Have you ever wondered about the depth of connection that forms in the quiet, powerful moments of childbirth? Enjoy this narrative through the tender, profound relationships that blossom between doulas and the families we serve. It's filled with respect, admiration, and the awe-inspiring dedication that accompanies each unique birth story. These bonds often stretch far beyond the delivery room, forging connections that last for years, leaving an indelible mark on both the new parents and their doula.
Visit our website, here: https://birthlearning.com/
Follow us on Facebook at Birth Learning
Follow us on Instagram at @birthlearning
Show Credits
Host: Angie Rosier
Music: Michael Hicks
Photographer: Toni Walker
Episode Artwork: Nick Greenwood
Producer: Gillian Rosier
Voiceover: Ryan Parker
Have you ever wondered about the depth of connection that forms in the quiet, powerful moments of childbirth? Enjoy this narrative through the tender, profound relationships that blossom between doulas and the families we serve. It's filled with respect, admiration, and the awe-inspiring dedication that accompanies each unique birth story. These bonds often stretch far beyond the delivery room, forging connections that last for years, leaving an indelible mark on both the new parents and their doula.
Visit our website, here: https://birthlearning.com/
Follow us on Facebook at Birth Learning
Follow us on Instagram at @birthlearning
Show Credits
Host: Angie Rosier
Music: Michael Hicks
Photographer: Toni Walker
Episode Artwork: Nick Greenwood
Producer: Gillian Rosier
Voiceover: Ryan Parker
Welcome to the Ordinary Doula Podcast with Angie Rozier, hosted by Birth Learning, where we help prepare folks for labor and birth with expertise coming from 20 years of experience in a busy doula practice Helping thousands of people prepare for labor, providing essential knowledge and tools for positive and empowering birth experiences.
Speaker 2:Hello and welcome to the Ordinary Doula podcast. My name is Angie Rozier, I'm your host and we are sponsored by Birth Learning. So in our podcast, we aim to help people prepare for childbirth, prepare for labor and all the different aspects that we need to look at in doing so. So I have thought long and hard about this episode and the aspects that we need to look at in doing so. So I have thought long and hard about this episode and the message that I want to convey on this episode. I don't know, I struggle to do it. I've actually re-recorded this one a few times and I've, over the years, I've re-messaged this many times and chosen oftentimes not to use it in social media and things. But I think what I'm going to call this is doula love. Okay, so this episode is called doula love. So the message I want to try to get across is the sentiment that doulas have for their clients. Now, I can't speak for all doulas for this, but I can speak for many doulas for this, many, many doulas that I know. There are some doulas that I've worked with who view this work as purely a transaction, a business relationship. They perform a service, they're gone like peace out, checks, delivered, we're done. But, however, in this work, this is such a unique and intimate work that most doulas that I work with fall in love with their clients. They really really do. They do this work.
Speaker 2:This is not easy work. I tell you what being a doula is hard. It is hard on so many levels. Maybe I'll do a podcast episode about that sometime. But it's a difficult lifestyle. It can be very exhausting physically, emotionally, mentally. It's unpredictable. You have to be 100% available, 110% available your time, your emotions, your energy, all the time for your clients. So we pour a lot into our clients and we get a lot from our clients. So what I mean by the term dual love is that, speaking from my own heart, I really do love all of my clients and I am, at, you know, thousands, thousands of people. Now we're kind of in the business of falling in love with people, which is so cool that we get to have these incredible human interactions. Now, that might not be reciprocated by all of our clients. That's fine. You know, we have different connections with different people. Some people have not been pleased with whatever aspects of our work. That happens in any business. But our goal, of course is to deliver quality product every single time, and that's the support that you need during labor, and that looks different for everybody.
Speaker 2:So, as I've thought about how to deliver this message, I want my past clients to know that I think about them often. I really truly do. Their stories become a part of who I am. I get to see a lot of birth stories, a lot, and I have this, I don't know, like this I wish I had the best words to describe this but, um, your stories become my part of my life. Um, and can I say words like so impressed by you, I so admire you. Um, I respect you, my heart aches for you, my heart rejoices for you. Um, but as I think about the work that you have done in those moments, those and we get to see them over and over and over again those moments of during labor and delivery that are tough, like what it takes sometimes to have a baby, is a pretty remarkable amount of work that's not always the case but impressive.
