A Student Doula's Story

Here is a post from another blog by one of my Level One students … giving you an inside view of what it's like to be a student doula, volunteering for Montreal Birth Companions.

DEAR BIRTHING, WITH LOVE (thank you http://highalert.net/news/dear-birthing-love)

I am ready to stop typing and run to my phone if it rings. It may be a call from the doula I’m shadowing. There is a woman who will give birth any day now, and when this woman (the client/patient/mother-to-be*) needs birth support, I will go (with the doula) to be with her at her home, or maybe straight to the hospital.

Besides my own, the only birth I’ve attended was that of my little sister, and I was a 5 year-old, and it was late at night. This makes me a minority among the 16 women in my Level 1 doula training course with the Montreal Birth Companions, because I am not a mother.

You don’t have to be a mother to be a doula. You just have to be there. In the last few months of this course, I’ve learned a lot about birth: anatomy, pain-alleviation techniques, how it progresses and why it might stall, affirmations, visualizations, and what to pack in my birth bag. This is all important, but the most important role that a doula plays is of being present, and being loving.

Montreal Birth Companions, then, love hundreds of women a year. They provide free doula services to women in need. They are most often refugees, immigrants, women without family in Canada, and women who don’t have health care. They are women who just need a little bit of love at a vulnerable time.

With each ‘birth story’ that I hear from a fellow Montreal Birth Companion, I am filled with admiration at the important role they play at these births. They are advocates and peace-makers, negotiators and videographers, a friend and calm presence. I am also filled with a certain amount of frustration or anger at a medical system that seems, often, to desecrate such a powerful moment—perhaps the most powerful of all. Birth also has two sides: pleasure and pain. But, I’ve learned that pain in birth serves a function—it releases oxytocin which makes the contractions stronger and more effective, and stress hormones increase blood flow, which brings much-needed oxygen to the baby. I’m not confident, though, that the ‘pain’ of the medical system serves a purpose.

I’ll remain on high alert for calls to explore birth and love in the hospital. In the meantime, I encourage you to VOTE daily for Montreal Birth Companion’s campaign to provide more free pre-natal classes to women. You can like the MBC’s facebook page and select 'get notifications' for daily reminders.

*Serving as a doula is new to me and I am not sure what language I feel comfortable with, yet. As my teacher writes in her book The Birth Conspiracy, 'client' seems impersonal and business-like, while 'patient' may disempower the woman giving birth.

Level Two Doula Course

I am very pleased and a little taken aback that my doula course has been so well received. So, happily, I will be offering Level Two starting on November 25, 2013. 

Classes will start on November 25, 2013, and will go through to February 17, 2014, with a break in December. Classes will run every Monday night from 6:30 to 9:30, at 6767 Cote des Neiges, in Montreal.

I have tweaked this course a little, and added two extra classes, as there is always too much to learn! So it will be a total of thirty hours of class time. Shadowing and attending births will of course be part of the learning experience.

Please let me know as soon as possible if you are interested in Level Two. As always, the cost is $400, payable in instalments if need be.

We will be adding several other courses this year: Level Three will definitely be offered, also an in-depth Fun with Herbs Workshop and a doula retreat.

Here's a taste of Fun with Herbs:

Herb Day 2013

Healing Balm

Herbs and Poetry, Birth and Death

In the midst of our world turning as it does - MBC doesn't have enough doulas for our needy clients; refugees are streaming from war-torn countries to other, less war-torn countries, Kofi Awoonor killed in that horrific bombing in Nairobi - Kofi Awoonor! - may he rest in peace...

"Across a New Dawn"

Sometimes, we read the

lines in the green leaf

run our fingers over the

smooth of the precious wood

from our ancient trees;

Sometimes, even the sunset

puzzles, as we look

for the lines that propel the clouds,

the colour scheme

with the multiple designs

that the first artist put together

There is dancing in the streets again

the laughter of children rings

through the house

On the seaside, the ruins recent

from the latest storms

remind of ancestral wealth

pillaged purloined pawned

by an unthinking grandfather

who lived the life of a lord

and drove coming generations to

despair and ruin

But who says our time is up

that the box maker and the digger

are in conference

or that the preachers have aired their robes

and the choir and the drummers

are in rehearsal?

No; where the worm eats

a grain grows.

the consultant deities

have measured the time

with long winded

arguments of eternity

And death, when he comes

to the door with his own

inimitable calling card

shall find a homestead

resurrected with laughter and dance

and the festival of the meat

of the young lamb and the red porridge

of the new corn

We are the celebrants

whose fields were

overrun by rogues

and other bad men who

interrupted our dance

with obscene songs and bad gestures

Someone said an ailing fish

swam up our lagoon

seeking a place to lay its load

in consonance with the Original Plan

Master, if you can be the oarsman

for our boat

please do it, do it.

