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
E65: Perspective and Childbirth
Have you ever wondered how your cultural background and personal beliefs shape your pregnancy and birth experience? Join us on The Ordinary Doula Podcast as we take you on a journey through the diverse landscapes of the perinatal period, exploring the unique perspectives of expectant parents. Drawing from 20 years of experience as a doula, we share insights into how personal and cultural factors paint each pregnancy with its own brushstrokes. Like observing familiar landmarks from the sky, our discussion delves into how these perspectives can transform the way pregnancy and birth are perceived, whether as monumental life events or routine passages.
We also venture into the world of maternal healthcare, comparing the panoramic views of healthcare providers with the intimate, immediate experiences of those who are pregnant. Through the story of a seasoned doctor who has delivered babies for multiple generations within a family, we highlight the evolution of perspectives over time. The conversation underscores the importance of open communication between healthcare providers and pregnant individuals, advocating for the crucial roles of doulas and midwives in bridging the gap with empathy and understanding. Tune in as we navigate the multifaceted journeys of pregnancy and birth, honoring the myriad of views within this transformative experience.
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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, my name is Angie Rozier and this is the Ordinary Doula Podcast. Thank you for being here with us today and spending a little bit of your time. So if you are listening to this, you are probably in some way in what we call the perinatal period, whether that's you're pregnant, you are preparing to have a baby, you had a baby, you're in postpartum or you're what we call a birth junkie Birth junkies I've known many of them in my life. I am one. Birth junkies just love everything about birth, whether it's them or someone else. They're just kind of into it and it's important to them. So we see the world from a certain perspective birth junkies do when you are in it, if you're the pregnant person, when you're in it, it kind of takes up a lot of your head space, right, a lot of your body space, but it it, the perspective you have while you are pregnant is it's like, front and center is all about pregnancy, baby delivery.
Speaker 2:Everyone's different on where their perspective is. Some people do not like being pregnant. Some people absolutely love it. Some people don't think it's a big deal. Other people think it's the biggest deal of their life and there's no wrong way to view it. People have different perspectives based on their family culture, their community culture, their healthcare systems, what's available to them. Some people, some cultures, play different place, different values and different kind of different priorities on the birth process. Some it's highly valuable, some it's very transactional, some it's. You know, it's a physical toll, for sure, but not for everyone. You talk to different people and some people are terribly sick during their pregnancy. Other people have easy, breezy pregnancies. Same thing with labor, delivery, birth, breastfeeding, raising a baby. Everyone's going to experience a little bit differently.
Speaker 2:So that's what I want to talk about a little bit in this episode is perspective. This can, in my circles of life, there can be some hot topics about this because people feel strongly about it. In some of our birth junkie worlds, like you, don't talk about religion, politics or birth around the table. Well, you could. You could talk about birth, and birth junkies will talk to you about birth long into the night. Many, many hours can be spent on that for those who are focused on it. So perhaps you have um people in your family who are not very focused on it or they um don't give a lot of weight in their life. They don't consider a lot of things about it and around it.
Speaker 2:Um, I recently flew in a plane out of my hometown city and it was daytime when I flew so I, the plane took off. I was sitting by a window so I got to look out the window during takeoff. And I love taking off during the day because you can kind of, you know, you can see everything becomes smaller and smaller as you get higher in the air and I don't live too far from the airport so I'm very familiar with the whole area. You know, I've spent a lot of a lot of years here, so it's kind of fun to watch for different landmarks from the that are normally I see on the ground to see them as the plane was getting higher and higher in the air. So some things like I could see some of our larger buildings and structures. There's some geographical landmarks, there's lots of architectural landmarks. There's like roadways, your freeways, your big, you know road systems. You could easily identify those.
