fashion clothes

I'm a walking contradiction sometimes, so bear with me.

Several years ago now, I started to finally share the story of my miscarriage, of the diagnosis of infertility that ended up being completely wrong.

Sharing that story, and some of the other experiences in my life, have brought many amazing people into my circle. A while back, one of them, Alexa Bigwarfe, contacted me asking if I might be interested in this project she was working on.

A book.

A book about grief.


Specifically a book for grieving mothers who have lost their children, however they have lost them, written by those of us who have been there.

I said yes immediately, threw out some names of other writers I knew who had stories to tell that I thought should be included.

Then I stared at the computer screen for a long time.

A very long time.

Though I had shared the story before, this time I had to write it not just for me, but for them. All the people out there who might someday read it.

It took a few weeks to work up the courage to do it, and when I finally did get to it, there were tears. Many tears. It has been a long time now since I lost her, but when you open up a vein like that, it all comes back and hits you all over again.

I sent it off, then we waited through edits and drafts and finally the book was live.

It is out now.

If you are interested, if you've experienced infertility, miscarriage, stillbirth or the death of a child, I would recommend it for one reason and one reason only: that you will know that even if it feels like the most isolating experience of your life, you are not alone. There are other mothers walking this earth without the children who should be here, and we hear you.

The book is available for free electronic download through tomorrow. It will be available to purchase as an ebook after that, and the print copy can be ordered now as well. 

I wasn't prepared for the emotional onslaught the release of the book would bring.

I'm conflicted, to say the least.

It took me a good long while to articulate my feelings about this earlier today when my therapist asked me what was going on. I am glad that I participated in this project, but I hate that it exists. I hate that it needs to exist.

It feels wrong to promote a book about grief, because anyone seeking this book out won't be doing it for a happy reason.

It feels wrong to be excited about something that still hurts me all these years later, even if my story is probably one of the mildest in the book.

It feels wrong.

If no one ever had to read this book, my heart would be filled with joy.

If no mother ever needed to seek comfort in the words of someone who understood the pain she is feeling right now, my soul would be rejoicing.

Everyone who reads this book, aside from those doing it just because they know one of us, or the therapists or medical professionals who read it to understand, will be reading this book because they joined a club no one wants to belong to.

And that breaks my heart.

It is my sincerest hope that this anthology we've created helps someone out there, that somehow our words can rise up from the pages and wrap her in love and acknowledgement, that she won't feel alone, that she will know that we understand.

xoxo

Princess Kate Middleton is in labor, as you'd likely know if you've turned on a television or been anywhere near Facebook this morning. I want to believe that the paparazzi will allow her and her husband this time with privacy and discretion, and I have to hope that the cameras won't chase them all over town when the baby emerges, elbowing each other for that first picture.

You have to wonder when being famous automatically meant that you consented to being followed by total strangers 24 hours a day, to having flashbulbs go off in your face at every opportunity, to relinquishing any sense of privacy.

Obviously, I make the argument that it shouldn't. I don't just make that argument, I also refuse to buy tabloids because when you buy tabloids, you are encouraging that very behavior.

Anyhow, I wish them calm and peace, joy and love on this day.

It also got me thinking.

I've been thinking a lot about babies lately.

I had a bit of a revelation in a therapy session a few weeks ago when it comes to my experiences with pregnancy, childbirth and parenting newborns.

My first pregnancy was a true miracle. I've never been so happy in my life as I was then, feeling as though the entire cancer diagnosis and all that had led us to this moment. Then it ended in the middle of the night in a medically forced labor two days after an ultrasound told me that the baby had died.

My second pregnancy, a miracle as well, but a cautious one now because the joy was gone, ended in shock and panic when he came too early and was whisked away to the nicu and intubated. The pregnancy had been easy, and he was an easy baby once we got past all that, but those were the scariest 9 days of my life.

My third pregnancy, mostly uneventful, ended in an anticlimactic birth in a room full of too many people and cameras, but with a baby girl who was healthy. She would soon develop nightmarish colic that would last well over six months.

My fourth pregnancy was hell, from the moment of conception. I knew I was pregnant immediately and was sick within days. I lost so much weight and was so dehydrated that I needed IVs more than once. Towards the end of the pregnancy, I developed an irritable uterus, which basically just meant that I had contractions almost constantly. For six weeks. Then I tripped chasing one of the kids and strained every ligament and muscle between my knees and my chest. In excruciating pain, contracting constantly, I was just happy when it was over. And she was the sweetest, easiest baby. I developed PPD that was almost border lining on psychosis. It lasted over a year.

At this point, my therapist stopped me, knowing that I still had one child to discuss, and she pointed out something that I had never considered.

You had to combine all four of them to get one good experience. To get the joy of pregnancy, an easy pregnancy, a good labor and a healthy happy baby, all four of them had to be grouped together. Something bad, very bad, had happened each time, and I had never really allowed myself to think about that way.

