The Ordinary Doula Podcast
Welcome to The Ordinary Doula Podcast with Angie Rosier, hosted by Birth Learning. We help folks prepare 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.
The Ordinary Doula Podcast
E51: Fun Facts about Childbirth
Unlock numbers with me, as we promise to reveal what two decades of doula work have taught about the birthing journey. Ever wondered how emotional and physical factors intertwine to shape labor experiences? Get ready to uncover the diverse tapestry of birth stories, supported by a wealth of data I've meticulously gathered over 15 years. With clients ranging from 18 to 44 years old and labor support stretching from 30 minutes to 47 hours, this episode illuminates the unique paths each birthing individual takes. We'll celebrate the vibrant diversity of birthing experiences and discuss strategies to enhance the support doulas can provide.
We'll explore everything from the implications of fetal positioning on labor length to the nuances of hospital policies, particularly those involving vaginal exams. Discover how my doula team tackles the challenge of extended labors and why the estimated blood loss after birth is a crucial aspect of care. Whether you're a parent, a future parent, or simply curious about the world of birth support, this episode promises to enrich your understanding of the pivotal role doulas play in empowering birth experiences.
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Show Credits
Host: Angie Rosier
Music: Michael Hicks
Photographer: Toni Walker
Episode Artwork: Nick Greenwood
Producer: Gillian Rosier Frampton
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 I'm so happy to be with you here today. So for today's episode I want to dive into a few just interesting fun facts we're going to call them about some research that I like to kind of keep track of. I'm kind of a data junkie and I'm a record keeper by nature and I cannot not keep records of things. If I go to a birth, I've got to jot things down just so I remember them, things that I think are important, keeping information so that one we can look back on it right there in the moment. So often I do take notes, you know, throughout a labor process, and it's so important how often it comes up where my client will say, hey, when were we three centimeters, or how long was I in the tub, or how long has it been since they checked me or since my water broke, or whatever. So I just am programmed to have this timeframe of things recorded and I've been recording data for a really long time.
Speaker 2:In the beginning I didn't know why I was recording it, but it kind of grew. The things I was curious about, the things I want to know from every birth grew. I didn't know what I would do with it, but I continued doing it for years and years and years and I have, you know, spreadsheets upon spreadsheets, this awesome huge database of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of clients and dozens of data points for each one. So several years ago, I got my master's degree and for my thesis I went, I combed that data and looked at all the different points of things that I recorded and got some fun facts out of it. I was looking for a lot of, you know, meaningful things too, but here's just some fun facts I want to share with you about that. So this is I want you to understand, as we look at any data, like any research, we got to look at it for what it is, for what it isn't, who's doing it, who's behind it, kind of what are we out to look at? What are we out to prove? So there's all kinds of bias in research. Um, there's different ways, different levels of research, there's levels of accuracy. These are just some fun facts, right?
Speaker 2:But I do want you to understand that this is coming from and I'm a white woman. Um, I'm a white doula who's serving not all for sure, but mostly white clients. My the access I have access to mostly white clientele, um, and I've had, you know, plenty of people of color as well, which I absolutely love, and it's such an honor for me, um, when I get to work with with um people from different countries, different cultures, when I get to work with people from different countries, different cultures, different backgrounds, ethnic and culturally, it's an absolute honor to me to be able to work with people who are different than myself. I love that. But most of my clients are private pay clients, so they're folks who can afford doula services and that's important to keep in mind. We're going to get different results from different groups of people, so this is coming from people who all used a doula. 100% of them because that's what I am is people who are using a doula. So it gives us a little picture of who uses doulas and in my research I dived into why people use doulas and the impact doulas can have.
Speaker 2:But today, the fun facts I'm going to share are, in no particular order, the age of client, so the average age, and this covers about 15 years of data and hundreds our population, our N, our sample size, if you will, was well over 500. And I had a lot more data than that, but the full sets of data. We were over 500. So we're looking at a population of over 500. For these statistical values, the average age of the woman giving birth was 31.39. So that was the average age of client and the range was from 18 years to 44 years. So that tells us that most people hiring a doula were not super young. They're not going to be your 22 year old, 24 year old moms and that makes sense, right? If you're going to be investing in a doula, you might have more resources in your 30s than you do in your early 20s. So that's pretty common. That's pretty common. I do have a client this year who's 52. So we're kind of broadening that range a little bit. I've helped several 18 year olds and I absolutely love that. I think I've even had a 17 year old now at this point, which is super cool. I totally enjoy that population. So, yeah, average age of client was 31.39 years.