Speaker 2:But kind of the higher I got, the more difficult it was to identify things, things that from the ground are very obvious, very present, very prominent and I'm very familiar with. It's like gosh. I know exactly what that big hospital looks like or that office building looks like on the ground I see it all the time, but from up here it doesn't look so big. It was difficult to recognize. Same thing freeway systems, right, they run through the whole valley where I live, very prominent, and it's cool to see the whole thing. Usually we just see a snippet of it, the snippet that we're driving on. You know if we're not driving the whole length of a freeway, but it was interesting to see this whole vein traveling through the valley and then mountains, like mountains which are I happen to live around beautiful mountains which are huge and prominent in your everyday life, and then you get above them and they become flat. Right, they're not as prominent as just because your perspective is different.
Speaker 2:So the speed of the plane too, like the speed of the plane as we got higher and higher, made it more difficult for me to recognize. Like I saw high schools, and I saw high schools are always fun Whenever I fly. It's fun to find high schools because that track you can just nail it by the track right. Or pools, backyard pools are always fun to see, especially during daylight. They're kind of glimmering in the sun and they're blue, right, it's really pretty blue. So if you go into, like Arizona, california, somewhere with a lot of pools, florida. You're going to see a lot of beautiful blue sparkling things in people's backyards and those are all fun to identify, but the speed of the plane made it more difficult to identify as well as like, oh gosh, I gotta, I gotta, get my bearings here and grab where I am, see if I can identify. I was trying to find, you know, like my house or my neighborhood, and that was more difficult because they were, they were so small.
Speaker 2:So so the the reason I want to talk about the aerial view versus ground view is has to do with perspective. Um, depending on where you are and where you've been, you're going to see things a little bit differently about birth. So I want you to consider, um, your provider. Like you may have a midwife or a doctor. Maybe they're early on in their career, maybe they're very late, they're very seasoned, maybe they've got a few decades behind them. They are going to have varying perspectives. It's going to be a different perspective than your perspective. Your partner may have a different perspective than you do.
Speaker 2:Some things when you're on the ground they're very obvious, present, present and prominent might not be as obvious or even noticeable from those upper atmosphere levels, right. So I'm going to kind of take your provider view A doctor, a midwife. They have a longer view, kind of a bigger view than you do. So maybe they are up in the air 12,000 feet, 15, maybe 20,000 feet, depending on their, the length of their career and their experience, so they can see the whole freeway at the same time. They're seeing all the cars on the freeway, not just the one you are driving in. They, um, you know they, those, those big buildings that might be very obvious on the ground aren't as important to them. Like, they see the bigger picture. So, as they're looking at maternal health, they're looking at a broader view, while you, you might be the pregnant person on the ground, you are that one car on that one lane of one freeway, one part of one freeway. You are that building on the ground. Maybe you're a tiny house, right. Maybe you're a larger building as far as like how prominent birth and pregnancy is in your life, but you're, you got like a front row seat, you are ground level. It's happening to you, right. So kind of realize that as you work with providers that you have a little varying perspectives on the exact same event, that of pregnancy. The speed at which you go through things determines what you miss and what you catch right. As far as like, if you're super busy during a pregnancy, if you're soaking up every awesome minute, or if you can't wait to get it over with, there's no right or wrong way to do it or think about it or feel about it. It's just how things are.
Speaker 2:I a hospital I work at just yesterday I was helping a patient just had a baby, helping with lactation, and she's a little bit of an older mom. This is kind of a surprise baby. She had some older teenage kids and then she had another baby. So her mom was in the room with her and so this you know. The grandma of the baby was in the room and it happened to be that the same doctor that delivered this baby also delivered some of the grandmother's children, right. So she pulled out some. I don't know where she got them, they were on her phone somehow but she got some pictures that were 30 years old of this doctor early in his career delivering her baby, who is now 30. And he also just delivered her grandson, who was like an hour old. She pulled that picture out, showed it to the nurses. Some of these nurses might not have even been born when that picture was taken.
