MBC Doula School Level One

Interested in doula training in Montreal? MBC Doula School provides a comprehensive doula training with hands-on experience throughout, as the students volunteer with Montreal Birth Companions (visit us here).

Level one is starting September 8, 2014. Follow the link below to find out more about a future in birth work!

MBC Doula School. 

Burnout

Mama and son in Barbados

 Mama was happy.

This story is about burnout. About that feeling you have when you have so many worries and brightly colored post-its stuck inside your head that you mainly just walk around your house looking at things.

My particular form of burnout started in December, when my mother came to visit with a large parasite on her neck. Cancer is weird that way. This thing just grew and grew and grew until it just sucked her away.

I made her a party for New Year's:

L'Chaim!

Then I got back to work. In January, I organized a big doula workshop with my friend Debra Pascali-Bonaro. It was wonderful, all things doula, all the doula students ... the hotel was crap, I learned my lesson about cheap hotels. The food was great - having a chef for a son is a bonus (yes, I paid him). 

I also attended five births that month. I realized during some of those experiences that I had to stop attending hospital births for a while. I couldn't bear to see unnecessary things done to women by people who had not bothered to educate themselves about the birth process. 

I studied like crazy for my CPM written exam. When my second son (the boy in the picture!) was born 28 years ago, I realized I wanted to become a midwife. Not because I had a wonderful birth experience but because in fact I was horrified by the approach and the touch of my birth attendants, and I was drawn to treating women with love.

I wrote my exam, and I passed!!! Now I am a Certified Professional Midwife. 

Then the parasite on my mother's neck took over my life, from February until March when she finally passed away, I was caring for her, sometimes from a distance, sometimes right by her side.

Home death isn't all its cracked up to be. Death can be pretty awful, really. I've seen death and its never so nice, but my mother's death was hard. 

And so to mourning and grief. In the Jewish faith, you just sit for a week and don't do anything. This is good. Then for another three weeks your activities are limited. This is also good. 

I have taken good care of myself over the past month. I realized that some of my big disappointments over the past few months are really little - the rejection slips piled up, so? So I started running again, back up to 4 k, and working on it. I want to get to ten by the end of the summer. I eat well. I try to do fun things. I cherish my kids and my family. 

What is the cure for burnout? Be gentle on yourself! This means being able to walk around the house and look at things. To stand in the middle of a room and think for a few minutes. To have a piece of chocolate. 

It also means saying no when you need to. Not always, but when you need to. It means making sure you have a couple of friends you can call when the going gets tough. It means not taking yourself too seriously. It means pushing yourself to get some exercise. It means starting slowly to get yourself back at work and play, but starting! Start off slowly if you need to, but you will need to. Burn-out can't last for too long, because then it becomes chronic tiredness and pain or illness. Treat yourself like a pussy cat for as long as you can, but when its time to get moving again, you will know it.

This particular pussy cat is so happy to be back from the edge! My energy is solid and growing. I am back in the birthing room, after some time away. I have my patience back. I am looking forward to an active and productive year, as the MBC Doula School blooms and MBC continues to provide service for those who are in need. 

Thank you for traveling with me for these past difficult months - the list is long, you know who you are. 

Back to Birthing!

 

I found this beautiful broken robin's egg shell the other day. It reminded me again of how I miss going to births. I finally feel ready to go back to attending birthing women after having taken a couple of months off to attend my mother's death and to then mourn her passing.

When I had a farm, back in the days when I had four little boys under my feet; an acre of vineyard; a huge market garden and a wheat field ... not to mention needy Wwoofers and occasional building tasks (like hoisting chestnut beams for the roof) ... I digress ... when I had the farm, I used to pick coltsfoot flowers in February to make syrup for the next winter's coughs. Just last week, I found some coltsfoot on an abandoned lot in Halifax.

Spring is lovely. I am so happy that the sun has returned - I thought it never would. The darkness of winter 2013/14 was very, very dark, and I am grateful to be alive on this warm lively day.

Projects coming up: I am available for prenatal classes and to attend births; the new MBC Doula School  is growing and expanding; Montreal Birth Companions, as always, is providing doula services for women in need. 

Please contact me if you are interested in joining in any of these projects. I am always happy to share the love!

Life and Death: A Tribute to My Mother

Death brings into question all of your life. My dreams, my goals, my aspirations, seem so small when I remember what my mother was whispering about on her death bed. 

I've always felt that my task on this earth is to try to do good; to try to be kind; to try to make the world a better place.

God knows I've failed,  spectacularly at times. I have a temper, and I "shoot from the hip", and I have a devil-may-care attitude that upsets people. I seem stand-offish and arrogant to those who don't know how deeply shy I am. But, yes, I must admit, my ability to dance to the beat of a different drum has kept me alive, literally, in the past, and probably will continue to offend people in the future.

