Odds are that you and almost everyone you know can spin a tale about birth: the birth of their children or grandchildren, births they witnessed or heard about, or the story of their own entry into the world. And these stories are important. People want to tell their story, and need to be heard.
YOU HAVE A HEALTHY BABY! BUT HOW DO YOU FEEL?
All too often, the story of birth might become eclipsed by the end result: the baby is here! After all the waiting, planning, guessing, work, and anticipation, a new person has entered the lives of the family. But the experience of birthing is still significant.
I ask everyone I know who has had a child to tell me their birth story. And almost every time, I notice the urgency they have to tell it and retell it, the surprise in their eyes at how much they suddenly want their story to be known and acknowledged. The stories take on the form of a fairy tale, or an epic. The stage is carefully set with the events preceding the birth, the challenges and joys of the middle retold, the climax given theatrical weight. People have told me things like: “I went to a place that I didn’t know existed with in me,” “I didn’t think I could make it through this,” “I felt so alone in my experience,” “I felt like a superhero.”
It becomes clear how important the experience of birth has become to all of these people.
I ask everyone I know who has had a child to tell me their birth story. And almost every time, I notice the urgency they have to tell it and retell it, the surprise in their eyes at how much they suddenly want their story to be known and acknowledged. The stories take on the form of a fairy tale, or an epic. The stage is carefully set with the events preceding the birth, the challenges and joys of the middle retold, the climax given theatrical weight. People have told me things like: “I went to a place that I didn’t know existed with in me,” “I didn’t think I could make it through this,” “I felt so alone in my experience,” “I felt like a superhero.”
It becomes clear how important the experience of birth has become to all of these people.
BEYOND BLACK AND WHITE
These stories are sometimes at odds with the narratives of birth that many people are familiar with through pop-culture and media. Usually those birth stories go one of two ways: a triumphant, glowingly positive experience that ends with the serene, ultra feminine mother cradling a darling infant, and basking in the glow of new life. Or, the birth becomes a battlefield, full of terror, and pain, and the baby is saved at the last moment the team of doctors who are only just able to avoid tragedy. Either way, the experience is portrayed as very black and white.
| Pop-culture and media birth stories leave very little room for parents to navigate the complexity of real emotion that accompany birth. |
 | There’s a deep, wide river of experiences that make up the birth story. What does it mean when the mother is handed her child, and is feeling more that just pure bliss? What about the challenges of transitioning into parenthood, recovering from a physical experience different from any other, or potentially encountering postpartum depression? “You have a healthy baby,” the world says, “this should be the happiest moment of your life!” This insistence, while well intentioned can have the result of robbing new parents of their own complicated experience, and silencing the details that go beyond just joy or tragedy. |
EVERYONE MAKES THE CHOICES THAT MAKE SENSE TO THEM
The choices people make around birth are so personal but can also be made very public. Family members, friends, other parents, or members of the community all have opinions about how the birth should go, which can make it hard when parents make choices that defy these opinions, or when the birth doesn’t turn out as expected. Parents can feel ashamed if they ended up not having a natural birth, needing surgery or just struggled with the whole process, and may be less willing or able to tell their story.
It is so important to value all kinds of birth, the decisions that the family makes about their experiences, and the decision that were out of anyone's hands. The story of birth is of course the baby’s story, but it also becomes an important part of their life story for the mother, the father, the parent, the grandparent, and it is a story they need to tell.
It is so important to value all kinds of birth, the decisions that the family makes about their experiences, and the decision that were out of anyone's hands. The story of birth is of course the baby’s story, but it also becomes an important part of their life story for the mother, the father, the parent, the grandparent, and it is a story they need to tell.
| So many birth stories don’t get told because they don’t fit neatly into what we assume birth should look like. |
What about the story of the single teenager, the genderqueer punk, the woman over 40, the incarcerated mother, the stillbirth, the 10th child, the trans parent, the birth after a miscarriage, the survivor of sexual violence, the new mother full of both joy and regret? Can we hear their stories, validate their experiences and see their births as real and true? What support and community can these folks find for their births if there is no road map for how birth can be different for different people? Is there a way to love and value all the ways that people might go about their births?
CREATING AND FINDING SAFE SPACE
Gather The Women Olympia. Photo by Samantha Pinson.
| We can all help create safe space for these stories by learning to listen to one and other, without judgment and acknowledging the diversity of our experiences, and by doing so, find both healing and celebration. |
Within our understanding of birth, there needs to be great space for a full spectrum of complex emotion. There needs to be room for joy, surprise, disappointment, grief, trauma, healing, damage, confusion, conflict, depression, hope and much more. One of the most important roles of the doula is to hear the story, see it unfold, turn out in unexpected ways, and then be able support the telling and retelling, so that the narrative, however strange, imperfect, upsetting or beautiful can become a part of the new life of the parent, the child and the family.
- Sophie Smyer
If you’re looking for a safe space to share your birth story, check out the Olympia Birth Story Sharing Circle, or Gather the Women Olympia. Both groups meet once a month and if you have a story you would like to share, send us an email!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
| Sophie Smyer is a new doula and recent graduate of the Evergreen State College living in Olympia, Washington. She has spent the last 4 years learning about birth in relation to reproductive justice and anti-oppression work. She is passionate about working with and holding space for clients who may not find what they are looking for in other birth settings, particularly queer folks, single parents, young parents, differently abled folks, inmates, and people of color. She is just beginning her work as a doula, volunteering at St. Joseph’s in Tacoma and connecting with other birth workers in the community. |  |
