Debra Pascali-Bonaro

Awaken Your Inner Wisdom

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Bringing Midwives and Doulas Together

I began my doula work before I knew the word “doula.” As a childbirth educator in 1986, I attended my first birth with a couple from one of my childbirth classes and immediately knew that this was what I wanted to do with my life. As the mother, I felt that it would be an honor to nurture women and their partners at such a critical time. In 1987 I  read an article in Mothering magazine about Doula, Inc., of Rhode Island. As I read the description of a doula, I said to myself, “I am a doula.” It was a magical moment. I called the organization and spoke with Cindy who knew of a woman named Jane Arnold in Westchester County, New York (across the Hudson River from my New Jersey home) who was running a doula service called Mom Service, Inc. I soon had Jane’s brochure in-hand and called her. I was pleased to learn more about doulas, what they do, and how to run a doula service. Jane was hosting a picnic that weekend for her doulas and invited me and my children to attend. I will never forget driving across the Tappan Zee Bridge that warm sunny day and arriving to meet Jane and her children and her doulas, as we laid our blankets out and had a picnic in her yard. He warmth and passion embraced me. She shared her dream to become a nurse, then a midwife and to bring doulas and midwives together, with a passion to serve underserved women.  I remember thinking how will she do this and Do this and more she has!

IMG_6172Jane became my mentor. As the mother of four, running her own company, she helped me to begin MotherLove, Inc., and to learn and grow as a doula. In those early days, no one knew what a doula was, friends called us “granola and oatmeal women.” Hospitals and medical providers wouldn’t even return phone calls. On many days when I was ready to give up, Jane helped me regain the vision of a doula for every woman who wants one. She kept me focused on the work we had done and what lay ahead, reminding me that change is a long, slow process, but well worth the effort. Jane began nursing school soon after we met. I greatly admired her determination to achieve her goals. Her example kept me focused on mine: to bring doula care into mainstream medical care.

I grew interested in the role and history of doula care and maternity care around the world. I reached to anyone who knew how different cultures or countries cared for women around the time of birth. I talked with anyone who would listen about doulas and the importance of caring for women and children.

Jane completed nursing school and began practicing as a registered nurse at North Central Bronx Hospital in New York City. Although we had less time to speak on the telephone, she kept encouraging me to carry the doula torch. Jane went on to midwifery school through the Frontier School of Midwifery in Kentucky, and was soon a certified nurse-midwife (CNM) working at the Morris Heights birthing Center in the South Bronx.

One day in 1994, Jane called to say she had been awarded a grant from the Robin Hood Foundation the Aaron Diamond Foundation to begin a doula training program, to be called the Morris Heights doula Program, in the Bronx. To my delight, Jane invited me to participate.  She was bringing midwives and doula together for the very first community doula program. I will never forget the first day I drove to the Bronx, a community not far from my own geographically, yet so very different from my suburb. I felt excited, nervous about not knowing what to expect, and keen interest in how this ethnically diverse community would react.

The training was exhilarating. To hear women from many cultural backgrounds share their stories to share their visions and hopes for nurturing support for pregnant and birthing women justified the days I had spent learning and planning. I knew then that Jane and I were right: Women everywhere would embrace this concept. We would work hard to return caring, education, and nurturing to communities everywhere. The Morris Heights Doula Program reignited my passion and determination to bring doula care to all women who wanted it.

In 1992 I attended the first meeting of Doulas of North America (DONA) in Boston and found myself a member of its first board as chair of public relations. I was to work with Penny Simkin, Dr. Marshall Klaus, Dr. John Kennell, Phyllis Klaus, Annie Kennedy and many other wonderful people. My horizons continued to broaden and my views expanded.

In 1994 I was invited to speak at the White House to the Task Force on Health Care Reform about doula care. A few years before, I had been unable to get a local obstetrician to speak with me. Now Hillary Clinton wanted to know more about doulas and the role we could play in rebuilding our families and communities.