I asked you before

once upon a shore

at home, where the

seafront has narrowed

to the brief space of childhood

We welcome the travelers

come home on the new boat

fresh from the upright tree

From "Promises of Hope: New and Selected Poems", selected by Kofi Anyidoho, University of Nebraska Press and the African Poetry Book Fund, 2014

I bring to you a recipe for St John's Wort oil in the hopes that you will be able to use it to heal each other and yourselves.

This can be used for muscle strain, sunburn, muscle cramps, bruises, labor pains. Do not apply it to open skin, and remember that it may increase photosensitivity so don't use it as a suntan oil.

Have fun with herbs, read poetry, make love not war!

Call for Volunteers

Montreal Birth Companions provides free doula services, prenatal and postpartum support, and resources for refugee, non-status, and other marginalized women in Montreal.

We are in need of birth companions ... please contact me if you are willing and able to devote some time to our worthy cause.
If you are a doula and you can donate one birth every six months to MBC, we would be happy to have you on board!
We are looking especially for birth companions who are fluent in different languages. We would love to have more doulas from our diverse Montreal communities. We welcome everyone who has an open heart and is willing to donate their time and energy.

The women we serve appreciate the companionship, support and kindness that her doula provides. Women come from many backgrounds, walks of life, stories and histories. But the birthing year is the same: we want to give birth to a healthy baby, and we would like to have that experience to be filled with joy. This is not always possible if it is a sad time in the mother's life, but the presence of a birth companion can help spread the love.

We have clients from all around the world. Right now we are serving women from: Algeria, Haiti, St. Vincent, Germany, India, Nigeria, Philippines, Mali, Senegal, Guinee, and Quebec. Next month, we could receive requests from China, Cameroon, Mexico, the US, or Russia ... we never know where our clients will come from or when they will find us. We have had calls from women in their first trimester, and from women in labor!

Many midwifery students try to gain experience as interns in other countries. Volunteering for MBC is a way that doulas and aspiring midwives can gain experience working with women whose cultural attitudes and lives are very different from their own. It is a way that these doulas and aspiring midwives can really understand that the birth experience is universal, and that accompanying a woman in labor transcends language and reaches across boundaries.

Please consider volunteering for MBC.

Vote for Montreal Birth Companions!

As you all know by now, if you are regular readers of my blog (speaking of which, please follow me!), Montreal Birth Companions is a volunteer-led organization that provides free doula services and resources to marginalized women in and around Montreal.

The women we serve are at risk because of youth, poverty, isolation, or refugee/immigration status, or because of all of these factors. MBC doulas work to provide non-judgmental and unconditional support to all of our pregnant women and new parents.

Montreal Birth Companions have been providing support for birthing families since 2003, with no funding. Our volunteers work from the heart; our coordinators and administrators spend unpaid hours devoted to this worthy cause. Please help us help women by voting for Birth Companions on the AVIVA FUND. You can vote every day, from individual email addresses!

HOW TO VOTE:

1) Create an account on the Aviva Community

Fund website: https://www.avivacommunityfund.org/users/registration/register

2) Go to your email inbox and click on the link that Aviva sent you.

3) Go to the Montreal Birth Companions Aviva idea:

http://www.avivacommunityfund.org/ideas/acf16929 and VOTE for Montreal Birth Companions!

4) Do this every day starting September 30th. Help us win funds to provide prenatal classes for the women we serve.

Ethical Birth Work

I was an intern at a maternity clinic a quite few years ago and I had some interesting experiences there. One young woman came to get some experience as a midwife, so that she could decide if she wanted to make the jump from being a doula, or if she was going to move to physiotherapy instead. On her first afternoon, the clinic was very busy, and she was led to a room where found she was the only midwife (not even!). She became depressed over the six weeks I knew her, and she left miserable and feeling violated.

I was very interested in what was happening. I have had a dream all my life of returning to Uganda where I spent my first three years, and working alongside the TBAs there to provide maternity care. I am fascinated by how organizations work, and I love to see how particularly women's organizations unfold, and how we keep (or not) bullying and aggression out of the ring.
I have travelled to many places. I have so many memories of different places and different people. I remember being led up a rocky path in the mountains of Morocco when I was seventeen, by two young women. We found a stream and drank, and spoke with our eyes and hands. We laughed. I gave them my earrings.