I first met my mother after I stubbornly refused to turn from breech and the obstetrician recognized that because of a short cord, a normal delivery would be dangerous for me. My mother had a cesarean, which back in those days meant a serious incision - no pretending that cesarean section wasn't major surgery back in the fifties. It gave you a scar to remember! 

Two years later, she gave birth to my sister, and then another sister after that. Back in Uganda at that time repeat cesareans were NOT the order of the day, so my two sisters were born naturally.

My mother was a very sociable person. She was intensely creative and loved to see the world. She loved a party. She loved to talk to people. Her deafness was a real challenge to her, as she was a great and witty conversationalist. Two days before she died, my sisters both happened to be wearing pyjamas with polka dots on them. We were at her side constantly for the last five days of her life. That morning, she brightened up, looked at my sisters (both in their fifties and a little tired after having been up for three days) and said: "I could spot you girls a mile off!".

She wins the end-of-life, in deep pain, absolute pun prize.

She was always excited about my projects, no matter how zany they were. 

She was brave. She left England in 1952 with my father to go to Uganda where she taught mathematics at Makerere University. In 1959 they decided to move to Calgary where she lived a very different life and was appalled by the backwardness and provincialism of the people there.

In her late thirties, with three daughters, one of whom was spinning out of control (yours truly), she decided to move from mathematics into art and she decided to take art classes. She worked very hard and created some absolutely beautiful works. She became an artist during this time, and continued to paint, draw and create up until very recently.

These are some works she did during and just after my father died. 

Never to stay still for longer than a few years, my parents moved to Botswana in the late seventies where my mother created a silkscreen workshop that is still thriving, at a village museum:

 Phuthadikobo Museum

My mother loved the desert. They would get in the truck and drive on to the pans and sleep under the stars. She loved the light.

My mother loved dressing up. She would mix colors magnificently, and she always made sure her hair was done. She loved jewelry, and perfume, and high-heeled shoes. She loved going out with me to buy a pretty dress.

She loved a party. She was always ready to celebrate! On her 80th birthday, she was with us in Italy and we drove to our favorite picnic spot: 

Cinque Terre

It is a spot by the side of the road where we stop and eat supper and watch the sun go down into the sea. We didn't have a fancy picnic basket - just the usual - home made bread, tins of tuna, mozzarella, capers, beer, ... and then we stuck a lighter into a plastic plate of cookies and sang Happy Birthday.

After the sun went down we drove to the nearby town, walked on the boardwalk, and had a coffee. A perfect party!

She loved to knit and sew. With three daughters, she always had us dressed in matching dresses, at least until her oldest decided to wear only jeans, hiking boots and a small T-shirt.

She was a very skilled textile artist: This is the front of a sweater she knitted for me from a silk/cotton mix.

She loved music. She loved art. She was always enthusiastic about going to the Musee des Beaux Arts when she visited Montreal.

She loved to get presents. 

She loved Italy. I moved there in 1985 and she visited whenever she could, which wasn't often in the beginning as she was living in Botswana. But a few years later, my parents bought a medieval tower in the middle of Umbria. It was, simply, a tower. No electricity, bathroom, kitchen, or much of anything. It had water. And it was in the middle of an Italian village.

They didn't live there, because they were still enjoying the Kalahari. So we moved in: two adults, two young children and pretty soon two more babies on the way. I don't know many kids who lived in a medieval tower for some of their childhood, but mine did - I suppose I must have inherited some of my mother's sense of adventure! 

Just over a year ago, after my father died, my mother found out she was ill. She decided to forgo exploration and treatment and instead booked herself on an art tour to Italy: 

Italy Art Tour

This year, my mother spent the winter vacation with us, and she partied with her six grandsons well into the night on New Year's, 2014.

L'Chaim!!

In loving memory of my mother who died on March 17, 2014. 

International Women's Day

This International Women's day, I would like to hand a mimosa branch to each and every one of the people I love.

This day is about women, about peace, strength, the power of love. 

We are not there yet, but I dream of a world where women can give birth with respect and honor; where we can all walk wherever we want whenever we want, a world where there is no hate, no war, no hunger.

"Se non ora, quando?"

If not now, when?

Please go out today and do one thing that will help bring peace.

Women's Bodies and Other People's Values

In Quebec, we are experiencing an interest phenomenon. A provincial politician is trying to be Le Pen. She is stirring up xenophobic and racist emotions rather effectively with some doublespeak that pretends to be about secularism and feminism. The target? Religious Muslim women. The fallout? Pretty well everyone who is not .. erm .. well, let's just say that anyone who looks a little different has experienced annoyance if not rage at this political acrobatics.

