10 Lessons from My First 10 BirthsPart 5 of 5
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Welcome to doula Tips and Tits. This podcast is a place where we answer one question about doula work, both to support you and to help you support your clients. I'm Kaylee Harrod. I've been supporting families in this perinatal space since my oldest was born 12 nearly 13 years ago. I am a birth and postpartum doula childbirth educator, lovely cheerleader and a doula coach. I love guiding and supporting doulas as they work out their doula business. It is a tremendous joy to be trusted in this way. Thank you for joining us on this journey.
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Welcome back, we are on the last two lessons that I learned from my first 10 births. So if you're new here, this is a little mini series 10 lessons from my first 10 births started in Episode 158. So if you have not listened to from there, I would pause and honestly go back and listen to those. This is a place where we share stuff about being a doula, right, we talk about birth, we talk about postpartum. And so that's where this this series is coming from. I want you to hear the things that I have learned in Part Two, learn from them and in part to normalize that these things are part of life as a doula, right. So we're on nine and 10, I'm just going to quickly run through what the other ones were without giving an explanation of them. So if you're like, I'm sorry, what you should go back and listen to the other episodes. The first lesson is eat. The second lesson is P slash don't neglect your body. The third is it's rarely a rush, let your body and brain shut off. The fourth is always have your bag ready. The fifth is get to know the providers and don't assume that they hate doulas. The sixth is have your notes with you. The seventh is have a recovery plan. And the eighth is it's exhausting for you too. And that's okay. So today we're on lesson nine and 10. So lesson nine is you may need support in processing. Now, I mentioned in the last episode that I saw some pretty significant emergencies in my early births. Now, I will tell you as a doula, I have supported a few scenarios where there was loss or nearly a loss.
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And that's both on the pregnant person side and on the the infant side. So that is incredibly challenging, and needs processing, you have got to process if you witness an emergency that could have taken a life or if you witness a stillbirth or other kind of emergency that is in that category. So one of my earliest births, I had a client that I connected with so well,
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in part because she was like, you seem like my person, I want to hire you even though you're so new. And she had a complication after delivery that she nearly died from. And it was really traumatic. It was really traumatic for her, of course, for her family, for me for everybody involved. And it, it shaped me as a doula early on.
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Another thing that I have experienced is witnessing emergencies with an infant after delivery. And that is terrifying in a different way. Because it's, I mean, it's unexpected. And so is the maternal stuff for the pregnant person emergencies.
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But it is a different kind of desperation to watch a baby that you're not sure is going to be okay. And to watch that alongside their parents. So, so I'm not going to go into great detail about those scenarios, of course, because those are my client stories as well. But I have seen some really scary things in birth. And I would not be still a doula if I hadn't had some therapy and some processing of those things. And that's still something that shapes and informs how I educate about around birth, how I educate around warning signs and things like that. But also, it's just a piece of this world that is part of what birth is that you carry with you when you are witness to it. Okay. So, early early on, I learned this lesson. I am hoping that you do not need to learn that lesson quite as early. But please know that there are resources available for both a doula and for parents to process trauma that you have witnessed or experienced in the birth space. Okay. Lesson number four is research things that
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At or new. Now, what I mean by this is, I firmly believe that every birth experience is a learning experience, meaning that this is not a profession where we arrive at knowing everything there is to know about the thing, right? Because birth is unique. And so that's really awesome. And also can be a little bit disconcerting, because we're like, Okay, well shoot. It's unique. And also, that means this thing that I'm seeing this time I've never seen before, right? So when you're new, and when I was new, there were a ton of things that I saw for the first time, of course, because I was new. And so as I found things, as I witnessed things, as I like, learned about things, I looked them up, try to really understand them, get a sense of if there was anything that could have been done to help it go differently, and then let that inform the way that I support clients in the future. So I shared I'm not sure in what what episode, I'm gonna have to go back. And look, I shared an episode about a time when I was at a birth, and I had no idea what op baby meant. Now, an OP baby is a posterior baby, meaning that the baby is kind of back to back with their, their parent. So in that scenario, I was like, oh, so the long pushing the heart, the really bad tear, the like all of that was about this baby size and position. And prior to that, I had some information about size and position and kind of like knew, roughly, but I hadn't really seen it and experienced it.