Speaker 2:So I can say I honestly, truly can say that I love every single person that has been my client. I absolutely love them. There are some I have not enjoyed. There are some that might be difficult to work with. There are some personalities that are challenging and I'm glad that when our job is done and our client relationship has come to an end. But there is a capacity of love that I have felt for every single one of my clients as I watch them do the work, whatever it takes, to bring their babies into the world. So I've recently run across, just out in public, just by happenstance, a few past clients and it's brought up for me again as I think back on my clients. I just absolutely love them. I wish I could reach out to every single one of them by mass text thread or give them a massive hug or something, but that's challenging to do. So let me tell you these three short stories of people I've run into in public in the last few weeks.
Speaker 2:So one of them and I think about this client often it happened to have been my very first doula client. So this is in 2003. Brand new doula. I was excited, nervous, didn't know what I was doing and I was driving to her birth. This was her second baby. This is one of the most nervous times I remember in my life was driving to my very first birth, thinking what am I going to do? I don't know what to do, I don't know what I'm stepping into, I don't know how I'm going to help. And one thing that made matters worse is that she's a chiropractor. So she was, you know, a well-trained body worker and chiropractor. She touches a lot of bodies in her career and I was going to be touching her body, probably, you know, and I'm like, oh my gosh, like I hope I do this right. So we had done all the preparation and everything and I'd gotten to know them, and she's in labor. I'm on my way there, terrified.
Speaker 2:And then I arrived in the room and this was in the days of DVD players, like portable DVD players, way back when, and so it became very apparent to me for those of you who are doulas or new doulas, my role became a very apparent very quickly. So there was my client sitting on a ball, laboring. Her goal was to go unmedicated. Um, her husband and her mother were there as additional support people. They had been with her during her first birth, which was long and hard, and, um, they had a lot of time, downtime and time to sit and watch movies. So they were getting the DVD player to work, this portable little DVD player. They were focused on that. And here's my client sitting on the ball working through labor, and some words from a doula mentor echoed through my mind like focus on her. So I turned my attentions to her, easy like, and my hands kind of automatically knew what to do. My heart reached out. I'm like all right, we're gonna focus on her, bring her some comfort.
Speaker 2:She did amazing in that birth. She delivered a little baby girl. It was kind of cool. They were taking video of the birth and she remembered she reached down to fill the baby's head. She met all of her goals and had the birth that she was hoping to. And then she reached up and I was to her left side and touched my glasses or my face or something and she felt really bad about that. But she says we've watched that on video and we feel bad as I've talked to her over the years.
Speaker 2:But I ran into her, I was at a meeting, a friend to visit and into this restaurant Walked this client with some of her friends and her daughter, her daughter, who was her daughter, who was this little baby who was born. So the very first doula birth that I went to and we were so excited to see each other. We did some catching up. She got her daughter, brought her over. She's um 20, 21 now and cool for me I well, it's not for me, but I thought it was kind of cool. This girl is in college, she's preparing for the nursing program and wants to become a nurse midwife. So I'm like awesome, very cool life you're going into. So that was fun. It was fun to reconnect with that very, very first client that I hadn't seen in, I hadn't seen that baby for, you know, 20 years. So it was cool to connect with them.
Speaker 2:Another client I ran into and every one of these, every client, has a story behind it and this is where, gosh, my heart and my life are full and I'm so grateful for these stories because they they build up, um, everything I view about the, about humankind and the capacity of humans, their heart, their minds, their bodies. So this particular client ran into her. We saw each other and we were in a public setting. I recognized her right away as a client, but it took me a minute to put some details together. She looked at me, didn't notice anything, but she looked back and had a look at her. She was staring at me and I'm like, and then it hit me who she was and she's like oh my gosh, you are my doula. And so she came over, gave me a great big hug and we caught up a little bit and she pointed over yonder and showed me that 14, I think 14 year old, 15 year old girl, her child, who I was the doula for. And what was cool about this?
