Pushing Back or Empowering Clients to Push Through Medical Authority?
As a doula trainer and the founder of Birth Coach Method, I’ve spent years observing how birth professionals navigate the intersection between physiology and medicine — and how this tension shapes our sense of purpose, pride, and satisfaction.
Over time, I’ve come to recognize that too often, our advocacy turns into resistance. Our passion for protecting the desired birthing process — though deeply rooted in care — becomes a source of frustration and fatigue. Especially when we witness many clients relinquish their inner truth and lose their voice in response to medical authority.
But what if the true power of support lies not in pushing back in L&D, but in coaching clients prenatally — helping them build confidence, agency, and firm convictions to hold as they meet whatever comes? Prenatal coaching can help them reconnect with their inner voice and trust themselves when communicating with authoritative figures.
From Resistance to Confidence
In most births, there’s a delicate dance between nature and medicine, between physiology and technology, between what we wish for and what actually unfolds.
As birth professionals, we’re often caught in this in-between space — standing by our clients while navigating the medical system, advocating for their choices, and hoping to protect the integrity of the birth experience.
But here’s a question I invite you to consider: Are you pushing against medical interventions or empowering your clients to hold their convictions firmly and push through unnecessary or non-evidence-based medical interventions to achieve their desired experiences?
When we define our role around resistance — pushing back, protecting, rescuing, or preventing — we carry the weight of opposition. Every intervention becomes a battle to win or lose. And when things don’t go as planned, both we and our clients can walk away feeling defeated.
But when we reframe our approach through a masterful coaching process, we invite transformation.
Instead of resisting interventions, we help our clients navigate them — emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.
We coach them to find agency within uncertainty, voice within hierarchy, and nature within medicalization.
In this shift, empowerment is no longer tied to what happens in birth, but to the prenatal process that preceded it.
Am I pushing back… or witnessing my client push through it with grace, confidence, and presence?
Birth as a Field for Transformation
Through the lens of Transformational Perinatal Coaching, every birth is an opening for growth — whether it’s the first baby who transforms us into parents or a birth that expands an already growing family.
Prenatal coaching conversations help clients:
- Explore their values and motivation long before labor begins.
- Prepare for a pragmatic mindset rather than a fixed plan.
- Reflect on how they wish to feel and respond, no matter what unfolds.
When we lead this process, we stop seeing interventions as obstacles. Instead, we meet them as turning points — opportunities to connect with our clients’ motivation, values, and desires, and to help them practice agency. We empower our clients to stay rooted in self-trust, even in the face of unpredictable or undesired circumstances.
A New Kind of Advocacy
This doesn’t mean surrendering to the system. It means elevating our advocacy.
Instead of positioning ourselves against medical authority, we become allies of growth, confidence, emotional safety, and inner agency. We model calm presence instead of confrontation. We assume choice without judgment.
We help clients find their voice — not by speaking for them, but by prenatally coaching them to speak from within.
That’s the essence of Transformational Perinatal Coaching. It’s not about what happens to our clients during childbirth, or even during the postpartum period— it’s about what happens within them.
Strategies to Lead Through Presence, Not Resistance
Here are the five best strategies to help you transition from resistance to presence:
- Clarify Clients’ Desires
Help clients articulate what they truly want for their birth experience. Clear intentions provide a foundation for decision-making and confidence. - Explore the “Why”
Ask: Why is it important to you?
Uncover the values, purpose, or motivations guiding their decisions. Understanding what’s truly dear to their heart strengthens their commitment. - Help Form Internal and Positive Motivations
Focus on motivations that come from within, rather than external pressure or fear. Only internal, positive motivations will sustain clients through moments of doubt or potential deviations from their plan. - Strengthen Self-Trust
Guide clients to connect with their intuition, their resourceful past, and their knowledge of themselves. - Identify Limiting Beliefs Ahead of Time
Explore any doubts, fears, or false assumptions that may hold clients back. Addressing these early allows clients to overcome barriers and approach birth with confidence.
Moving Forward Together and Stronger
As birth professionals, our influence doesn’t come from rescuing clients — it comes from prenatally empowering them. When we try to “fix” or control outcomes in L&D, we take on the emotional weight of every decision, every intervention, and every unexpected turn in birth. This constant responsibility can quickly lead to frustration, professional fatigue, and burnout.
Prenatal coaching changes that dynamic. When we focus on coaching clients to connect with their inner strength and practice agency, we shift the energy away from ourselves and toward the people we support. Instead of carrying the burden of control, we become facilitators of confidence and growth.
Prenatal coaches become allies of growth, confidence, emotional safety, and inner agency. We model calm presence instead of resistance
From a professional perspective, this approach:
- Reduces professional exhaustion by shifting our role from resistance to building confidence.
- Builds professional satisfaction because success is measured by the client’s empowerment, not just the outcome.
- Protects our energy, allowing us to stay present and engaged in each birth without overextending ourselves.
- Encourages sustainable practice, so we can continue to show up for every client with clarity, calm, and presence.
In short, coaching clients prenatally doesn’t just benefit them — it’s the foundation of a healthy, resilient, and fulfilling birth-support career.
So the next time you find yourself in that in-between space — between advocacy and frustration, physiology and medicine — take a breath and ask: Am I pushing back… or witnessing my client push through it with grace, confidence, and presence? If you’re going against it, I’d be honored to show you how to transition from resistance to true empowerment.
Because transformation happens not when we fight the system, but when we help our clients rise within it.
If you’d like to learn the coaching strategies and exercises of the conversational frameworks that make this shift possible, explore my continuing education program:
👉 Transformational Perinatal Coaching — for birth professionals ready to lead through presence, not resistance.
- Pushing Back or Empowering Clients to Push Through Medical Authority? - November 2, 2025
- The Body is Ready, The Baby is Spun… What About Your Clients’ Mindset - August 27, 2025
- Agency in the Perinatal Journey: A Win for Clients — And for You - July 1, 2025
