The Ordinary Doula Podcast

E99: Embrace The Wabi-Sabi Of Birth

• Angie Rosier • Episode 99

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Birth rarely reads the script we write for it—and that can be a source of strength rather than stress. We dig into the wabi-sabi mindset, a Japanese aesthetic that celebrates imperfection and impermanence, and translate it into a practical philosophy for labor, delivery, and the tender days that follow. With two decades of doula experience, we share grounded stories and simple tools that help you hold your plan with care while staying responsive when the path turns.

You’ll hear how one client progressed beautifully before meeting an unplanned cesarean with grace, and how another moved from long, uneven early labor to a swift, powerful finish after a spontaneous release of membranes. We unpack why satisfaction in birth hinges less on a single outcome and more on agency, informed consent, compassionate support, and the freedom to adapt. If you’re preparing for a VBAC, considering pain relief options, or crafting a low-intervention plan, you’ll learn how to create layered preferences that travel with you through induction, epidural, or surgery without losing your values.

We also widen the lens to postpartum and feeding, where “good enough” often beats “perfect.” Expect practical language for asking better questions, building option sets for different scenarios, and staying connected to your body, your baby, and your team. By embracing the beautifully crooked seams of your story, you protect your energy, reduce disappointment, and make more space for awe.

If this conversation helps you breathe a little easier about what’s ahead, follow the show, share it with a friend who’s preparing for birth, and leave a review to help others find us. Your story matters—and it can be powerful even when it’s a little wabi-sabi.

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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

SPEAKER_01:

Welcome to the Ordinary Doula Podcast with Angie Rosier, 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_00:

My name is Angie Rosier. I'm your host, and I sure enjoy doing this and being here with you. Hopefully, um you are having a great day. I hope that things are going pretty awesome for you, or at least pretty good. Um, one thing I was talking to a friend about recently was um whenever things are going awesome, which is not, you know, it's not like it's not kind of a constant state of awesomeness usually in everyone's life, but whenever things are just like, wow, this is amazing, everything's awesome, then it won't last, right? That's that that might not last forever. And or when things are going more difficultly and like, man, this is just hard. Um, knowing that that won't last forever either. So hopefully things are pretty awesome and uh you know going pretty well for you. That uh brings me a little bit to what I wanted to talk about in today's episode. I have um living at home, I have a 16-year-old and an 11-year-old at this point in my life, and they are so much cooler than I am and keep up on lots of trends and social media things and TikTok I've never touched really, but um they keep up on a lot of pop culture stuff way more than I do. And I recently learned, I don't know about you, but I if you learn new words from um this awesome generation we have coming up, I learn new words all the time and probably don't incorporate them into my vocabulary very well, and maybe not in the best of ways, but um a new word I recently weren't learned from my 16-year-old daughter is wabi sabi. So um she got this little toy given to her from a friend, just a little gift, and it was a little stuffed animal, and the eyes were sewed on very crooked. Like one was like up here and one was down there, like they just weren't kind of lined up right. And she just giggled and she's like, Oh my gosh, I love this. This is so wobbi-sabby. Um, and and I'm like, what is that? And I thought honestly, it was the name of this little stuffed animal, but you know how some animals come with names. That was not the case. She said, Oh yeah, it's just like it's when something isn't quite right and you just love it anyway. Like when something's imperfect and it's just so dang cute. That's what this this is wabi-sabi, and I love it. And so she mentioned to one of her friends, and they all just giggled, thought it was cute. So they get it, like they totally got it. So I've been I've been trying to incorporate the word wabi sabi into um my uh I don't know, I probably honestly will never use it, but I like the concept. So I looked it up actually, and this is um actually a concept, a Japanese aesthetic concept or a worldview that kind of centers on the acceptance of imperfection. So just like my daughter said in her cute 16-year-old way, she's like, Yeah, it's eyes are caddy wampus, and I love it. Um, this is finding beauty in the imperfect, in the modest, valuing marks of imperfection, of individuality, something that makes something different, um, marks of age, marks of rusticness. So this is like um appreciating the the not flawed, the like the flawed parts, right? And letting that flawlessness go. So this philosophy um is often seen in art and design, which appreciates things that are incomplete sometimes or in a state of constant change or um that are weathered, um, things that you know um just are imperfect and impermanent, which is kind of cool. Um so in in keeping that in mind and kind of the the theme of this podcast, which is oftentimes dedicated to preparation for childbirth, for parenting, for baby feeding, like all these journeys. Um, a lot of times we have an idea of how we want things to go, right? We have like an ideal, we have like goals, we want a perfect experience. For most people preparing for birth, not all, but probably most, especially who are listening to this podcast and like those like it, have a pretty particular way. They've given some thought, right? They they have a way they want birth to go. Um, and what as I prepare my clients, um, one thing I promise them is that we don't know how their brush will go. And I can promise them it won't go how they thought it would go. Now, sometimes it does. Sometimes we get on the other side of the experience and people like, wow, that was exactly how I thought it would be. Wow, that was better than I thought it'd be. Wow, that was amazing. Most people do honestly say, Wow, that was amazing, but birth can go so many ways. And I think this concept of wabi sabe, and it's kind of a fun word to say it, honestly, like say wabi sabi, wabi sab, however you want to say it, it's kind of fun. And I I love to hear teenagers say it. Um, so this concept of imperfection and loving it, right? If it's caddy wampus, um just embracing that. Um, that can be much harder to do than to say for sure. Um, and I and I'm gonna give just a couple of recent birth experiences. Just today I met with a couple. Um, this is uh an awesome, awesome client. This was a two-mom's client. Um, one of them had a baby three, four years ago, um, and it did not go well. It was a c-section, ended up being an emergency c-section, like it was rough, you know, she had some complications afterwards. So now the other mom is now having a baby, and they had some hopes and ideals. And um, just like they did the first time, they did a little different preparation this time. And we actually did a postpartum visit today. So this birth was a couple weeks ago. Um, and things were going awesome until they weren't. And like she dilated fairly quickly. Um, labor was pretty powerful, pretty effective. And she had pushing was right around the corner, pushing is right around the corner, and and never quite did get to that pushing phase. Like it was kind of a unique situation where um it seemed like she was 10 centimeters, but no, she was eight, eight and a half. And we went back and forth on that and and played with Pitocin and positions and did a lot of things for a lot of hours, actually, until ultimately she had a cesarean, um, just like her partner had four years ago. So not what they had hoped. Saw them today. Baby's gorgeous, they're doing well. Um, they've both had you know their experiences that are shared, yet unique and different. Um, and they did say, you know, it was it was better to have they did not have a doula support last time. This time they had doulas and they said that was that was great. And so they viewed it as yes, um, it was a cadywampus experience. It was wabe sabe. Um, not perfect, but um something, you know. They said, okay, that wasn't perfect, but we we can love that. Uh another recent one, we had a client go into labor on a Friday night. Labored pretty well through the night, all day Saturday. We were waiting for contractions to get closer. There were a little bit space that'd get close and space out and get close and space out, but seemed powerful, seemed to be picking up strength the whole time. Um, Saturday rolls by Saturday night rolls by contractions, still weren't as close as textbook normal says they should be, which you know it's not always the case. Um finally to the hospital early Sunday morning, and after all this time and effort and powerful contractions, she was dyled to a one. You know, like one. That was disheartening. That was her wabesabe, this imperfect um situation. And she kind of trudged along for a few more hours, got to two and a half centimeters, got to four centimeters. It was difficult. She was kind of caving, like she'd gone two nights with without a lot of rest and um working hard. And so was looking at, you know, she's like, okay, I think I think I'm gonna I think I'm gonna call it. I think I'm gonna get an epidural. No shame in that, right? Like this, you know, fatigue is definitely