Instead, I always just sort of felt like something was missing but couldn't make sense of it.

Even though I am a doula and help other women work through their experiences all the time, my own weren't making sense to me.

I can see it now, though.

Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on how you look at it, my fifth pregnancy was easy. He was early and tiny, but perfect. He was a good baby, but he was also not planned, and that fact set in motion an entirely different set of events that would tarnish all the memories that could have been good ones. That should have been good ones. I've written before a little about how, purely as a coping mechanism, I don't remember most of it. What I do remember acts as a trigger for my PTSD. My own child, a trigger for something that he had no fault in.


I know that it may sound odd, but as a woman who has been pregnant five times and who has four children now, I don't have many good memories of those moments in my life. Just playing the numbers, you would think I should.

I became a doula in the hopes of helping other women build those memories, but every once in a while, I wish that things had been different for me.

This is the part where I ask you not to lecture me about being grateful for what I have, because I am. I'm fully aware that society, women especially, expect and almost demand that we only remember the good pieces, that we never talk about the bad experiences because they mistakenly think that it somehow diminishes our love of our children. It doesn't. It just makes our experiences as mothers more real, more genuine, more honest.

I wish and hope for other women to have what I didn't.

And as much as I hate to admit it, sometimes I'm a little envious when it all happens for them.

Good luck, Princess Kate. I hope another chapter in your fairytale comes true today.

Mother's Day is upon us. As a doula, I've been blessed to bear witness to many women as they became mothers, as they harnessed all their inner strength, as they fought for the births they wanted, as they held their children for the first time.

This is a topic near and dear to my heart, and it has been since I was a college student reading book after book after book about how much things have changed in health care. It wasn't until I was a laboring mother in that system that I really saw it though, and it wasn't until I became a doula that I knew there was something I could do about it. With my hands and my heart, I have the power to help other women reclaim maternity.

If you talked to 100 women and asked them to describe their experiences with pregnancy and childbirth, there's a good chance that you would hear 100 very different stories. Some of them would be triumphant and inspiring. Some of them would be anything but. Too many of them.

The truth is, pregnancy and childbirth don't belong to us women the way they should. They haven't for a very long time. For any discussion of why maternity is as messed up as it is today to make sense, we have to talk how and why we got where we are.

Since the dawn of time, for as long as women had babies, they have had help.

That help came from other women, most of which had birthed children of their own. Midwives. Without formal training, they learned the craft by hands on experience. They were skilled in breech deliveries, they were skilled in the use of herbs to assist with labor, with bleeding, with nursing. They understood that pregnancy and childbirth were and are a very normal, natural part of the human condition - a requirement of it, in fact, in order for society to perpetuate itself.

All that began to change in the early 1800's with the development of hospitals and the invention of forceps. Men began to push their way into birthing rooms, claiming they had new tools and procedures that would make labor better. By mid-century, more and more women were giving birth in hospital settings with male doctors and fewer with midwives, particularly in urban settings. Hospital births were more expensive, a privilege of those with money, and the perception quickly arose that they were therefor better.

Though the thought at the time was that the hospitals were safer and more advanced, the truth is that they weren't. Obstetricians began demanding women employ the lithomy (laying on the back) position for pushing, primarily because it made their job easier - even if it's not the one most women would naturally gravitate towards. It decreases the size of the pelvic outlet and makes the delivery process longer and harder for the mother. In addition to changing the mechanics of labor, the use of forceps and episiotomies skyrocketed, again for the ease of the doctor. All this must have come with some benefit of better outcomes, right?  Wrong.

Maternal deaths went up as disease spread far easier in hospitals, doctors moving from one patient to the next without realizing that unwashed hands were a perfect vector for illness.  Puerperal fever, also known as childbed fever started killing mothers at alarming rates. Women were also increasingly likely to suffer from sepsis because of the surgical interventions.

Even still, the profession pressed on, declaring their superiority over midwifery. Male doctors pushed for a monopoly on childbirth, and gradually the practice of midwifery was outlawed, even though there was no actual evidence that medicine was better. In fact, the evidence was to the contrary.

By the turn of the century, women just came to accept that births occurred in hospitals. Twilight sleep was frequently employed, leaving the women with little or no conscious memory of the birth. They arrived at the hospital in labor, were drugged, and eventually woke up having given birth, usually with large episiotomies.

Families weren't present, women weren't even conscious. Birth had become an automated process that all happened behind closed doors.

Those women, the ones who were drugged and had their children ripped (sometimes literally) from their wombs?

They are our mothers and grandmothers.

In the matter of a few generations, women lost any real connection to what labor is supposed to be like. It went from a normal part of the human condition, attended to by knowledgeable women, to a medicalized process where mothers were at the mercy of the industry.