Speaker 2:This was a while ago when I was kind of very first doing postpartum work as we prepared. I think it was her third baby, so she'd had a baby before. But for her the biggest piece of preparation was the postpartum piece. She had had some postpartum mood challenges. She was terrified, specifically anxiety and OCD, postpartum anxiety and OCD. She was terrified about how that was going to play out after this delivery. So a little different twist on our role but we do a lot is helping with postpartum preparation. So, yes, we were preparing her for birth but we were also preparing her for postpartum and it taught me very acutely that that's a big piece of preparation is the postpartum part.
Speaker 2:We employed specific strategies to help minimize any postpartum mood challenges that she might encounter. Part of those were having her house cleaned. She had an inner circle of good friends that were going to come do this for her. She was also going to consider some professional cleaning services like deep cleaning, because in her mind she needed her house to be very immaculately clean to bring this baby home. We talked about who could support her with her other children, who could help her be able to get the rest she needed it would be safe spaces for her emotionally, who could address some meals in her life. So, kind of looking at her inner circle and everyone's inner circle is a little bit different Family sometimes is it, sometimes it's not. Sometimes our best inner circles are very small. They might be neighbors or friends or you know lifelong. Maybe a college roommate or someone from long ago is going to be in that inner circle of safe and best support. So that was kind of cool to meet her. She gave me a great big hug and we moved on and it was neat to see her Another client I saw in a public setting as well, to see her Another client I saw in a public setting as well and I this one there's.
Speaker 2:There's a few stories that are so vivid in my mind and they will always ring clear and true with a whole lot of detail and this is one of them. So instantly when I saw this client, I know who she was, she knew who I was A huge hug, huge embrace and, oh, the best, best, best smile. So she was with her husband and they had some of their kids there as well. Um interesting story with them. I was their doula for their third daughter and their fourth daughter. Um back, kind of how they came to seek doula services was their first baby was born very quote-unquote, normally, a a very normal hospital situation.
Speaker 2:I think she was induced for some reason. Maybe she was 39, 40 weeks, she was young, she was healthy. There was no, you know, medical indications to induce, but that's common, that you're offered an induction. So she got induced because she didn't know any different or want any different. She got Pitocin. She ended up getting an epidural. Didn't love recovery, but that's you know. It was as good of experience she knew she could have. And then her second baby, as second babies often are, was much faster. So her second baby came quickly, came smoothly. She didn't have any different plans in place but there was no time to get an epidural and she realized for her after this second baby was delivered quickly and without an epidural, that her recovery was awesome, like she loved being able to move and she liked moving through labor and being pretty intuitive to the process.
Speaker 2:So now comes their third pregnancy and she decided to do this on purpose, this time to prepare for an unmedicated childbirth, to um have the tools in place to have better articulated plan of what she wanted to do. So we met, she hired me, everything was great and at her 20-week ultrasound, um, it was discovered that her baby had some anomalies. So this baby had a hematoma on the back of her neck that was about as big as her head. So hematoma is a very vascular growth, sometimes of mysterious origin. So she was transferred doctors, transferred hospitals, was going to a high risk practice at a highrisk hospital and this changed her entire plan. So she now had a plan that she was gonna you know I want to do this intentionally and on purpose and the way I like it and everything shifted because things became high-risk.
Speaker 2:So her case was incredibly unique. People heard the docs she was working with the maternal fetal medicine. Doctors had not run into this much before. They were consulting with a doctor in Tennessee about it because it was pretty uncommon. The baby's heart was enlarged because it was feeding this very large hematoma, you know, which is a vascular mass. And so her birth plan changed dramatically and they didn't know if this baby was going to live or die, if being being in utero and being fed by the placenta was keeping it alive. So that was one huge question is is this going baby going to survive, and what type of delivery? So they decided to do a planned C-section and they did a vertical incision because they didn't know on a low transverse abdominal incision, which is pretty common for C-sections, that's kind of the gold standard and what is desired. But they did not do a low transverse, they did a vertical incision which is kind of from belly button up to chest incision, which is kind of from belly button up to chest. So it's that direction instead of going like hip to hip down low, because they needed a space for the baby and her very enlarged head to fit out.