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And so that's something that I went home and really researched and learned about and dug into and quickly paid for a training from spinning babies and things like that. So there are certain topics that when you experience them, you go back and learn about them so that you can impact those scenarios differently, if possible, right. There were also scenarios where no matter how much you learn about them, you have no control over whether they happen or not, and how they happen, etc. So I'm not saying that you research things so that you can keep them from happening. That is not a part of how birth works. We don't have control like that, which I honestly wish we did sometimes, but we don't. So something like a hemorrhage, for instance. I have educated myself on when that can happen, when that does happen, how it happens, why it happens, what to look for, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, because I've witnessed it too many times to not pay attention to it. However, oftentimes, it is not the fault of anyone that it's happening, right? There's different reasons for hemorrhage. I've seen hemorrhage because of cervical tear. I've seen hemorrhage because of a placental abruption. I've seen hemorrhage because of placental
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retention, I've seen hemorrhage because of
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because of like, lack of uterine tone, I've seen so many scenarios of hemorrhage. And there are different causes each time, there are things that raise the risk of hemorrhage. There are things that providers can do to make the risk of hemorrhage higher, for sure. But also, there are hemorrhages that happen, that we don't know why they're happening. And that is sometimes really challenging, right? So as a doula, I didn't research that to make sure they never happened, because I can't do that I can't carry that weight. And also, that's not my job. And also, a lot of times I can't, there's nothing that can be done about it, right? Like there it didn't, wasn't caused by something that that happened. And so I've researched it and understand it better. Because I want to understand it in part to process it. And in part to help my clients process it, so that I have some better resources and information around it to have accurate explanation of things and understanding of how and why this might have happened and things like that. Now things like you know, a long time pushing or like a really long labor. Those are things to research because you can learn tools that you can do to help that in the future. Right. So I think that it's really important to look at new scenarios that you have never seen have never heard about terms that you're not familiar with, and use them as a learning tool where you can then expand on your knowledge, rather than using it as a way to show
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aim yourself for not knowing everything. So that really is important to me. But also a big part of what I encourage doulas is to have an open mind to the fact that you don't finish learning in this work. And that is true no matter if you're where I am having seen hundreds of births, or if you're where you are having seen just a few or even maybe none yet. Um, so don't feel like you're gonna get to the point where you no longer have new things to learn. That also normalizes the fact that you're learning new things right now, if you're new, of course, you're learning new things. But guess what, I also learned new things. I was at a birth recently, and the nurse and I were both like, Have you ever seen this before? Nope. Have you? Nope. And here we are, in this new thing, that both of us are incredibly experienced been doing this for many years. And this is a brand new thing. So normalize that for yourself and also research them so that it informs the way that you do this work in the future. Okay. All right. So that wraps up the 10 lessons. I am so excited that you hung on for that journey of 10 I would love to hear lessons that you have learned please connect with me at Herat doula, and in the meantime, I look forward to seeing you in the next episode.
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Thanks for joining us for this episode of the doula Tips and Tits podcast. If you learned something today or had an aha moment we'd love for you to share that on Instagram and tag us at Harrod doula, so we can celebrate alongside you. If you found this podcast helpful. We would so appreciate you taking a second to leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast app that helps other doulas find us as we do this work together. This podcast is intended as educational and entertainment it is not medical advice or business advice. Please consult your own medical or legal team for your own needs around your health and your business. We'll see you again soon.
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This is our last episode in “10 Lessons from My First 10 Births” so if you haven’t listened to the other episodes, go give them a listen. With our last two tips, we are talking about processing after some pretty mentally heavy births and keeping your mind open to constantly learning new things no matter how much experience you have.
Quote from the show:
“But also a big part of what I encourage doulas is to have an open mind to the fact that you don't finish learning in this work. And that is true no matter if you're where I am having seen hundreds of births, or if you're where you are having seen just a few or even maybe none yet. Um, so don't feel like you're gonna get to the point where you no longer have new things to learn. That also normalizes the fact that you're learning new things right now, if you're new, of course, you're learning new things. But guess what, I also learned new things. I was at a birth recently, and the nurse and I were both like, Have you ever seen this before? Nope. Have you? Nope. And here we are, in this new thing, that both of us are incredibly experienced been doing this for many years.”
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Kaely Daily is produced by Kaely Harrod of Harrod Doula Services
It is sponsored by The Birth Prep Blueprint Childbirth Class
Music by Madirfan: Hidden Place on Pixabay