In 1995, as a board member of the Northern New Jersey Maternal Child Health Consortium, I had an opportunity to participate in the development of a grant proposal to provide doula care to women in treatment from substance abuse and alcohol addiction in Paterson, New Jersey. The Neighborhood Doula Project was founded with a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation of Princeton, New Jersey, and later Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies of Paterson. Again Jane provided guidance and wisdom as we brought doula care to a community burdened with difficult issues. Unemployment is rampant. More than 30% of homes with children have only one parent. High rates of violence and child abuse and widespread distrustfulness cry out for emotional and spiritual nurturing. I trusted my heart that doula skills were needed here. One cold winter morning in Paterson after a month of training- five talented black women spoke passionately of the need to reduce the high rate of black infant mortality in their communities. They vowed to help raise the low rates of breastfeeding, to lower the incidence of postpartum depression, and to reduce ever-increasing rates of child abuse and neglect. They proclaimed their determination to assist teenage mothers, to help women stay off drugs while pregnant, and to prevent child abuse.  Hearing my words echoed in theirs, I felt fiercely proud of them.  If training and education no longer come automatically from one’s actual mother, sisters and friends, they can come from surrogate mothers… from doulas.

Directing the Neighborhood Doula Project enriched my life in ways I had never anticipated. I learned so much from the doulas and the women we served. Running this program reinforced my belief that caring for pregnant, birthing, and parenting women and their families is necessary if we are to provide the next generation with the love and family values we hear thrown around in political speeches.

In 1996, with a grant from the New York State Department of Health, Jane was hired by the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Medicine at the State University of New York at Stony Brook to begin a midwifery practice there. As Director of Midwifery, and with the help of other key nursing personnel within Women and Children’s Hospital at Stony Brook, she prepared to bring doulas to the surrounding community. In 1998, Jane and I began to train doulas at Stony Brook.

Jane and I and the Midwifery Practice and School of Nursing at Stony Brook are honored that our work to return education, caring, nurturing, and high-quality medical care through midwives and doulas into communities was featured in “Indivisible,” a national documentary funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts. (www.indivisible.org)

Our journey has continued to include bringing Midwives and Doulas together in North Carolina and Botswana- Africa. We don’t know the next place we will be together,  yet,  Jane will always be in my heart as I pass along the warmth and wisdom she greeted me with years ago. I now train, speak, consult, and design doula programs for hospitals, medical providers, and doulas globally.

Doula programs are regularly being started in new communities around the world.  Jane and I continue working together to bring midwives, doulas and doula training to all women and all communities.

Wherever the doula heart and spirit live, the interrupted tradition of woman-to-woman, mother to mother care resumes and prevails.

I thank all the doulas and midwives who have joined us on this journey. They bring their dedication and love to grateful families every day.

Thank you Jane for starting me on a journey that continues to evolve. Looking back to that day on your lawn, I could not have imagined the many places around the world we have reconnected the circle of support of midwives and doulas. Thank you for sharing your vision and making it happen.

With love and gratitude,

Debra Pascali-Bonaro

 

Debra and Jane collaborated on Nurturing Beginnings, found on the DONA Post Partum Reading List- an updated, digital version of Nurturing Beginnings will be available later this year. If you’d like to receive announcements about this updated, electronic version of Nurturing Beginnings please sign up here.

Serendipity: A Solar Eclipse, LTMIII & Respectful Care at the UN

I love when three powerful things happen all at once, showing a sign that we are shifting.  My mother always shared with me “the one constant in life is change.” Yet, sometimes it is hard for us to see or feel the change.  The landscape of maternity care in my state of NJ and in the U.S in general has been far from what I hoped for.  A day that can transform women, as Deepak Chopra said:

“Labor is an opportunity for women to learn about themselves and discover the strength and wisdom inherent in their bodies.”

Yet sadly a day that can be ecstatic, powerful, blissful or orgasmic is  turning traumatic for far too many women.

