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9/30/2024 0 Comments When Birth Didn't Go to PlanOur Online Meet-Up for January 2023 focused on the topic 'When Birth Doesn't Go to Plan.' This follow up blog post provides a glimpse into topics we might coverin our online sessions & some information signposting on birth trauma and birth resolution and support available. Plans can go differently on the day if you stilll feel good that's okay. But if something happens in your pregnancy, labour, birth or postnatal experience that leaves you feeling sad, angry, shaken, anxious or any number of other feelings you're not alone. When we plan for birth there are lots of things we can control and be prepared for but there are also things that are out of our control, that we must deal with the best we can at the time. It might be something dramatic like a crash caesarean or a baby who needs medical support when they are born. Perhaps, it might be something that seems very small from other people's point of view but actually has a huge impact on us; such as the way someone speaks to you or how they make you feel about yourself at a vulnerable point in your life. Often when we talk about these things we will find people dismiss our feelings, generally with the well-intentioned specific but really unhelpful observations that your baby is here, or that a certain outcome was meant to be and there's always a next time.... and that you're fine now you should get over it. What would be a better response? We can't go back and change anything that happened in the past but we can listen and validate how you felt then, and how you feel now. We can provide some information and support for moving on from this point. We can offer respect and support for the fact that getting over it is not that simple and sometimes further action and support are needed before you can even think about feeling differently in the future. 
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Birth is just the start. This post is about planning for your birth and beyond in the context of planning for the fact that birth is just the start of the rest of your life. It's a bit like a post on planning your wedding that is mostly about planning for your marriage. Your birth and parenting experience is a journey into the great, exciting, unknown. You can't control everything, some things will happen that you're not expecting but you can give yourself the gift of support and knowledge that allows you to not just survive but thrive.
There's a saying: "It takes a village to raise a child" and that used to be naturally built into our daily lives. But modern-day parents are increasingly finding themselves coming into parenting with the expectation that it's all on them. We see parenting reflected in the media and on social media as something done inside a small nuclear family. We get the impression that we're expected to be able to meet all our children's needs by ourselves and even, if we're doing it "right", to find that experience blissful and fulfilling. 6/4/2024 0 Comments Owning your birth environment In some senses, we're all birthing within the same environment. We're all living in the same culture and most of us are being cared for by the same medical system. Some things are outside of our control like how well-funded our local maternity services are or what the priorities of the management teams are. We see headlines in newspapers and form an expectation of what's "normal" from the births we see in television dramas. Pregnancy is a time were we can really start to reflect on how our cultural and family environment has affected us and our expectations and about what is in our control to change within ourselves. If you didn't even know you had choices about your birth we hope this information will get you started thinking about the things inside your control and what choices you really want to make.
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AuthorPosts by team members who are doulas, antenatal teachers, placenta specialists and birth nerds among other things. Archives
September 2024
CategoriesAll Birth Birth Plan Mental Health Peer Support Postnatal Postnatal Plan |
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