At this birth, I met the mom for the first time when her cervix was 7cm dilated and she was already in the birthing pool. She was having trouble coping and was gulping laughing gas (commonly used outside of the US for pain management) during each contraction. Everyone in the room felt a bit frazzled, and it was hard for me to connect to her initially because she was so stressed out. I talked her through a couple of contractions, encouraging her to let her body open up with each one, sending the energy down to her cervix, visualizing it opening up with each sensation, and moreover, that each contraction was important as it brought her closer to her baby. She opened her eyes and stared at me and said, “I don’t know what you mean!” After an attempt at an internal exam, the midwife told the mother she had to get out of the pool because her cervix was still 7cm – it had been 5 hours. For various reasons, mom was fighting each and every contraction and completely unable to relax and let each one do the work it needed to do. “Come out baby!” she shouted.

We all moved to the bed – Genesis has king sized beds in each room for labor, delivery and postpartum- where the midwife did a 20 minute tracing and administered a temporary muscle relaxant to help the mom sleep a bit and let her body do the work it needed to do. As a doula, it was difficult to build an instant rapport with her when coming in to the process so late. In the middle of a contraction I suddenly thought about what a doula mentor of mine told me about the importance of the image of light in labor. I began to talk her through the contraction and used the image of a ball of light growing in diameter with each breath during her contraction, and she began to nod. “Yes,” she murmured, “this is working.” With each contraction, she would roll her eyes open and nod to me to begin. The visualizations became increasingly complex as I watched her respond to the work we were doing together, creating a world where her body responded positively to each contraction and she was not afraid or shut down. Within an hour and a half of this work, she was ready to get back in the bath and push.

Her healthy baby boy was born within about 40 minutes of pushing! I feel so thankful that we were able to discover the power that light, and the image of light, had for this mom and for her family. At the risk of being cliche, I would say that it felt like the mom and the entire team really did come out of a dark place and into the light!

I attended my first birth in Johannesburg, South Africa! I supported an excellent midwife-doula team as a well known stand up comedian delivered her second baby boy via c-section (known as a “Caesar” in South Africa) at a birth clinic here. The mother, let’s call her Tsholang to protect her privacy, switched her care providers in the last three weeks of pregnancy to a midwife-doula team supportive of her desire to VBAC. The midwife and doula generously invited me to help out at the birth.

The atmosphere in the theater was jovial. OBs, anesthetists, nurses, doulas, midwife, husband and pediatricians laughed with Tsholang as she cracked her legendary jokes on the operating table.  Once their son was born, parents sat side by side and the Dad held his son until Tsholang was able to nurse him. As doctors finished the operation, Tsholang turned to me. “Thank you,” she said, “for helping me to make my happy place. You gave me somewhere to place my mum,” who had died just before she became pregnant.
I am infinitely grateful for the comfort and warmth Catherine Shainberg’s visionary DreamBirth sequence brought to this mother. This was the warmest, most relaxed c-section I had ever supported a family through. I am thankful for Tsholang’s sense of humor, and certainly for her mother’s presence with us in the room that night.

We are very excited to host Laura Thompson Brady, THIS Saturday, March 24 (1-4pm), at the Museum of Motherhood as she guides us in the “Cocoon Time” workshop.  This wonderful workshop will offer tools for holistic postpartum self-care, a nourishesd home, and harmonious family rhythm.  Isn’t spring the perfect time to open ourselves – and our homes – up to new growth and new ideas about ways we can blossom in our own lives and cultivate a sense of bliss in our homes?

With the intention of offering an opportunity for new parents to find the balance between their intuitive selves and their intellectual selves we are continuing to offer our “Freedom to Birth” classes this spring. This course offers a chance to connect with your body and your baby to create a full sense of body, mind, and heart awareness as you embrace your pregnancy and birth experience.  Our next session will begin Tuesday, May 1 in partnership with Kids at Work in Chelsea.

Finally, in celebration of World Doula Week (beginning on March 22), we will be hosting a screening of “BIRTH – a play by Karen Brody”, THIS Saturday, March 24 (7pm) at the Museum of Motherhood. On Labor Day 2011 BirthFocus co-produced, directed, and acted in the live performance of this play at the launch of the Museum of Motherhood. Over the past several months we have formed a beautiful partnership with MOM and are excited to return to celebrate the wonderful work of doulas and honor the beautiful stories shared in this play! Doulas are FREE and there is a suggested donation, to benefit the museum, of $15 for all non-doulas.

We look forward to having you join us in our celebration of spring! And, as an extra bonus, we’d like to offer a $25 discount on all classes and workshops to anyone who has partnered with – or will partner with – one of our BirthFocus doulas for their birth!

