Owning Your Birth
Take charge of your birth story with intentional preparation
Our birth stories don’t define us as mothers. But the emotions tangled tightly around our birth experiences are not easy to unravel. Our maternal brains are hardwired to remember the feelings, smells, and conversations during one of our most vulnerable times. For some of you - the memories are positive, euphoric, and powerful. For others...your birth may have left you feeling empty, ashamed, sad, and even angry.
I was lucky. I have two positive birth stories. Both were fueled by choices I made well before I met my daughters. I made a conscious choice early on in pregnancy to own my births. What does that mean? It means I treated pregnancy, labor, and birth like it was my college degree. I studied, I sought out experts, I practiced, I prepared, and I made it to graduation. I didn’t let someone else (my OB or midwife) decide which degree I would get or how I would get it. Sure, I worked with them, but this was my degree...er, my body and my baby.
Here is a simple checklist to think about as you embark on this nine + month journey. It will help prepare you and keep you in control of your birth story.
Pick the right care provider
Don’t settle for your OB-GYN’s office just because you’ve been going there for Pap smears since you were 21. Many women make this mistake, only to realize in the third trimester that their preferences and beliefs about birth don’t match their care provider.
Obstetrician or midwife?
Midwifery care is standard care for low-risk birthing people. Midwifery care can be sought out for hospital births, birth centers, and home births. Again, midwifery care is standard care. Obstetrics is a medical model of birth. Obstetricians are skills surgeons who can handle high-risk pregnancies and emergencies. The majority of Americans birth with an obstetrician.
Midwives are the experts in normal pregnancies. They are highly trained to tend to you during pregnancy, labor, and delivery. They take a more watch and see approach before taking action. A midwife believes birth is a natural, instinctual process that should be trusted.
Motherly offers a great list of questions to ask yourself before interviewing a potential provider:
What are your birth preferences? What kind of care will make you feel respected and safe?
Are you comfortable with routine interventions such as full-time external fetal monitoring as opposed to intermittent monitoring?
Do you want your doctor present during most of your labor? How involved do you want or need your doctor to be? Consider how involved your birth companion will be and if you will hire a doula.
What are the care provider’s intervention statistics for things like: Induction? Primary cesarean? Forceps or vacuum extraction? Are you content with these statistics?
Are you drawn more towards medical support, such as having an ultrasound as often as possible, or are you comfortable with a hand-held doppler scope and having the care provider be more hands on?
Take classes
Childbirth, breastfeeding, and take home baby courses are all great ways to gain confidence in your parenting skills. Not only will you learn a ton, but it’s a great way to bond with your partner and meet other expecting parents just like you! You’ll quickly see that you are not the only one worried about how to change a diaper without getting peed on.
I highly recommend taking a comprehensive childbirth education course that is independent from your hospital system.
Choose the right birthing location for you
People in Columbus can birth at home, in the Ohio Birth Center, or a local hospital.
Here are some helpful questions to ask your birth team (provider, doula, childbirth educator):
What’s the culture like on the labor & delivery floor of this hospital?
Will I have access to a birthing tub if I want one?
What types of monitoring are available to me? (wireless, waterproof options?)
Do you support and promote kangaroo care?
Can I chose to walk around or assume different positions of my choice during labor?
Are there birthing balls and peanut balls in the birthing room?
If you have specific requests in your birth preferences, ask if the hospital policy and culture meshes with your preferences.
Ask if you can request a nurse that fits your birthing style. (I requested a nurse that wanted to work with a HypnoBirthing mother.)
Make one request
Moms love to share their birth stories with pregnant women - especially negative ones. These are stories you don’t need to hear. Be polite, but firm when you ask them to hold off on sharing their birth story with you until you experience your own.
Listening to other women’s birth experiences can influence your outlook and feelings towards labor and birth. If you hear a negative birth story, you may harbor the feelings and experience of that mom.
Give yourself the chance to fill your subconscious mind with positive thoughts about your upcoming birth by leaving out everyone else's.