Speaker 2:Another interesting thing to know and this I think is interesting for doulas anyway and maybe those who are using them is the average time that a doula is present for labor support. We do our prenatal visits ahead of time, before labor begins. But the average length of time that a doula is actually present offering labor support was 7.68 hours, and this is over 15 years. So there can be quite a range. Our range is from half an hour and really sometimes the range is zero, like if we have missed a birth. I took those ones out. And sometimes birth is so precipitous or very fast that we don't make it there in time. I wish, like crazy doulas, had teleporters or helicopters or something to help us get there in time. And sometimes babies are born in cars or at home, unintentionally or something. So everybody sometimes misses the birth. But the range is half an hour to 47 hours. So quite quite a broad range. And I don't I don't know if people realize, um, when doulas go into births, like that's an indefinite amount of time, right, um? And sometimes you miss the birth and sometimes you're there for 40 plus hours, um, I have had colleagues there for over 70 hours before. So that's on our long. Oftentimes that's an induction.
Speaker 2:There's something long and slow going on. There's some things to address, whether it's emotional challenges, fetal positioning challenges, slow patient induction processes there's lots of reasons that labor can be super long. I remember when I started doing this work, my mom. My mom had pretty quick labors and she had six kids kind of a big family and I had five kids and pretty fairly short labors as well. And when I started doing this work my mom was blown away by how long labor could be. She's like wow, I had no idea people were in labor that long sometimes and when we look at labor like to be in the hours in the 40s, 50s and 60 hours long. It's not intense labor the whole time. Generally you have a lot of slow warm up time. Sometimes we do have an impressive amount of hours in active labor. So average is 7.68 hours.
Speaker 2:I've looked at my data over different years and sometimes it's more like nine hours on average that we're with people. In my doula partnership we swap out. We have always two doulas two and a half kind of, on each client and at 12 hours or so we will swap out so that our client always has somebody fresh and competent A lot of doulas. You know there's different ways to work with that. Another just fun, little interesting data point is the average number of vaginal exams. So this is during the labor process, how many times the cervix is checked. The average is 4.2. So if we're with people you know, up to 47 hours, um, but an average of eight, and they're getting about 4.2 vaginal exams that's, you know, every couple of hours, um, and when we look at averages they're going to be getting every couple of hours the range on this one is zero vaginal exams.
Speaker 2:Sometimes you just get to the hospital and the baby comes out and obviously 10 centimeters. But generally upon arrival you're going to get an exam to see, hey, what's the cervix doing? Where are we at? Are we going to keep you here? Admit you to the hospital? So there's generally always that first one and then there can be a various number of vaginal exams after that to assess progress. So I would say, anecdotally, what I most often see is three to four, sometimes more, but three to four hours between exams when someone's in labor. Sometimes it is a whole lot more than that. Sometimes it's six or seven, but generally it's three or four. Sometimes it's pretty frequent.
Speaker 2:I know my range of zero to 13 vaginal exams. The 13 was at a hospital that had at the time. I sure hope they've changed this policy by now. This was many years ago, but they had a policy at this hospital too, and I will say it wasn't one of my favorite hospitals, actually my least favorite to work in. But they had a policy to check the cervix every hour, no matter what. So if the water was broken, they're checking the cervix every hour. Not a great idea, not evidence-based. If you're going unmedicated, they're going to check the cervix every hour. If we have someone who has a history of trauma in their life, doesn't matter, they're checking the cervix every hour. Pretty terrible policy. So I remember that one vividly. That was our 13 vaginal exams. So must've been with that person 13 hours, as it works out. But generally it's two, three, four hours and I love it when that is patient driven, when the patient can decide okay, I'm ready to be checked, I want to see what's going on, and oftentimes I'm in the hospitals I work in and probably just the fact of having a doula there helps with that.
