Rock your Birth Philosophy

What do you believe to be true about birth?

We each come into birth work with our own set of assumptions, beliefs, and desires about birth work.  These have been shaped by a lifetime of cultural and family training around birth, our own birth experiences, books we’ve read and trainings attended.  I’m guessing most of you reading this have a pretty clear sense of what your core philosophy is about birth, and how that translates into your work with families.

Every once in a while we are blessed with something new that rocks our birth philosophy, shaking things up or even upside down… This transformative experience may come through a training or workshop, article, an extraordinary birth experience, or even just one truly special person who says just the right thing.

With over twenty years of birth experience, I can still readily name the core experiences that have made me who I am as a doula and childbirth educator.  The lessons learned can be subtle but have a deep impact on your practice, or sometimes they can rock your very sense of who you are as a birth professional.

Check out this brilliant recent blog post by a doula in England reflecting on her experience of a transformational Birthing from Within training and how it rocked her birth philosophy inside out!  Her writing is wonderfully honest, personal, and full of questions rather than answers…

We all need to have our birth world rocked from time to time.  It is easy to get stuck, particularly in anger at the ways in which modern birth culture can disrespect women, birth and babies.  If there is one thing I’ve learned in two decades of birth work, it is that we All need to ask more questions, listen with an open heart, and make room for new knowledge and perspective if we are to best serve the families we are called to support.