In Africa, a few years later, a young woman ran to me carrying her baby. I knew he was dying. She thought I may be able to help because of the color of my skin. I couldn't.

I travelled on my own, avoiding danger or fleeing when necessary. I used my polite manner and my eyes and hands to communicate friendliness, and I was never hurt too badly.

Years and many experiences and chapters later, I decided to finally get my certification as a professional midwife. My visit to the maternity clinic was one step along the road. One night, at around three in the morning, I was in a birthing room at the clinic. I was not supposed to be "primary", but the woman who was on for that night was exhausted from a hard birth, so the head midwife told me to assist. The birth was difficult, and the head midwife told me to enter the woman and manipulate the baby's head so that he could be born. I had my hands in the woman, when the boss midwife entered the room, tapped me on the shoulder, indicated that I should leave, and she had another intern take my place.

She was having a power struggle with the head midwife. Her ego was too big to fit through her pelvis, that's for sure!

But what about the woman giving birth? How did she feel when my hands left her, there was a tense emotional moment, and a new person's hands went in? Did she feel violated?

I have no interest in manipulating baby's heads, actually, I believe they get born better if they're left alone. But I also believe that the epicentre of the birthing room HAS to be the mother who is birthing her baby. A birthing room is no place for politics to unfold. Aggression and rudeness do not belong there. Love belongs. Peace belongs. Honor and respect belong.

There is a wider discussion going on right now in the midwifery world, about how this plays out in the bigger world picture of midwifery today. Student midwives from North America are traveling to poorer countries to earn their qualifying numbers so that they can become certified as professional midwives. Is this right or wrong? How can we accept a student midwife's desire to do good, and screen out the "number whores" (these are the students who travel to other countries simply to get their qualifying numbers, giving little thought to the women they are working with or for).

There are many small clinics all over the world where courageous, passionate, dedicated and professional midwives work every hour of every day to improve maternity care for the women they serve. Let's not throw the baby out with the bath water! For many of these clinics, paying volunteers from rich countries are one of the few ways they manage to stay solvent. But we do not need students to travel to other places so that they can experience a woman dying...birth is not reality television.

I believe the answer is within. If you go into every birthing room with love in your heart, respecting the other people in that room and honoring the birthing mother, then you will find yourself unable to use a birthing mother as a number, a statistic, or an educational tool. Women who give birth are worthy of the greatest respect. Let our politics play out elsewhere, away from the new baby, away from the birthing mother, away from the birth room.

Refugee Babies

You decide to move to Canada, because in your country, you are hearing stories from neighbouring countries about chemical attacks, schools closing, medical care non-existent. Your friend's cousin's aunt married a man from a country where, ten years after she moved there, she is leaving everything and running to live as a refugee in a country she only visited once before, on holiday.

Your sister can legally sponsor you, and you move to Canada. You and your husband can find work legally, and the children can stay with your sister. You live together in a small apartment, smaller than the one at home but... the future looks good

Even the birth control pill doesn't work 100% of the time. The best way to not get pregnant is to not have heterosexual sex. But, you're in love, you're on an adventure...the sperm meets the egg, and you are pregnant.

You know you don't have medical coverage, but you don't care. You're young and healthy.

Then you find a doctor, who tells you that the birth will cost you at least $5000. If you have a cesarian section, or your baby needs care, it could go up to $10,000 or even $15,000.


I know some people think that the lady in question should "go home". But sometimes that just isn't possible. MBC has assisted women who have been living in Montreal as domestics, for years, and when they find themselves pregnant, they find themselves out of work and out of a home, and without medical care. Other women do not qualify as refugees, but they know if they go home they will be killed, or raped, or they will have to work as prostitutes. It's always easy for you to say, if you're a hard-working person with the good luck to be born into a place where hard work pays, and food is on the table, that "these people" need to act differently. But everyone makes love, and babies are conceived all the time. And sometimes a baby is conceived out of love - and when a woman keeps a baby in her body who is the result of violence and violation, doesn't that woman at least deserve our care?

Babies are being born every minute, and I believe we are ALL responsible for them. If we can assist a mother to have a birth experience that is full of love, and she can leave the birthing room knowing that she is capable of providing unconditional love for her baby, and knowing that she will be supported in this task, then we are paving the way for a better world for all of us: our children, and everyone's children.

Montreal Birth Companions doulas accompany women like these to the hospital to labor and give birth. Many of our clients are single, or apart from their families. Some have other children "back at home". Some have love babies, others have babies conceived during violence. Some have medical coverage, many do not.

If you would like more information about our program, please visit Montreal Birth Companions.