Ruth Pay - The Good Birth Practice

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Ruth Pay - The Good Birth Practice

Birth & Postnatal Doula
Antenatal Birth Preparation Classes
Kent and London
Informational, Emotional and Practical Support

10/10/2024

Thank you to the beautiful, insanely powerful woman who wrote me this gorgeous review. I will never tire of watching, experiencing and supporting women in labour (and if I do, I promise to throw in the towel).

When I first started out, I think I thought that once I had been to this many births, the learning would slow down. But it doesn't. I hope I never think I know it all or feel that your day is just one of many.

This birth was a birth-days party and I still smile when the songs played there cross my path ✨

04/10/2024

Hello beautiful people! From me, my sunbeam, and my new autumnal jumper.

Gosh it has been too long - how are you all? What's new?

What have I been doing instead of posting like a good self employed person? I've had a year of beautiful birth-days and postnatal nurturing. Huge thanks to all the families who chose me to support them this year, it's been such a varied and fun year! Plus looking after and home educating my little (not so little) scruffians.

I'm booked up birth-wise until the end of January, so get in touch if you're looking for a doula next year.

Genuine question - has anyone got any tips on how to slow life down because it is ~out of control~ and I'd love a few more moments in my day 🙃

03/03/2023

there's a doula for everyone that wants one

and not every doula is the one for you 🧡💖❤️

It's important to click with your doula, to trust that you're on the same wavelength and you've got a similar idea of the kind of support you want and need from your doula.

~°~°~°~°~

I'm booked up for birth support until the end of October. If you'd like to talk about birth support for your winter baby or babies, get in touch 🥰

I can squeeze in a few more private Birth Education clients across the next few months so if you'd like to know more, give me a bell (or any other convenient equivalent of a bell 🙃☺️)

12/12/2022

Changing the Plan

🌧️ "I'm going to go with the flow"
🌨️ "I know it's silly to have a plan because no one knows what will happen"
🌩️"I really don't want any pain relief but apart from that I don't mind"

☔ What does it look like in practice?
☃️ When do you switch from plan A to B?
🏠 How do you let go of the way you'd been imagining and lean into the next chapter, best foot forward?

I'd love to talk about all things Birth Plan with you in a one off Birth Plan Session to boost your Birth Plan from a list of likes and dislikes into a broad goal focused plan centred on why actions and tools are there and what you're going to do when they're not.

🌧️🌱🌼

While we're here can we add this to your affirmations:

"I'M NOT SILLY"

Or positive ones that define the opposite of silly for you...

"I'm sensible"
"I'm well prepared"
"I'm intelligent"
"I'm good at making decisions"... etc.

Thank you 😘

08/12/2022

Birth can sometimes be a little like chucking someone in the deep end of parenting before they've even met the person they are parenting.

High stakes decisions coming at you left, right and centre.

Discomfort, exhaustion, overwhelm, guilt, confusion, other people's opinions, head vs. heart.

The most effort you've ever put into anything.

The most you've cared about anything.

And then hello baby! Let's do this every day forever then I guess?

In birth, as in parenting - there's no such thing as perfect. Perfect doesn't exist. Weirder than that, perfect would be bad. Perfect parents don't expose their children to failure and allow them to prove their own success. Perfect birth wouldn't allow you to prove to yourself that you can overcome adversity. That knowledge resilience is a powerful thing.

Perfect days, perfect people, perfect birth - doesn't exist.

And I'm so very glad. Because Good Enough is beautiful, Good Enough is heroic, Good Enough is perfect.

Let's go have a beautiful, messy, flexible, wonderous, good birth.

01/12/2022

"I had the absolute pleasure of witnessing Ruth give extraordinary support and love to a couple, a few weeks back. She was so inspiring to me, her gentle, calm, and warming approach, her advocation and general aura...she may not know it but she taught me a lot about birth and how to approach care"

Such a huge compliment from a truly wonderful student midwife. I don't work for midwives, my goal is not for them approve of me or to do what they want, but when our goals of being women centred and we put care of mind, body and soul together - it's MAGIC

Thank you Danielle, hope to work with you again. Good luck with the dissertation 😘

28/11/2022

You've done your hypnobirthing course
You've read your book
You've got your birth ball
You know that it's your body, your baby, your choice
You know that "no" is a full sentence
You know that you should use BRAIN
You know the reasons you want to say no

Then why is it so hard to say it?
Why is it sometimes impossible?