a factor in that. Um, and when she was kind of considering that, her water broke on its own, just spontaneous with all the SROM spontaneous release of membranes. Um, her water broke on its own. And wouldn't you know it, that baby was in her arms within one hour. So she went from a four to a 10 and baby out. It was her first baby, so that's six centimeters plus 20 minutes of pushing. So if it took 40 minutes to do six centimeters, 20 minutes of pushing, and she had a baby. Now her particular goal was to go and medicated. So she got what she wanted, not in the way she thought uh that it would happen, but she did get what she wanted. Um, and these stories happen over and over and over again. So your birth, your labor, your experience may be very wobbi-sabby. And kind of um, if we can sit back, and and it's interesting as, you know, being in this arena for a long time, like as you kind of I don't know, come come above it. Um, those of you know, those of our clients who are in the trenches basically, like having babies, they're pregnant, they're currently going through this. Um, that experience is really up close and obviously very personal. But sometimes dialing back and having watched and observed this for a long period of time, um, there are patterns in humanity, right, that are um beautiful and heartbreaking and empowering and and rich, full of all kinds of um reward and challenge. And that's kind of what birth is. So I have seen people that are absolutely devastated by however their birth might have gone. Um, some people are not devastated at all how their birth went, when a lot of people would be dismayed or frustrated, even I myself sometimes I'm like, man, that was rough. Um, but my client might not think so. Right now, I'm actually just tonight I finished an appointment with a client whose labor's coming up. Um, she had uh a cesarean last time, so she's hoping for a V-back this time is what she's preparing for. Um and she didn't do a whole lot of preparation last time. This time she's doing a lot more, doing some more learning, reading, taking classes, um, working with Adula. And for her, she is really truly fully open to having another cesarean if she needs to. Some of our VBAC clients are gonna be pretty devastated or heartbroken if they have to have another cesarean. So last time she said she learned something, which, you know, as you always do, um, she said, I kind of had an idea of what I wanted, hadn't gone too deep into it. And her baby um was Frank Breach, so that means their bum is kind of wedged down in the pelvis. They were going to turn the baby on a Wednesday and Saturday night before that particular Wednesday, her water broke um and contractions began, and they went to the hospital right away, and within an hour they had their baby in their arms. So he's like, wow, we were just sitting there at home on a Saturday night. I was talking to the her partner just tonight, and he's like, it was just wild because we were just sitting there on a Saturday night and her water broke, and you know, an hour and a half later we were holding our baby, not what we were anticipating doing that night, not how we were anticipating doing it. We had a version schedule, we were planning something very different. Um, so now this this mom is uh, you know, her goal is having a V back this time. She's open to going without an epidural, but also open to getting an epidural, which I love that openness, you know, kind of see what the situation warrants, see time of day, time, you know, amount of energy, length of labor, all these things. So um hopefully her she seems very open to the wabbi-sabi of um her last experience, which was you know surprising to her, and open to the wabi-sabi of um her upcoming experience. That's a healthy place to be. And over and over and over again, we've seen um our clients, you know, watch um as their their story unfolds and they get a less than perfect experience. And um it's interesting, even in pretty tough cases when it can be a little bit devastating on in some regard, whether that devastation to one person is, oh, I had to use an epidural, um, or that devastation that might not be a devastation to someone, right? If they didn't get an epidural, that might be a devastation. Or their devastation was I had to be induced, or um, you know, my baby came earlier than I thought, or it might be postpartum stuff, like my baby didn't breastfeed well. Um so often the the gift of of um the ultimate goal, which is a healthy mom, healthy baby, that is preeminent, of course, and so often that will override our disappointments. But I guess my my message in this for this podcast is to love the wabi-sabi of your experience. Um be gentle to yourself in your expectations, be gentle to your baby and the the journey the baby has to have. One time I I love this um recently. I had a client who took that perspective. Her birth didn't go exactly how she wanted. Um but she said, you know what, but this is maybe this is how the baby needed it to go. And that's okay with me. I could do, I can't remember what it was that she didn't like, but it's like I could do that if it's what the maybe this is what the baby needs to be born. So your wabi-sabi, your imperfect experience, your caddy wampus experience that's just a little bit off, that has a little bit of flaw in it, um, maybe perfect if you can embrace that and adore the wabi-sabi of your experience. Um, maybe that will make all the difference as you go in with um more open expectations. Because from a grand view, um, from a grand view in humanity, there are all kinds of birth experiences. There's no right experience, there's no wrong experience. There are difficult experiences, there are exhilarating experiences, there are incredible experiences, there are um tragically devastating and and uh sorrowful experiences. But um if we can kind of maintain our view of perspective and priority, that that uh that might be a healthy place to be as we uh embrace the wabi sabi. So there's your new word for the day. I know it's mine for the day. Wabi sabi. It's it is actually it has some um roots in Japanese culture, art, history, um, and it's a concept that comes from Japan. And apparently it's getting a little attention um on TikTok now. So in embrace the wabi sabi of your day um is is my your day and your your birth, your labor, your breastfeeding experience, your um, you know, your parenting experience. Kind of sit back and learn to accept what is um and what cannot we what we cannot change and kind of enjoy it. Enjoy it for what it is. I know harder said than done. But hopefully you enjoy wabi sabi. I know that um, you know, sometimes we just have to relax, let go a little bit, and let things be. Thank you for being with me here today on the Ordinary Doolow podcast. I hope you have a wonderful day coming up. Um, and I want you to to make a, as I always do, like make a connection, make a human connection with someone else. Um, and my challenge today is to make a connection with yourself. Um, however you do that. If you need some quiet time, some still time, make a connection with yourself. Maybe that's um doing a little introspective work, maybe that's just being still with with uh sounds or with sights or um some spending some time just, you know, you in nature or you in your room or wherever that space, that time and space might be for you to connect with yourself. That's a very important person to connect with. Thank you so much for being here today. We hope to see you next time on the Ordinary Doula Podcast. Have a good one.

SPEAKER_01:

Episode credits will be in the show notes. Next time, as we continue to explore the many aspects of giving birth.