our future?