Doua Pink Kit discussion #11

24 June 2007

I went to see the movie 'Waitress' last night. It's such a lovely movie. I was a bit surprised at the 'birth scene' when the young woman says: 'I want every drug known to man ... and lots of them.'

Then throughout the very short labour and birth, she remain aware, engaged, participatory and involved as though she was absolutely sober and capable.

Certainly in the 1970s when these skills were evolving, being given drugs in labour was common place. Thankfully they weren't as strong as the ones my mother's generation had ... being knocked out and unconscious. However, there was no doubt that drugs had a huge and profound impact on our behavior and demeanor.

Painkillers make us stoned and high. Many of us felt less in control or able to respond to contractions. These skills certainly didn't stop many of us from using or being given pain relief during labour however, with these skills we certainly made much more effort to continue to participate in the birthing process.

Certainly, with our skills many of us found labour pain to become manageable so at the time we didn't require pain relief. We tended to stop making Birth Plans. Instead we showed a capability of handling our birth pains, working with our skilled husbands and making decisions based on the reality of that moment.

Birth became less of an 'ideological' stand-off. Obstetricians and midwives really appreciated our high level of birth and coaching skills and our ability to respond to any medical needs as they presented themselves.

One thing is really certain, we were infinitely less reactive to the required medical assessments, monitoring and procedures.

23/1/07

Dear Sonya:

You've really hit the nail on the head with your first paragraph. When I teach women who work as midwives/doulas and ask 'What do you do? They answer 'I'm a ...'.

But in reality being a midwife/doula is an occupation which you might absolutely love. First and foremost all of us are human beings. next we are either women or men. Next we are either things like: age, weight, color of hair,eyes, etc. Then we may be mothers by birth, adoption or step. Then we might have a great sense of humor or be very serious. Then we might play an instrument, like to garden etc. Then some of us have a job/occupation.

This identification with one's occupation to the level of self-identity is why CKT doesn't work easily with people in those occupations. They are too wrapped up in themselves. They only see their own practice and what they can do for 'their mothers'. They bring too much of themselves into their practice, tend to attract clients who hold similar view points and get a buzz or feel disappointed by what their clients do. This means it's all about them.

Now, there have been many, many families who compose the stories from The PK who had indep midwives/doulas. Some of those births were terrific, sometimes the midwife was sick that day, sometimes she had been at a birth the night before and was too tired to be much use, or didn't behave in the way that had been expected. On the other hand some of the stories told we had great births with our midwife/doula and others stories told of terrible births because they never got on top of the pain while their midwife left them 'to discover birth for themselves' even if the outcome was fine, while other stories told of relying on their midwife too much and eventually that midwife/doula stopped practicing due to exhaustion from over dependence. If you think the stories about our midwives, there are as many stories about our doctors.

On the other hand, hospital births replay the same stories. Suzie (* one of the midwives who collected the Pink Kit statistics) told me today that a friend of hers (another midwife) had what she considered an absolutely perfect hospital birth but when she told her colleagues about how great it was, they told her she couldn't have had such a good birth because it wasn't at home.

CKT is basically not marketing to clients who go to indep midw/doulas, or alternative or natural birth advocates. We market to all pregnant families. CKT's focus is the general population, the millions of people who will go to hospital with staff, be left in a room for 3-4 hours before checks and delivered by either staff midw or doctor. These people have heaps of opportunity to breathe in well and breathe out well.

Sure if people who plan home births want to increase the possibility of having a home birth then they should prepare their body and learn how-to birth. Just because a woman gets through birth doesn't mean she had a clue how-to cope or felt good afterward. This is a personal statement here... my belief is that as women and men who want home births then we have an increased responsibility to learn how-to birth, reduce potential trauma and risks and behave in birth in a way that doesn't exhaust the women who work as the midwife or doula. It's really exhausting to spend hours with a woman who isn't coping well.

The purpose of the skills, for us who are the stories, were to learn how to cope with labour pain. If labour wasnt' painful we didn't have trouble coping. If pain was very manageable we didn't have trouble coping either. We wanted the skills to cope with what we perceived of as painful labour. We knew the pain was normal it was just really hard to cope with.

What Andrea and Suzie also learned (which is true) is that for those of us who had reasonably good births have so much more enriched ones once we've used the PK. It's like being in a different internal place and that place is knowing we are skilled at doing the task at absolutely every nano-second of that birth. It's hard to explain but it's similar for anyone who really knows they are using their best skills to sew a garment, build a house, play a game or instrument. When we are able to use our skills throughout the experience by remaining conscious at every moment then we have an aware experience. The Pink Kit skills provides us with that awareness and we can use these skills and be that aware in absolutely every single birth experience.

CKT can't not stop mdw/doulas who have bought the Pk and are now teaching or doing it on their clients. They will just never understand what this is all about nor get the rush of seeing one woman after another really knowing she is managing her birth. Nor will she ever get the rush of watching fathers really work with their partners rather than supporting them. Nor will they get the results or the PK stories ... 'I knew where I was at every moment' or 'I knew exactly where my baby was at each moment and could help my baby come through me' or 'my husband could read my subtle responses and tensions and immediately help me focus.' These stories can just be duplicated again and again and again by people who teach themselves. So our target market is all births.

Until most of one's clients teach themselves these skills, no one person who works as a birth provider will understand the depth of skills that we can have as women and men in order to handle this one-off experience. You know each birth is different so they are always a one-off.

For an experience that has such a huge impact on our lives, you would think we'd have lots of skills.

If women who work as md/doulas believe that women and men need them to do or teach them how-to birth then that's something CKT will never be able to deal with. As a bottom line that attitude perpetuates a dependent model of birth and a belief that we, as pregnant women, are somehow capable-deficient.

As Suzie and Andrea learned, the women and men who taught themselves The PK taught them rather than the other way around.

Thanks for your patience to learn this new language. The old one is deeply entrenched. If it were working well what CKT is doing now would seem out of place. But what other birth resource can reach all women and men and can fit into any birth because it's just based on skills we can have for ourselves?

Wintergreen, trustee