Add in the more recent additions of elective inductions and pitocin (the devil's contractor is what I call it) and you end up with countless women who were told that their bodies couldn't labor right, that they failed to progress, that their uteruses were overstimulated, that they needed c-sections. Tethered to machines, kept on their backs and drugged, it's no wonder their bodies didn't cooperate.

This is not what labor is supposed to be like.

And yet, it is. More than that, it's what we've come to believe is normal.

I cannot even tell you how many women I have talked to as they tried to work through what happened. Who break down when I tell them that what they've experienced is real and legitimate and it's called birth trauma. Who didn't realize that they didn't have to go along with every intervention. Who feel like their bodies have failed them. Who are hesitant to ever go through it again out of fear. Who didn't feel empowered to ask questions, to ask for time, to say no.

It breaks my heart.

One of my favorite clients and dearest friends was one of them. Her first delivery had been traumatic. Induced, it took forever for the induction to work. Starving and exhausted, she got an epidural because she couldn't handle the artificial contractions anymore. Then one thing after another happened and she eventually delivered her son in a drama filled urgency of interventions. One of those if we can't suction him out with this push right now, we're rolling you to the OR for a section kind of endings.

She felt defeated by it all, and I remember how scared she was that it would go that way again. She called me in tears when she found out she was pregnant with the next baby. I told her that it might happen again, but that it didn't have to. That things could be different. That I could help her.

Her second pregnancy, with more complications than the first, ended in a dark hospital room one night. Music playing in the background, calm surrounding us. She had to be induced, there was no avoiding that, but I was there to help her work through the pain. She ate. She drank. She breathed. She went into the deepest recesses of her mind when she needed to gain clarity and peace. She pushed for only a few minutes. No vacuum, no forceps, no episiotomy, no c-section, no drama. The baby was healthy, she was healthy. It was beautiful.

I'm pretty sure she felt like she could conquer the world that day.

~~~~~~~~

As women, we need to help each other feel that way.

Women need to be taught that their bodies almost always know what to do. They need to learn to trust their instincts.

We don't have generations of women before us to teach us these things like we used to, so we need to relearn it all. Then we need to share it with other women. We need to support each other.

Pregnancy is normal. Birth is normal.

It is not a medical emergency unless it is.  It is a necessary condition of humanity.

Complications happen, yes, but not all the time and not to everyone. For those women and their children, often the only safe route to birth is surgical, and for that option we will be forever grateful.

Birth is not something we should be afraid of.

Knowledge is power. Experience is important. Having someone there to support you is vital.

Women should be there, helping each other, whether the births happen at home or in hospitals, whether with midwives or obstetricians, whether for the first time or the fifth time.

We need women who've done this before. Who can tell how dilated you are just by watching your body language. Who can find the place where you keep your tension and release it. Who won't rush you. Who can whisper the words of encouragement in your ear when the doubt sets in. Who will remind you to focus. Who will tell you that you are strong and beautiful and capable. Who will tell you that you can do this. Who will get you through each contraction by promising that it's one step closer to meeting your baby. Who will sit in the hushed silence with you as you wait for the first cry. Who will shed tears of happiness with you. Who know what a miracle birth is, no matter how many times they see it.

Pregnancy is beautiful. Birth is beautiful.

Let's take it back.

Let's take it all back.

One pregnancy at a time.

I know this lady.  She's pretty fantastic.

She's known to most as I Want A Dumpster Baby.  To me, she's Katy.

I've never actually met her in person, but we've connected in this strange and magnificent online world.  She gets me.  I get her.   Maybe more than most people do, for the reasons that we share only with one another.


She's about to become something she's wanted to be for so long that my heart is ready to burst with happiness for her.

She's about to become a mom.

And she didn't even have to fish a baby out of a dumpster.

I get a little teary and sentimental when any of my friends has a baby, just part of who I am.  As a doula, I think this tendency of mine is magnified even more.

I'm drawn to women in labor like a moth to a flame.

The anticipation.  The unknown.  The nerves.

The waiting.

The rhythm of labor, when it comes and washes over your body.  When instinct drives you to water, to rocking, to going deep inside yourself.  To whatever you need to do right now.

Though I can't be with you tomorrow in person, I want you to know that I'm holding your hand from here.  I'm cheering you on.  I'm rubbing your back.  I'm whispering in your ear how you are strong and beautiful and capable. I'm telling you that you can do this.  I'm reassuring you that you can trust your body to know what to do.

I'm holding back tears and holding my breath with you as we sit in the hushed silence waiting for the first cry.  Then waiting again.

Katy, my friend, have a beautiful labor.

Keep those babies all to yourself, in your own little space for as long as you need.

Hall & Oates.

Their adoring public can wait.  Honest.

I love you.