It might be the decades of NHS work flows streamlining people onto care pathways.
It might be your own personal patterns and trauma.
It might be the centuries of systematic oppression of women.
It might be that you don't actually want to say no.

And so many more layers of reasons besides.

You are one person: a culmination of experiences and culture, a single entity of energy and resources. I'm not saying you can't do it. I'm not trying to talk you out of it. I'm saying that if, on the day, it feels impossible - it is not because you are broken. It is because sometimes it is too much. You can forgive yourself that and know so many others are in your position too. You didn't fail, you were strong and brave, sometimes the dragon is just a little too big.

24/11/2022

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Review

"Ruth supported me through the birth of my son on January 2020. She was wonderful and was key to how smoothly everything went. She was calm, kind, non-judgemental and always knew what to do. My midwives complemented her as one of the best Doulas they had worked with. I can't praise her work enough! I will forever remember this day as a wonderful experience and I am sure that it would not have been possible without Ruth!"

🥰🥰🥰

21/11/2022

Quiet Revolution

I know we aren't the same, but just for today I'm lumping us together. Midwives and doulas. What do we do every day? Get up, stretch our achey bones and focus on the person in front of us. Make incremental, tiny changes in the right direction. Show human love and compassion soaked in research and years of dedication to the woman at her most vulnerable with us right now. If everyone did that for their own tiny corner of the world, I wonder if birth would need a revolution.

But here we are, those of us choosing to listen and support, we find ourselves having to standing strong to push back a tide of standardisation. I see you, doing the hard thing softly. I see you reading a woman's face and body and doing what she needs in that moment. Thank you.

17/11/2022

This tells us something.

Midwives and maternity support workers don't do this job for the fame, glamour and buckets of cash. They do it out of passion of supporting women. They do it for the buzz of knowing they are making a difference.

Don't let me put words in your mouth, midwives, maternity support workers, student midwives - why do you do what you do?

It makes it even more heartbreaking that these are the people we are losing. There is so little room to make positive change that the job becomes untenable.

There is hope left. There are pockets of joy, pockets of incredible care, whole teams smashing it out of the park, there are activists working hard...but there aren't many.

Leave your best tips for positive action below. Those of you working in maternity - how do you want to be supported?

14/11/2022

Hello! I'm Ruth
Mum of two, seaside lover, birth and psychology nerd - I love investigating the mind/body connection. The bio/social/emotional layers fascinate me and I love working out how to use that to our advantage in birth and parenting.

🌼 Birth & Postnatal Doula
🌼 Antenatal Education
🌼 Doula UK member
🌼 ABM Mother Supporter
🌼 Doulas Without Borders Volunteer
🌼 Kent Doula Collective founder

Come and say hello www.ruthpay.co.uk

Looking forward to hearing your story 🌱

08/11/2022

Of course you won't know.

🔬What are you going to do, digest 7 years of medical training in 6 months?

🖥️Revise the statistics like you are going into an exam where grades equal lives?

🪆Repeat menacingly to yourself that you must BREATHE CALMER until you reach a deep brain instinct that knows what to do?

🥲 I can talk to you like that because I AM YOU. I took on birth like a new work project. Fresh ringer binder, heap of peer reviewed studies, chuck in enough breathing techniques to get the job done.

What's wrong with that? Nothing wrong with it per say, just didn't work for me. And I suspect it might not work for most people because, this is gonna be a shock, birth is not a work project.

Birth has a condensing affect of layering up all our life experiences and expectations to that date for us to use as a kaleidoscope of choices and reactions to our experience on the day. It stays with you like grief, getting pinged back into your body without warning at unlikely triggers.

So. You don't know. You don't know it all, you know what you know.

🔬You're not getting a doctorate
🖥️You're not taking an exam
🪆You can't force yourself into your unconscious, especially if you're a type A control freak. Yeah I said it, own it.

You CAN
🌧️ Learn to let go
⚖️ Work on your decision making skills, which are already pretty great
🧬 Give birth today if you had to, you don't have to access the instinct for it to be there

And yes! Do all the antenatal education and hypnobirthing and yoga and everything else. It all helps, as long as you don't look at yourself in the mirror afterwards and tell yourself you were the problem in a sea of solutions.

It's perfectly okay not to have all the answers, if you'd like someone with you who's been there before and knows where to find many of the answers, you know where to find me.

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Address

Rochester
ME13GP

Telephone

+447886199300

Website

http://www.ruthpay.co.uk/

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