Speaker 2:So I will tell you, one of the most intense times of my career was meeting this couple at the hospital as we were walking in. There was a lot at stake that day. Gosh nervous, you know, like nervous to find out is this baby going to live or die Once she's born, how's her delivery going to be? What are we really working with and dealing with? It was kind of surreal to walk into the hospital, knowing the purpose that we were there and everyone else is at the hospital. It's a, you know, huge, big, bustling hospital lobby and parking lot and people are there for lots of reasons, not realizing the incredibly tenuous reason that this, that we were walking through the lobby. So we got set up.
Speaker 2:When you have a planned C-section there's a fair bit of prep time and wait time, as with any surgery. So we had time to just sit, sit there and be together. Different team members came in, took great care of them, helped prepare them. So anesthesiologists came in, the maternal fetal medicine doctors came in. She had a great nurse. Everything was in order as far as it could be. They took her, the mom, back to the OR to prepare her and then I hung out with the dad for also a tenuous several minutes. Hard to offer that support and be a presence when you know something so big is right around the corner. So this baby is born.
Speaker 2:Things went very well. She was remarkable. They took her right away to the NICU. They didn't know what kind of support that she would be needing. She was doing pretty well, so I got to be with this mom. I wheeled her in um to see her baby for the first time and I'll never forget the word she said. She said you, little turkey. Um, as this baby was sitting there, and this baby got a lot of I won't get into all the details, but a lot of specialized care over the next many weeks, months, and so she had to stay at the hospital a little while. They didn't know how to care for this baby and what her needs would be, and eventually she got to go home. They had to get a special car seat for her and later on she had a surgery to remove this mass from her neck and it was like kind of entwined in her neck muscles. So that created some new challenges, but it was successful.
Speaker 2:She's had some other health challenges later in her life and as I saw her sitting there standing there with her parents, wow, it was so incredible to see this beautiful girl. I think she's 14 as well and I asked her. I said can I hug you? Can I just hug you? And she had this cute little grin and said yeah, and she gave me a great big hug, but both my client and her husband gosh the biggest hugs and that connection was back. We had an experience together, a pretty wild, emotional, intense experience together and while I was a quick touch point in their life, what an impactful story in their lives and that their life, of their daughter and in the lives of so many of those who love them and support them.
Speaker 2:So several years later they went on to have another baby. It was also a girl, so they have four girls and that was kind of you know, they had a lot of health challenges to work through with that third baby. So a few years later they decided to have a fourth baby and because she had had a vertical incision we call it classic incision she was with a regular doctor this time and you know there was no health risks, everything was fine, except she wanted to do a VBAC and we did a lot of working and learning and researching about the risks and the true risks of her laboring. Like a lot of times when you have that kind of a vertical incision on the uterus, they don't want you to contract again ever in your life. They don't want that uterus to ever contract. She got to a point where she and her doctor team decided, looking at the real risks of that and the amount of time it had been since she had that surgery, they'd probably be okay and she went into labor and in the end she chose to have a cesarean again.
Speaker 2:But it was so incredible to run into them and to make that connection with them over a period of years as I was able to serve as their doula. So hopefully I have conveyed my words are not enough, but hopefully I've conveyed from my doula heart all the people I have been so incredibly honored and privileged to serve over the years. And as I look at and stories of just the intricacies and the capacity of the human heart, the human mind, the human body, like women, are powerful and their capacity is incredible and it's incredibly inspiring to me. I remember these stories, they stick with me, they help me go on and move to serve other people, because I've seen what you can do, I know what others can do as well. So I guess doula love, doula gratitude, doula honor, doula respect, whatever you want to call that I feel all of those things for my clients and am so humbly grateful for the trust that people have put in me and allowing me to be a small part of their experiences. Know that I think of you often. I love you, I admire you, I respect you. That all sounds so trite, but really I feel so fortunate that that makes up so much of my life experience on this planet and I thank you for that.
Speaker 2:Signing off today, this is Angie Rozier with Ordinary Doula Podcast. We're hosted by Birth Learning. Go check out our website. We do have doula trainings that we offer doula services, lactation services. We have online pre-recorded classes if you need some help preparing. Thanks for being with us and we will see you next time.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Ordinary Doula podcast with Angie Rozier, hosted by Birth Learning. Episode credits will be in the show notes Tune in next time as we continue to explore the many aspects of giving birth.