Doulas, Obstetricians, and Whistle Blowers

I read a couple of posts on BOLD Thoughts, Birth the Play Blog
and I posted a response.

The BOLD blogger wrote about a NY Times article trashing Doulas and about a showing of the "Business of Birth" at Cornell and how one obstetrician set the tone for a negative discussion, but a labor and delivery nurse was a "whistleblower." I wove my responses to both into one post ...about the baby in all of us:

Your posts on Doulas and the two comments raise real concerns. For every baby there is a story and observers will interpret it according to their beliefs and needs. The baby's story goes untold, unacknowledged, unprocessed, and unintegrated.

The story here illustrates a common situation --- the birth women wish for is unattainable in the hospital and most women who prepare for and expect an empowered, natural or whatever birth in the hospital, are profoundly disappointed in their experience after they have prepared for the ultimate birth experience. It has women from the different perspectives at each other's throats.

Women are in the process of reclaiming their power through birth -- and the experience is rarely as was idolized. The truth is that the empowerment comes from embracing was is, what happened, and resolving and integrating the experience ... whatever it is that one co-created. It involves also embracing that the birth is the baby's birth into this world. It is not the mother's birth. She had her birth. This is another soul's journey into this physical world through her. It is her experience of birthing her baby, but it is the baby who will have to live with the choices and consequences of every single moment provided by the mother and her caregivers. The baby and the mother will forever live with the relationship dynamics of birth and attachment that happen during birth.

The human baby is a sentient being who is experiencing birth and that the experience is imprinted into the soul, body, and brain of the human. It is illogical that a society of people would promote that prenatal development is critical, but that the labor and birth is not -- so that well-educated, well-intended professionals can do whatever it is that they happen to believe is right, all based on their own science and research.

With that said, my observation is that many doulas are well-intentioned and good-hearted people who are hardly in the work for the money. They have a burning desire to help other women have the birth they desire, and their unacknowledged fire comes from the need to heal the birth they did or didn't have. This is a huge issue in the doula profession. Doulas (like nurses and doctors), like doctors and nurses, are not aware of their own experiences of their own birth, and they have usually not processed and healed their experiences of giving birth. Witnessing the manipulation and brutality, an LD nurse is a rare one if she can stay aware and receptive to the real needs of a laboring woman. Ninety percent of the current population was born in a hospital. Since the thirties that has involved excessive drugs and inappropriate positions and brutal treatment. Generations of denying this has profoundly numbed the majority of people, so that they will smile and coo at a baby who is being brutalized with an intervention, such as bulbing and scrubbing to stimulate, both of which are shown to be not only ineffective but disruptive. Some of add to that unduly emotionally and spiritually traumatizing.

Regardless of the role of the person at the birth, they bring to that space and time their own unresolved birth trauma. People at the birth are actively trying to heal their own trauma. Women don't get to choose the majority of the people who will actually be in their space during birth. The most important event of their baby's life so far, and it is left to fate and is a cacophony of strangers crap into which a newborn enters.

It is not surprising that doulas are not regulated --- there is no standard of care in obstetrics in the US. Obstetricians are self-regulated. There is no oversight of what obstetrics do. Most drugs that they use freely are off label use, but promoted as safe under the guise of "maternal choice" until the social tide promotes the myth as well. I.e, induction and epidural anesthesia.

A woman can go through multiple shifts during a labor and birth and every nurse will enact her version of is supposedly scientific. It is mostly based on her personal preferences, that particular hospital's policies often formed around previous lawsuits and prevention of lawsuits, and the attending physician's quirks, needs, and preferences. The power over patients is so profound as to totally disempower a man who was prepared and educated. A man will know remember that this baby is HIS baby and that he say no and he can hold his baby.

Enter the doula into the mix. Everyone has their agenda and baggage .... doctors have an agenda to manage and control stress, time, and litigation. Doulas have the agenda to support a woman ... often to support her to do that which is the mother is not even prepared to do or truly aware of.

Bottom line, there is a profound black out in our society about what is best for the human being who is coming into this world. It is the baby's birth into this world.

It will surely come to pass that obstetrics will use credentialing and licensure as a means of controlling doulas, and they will fight, like the nurses and midwives.

It's the human baby that will continue to get hurt in this fighting and warring environment.

We are in a collective denial about the impact of labor and birth on the human and it allows atrocities to be done to babies. Until we embrace the truth that the human baby is aware, sentient, engaging, developing and learning being in the womb AND during labor and birth, the war will continue.

I agree that nurses see and know what is happening, and they are key people and need to speak out. But they are trained to think a certain way and it will be a rare person who will is willing and able to be a whistle blower and is able to pay the price. Squeaky wheels and whistle blowers will most likely still be lone voices and suffer ongoing consequences such as loss of jobs and livelihood until the masses begin to unnumb and wake up. As we incite and insight women/nurses to be whistle blowers we are not ready to support their process and their losses that result. One may want to blow the whistle loud and shrill, but can rarely continue to make a living. I was a whistle blower nine years ago and the losses have been great. All I have left is my ongoing mission to bring attention to the fact that the newborn human baby is conscious and aware and has rights.