As I drove into NYC to attend the UN meeting on Respectful Care I listened in to the press conference for the release of the Listening to Mother’s III Survey.

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/24/maternal-mortality-rate-infographic_n_1827427.html

It was sad to hear the data, but not surprising.  The last few years I have seen both women and providers so filled with fear of childbirth that they are using technology as false safety nets, not wanting to acknowledge all the risks we are putting our Mothers and Babies thru and the poor outcomes we have for a country that spends more on maternity care than any other country in the world.  “The United States spends $98 billion annually on hospitalization for pregnancy and childbirth, but the US maternal mortality rate has doubled in the past 25 years. The U.S. ranks 50th in the world for maternal mortality, meaning 49 countries were better at keeping new mothers alive.”  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/24/maternal-mortality-rate-infographic_n_1827427.html

For all our interest in eating healthy and organic, many women turn their bodies and their babies over to medicine and allow many drugs and procedures to be given to them, some that we know are harmful or ineffective and many that we don’t know the short or long term consequence for MotherBaby  What happens when we disturb a healthy process and replace our natural hormones with drugs and surgery at alarming rates? We are only beginning to ask these questions.

Here is what I heard on the press conference of what women shared about their birth experiences that rang in my ears as I walked into the Respectful Care meeting:

  • Few women used simple, low-risk, drug-free measures to ease labor pain, like taking hot showers or baths. Women who had taken childbirth education classes were more likely to try such measures.
  • Many women report experiencing pressure from a care provider to have a cesarean, labor induction, or an epidural.
  • Many women reported that they held back from asking questions because they were concerned about being perceived as difficult, they wanted maternity care that differed from what their health care provider wanted, or their provider seemed rushed.
  • Most women who had an episiotomy, an incision in the skin around the vagina made during delivery, were not included in the decision to undergo the procedure.

There were some good findings: Women’s readiness for pregnancy appears to be improving. Hospital support for exclusive breastfeeding is improving, although women’s intentions to and experiences with exclusive breastfeeding appear to be declining.

The room was full, I quickly found a seat up front and just settled in as the presenters began to speak about Disrespect and Abuse, D & A and defined Respectful Care through the White Ribbon Alliances Universal Rights of the Childbearing Woman http://www.whiteribbonalliance.org/WRA/assets/File/Final_RMC_Charter.pdf

I wanted to call out and say we need to frame the LTM III survey results within this same human rights framework.  How have we silenced American women so that we accept institutional abuse and disrespect?  Thinking back to the survey, we cut women’s vaginas without their permission and this is acceptable?  If a woman were cut on the street she would know it’s abuse, but in a hospital it’s allowed?

It’s your body and your baby, you should be able to ask questions, to be respected, treated with dignity and fully involved in collaborative decision-making.  In addition, the proportion of women with a prior cesarean who reported a lack of access to VBAC grew to 56% in the current survey from 42% a decade earlier.  This is putting women at three times greater risk of dying in childbirth with major abdominal surgery. Yet, many women report experiencing pressure from a care provider to have a cesarean, labor induction, or an epidural.  Many women reported that they held back from asking questions because they were concerned about being perceived as difficult.  Would you buy a computer, cell phone, car from someone who is pressuring you and that you don’t feel comfortable asking question?

Yet, we trust our health and well-being to a maternity care system that is clearly broken giving us care that is not supported by the best research and women are made to feel as they are the ones that can’t speak up?

It’s time we speak out about abuse, speak out to have access to more effective, low cost comfort measures that are not available to many women such as tubs, balls, doulas that we know make a difference!

This is a human rights issue!

I am getting ready to fly to Malaysia to speak on the Respectful Care Panel at www.womendeliver.org with over 5000 global leaders and change makers coming together.

“Women Deliver 2013 will serve as a global platform for ensuring that the health and rights of girls and women remain top priorities now, and for decades to come.”

