03/14/2021
There comes a point in labor where you can do nothing else except focus on your body and everything else happening around you comes out of focus. The last thing you can do is to pay attention and take in information to make choices, to voice dissent.
Have a care team that knows what you want under all the contingencies. Have a care team that will step in the breach to protect you and prevent harm.
Run.
I’m not kidding.
I was a doula who promoted “self-advocacy.” CAPPA told me to “empower my client to advocate for themselves,” and to never “undermine the client’s confidence in their care provider." 9 yrs later I'm here to tell you: that ain’t it. Especially if you're supporting BIPOC, Queer/NB, teen, homeless, undocumented, non-native English speakers, & other marginalized communities. I've seen first hand how these communities are treated, & if you haven’t, you'd be disgusted by what happens in their birth rooms.
Doulas MUST advocate. Our silence is complicity. Again, I have been there. I have been silent when I shouldn't have. I will FOREVER be haunted for those times where I should have said or done something, rather than do what I was taught & help a client “breathe through” their trauma. I am calling myself out because it is so important that we look at what we have done to contribute to the harm of birthing people.
I wasn’t taught how to advocate, but I will not excuse myself. Over the last few years of unlearning all this, I've realized birth advocacy transcends our role. This is about the human right to dignity & wholeness. This is the, “What if it were me,” question we need to ask ourselves. If it were me, what would I want someone to do? I would want someone to help me, not coach me to breathe thru it. What is happening to ppl in birth is violence, is r**e. No one would hold someone’s hand thru that in a sexual context, why are we promoting that in birth? Why are we allowing this imbalance of autonomy & power? The medical industrial complex is extremely powerful and intimidating, & it's really hard to hold oneself against that as a doula. It’s also because modern obstetrics was literally designed to work this way. I don’t need to “not-all-doctors” here, because OBVI. The system, the education, is built upon racism and misogyny. Look up J. Marion Sims and see for yourselves.
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