Speaker 2:She showed it to the doctor himself and what was so interesting is he wasn't sure it was him. He's like I don't know, is that, is that really me? He didn't recognize himself and it was very like he had a mustache and dark brown, thick head of hair. He was in like it was like an action shot delivering this baby 30 years ago and then he was. Just think of how his life and his career, his perspective, had changed 30 years later. He was about two or three years into his career when that grandma had a baby, and now he's 32 or three years later into his career when this grandbaby was born.
Speaker 2:So he is a very different person, a very different provider. He's seen a lot of freeway. He's seen a lot of little tiny houses. He's getting higher in the atmosphere, if you will. He's at 35,000 feet now. He has a longer view of things. That's good and that's challenging, right For you as a patient. Sometimes like he may not be as in touch with what your ground level experience is like and it's different for everyone. He's probably seen some tough stuff now, after 32, 33 years. He's seen some amazing things. He's seen a lot of things and those experiences change you as a person. They may inform how he practices or what he advises his patients to do because of what he's seen.
Speaker 2:And I think what I hear so much from my birth clients is there's sometimes a struggle to get the provider to understand their perspective, like providers. Sometimes some providers can just kind of brush off how the pregnant person's feeling or what they want or what their desires are what's important to them, because they are on the ground, they're in front of this big building. That's very obvious to them, right, like they've got a birth is looming in front of them, maybe their first one, and maybe they're so excited or they're so scared or both. This like, eh, yeah, it's fine, it'll happen. And so take that into consideration as you share your desires or consider your desires with a partner, with your provider, with your doula, doulas, midwives. You know we have a little bit of a different angle, I hope. I hope I can speak for doulas when we say we try to stay on the ground, like, yeah, we can see, especially those of us who've been doing this a while. We have seen the long view, we've seen the length of the freeway. We've seen the buildings from far away, but we try to stay down on the ground and remember what that's like for people who are facing a challenging labor or an induction that they didn't want, or a C-section or a VBAC or twins, maybe they're having multiples, or maybe they're doing a home birth or a birth center birth, like they are on the ground, very present. So anyway, that was kind of some some thoughts I had, as we understand why the struggle happens.
Speaker 2:Sometimes you might have a midwife who's seen the long view right. We hope so. We hope she's. She's got that good experience where she's seen and heard and felt and learned a lot of things throughout her career, but also can keep her feet firmly planted on the ground. Some providers are amazing at this. One of my very favorite midwives and humans she's been a midwife for I don't know 30, probably coming on 30 years. She's totally incredible. Her experience is deep, yet she still maintains this incredible way to connect with every single patient. One of my clients, the midwife, didn't help deliver the baby but she was there for discharge. So she said my client said I am so glad I got a touch point with her before discharge because she's just so amazing, so deeply experienced, yet still deeply connected. And that is my hope and goal and desire for all clients that they have a very deeply connected and well experienced provider who's going to take that broad view, that 35,000 elevation for elevation view, and dial it into that one little house on one little corner that is so important to the person who's in that house and they can make their birth help that be a very important and personal experience to them. So that's just a little bit of food for thought.
Speaker 2:As you work with your provider and or your doula and or your partner, your partner, you know, with your provider and or your doula and or your partner, your partner, you know they might be in a taxi, on the ground, they don't want to see the long view or maybe their view is a little bit different based on their history or background. They might be kind of nervous about things. I recently also spoke to a friend, a doula friend, who had a really rough experience, super rough with she was just treated not very well at all, kind of disrespected, disregarded, um frustrated with her how her birth experience went. And I learned her provider was and I just wasn't surprised I had not heard of this provider's name for like 20 years. But I do remember some brush ins with this provider 20 years ago, um, and you know what? She hasn't changed. Like she's still rough, like she's kind of seeing things from a really super high view. Maybe she's even in a stratosphere. She's gotten kind of up there, disconnected from the people on the ground who, unfortunately, sometimes are her patients.