I will be sharing about the International MotherBaby Childbirth Initiative www.imbci.org that offers quality evidenced based care, within a human rights framework and a caring heart.  Honoring each woman’s right to choose where, how and with whom to safely give birth.

Please join me in one of these ways:

We have the information and the knowledge to make a change, now we need you to Stand up and Deliver, Don’t take it lying down!

Mother, a powerful word – creating a powerful world!

“One of the primary jobs of being a mother is to encourage our children to achieve happiness and fulfillment by reading and acting on their own innate instructions- a job that is much easier if we ourselves had done such work, and been honest with ourselves about the extent to which we have followed our hearts and lived up to our potential.”    -Dr. Northrup, “Mother-Daughter Wisdom”

This is me with my mother behind, her mother and grandmother, her father (not pictured) and his mother and grandmother, so both sets of maternal grandmothers and great grandmothers for me.
This is me with my mother behind, her mother and grandmother, her father (not pictured) and his mother and grandmother, so both sets of maternal grandmothers and great grandmothers.

SINGING to the COLLECTIVE MOTHERS  One of my earliest memories celebrating Mother’s Day is that of being a young girl and my older teenage cousin, Mary Anne, gathered all the cousins and taught us the M-O-T-H-E-R SONG so we could sing it to all our Mothers. Mary Anne lined us all up on the stairs with the littlest one on the bottom leading to the older cousins higher up and orchestrated our singing:

“M” is for the million things she gave me, “O” means only that she’s growing old, “T” is for the tears she shed to save me, “H” is for her heart of purest gold; “E” is for her eyes, with love-light shining, “R” means right, and right she’ll always be, Put them all together, they spell “MOTHER” A word that means the world to me. – Howard Johnson

We sang that song to my mother, grandmother and great-grandmother as well as many aunts.  I hold all their memories of mothering me and treasure these many special moments.  This was such a special moment to me as little girl because we were singing to collective mothers who were all there.  Life changes, I am now a mother and grandmother and I see my mothers and the World of Mothers from another vantage point….

IMBCO Logo FOLLOWING our HEARTS  Professionally I share a passion with you to protect every mother’s right to give birth safely with respect, dignity and informed decision making.  Both personally and professioScreen Shot 2013-05-08 at 12.31.57 PMnally the lives of mothers matter! I am committed to sharing the ten-steps to creating Optimal MotherBaby Care, with the International MotherBaby Childbirth Initiative www.imbci.org working to ensure every woman’s right to give birth with quality, respectful care. Together we can, and are, improving the lives of mother’s around the world.  And it is with both sadness and hope that I share with you and ask you to read The State of the Worlds Mother’s 2013 from Save the Children. We each make a difference in the lives of mothers.

So this Mother’s Day, as I celebrate you and all the mothers of the world, I ask you are you following your heart? Join me in giving yourself these three gifts:

  • Honor all the mothers who have gone before you.
  • Acknowledge the greatest gift you give as a mother is to nurture yourself and to live your life to its fullest potential, being an example for your children and others.
  • Honor yourself as a woman/mother– whether you have given birth or not, you mother many ways by sharing your creative, nurturing energy with the world.

 

To register for Dr. Northrup’s online course Lightening the Mother Load, please visit Hayhouse Radio- Early-bird deadline until May 9th!

Nurturing a Cycle of Knowledge

Women gathered to support women and in doing so handed down essential knowledge and wisdom that today we have replaced with fear.

As a doula and childbirth educator for almost 30 years, I’ve had the pleasure of being with many children who are attending and supporting women/their mother’s in labor and childbirth- natural childbirth, homebirth, hospital. Some of whom I met years later and could hear their perspectives on birth that were formed from those first experiences. I also had many women attend my doula workshops that have been at births of their siblings. In all cases, attending birth as a child has given them a greater appreciation for women’s bodies, women’s power and a trust in our ability to give birth.

