“If you can find one in your area, doulas are sympathetic and knowledgeable labor companions who typically provide some form of prenatal preparation and stay at your side once labor begins until your baby is born.  The doula’s job is to make you as comfortable as possible and to reassure your partner as well.

The evidence in favor of doulas comes from more than eleven carefully designed studies: Quite simply, hiring one cuts in half the odds of your having an unnecessary cesarean.  It also halves the odds of your having a forceps or vacuum-extractor delivery.  That’s not all!  Having a doula also shortens labor by greatly reducing stress, pain, and anxiety.  In the typical U.S. birthing unit, the doula you bring with you may be the only person whose sole responsibility it is to make you more comfortable and to help you labor as effectively as possible.

If your baby’s father plans to be with you throughout the labor, you may wonder if it makes sense for you to hire a doula.  The answer is yes.  Fathers often have significant fears and anxieties surrounding birth-giving.  The calming influence the doula can have on expectant fathers is often as significant as her effect on the laboring woman.”

—Ina May Gaskin, Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth

“When a child is born, the entire Universe has to shift and make room. Another entity capable of free will, and therefore capable of becoming God, has been born. In that way, every child’s birth is exactly like the birth of a world teacher. Every child born is a living Buddha. Some of them only get to be a living Buddha for a moment, because nobody believes it. Nobody knows it, and they get treated like they’re dumb. Babies are not dumb. Just because they don’t speak English doesn’t mean they are dumb. A newborn infant is just as intelligent as you are. When you’re relating with her, you should consider that you are relating with a very intelligent being who just doesn’t speak your language yet. And you shouldn’t do anything gross to her before she learns to speak to you.”

—Ina May Gaskin, Spiritual Midwifery

When I was in my senior year of high school, I had already taken all the advanced classes, so I started taking college classes. One class I took still stays with me. It was called Women in the Bible. I was raised Baptist, and studied the Bible quite a lot over the years, but there was so much I realized I didn’t know once I took this class. I am reminded of that class when reading Heatherlady’s post on her blog about The Importance of Birth. Coming from an LDS point of view, she writes:

One of the things I’ve noticed as I’ve studied the scriptures is that birth is an over arching theme in the stories of the women in the scriptures. A good portion of the stories about women in the scriptures center around women’s ability to bear, or inability to bear, children.

Personally, the births of my children have been incredible spiritual experiences for me and have completely changed my outlook on life and eternity. I’ve gained great spiritual strength through the birth process and a closer relationships with my Heavenly Father and Mother. As I’ve reflected on my own experiences and as I read about the important role birth plays in the lives of the women of the scriptures I am prompted to believe the ability to give life is a central part of what it means to be an eternal woman and that the birth process is incredibly important to God.

A friend pointed out that in the Proclamation to the Family it says, “We declare the means by which mortal life is created to be divinely appointed.” The means by which mortal life is created is through the processes of conception, pregnancy and birth. It stands to reason that if God designed the way children are conceived to be deeply and powerfully symbolic of a man and a woman becoming “one flesh” (Genesis 2 :24) then He has also designed the way children are born into this world to be deeply and powerfully symbolic.

In order to understand the symbolism and meaning behind labor and birth, and to understand why so many of the stories of women in the scriptures center around birth, we have to go back to Eve and the Garden.

Head over to her richly detailed and referenced post to read the rest. She makes such beautiful points, and I think it is a very interesting read whether you are LDS or not (but especially if you are!) It is such a lovely take on the importance of our birth choices. This is definitely a must-read!

Shortly after I posted about midwifery being my “calling,” an LDS friend emailed me the following story about the history of LDS midwives. I am not LDS myself, but I am Christian, and growing up in Iowa, where so many LDS pioneers settled after fleeing Nauvoo, the majority of my friends from childhood are LDS. Now, living in Utah, the LDS culture is all around me and I find it fascinating. I love learning about the pioneers’ trek to Deseret and their hard lives settling in Utah.

Did you know that midwifery used to be an official Church calling?

The need for midwives in the newly established Zion was so great that in each Ward, the Relief Society would nominate two women to be trained and set apart as midwives for the women of the ward.

…

Several of the accounts [of Utah pioneer midwives] also spoke of midwives as “presiding” at a birth. Typically when I think of “presiding,” I think of a priesthood holder presiding over a church meeting. The man presiding isn’t always the one who is in charge of conducting the meeting; commonly he doesn’t say anything, but he is there representing the priesthood authority of Heavenly Father. I like the image of a midwife not “delivering” or “catching a baby,” but “presiding over the birth.” Her job isn’t to do the work—that is in the hand of God, mother and baby—rather, she is there to oversee the process and to represent the power of the Heavenly Mother.