Happy Spring!

**To register for any of our classes please contact us via email or phone**

To put it bluntly, her patients are dying because of a lack of medical resources.
After watching the film I am struck by how, in New York City, my conversations with doula clients involve in depth discussions around what is seen often as the over-medicalization of birth. We discuss how much medical intervention women want to involve in their birth plans when striving to seek a balance between elected medical interventions and trusting their own bodies to do the work needed to birth their babies. I think these decisions involve a high level of communication and trust between doctor and patient (and doula and family!).  Two recent births highlight how crucial this trust and communication is in determining whether or not a mother is facing an emergency that requires medical intervention. I am reminded again of the importance of having pre-established communication with a care provider who trusts in the process of healthy childbirth, and is thus able to correctly identify times when something is truly wrong.

After laboring beautifully at home (in the tub, in bed, on the toilet) for nearly eight hours, Jenny, her husband and I decided it was time to head to the hospital. Jenny wanted to give birth without pain medication or other interventions, so we were all excited when she was admitted around 5 am at 6 centimeters dilated and no one thought it would be much longer. Her contractions were strong and regular, and around 7 am she went through a transition phase and then began feeling the urge to push. Shortly afterwards, the doctors checked her and she still had a tiny lip of cervix that had not gone away. The baby’s head was at zero station in the pelvis.  Nearly ten hours later, at 5pm, nothing had changed. An exhausted Jenny and her husband agreed to follow the doctor’s suggestion to “meet the baby in the operating room.” At 6 pm, their beautiful son was born – all 9 pounds 4. 2 ounces of him! After the c-section, the doctors realized that Jenny has an android pelvic inlet, which means that her pelvis is not as round as most women’s, and instead tends to show characteristics more typically seen in a male pelvis. There was no physical way her baby’s head could have passed through her pelvis at that birth – without us knowing it, the c-section saved both her and her son’s life.

In another part of town, a laboring woman’s water broke in the late evening. As she was GBS+ she went to the hospital right away to be administered antibiotics (upon the recommendation of her midwife).  Approximately five hours later, her labor had picked up and her cervix dilated to 4cm.  She used the tub for pain management, visualization and hypnobirthing relaxation techniques, and doula/midwife support.  A few hours later her cervix was almost fully dilated, despite a bit of cervical lip.  After almost three hours of strong contractions her cervix still had not budged.  As she trusted her midwife, the process of natural birth  – and despite pressure from the resident OB on shift – she labored a few more hours and had a beautiful, and drug-free (as she wanted), vaginal birth. Because her heart rate and the baby’s heart rate was fine throughout her entire labor the situation did not ever require medical intervention, only a very patient mother and support team.

Listening to Dr. Kodindo talk about her work and introduce her patients and Chad’s health care system through the documentary, one is struck by how important it is for all nations to make maternal health a priority to make sure that the kind of care Jenny received be the norm, rather than a privilege. On the flip side, one is also struck by how important it is to trust in the natural process of birth and if the mother/baby unit does not indicate a medical reason to intervene then patience is the answer.

The United Nations Millenium Development Goals identify maternal health as one of its top five concerns. The United Nations states clearly on its website, “most maternal deaths could be avoided,” and countries around the world have pledged to reduce maternal mortality rates by three quarters by 2050.

Dr. Kodindo works in a hospital in Chad where, at the time of the film, one in eleven women die in childbirth. In a post film discussion, Dr. Kodindo shared that after the film was released, Chad began to make some changes and is in the process of re-designing the country’s health care plans when it comes to maternal health.

“Dead Mums Don’t Cry” clearly makes the case that by prioritizing maternal health with funding, resources and legal support, the Millenium Development Goal of reducing maternal mortality by 2050 is possible. Contraception, pre-natal care, access to certain medications in the labor room, including oxygen and magnesium sulfate, will make an enormous difference.

As a doula, I am constantly humbled by the wise, knowledgeable birth workers and mothers worldwide who advocate and fight for healthy, safe births. Here in the United States, in New York, I am reminded at every birth how important it is to fully trust your care provider to follow your intuition and your vision for your birth plan but also to make the right decisions for your and your baby’s health. While I trust fully in pregnancy, labor and birth as a normal, natural process, it is true I speak from a place of enormous privilege, given the abundance of resources, information and skilled providers that surround us in New York City. I believe that it is our responsibility as doulas and pregnant mothers/families to work closely together to make sure we take full advantage of the resources that exist both within ourselves as well as the knowledge that is available from others. We can do it!