Speaker 2:Also, we want to dial back even further. Like we look at large organizations like ACOG, american College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, they look at a huge view, right. They're looking at not just the freeway but the interstate system. They're looking at the topography of the entire landscape. They're looking at where the lakes are, where the valleys are, the peaks, the mountains Like they have a super broad view. Same thing with the CDC or World Health Organization. These all take, or maybe the National Institute of Health or your local health department's going to have a certain view of things. This is where a lot of our data and statistics I can I'm a data junkie and I love getting into that stuff but when they look at the broad view of birth, they can see much bigger than just what an airplane over one valley is going to see. So when they set policies or when they roll out recommendations or when they look at statistics, they're looking at the broad view. They can also dial it in right, which is super cool. They can look at certain groups in geographical areas or certain racial or ethnic groups and to see how their experience might be different. So they do spend some time getting on the ground.
Speaker 2:And then we look at global health, right. We look at birth all over the world, like in the United States. We think we're all that in a bag of chips when it comes to birth, but you know we're not. We can do a whole other episode actually on the state of maternal care in the United States. It's not nearly as state of the art as you would hope. And there's a lot of countries throughout the world, a lot of industrialized countries, who are doing far better than we are with their policies and their outcomes too. Yeah, it's uh, you know it's kind of interesting how they, how they set policy. And you got to realize what drives things right. Policy is driven, um a lot by the dollar. Like the dollar is going to drive a whole lot of things in our country as it's tied into, um economic growth and development. It's kind of interesting. So, okay, I'm not going to go down that rabbit hole because, um, I could chase that rabbit for a while.
Speaker 2:But, uh, consider your perspective, realize where you are and those around you, realize their perspective and try really key to a good experience for you is try to find, try to match yourself with a provider whose perspective could easily match yours so that you can be well cared for, somebody who can get on the ground with you even though they have that that sky view Best you in birthing and preparing for labor and for birth. Keep that, keep that perspective. It's important. You know, like, look at the big view, look at the small view and realize that, yeah, birth is impactful, but life too has a whole lot of experiences. Birth is is one very impactful and important experience of life. But look at your life. Your life too has a whole lot of experiences. Birth is is one very impactful and important experience of life. But look at your life, your, your life spent. You'll dial back on your life as well. Sometimes we get pigeonholed in wanting birth to be a certain way. Okay, I'm going down another rabbit hole, sorry.
Speaker 2:I met with a client this week who had she had some amazing goals, goals that she she aligned with with some great midwifery model care thing. She was in a place with people that were supporting that. She had awesome doula helping her um and was awesomely prepared for this unmedicated, natural childbirth, no interventions, um, and things were tough, like they went long and they were difficult and she didn't progress I think past an eight Um, I don't know she did. She got to complete, she got to 10 and pushed for a long time and I was just hearing this story secondhand and after a long time they uh, they weren't pushed into a cesarean at this time but they um elected for a C-section um. At a certain time the mom and the dad, the client, did.
Speaker 2:And as I met with her I was meeting with her for lactation she was mourning that, crying. She cried several times during her visit, hugged her, talked to her about it, but again when that? And then we can do a whole other podcast about birth trauma and how to to deal with that, what, how to manage moving forward. But we did talk about for her to honor this baby's journey and to honor the choices that this couple made, although it was very different than what they thought. So sometimes it's important to come off the ground level like, look at broad view and honor what this baby needed in order to be born and the journey the baby was making as well, which was the journey it needed. It was it was. It happened this way for a reason for that baby in their particular circumstance. So keep that in mind as well. Perspective's important, helps keep us grounded, and sharing perspective and shifting perspective is also important. All right, that's it.
Speaker 2:I'm wrapping it up. No more rabbit holes today, I hope, but best to you in birthing and preparing for that and maybe broaden your horizons a little bit. Maybe, you know, consider some other perspectives, whatever that means for you. Hope you have a great rest of the day. Wherever you are. Whatever you're doing, Please reach out and make contact with someone in your life, someone new, someone old, old to you, new to you. Make contact with another human. You won't regret it. Talk to you later. We'll 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. Thank you.