I often discuss at my doula workshops that when we OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAtook birth from the social model to a medical model, moving from women’s homes to hospitals, we broke an important cycle of learning and understanding that has led to increasing fear of our bodies and birth. I ask women to raise their hands if they have younger siblings and imagine that 100 years ago they would have been around their mother’s laboring and possibly in the room for these births. Add to this, younger cousins, younger children of friends of your mother’s, and other younger family members, as young girls we would have had an opportunity to learn nurturing and comfort skills passed down woman to woman and to see birth firsthand, which I believe builds confidence.

Knowledge is power! Understanding the process of labor and birth along with tools that help provide comfort is what were all striving to learn today as we approach our births, often the first time we experience birth now, but not what it was historically. Women gathered to support women and in doing so handed down essential knowledge and wisdom that today we have replaced with fear. I applaud a woman’s wisdom who prepares her daughter and listens to what she is ready to learn and see, and meet her there. As we see, birth can be powerful, pleasurable, and gentle. Wishing you a Pleasurable Birth.

Join the discussion taking place on the oBirth facebook page. Did your children attend the birth of their younger siblings? Do you hope to include siblings in an upcoming birth?

Sign up for Debra’s Weekly Pleasurable Birth e-news.

What do Butterfly’s have to do with Safe and Healthy Birth?

As spring continues to open and unfold in northern NJ, I love walking and seeing all the flowering bushes and trees. Soon, the warm weather will be upon us. As I listen to the birds each morning and see more and more creatures and animals in my yard and garden, I am looking for the caterpillars that will soon appear. While I love caterpillars especially the fluffy ones, I love even more their journey of transformation.

In time, they will spin transform into a chrysalis and settle in for a short sleep. It is amazing that their body will transform from one that remains on the ground to being free to fly well above the bushes and trees that have been home to them till now. When you see a chrysalis it might be tempting to help the butterfly to emerge. If you come upon it as it begins to open you can witness its struggle to be set free. Yet, if you help it open and don’t allow this essential struggle for life, you will stop it from reaching its beautiful potential to fly- as its wings need this time and this effort to fully mature.
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Teri Shilling, a great Lamaze educator with a Passion for Birth, was the first person who helped me understand how inducing a baby to arrive before it is fully ready may also take away some of the MotherBaby potential to have a safe, fulfilling birth.  The journey of natural childbirth is needed for a safe, satisfying passage into motherhood and breast-feeding.  We are starting to learn amazing things on how essential the babies hormonal opening is in childbirth, as well as the development of cells on the baby’s cheeks that happen only in the 24 hours before birth that are needed for the baby to find the breast and begin to feed easily.  Mother Nature does not do well when disturbed!  We are learning there are important reasons to allow our babies to arrive when it is their time and not before.

Lamaze Safe and Healthy Birth Practices- give us some of the science and information that will guide you to make an informed decision on when labor should begin. http://www.lamaze.org/HealthyBirthPractices.  Healthy Birth Practice 1: Let Labor Begin on Its Own http://www.lamaze.org/HBP1

This weekend I will be speaking in Montclair NJ about Healthy Birth Practices- if you are nearby please join me and if you afar please stay in touch via my weekly Pleasurable Birth e-news.

Happy Earth Day: “Peace on Earth Begins at Birth”

GBF logo smallI have always loved  the saying – “Peace on Earth Begins at Birth”.  Today, Earthday, is the perfect day to look at how we can nurture Mother Earth.  It is also a great day to look at how we can Birth our babies naturally.

These days many people incorporate an eco-lifestyle, but then when it comes times for childbirth turn their bodies and their babies over to medicine and drugs.  I encourage everyone to take the time today and over the next few months to explore your natural birth options.  Researching your options now can help you and your baby avoid many of the chemicals and medications later that are often overused at childbirth (for which the short and long term consequences have not been extensively studied).