Speaker 2:Another interesting fact, moving on to next one, is length of labor. So the average length of labor and I take this as reported by the person in labor. So hospitals will report this differently. They kind of wait till you're quote, unquote an active labor, which means you are four, five or six centimeters, and they kind of measure that differently in different places, different regions, and that the cervix is making change. But we might have done a heck of a lot of work, been super active, working really hard for hours before we're getting to that spot. So what I have reported on average length of labor is reported by the person experiencing the labor, not a quote unquote active labor calculator, if you will, from a certain dilation point. So this is reported by the person doing it and 13.22 hours is. So just over 13 is the average amount length of labor and the range is point six hours, so just a little over 30 minutes.
Speaker 2:Sometimes labor can be wildly fast to 91.5 hours. Now that's a long time. That was a really long, slow induction. I think started on Monday, baby was born on Friday and I was with those people for a long time. That you know. It was in the 40 plus hours of labor support for that person and we had a super patient client in labor, super patient providers, everything was going well. It just took some time. So, with a range of half an hour to 91.5 hours, the average length of labor is 13.22 hours. So if you're, if you are anticipating being in labor, we can look at an average of 13 hours and this I did not break my data down into primips and multips, as in people having a first baby and people having second, third, fourth babies.
Speaker 2:Guarantee, we're going to get some differences there. Second, third, fourth babies are going to be a shorter labor time, um, um experienced, than your first time babies. And this is just an average of all. So kind of interesting um. Let's see what are some other interesting average. Okay, one more. I'll share one more here.
Speaker 2:Um EBL, and I've done episodes on estimated blood loss in the past, um, but the estimate EBL is estimated blood loss. So and I record that after, after my client has a baby and that tells me a lot of things um, that I might want to look for as I support them in the postpartum period and follow up with them. If they're having a higher blood loss than normal, I definitely take that into account because that can impact postpartum mood challenges that may come up, fatigue when they're already recovering and working with a newborn and trying to breastfeed. It also may impact milk supply. So I take that into account as I move forward into the postpartum period with my clients. What was their blood loss?
Speaker 2:So the average that I recorded in 15 years was 368 cc's. So cc is a gram or a milliliter. So 368, and I would anecdotally say 350, is very, very average. Sometimes you see hundreds, really scant, sometimes you see more than that. That's something providers are very interested in, right. They're assessing blood loss afterwards and where's it coming from? From the uterus? Is it coming from a laceration? They're going to be that's when they're at just that immediate postpartum. They're going to be tracking that and and helping to manage that. So the range on that was that's when they're at just that immediate postpartum they're going to be tracking that um and and helping to manage that. So the range on that was 50, that's super scant.
Speaker 2:50 cc's of blood loss up to 1450, um was the average and I did take out some outliers. I've had some incredibly high um EBLs that I that I took out because it skewed the numbers um quite incredibly, like one um really tough case was 4,500 cc's lost and our body has about 5,000 cc's of blood. So almost all of her blood was lost and that was a very scary situation, very rare um where she was in surgery, had a massive team and the ICU team and had you would not believe how many blood products this particular client got into her, got put into her, waiting for clotting factors to start working from donated blood and platelets, because her clotting factors were gone. So that's why she lost so much blood. So those kinds of situations were not included in the data. I took out the outliers, but pretty average 368 cc's of blood loss and we can kind of expect that for sure after delivery.
Speaker 2:So let me see if there's any other fun facts. There's a couple but I think I'll save them for another episode. But hopefully that's just odds and ends, little tidbits of information, some fun little things and averages. It's interesting to look at over the long view in my research because I'm kind of a data junkie that way. Hopefully that's been helpful to you in some way as you move forward and prepare.
Speaker 2:Hey, I might be in labor for 13 hours, or my cervix might get checked an average of four times, or doula support, you know, generally under a little bit under eight or nine hours and your age is whatever your age is right, that's cool. So hopefully that can be helpful to you in some way. But thank you for sharing a little bit of my birth nerd research junkie information with me. Hopefully it's been helpful to you in some way. So today I hope you can make a human connection with someone in your life. Reach out, provide joy, uplift someone in nearby, someone familiar to you, someone unfamiliar to you, but reach out and make a connection, make a good difference in someone's life for the better. Hope to see you again next time. This is Angie Rozier signing off from the Ordinary Doula Podcast.
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. Thank you.