Doesn’t that sound like just the perfect description of a midwife’s role? Go read the rest of the post over at The Gift of Giving Life.

This is why I truly love working with LDS clients, and why I feel blessed to practice as a birthworker in Utah. Family here is sacred and birth is respected and honored as spiritual.

Even for non-religious clients, I believe there is a sense of the sacredness of the moment, even to those for whom it is a secular sacredness.

I love this video of a woman singing to help her manage contractions. There are so many ways to tune in to your body as it works to birth your baby. I have heard of many women singing hymns during labor. You can just sense the peace in the room!

Being a doula is difficult, rewarding work. It is different than any other labor I’ve done, yet I am able to make connections. In the past, my jobs have always involved teaching, whether I was assisting in a fifth grade classroom in Tucson, or teaching in a bilingual kindergarten in Paris, teaching high school English in Vermont, or college freshmen in Florida and Utah. I love teaching, and though doulaing is quite different work, I know I am a better doula for the pedagogical skills I can bring to my practice. My teaching background is part of the reason why I love Childbirth Education and helping my clients learn what they need to know to make sure they have the healthiest pregnancy and the safest labor and delivery. I’m a wealth of knowledge, and I love to share what I know! One thing I love about my job is that when people find out what I do, they usually voluntarily launch into the telling of their own birth stories. Storytelling is woven into birthwork and this aligns perfectly with my other job as a poet.

I’ve always told stories, even before I knew how to write. I would dictate my imaginative fancies to my mother who would dutifully record them and post them on the fridge. My love of storytelling grew into its expression as poetry. I love telling stories through my poems, even if the story isn’t immediately apparent. Here is a poem I wrote after attending my first birth:

Birth Recollected in a Dream

You were born on the first cold day of autumn.

I walked slowly to the hospital.

Dogs ran for me, a woman in labor, each time I howled.

There is a smell to birth; not bad, just feral.

I held you in my hands, all seven pounds of you.

I watched you emerge, watched your body give way

to oxygen, milk, your mother’s smile.

There is a rhythm, a ritual to birth. I felt the ache

in my hips, the tightening of the fundus

how easily the placenta slipped away from me.

I awoke, a mixture of blood and breast milk

in the air, womb to cradle remaining.

Poetry was my first calling. I have always done it and loved it and knew I needed to make a place for it in my life. My love for poetry and teaching poetry has kept me in school and grad school for ten years now, as I work on completing my PhD. But the more births I attend, the more I realize I need to answer another calling: I have decided to pursue midwifery. I want to be able to help pregnant people and their families even more than I do now, to provide well woman exams and homebirth services. I want more power than I have as a doula so that I can turn around and hand the power right back to the birthin woman, to help her tune in to her own body and birth the way she instinctively knows how to do. For me, birth is spiritual and sacred. Being allowed in to that space when people become parents, when a new soul comes earthside, is the most incredible experience life can offer. I feel so honored to be able to devote my life to helping families achieve their best birth. I’m answering the call. I start midwifery school in May, and will serve as a doula and midwife’s assistant as soon as I find an apprenticeship.

This is a beautiful video of a baby who was born vaginally at home, presenting as frank breech. Don’t let your doctor tell you it’s impossible to deliver a breech baby naturally! Most OBs aren’t even trained in delivering breech babies, but midwives maintain their knowledge of the wise woman traditions of common sense natural childbirth. Get a midwife, instead.

The Breech Homebirth of Annaka Faith from Electra Hutchison on Vimeo.

In my other life as a poet, I discovered the book Home/Birth: A Poemic by Rachel Zucker and Arielle Greenberg. I am a fan of Zucker’s work, and I knew she was also a doula, as she writes frequently about pregnancy, birth and working as a doula in her book Museum of Accidents. I cannot stress how incredible this book is! It functions as part poetry, part memoir, part conversation between two friends, part commonplace book of birthy thoughts, and it is beautiful!

So often birth is described as gross or painful or “over the top” or just plain scary, and sure, it might be all of those things at times, but too rarely is it described in terms of its magic. I am fortunate to live in a state where, more ofthen than not, the sacred moment of birth is venerated and valued. Utahns love birth and I love working in Utah.

If you are interested in birth, I recommend this book!

I am now accepting clients again and I have openings from now to whenever! Feel free to get in touch with me any time! I’m happy to meet with you to see if we are a good match, and answer any questions by phone, email or in person.