Today as I celebrate our Mother Earth, I enjoyed reading Alicia Silverstone’s Earth Day Challenge with great ideas of things we can each do to make a difference.  When Alicia was expecting her baby, she wrote about our documentary Orgasmic Birth: The Best-Kept Secret and she featured our book Orgasmic Birth: Your Guide to a Safe, Satisfying and Pleasurable Birth in the Kind Life Book Club, listed as one of her favorite books to read while pregnant.

Alicia reminds us  “A great documentary can be the best reminder of why we choose to maintain a kind lifestyle.”  Here is Alicia’s recommended documentary list  in honor of Earth Day.  I would like to encourage  you to see our new Green Version, of the award winning documentary, Organic Birth: Birth is Natural!

Take one-step today to make change.  Share with us what you are doing to honor our Mother Earth and how you are preparing for an Eco-Friendly Natural Childbirth.

We birth the way we live!!  Wishing you a pleasurable Earth Day!

To explore more natural comfort measures for an Eco-Friendly childbirth look for my upcoming Talks & Webinars and find more tips in my Weekly Enews.

Reduce Pain with Oxytocin, The Love Hormone

Love SculptureSubmitted by: Debra

I ask you to consider, what happens when we bypass the body’s natural ability to begin labor with love, and its ability to secrete peak levels of the hormone of love, oxytocin? Studies have shown oxytocin’s role in reducing pain. In my own state of NJ, Beverly Whipple, professor emeritus at Rutgers University, a famed author/sexologist found that when women masturbate to orgasm, “the pain tolerance threshold and pain detection threshold increased significantly by 74.6 percent and 106.7 percent respectively.”

In an interview in Wired magazine another colleague, Rutgers psychology professor Barry Komisaruk, said, “We’ve seen that there is a strong inhibition of the response to pain during orgasm. What that leads us to think is there is some kind of very important interaction between the orgasmic experience and the pain experience.”

We know that when women are induced with synthetic oxytocin they and their baby feel more pain. Labor contractions are much harder to manage and often require an epidural to manage pain. But what about other short and long term effects of not allowing our bodies to produce this essential hormone at peak levels? Synthetic oxytocin cannot cross the blood brain barrier. We not only loose its pain relieving effects, we miss the ecstatic, nurturing, bonding effects it offers to MotherBaby too.

These relatively new studies are key to our discussion in our documentary Orgasmic Birth and in my many talks and workshops about finding pleasure in birth and life. Sarah Buckley so exquisitely writes in her book, Gentle Birth Gentle Mothering “Passion and love are as powerful a combination at birth as they are in sexual activity. And in birth, as in sex, we release oxytocin, the hormone of love, in huge quantities from deep inside our brain. Here again, our hormones are directing us toward optimal and ecstatic experiences, yet this system is also extremely vulnerable to interference.”

What happens when we replace our natural hormones with synthetic hormones to begin or augment labor? We don’t know all the answers in either the short of long term for our babies and society but the question must be asked.

Dr. Buckley is the author or new Physiology Report due out next month that will provide more data and insights on how valuable our natural hormones our to keep childbirth safe, healthy and, I add… pleasurable!

Lamaze Healthy Birth Practices gives us great information and research on why allowing labor to begin on its own is so important! Lamaze International recommends that you neither choose induction nor agree to be induced unless there is a true medical reason. A “large” or even “very large” baby is not a medical reason for induction. Letting your body go into labor on its own almost always is the best way for you to know that your baby is healthy enough to be born. Spontaneous labor also increases the likelihood that you can experience the other healthy birth practices identified by Lamaze International that lead to a safe and healthy birth— especially freedom of movement and no routine interventions.

Lamaze Induction Questions
Excerpt from www.MothersAdvocate.org PDF

Amy Hannaford of Bellies & Birth comments: “Always, ask “why” when your care provider is recommending something or especially if you are being told you “have” to have an intervention, such as an induction. We normally would never let anyone do something to our bodies without our consent, so pregnancy and birth should be no different.”

