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A Dream Coming Alive
Many years ago I decided that I wanted to become a midwife. This was in the days before the industry was regulated in BC and finding a way to support that dream while raising a family was near impossible as there were not a lot of midwives practicing in Canada and there was very few women who were birthing at home. In order for me to take the courses I would have had to leave my province and quite possibly my country to take the training. This was not feasible and so I put that dream away.
Fast forward to January 2017 when our grand daughter was born. Just minutes after she took her first breath the memories of wanting to be involved in the birth process came flooding back. At the time I didn’t put too much thought or effort into re-igniting the dream but the idea was there. Then a close friend of the family found out she was expecting and she asked me to be a part of her birthing team. In July of 2018 I attended my first birth and knew that it was time to bring my dream to life and to find a way to make it happen. Hours of research and conversations with family followed and I decided to enroll in training to become certified with Doula Canada.
The role of a Doula is to support birthing persons and their partners and to provide evidence based resources that help them make informed choices and decisions about their birth plan. So what does that mean to me? It means being “there” for my clients, knowing that there are other trained people involved who will take care of the medical, clinical process of delivery so that I can help my client focus on the emotional process of labour and delivery.
Labour is a beautiful natural process that has moved away from the private and personal experience it once was and has become medical business in an industry that doesn’t have time for patience. Cesareans are at an all time high and research suggests that when there is intervention during labour there is a greater likely hood that the birth with be by cesarean. I believe that if women take time to know and trust themselves and are taught how to work through the experience of labour, that in many cases, they can increase the instance of natural birth and reduce the needs of intervention.
It is my wish to help birthing persons find a way to reconcile with what makes them feel safe and what makes them feel brave. There is a birthing plan and birthing story for every pregnancy and I hope to help my clients write a story that is memorable and filled with love no matter how their baby enters this world.
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