I am the founder of Birth Coach Method and am celebrating 20 years of leadership in the field of childbirth support. Throughout my career, I have been honored to provide doula support and teach childbirth ed. classes to hundreds of expectant couples, as well as to direct two birth resource centers. I am also a doula leader in my community in the South Bay area of Silicon Valley in California.
Out of all the birth support professionals, prenatal yoga instructors probably are the ones to begin supporting expectant individuals the earliest along their journey of pregnancy and childbirth. From a coaching perspective, I see it as a huge advantage, so if you’re a prenatal yoga instructor, you can make miracles leading and empowering expectant mothers to strongly hold not only yoga poses but important convictions about their childbirth experience. Just like the practice of yoga helps individuals to connect with their breath and their body, coaching strategies help them connect with their beliefs, inner truth, values, and needs.
Are you curious about what happens in our Birth Support Coaching course?
It’s exciting to lead the first group of birth professionals who joined the Birth Coach Method’s first coaching course. We have participants from all around the globe: The Netherlands, Israel, and the US (East and West Coast). We all come together on consecutive Tuesdays for eight weeks using the Zoom platform. It is a group mentoring session in which I get to expand on the topic of the current lesson studied prior to the meeting. In addition to highlighting important concepts, we all brainstorm scenarios and engage in powerful coaching exercises.
I’m constantly searching for coaching props and strategies that can help me coach expectant parents throughout pregnancy and childbirth. I have been developing tools and strategies for some time now and excitedly shared them with the community of birth support pros in previous posts and in my book. So, you can imagine my excitement when I came across a few resources affirming the use of white dry-erase boards in L&D for improving communication and maternal care.
Are your birth clients overwhelmed by the overload of information?
Being overwhelmed by the overload of information is a state of consciousness that many expectant couples struggle with. It disempowers and damages their ability to make mindful decisions and perform well. Beating it requires a shift in our practice rather than providing more information. You can help your birth clients beat this overwhelm by coaching them.
In my practice, I often encounter the overwhelm that my clients
experience being overloaded with information. Seriously, it feels like it enters the room when they do. How often are you being called to resolve this overwhelm as a childbirth educator or a doula? There are conflicting opinions and expectant parents don’t know what advice to take or what to believe while all along trying to do the right thing; they want to find what is best for the mother and the baby. The overload of information creates a ‘noise’ that interrupts our internal conversations with ourselves. Feeling overwhelmed is not only disempowering, but it’s also exhausting.
When birth workers, such as doulas and childbirth educators, first envisioned the birth plan in the eighties, the main idea was to help expectant parents prepare for the physical and emotional aspects of the birth process, explore how they want various situations handled during their actual birth, and provide a tool for parents to communicate with each other, their care provider, and the hospital staff prior to the birth (Simkin, 2007; Simkin & Reinke, 1980). As sometimes happens, the mean comes to be associated with the goal, and as such, expectant couples and some birth workers, associate writing the birth plan with achieving it. This association may evoke some unexpected outcomes:
While the coaching strategies are valuable in supporting and leading every expectant woman who would like to give birth healthily and experience high levels of satisfaction, they are even more crucial when supporting and leading a mother who wishes for a VBAC because of the additional elements or challenges she faces.
What are those challenges she faces?
Environmental challenges
The external constraints this expectant woman needs to react to and overcome are much bigger than a woman who did not undergo a cesarean. Medical providers aren’t supportive of her VBAC decision, and even when she finds a caregiver that will agree to a TOLAC (Trial of Labor After Cesarean), Agreeing to a VBAC doesn’t mean Supporting it. The difference is being manifested by the medical imposition and restrictions that aren’t supportive of her vision for her birth.
The process of childbirth presents birthing women with some recognized moments of emotional crisis, as well as some unexpected ones, related to the unfolding of the birth. My experience has been that the known and expected emotional crises occur during transitions or changes occurring throughout the process. It is common knowledge that the transition from one phase of birth to another triggers an emotional reaction. For example, the transition from the early phase of labor to active labor is symptomized by the emotional change in which excitement and self-confidence give way to fear, despair, or self-doubt. Birthing mothers express these new emotions in a variety of ways: If they are talkative, they might express them by sharing their thoughts, such as: “Do you think it’s time to head the hospital”? Or “Do you think all these contractions are doing anything”?, “Do you think I’m progressing?” and “How much more painful will this be”?
I am not an expert in marketing. To be honest, as an introvert, I am very challenged in this field. However, as a pioneer doula in my homeland, I had no choice but to spread the concept of a doula and endlessly share the doula benefit statistics. But that was in the old days (LOL). Nowadays, ‘doula’ is a dictionary term, and all you need to do is put yourself out there as a doula. I sat down and gathered a few ideas that served me well over the years.
Storytelling: Since there is no need for you to promote the profession of a doula, I feel that you’d better avoid the “doula benefits statistics” talk. Instead, try to connect with your listeners on a personal level and build rapport.
Doulas often feel that they are accountable for their client’s positive and healthy birth experience. While this is somehow true, it certainly does not dismiss the couple’s efforts to achieve their desired birth experience. The presence of a doula at the birth should not by itself be perceived as a guarantee to a healthy and active childbirth. When couples choose not to engage in other types of labor support and preparation activities such as pregnancy physical activity, prenatal yoga, or childbirth education classes, there is a high chance that the doula will be the only one accountable for their positive birth experience. In this case, both parties risk a complicated relationship which might involve disappointment and lead to a non-satisfying birth experience.