Experiencing natural contractions, produced by your own body’s oxytocin, increases your freedom to respond to your contractions by moving around, changing positions, and trying the tub or shower. Interfering with or replacing the natural hormones that orchestrate labor, birth, breastfeeding, and maternal attachment may have consequences that we do not yet understand. So take the time to ask questions- its your right! Wishing you lots of love and oxytocin!

Please sign up for Debra’s enews to learn more about these studies as well as discuss many of the ways you can enhance the release of oxytocin in your labor and birth- finding more pleasure, reducing pain, and enhancing safety for you and your baby.

My Personal Journey with Birth: Third Time is Orgasmic

Debra & her grandmother
Debra & her grandmother

My fascination with childbirth began when I was a young girl, listening to the birth stories of my great-grandmother, grandmother and mother. I share these stories and my first birth experience and how I was able to have a safe, satisfying birth in the midst of a technological medical model, in our book Orgasmic Birth: Your Guide to a Safe, Satisfying and Pleasurable Birth Experience as well as in our new Pleasurable Birth films. Each of my three births provided me with many lessons and awakened more of my intuitive wisdom. It was during my third pregnancy when I was already a childbirth educator that I researched and knew that birth could be so much more than I had been able to experience in my two previous births. Although my births had been positive, healthy and empowering, I knew there was more.

Debra & Lonnie Morris Midwife
Debra & Lonnie Morris Midwife

I discovered an amazing midwife, Lonnie Morris, who at that time had a birth center in New Jersey. Having had two births already that had both elements that I treasure and aspects I knew I wanted to change, I was excited to be with such a strong midwife, whose confidence and wisdom in birth, gave me the freedom I had been yearning for to believe birth could be something incredible, joyous and yes Ecstatic, Blissful and Orgasmic!

With Lonnie strong yet gentle guidance, each visit I found new strengths and insights into childbirth and myself. She touched and rubbed my growing belly, listened to my concerns, feelings and my wishes. Lonnie helped me connect with my baby’s movements in a way that other caregivers had not done. I would no longer have to fight to move around in labor, she encourage me to find positions I was comfortable with. Labor would begin on its own, when my baby was ready, no fear tactics to begin labor before we were ready. I could eat and drink in labor, all these seem like obvious rights, yet laboring women give these up every day around the world, when science shows these simple acts make labor safer and easier for both MotherBaby. Why had I had to fight for these in my past pregnancies? A midwifery model of care, not only honored my voice, my rights and treated me with dignity, but her encouragement instead of a fear-based model, nourished me in confidence.

Debra & her baby
Debra & her 3rd son bonding

I will never forget arriving to the birth center in labor knowing I could surrender to the power of labor. Feeling nurtured and supported by a circle of women, midwives, a nurse and my partner.  I did not have to negotiate to protect myself or my baby from standard practices that did not meet our needs. I showered, moved and gave birth upright on a birth stool. I was never told to do anything. I was nurtured and encouraged to do what I had to do. To listen to my body, my baby, my “inner wisdom”. As my baby slid from my body, the sense of accomplishment, the orgasmic, blissful feeling that came over me, the release, I did it! I had remained calm, confident and upright. There are never enough words to express those feelings that are contained in the moment of ecstasy. I am filled with gratitude each time I remember my birth. I am so grateful to Lonnie and the other midwives who believed in me. They were like guardian angels, nurturing me safely thru these sacred gates. Lonnie and I have attended many births together in the past 25 years as midwife and doula. She caught my grandson. With tears in our eyes as he was born, my eyes catching hers – I smiled knowing the circle of life goes on as Lonnie continues to advocate for every woman, man, baby’s right to give Birth Your Way!

What does Birth Your Way mean to you? Please share your thoughts, your quotes, your comments as I will gather them and weave them into my upcoming teachings.

Lonnie attended Debra’s daughter’s birth too – read her story.