I am used to people using women's bodies as a battleground. From my days as a sexual abuse counsellor - and a direct action activist - to my days working in hospitals with birthing women, I have been witness to the phenomenon of the woman's body being argued over, manipulated, commodified, objectified, ground up and spat out.

And it has grown up, this violence against women. Back in the seventies, as a rape crisis worker, it was pretty clear what was happening. If you were a woman, and you were alone at night, or walking home from work, you were a target and you could be raped. If you were a prostitute or an indigenous woman, you could be raped AND killed. Simple. Violence against women.

But today, the violence is coated in pretty words. What do you call it when someone puts his hand into a woman's vagina without asking her or looking her in the eye? Its called rape. Birth rape. Doctors who manhandle and abuse women when they are giving birth say that they are saving lives. They are not. They are exercising their power.

Politicians who make silly rules about what women can or cannot wear may say that they are doing it "for the women" (yes, in South Africa they say that rape is "for the women" too, when they are raping a lesbian to convince her to change her preferences). They say they are doing it for the Muslim women's enlightenment and freedom. 

They're not. They are also exercising their power.

I suggest we ban the type of clothing that overweight, middle-aged Quebecoise women wear, when they should know better. Oh, the tight T-shirt over a middle-aged belly! Oh, the tight jeans over hips that should be covered! Oh, the dyed blond badly-styled hair! The polyester double-knit suits! The shoes that Cinderella's sister wore!

But it's different, you argue. Those badly-styled garments do not speak of a deeper moral code - a code that oppresses women (we are speaking of Islam here). They are just off-the-rack, cheap garments, bought without a shred of moral judgement or thought. Yes, you're right. It heralds the victory of the mediocre fat lady; the no-brainers; the thoughtless violence; the amoral assholes who parade as sensitive do-gooders.

I went to a birth once with a lovely student of mine who wore a see-through spaghetti strap tank top and a fake leopard-skin miniskirt. It was a Montreal summer - hot and humid. In the greyish hallways of the hospital she looked like an angel from heaven - hot, sexy, and happy. The birth was a lot of fun: the birthing mother didn't take any shit from anyone and she gave birth on her hands and knees, even if the physician couldn't handle seeing her vulva "upside down". After the birth we ordered sushi.

Another of my fondest memories was a birthing woman who was dressed completely top to bottom: hat, wig, robe, undershirt, bra, panties, stockings and socks. She removed the panties and stockings to give birth but everything else remained. Her husband, who was not allowed to look at her, sang throughout her labor, and told jokes. She laughed that baby out. The room was full of love.

I have seen women's legs held down, women's bellies jumped on, women yelled at and berated. I have listened to doctors, nurses, and midwives tell women what to do; what to say; what to feel; how to move.

When will we rise up against this banal mediocracy?

Birth and Pleasure!

Here are some highlights from the Birth Companions/DONA workshop with Debra Pascali-Bonaro last weekend. We started out sitting around in a circle, with notebooks at hand, listening intently to what Debra had to say...

Day One, Hour One

The room started to get a little messier and we all moved in closer to Debra, and to each other, as we started to get into her words and the concepts we were exploring together.

Moving Closer

Group Work

Debra explaining about positioning. As I was saying - Birth is Simple! An introduction to the concept of pleasure during the childbearing year.

As the days progressed, we got to know each other better through working in groups of two, three or more. Women came from Nova Scotia, Quebec, and Ontario to participate in this gathering, and from such different backgrounds! But we found common ground and really connected.

And That's It! Debra brought her birth cards out - a wonderfully innovative tool that really helps the new parents to imagine and understand what their options may be, and how one choice will have consequences on how the birth will unfold. The students played with these cards to learn how a doula can help the new parents to make choices prenatally.

Working with the birth cards

I Love You  Taking the time to treasure each other and ourselves.

WomanPower!  We learned important techniques to use during labor and birth: the rebozo was a favorite! And of course the messiness of the room was no longer a consideration. We were getting down to the ground and having a good time! Shimmying with a rebozo Through active role play the students learned how they might act with a real woman in real labor. They used props such as birth balls, rebozos, and learned about positions in labor, prenatal positioning, and some massage work.

Shake and Lunge!

 This useful tool hangs on a door (make sure it's locked!!) and a laboring woman can pull on it as she squats.

Deep Squat

 Finally, on Day Four, our babies were ready to be born. Our doulas comforted each other through active labor and used all the techniques they had learned during the final role play. They used birth balls, rebozos, positions, physical comfort measures, and a lot of vocalization! The room was alive with woman sounds: moaning, yelling, sighing, and laughter!

Thank you to everyone who made this workshop happen!