Has swine flu impacted your doula work?

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I’ve been wanting to write about doulas, pregnancy and swine flu (also known as H1N1) for a while now. The epidemic has alternately fascinated and frightened me since the first reports of it last Spring.

Lately the hype has died down, although we are in the midst of flu season, the one that world health officials would bring serious deaths and contamination across the US. I’ve noticed an huge increase in public education and awareness campaigns about washing hands, getting vaccinated and staying home from school or work if you are sick. I’ve even seen hand-sanitizer machines installed in public areas like bus and train stations. I’ll leave my thoughts about hand sanitation for another day, but let’s say I’m skeptical about the negative effects (including breeding super-strain versions of viruses).

Today, Women’s E-News published a piece about the 28 pregnant women who have died as a result of swine flu so far, so I decided it was time to delve in to the issue.

From Women’s E-News:

At least 28 pregnant women with H1N1, commonly known as swine flu, died last year in the United States and another 100 were admitted to an intensive care unit through Aug. 21, according to the latest Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, figures. Pregnant women are 7.7 times more likely to die from H1N1 compared with the general population, according to an August 2009 editorial in the medical journal Lancet.

However, pregnant women who get the H1N1 vaccine get sick less often and their babies are less likely to get sick with the flu than babies whose mothers did not get a flu shot, the CDC says.

Those are some scary figures, especially for pregnant women, who are often barraged with information about what could go wrong (see: what to expect when you’re expecting) and lots of fear during that time. Couple that with sensationalist media coverage about how WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE FROM SWINE FLU TOMORROW and you’ve got an unpleasant situation.

Continue reading →

When Survivors Give Birth: A workshop with Penny Simkin

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Cover of "When Survivors Give Birth" image of two hands holding a heart with a break line down the middleI wanted to highlight an upcoming workshop on the topic of working with survivors of violence and abuse in birthing situations.

It’s the weekend of February 5-6 in Seattle at the Simkin Center.

I think it’s an important topic for birth activists, as so many folks have experienced abuse and trauma in their lives that can be triggered in the birth process.

Penny Simkin is a well-known and widely-respected birth educator and co-author of the book When Survivors Give Birth. I haven’t read it myself, but I’ve heard good things.

More information about the training here, or you can check out the book here.

Volunteer Program Spotlight: Open Arms Perinatal Services in Seattle

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Peggy Fitzgerald, the Board Chair of Open Arms Perinatal Services, emailed me recently to tell me more about her organization. I thought I’d share what she had to say in this post.

I actually interviewed some of the folks at Open Arms last year for an article I wrote about access to home birth in Washington State for RH Reality Check. You can read it here.

Here is what Peggy had to say about their program:

We’re a group in the Seattle area who provide doulas for low income women – but as far as I know, we’re the only organization in the country that provides PAID (market rate) doulas for women serving this population, free of charge to our clients. We believe strongly that as much as women deserve to be served regardless of ability to pay, women also deserve to be paid for their work (because women’s work IS valuable, right?), and we pay market rate to our doulas to serve the population. How’s that for radical?

Of course, we’re challenged by funding, as are many other organizations, and this year due to county funding being cut for us along with most small nonprofits, we were able to make up the gap through having volunteer doulas supplement our paid doulas. Even our volunteers however are paid a stipend to defray cost of serving our clients – so no one has to serve for free. Thanks to the efforts of volunteers, we could not only serve as many clients as we served in 2008, but we exceeded that number by 28% in 2009. However our paid doulas still are going strong and we hope next year to increase the amount of doulas we can pay, because it’s a core belief of our organization.

I agree with Peggy that is it great to provide doulas to women who would otherwise not have access and still be able to pay the doulas for their time. Volunteering in itself is a luxury, and not all of us have the time or the means to do unpaid work.

Peggy also alerted me to the new Open Arms blog, which you can check out here.

For more info, visit their website.

And just out of curiosity, is Peggy right? Is Open Arms the only volunteer doula program that fundraises enough to pay their doulas? Let us know in comments!

A happy birth story for the new year

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I thought we’d start off 2010 on a good note.

Via Pushed Birth and CNN, the happy news that Joy Szabo gave birth vaginally to her fourth child on December 5th without incident.

Unfortunately she had to do quite a bit of fighting to have the birth she wanted. From Jennifer Block:

Joy Szabo of Page, Arizona, was told by her local hospital that she wouldn’t be allowed to give birth vaginally there. She even met with the hospital CEO to discuss their policy of forcing repeat C-sections — a policy she equated with physical assault — and the hospital responded by threatening to get a court order for the surgery. When the local paper headlined Szabo’s plight, the hospital backed off, but it still told her “No VBAC.” Instead of agreeing to the major surgery, Szabo pushed back. She found a willing hospital and provider in Phoenix, a six hour journey by car from her home, and made the decision to move there and await labor.

The birth was an easy one, with just a few hours of labor and one quick push. Congrats Joy!

Radical Doula on Facebook

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You can now become a fan of Radical Doula on Facebook. I’ll also post links to my blog posts there. Just another way to connect with the other Radical Doula’s out there.

Click here to see the page and become a fan!

Radical Doula Profiles: Nicole Murray

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Nicole is a labor doula and a mother of two young children. She currently resides in Newberg, Oregon, with plans in the near future to buy and live aboard a sailboat in Portland, along with cruising the world with her family (all while hopefully remaining a doula)! You can learn more about Nicole at her website.

RD: What inspired you to become a doula?

NM: When I was pregnant with my second child, I was planning an unassisted birth. I read and studied as much as I could, learning about all kinds of birth options. I did not have very many family or friends who fully supported me through that pregnancy, and I realized that I wanted to be there for women, no matter what their choices were. I think every woman deserves to have that.

RD: What is your Doula philosophy and how does it fit into your broader political beliefs?

NM: I am there to serve a woman and her family in whatever way is needed. Every birth is different, and as a doula, I know it is my role to support, respect and listen to each woman. I go in with no plans, or desires to mold the birth into what I deem right. In the same sense, I am very liberal in my own life choices, and believe that every person deserves the right to choose what kind of life they want to live.

RD: What is your favorite thing about being a Doula?

NM: I love the excitement of birth. Coming into a home where a mother is laboring, it almost feels electric. You are apart of this amazing experience that forever bonds you with these people. It totally fills me up with happiness unlike anything else.

RD: If you could change one thing about birth in the US, what would it be?

NM: That homebirth would be more accessible to every woman, no matter her means. I wish that all insurance companies would cover homebirths, and that those who choose to have one would be encouraged rather than being continually dissuaded.

Rebecca Project’s Malika Saada Saar profiled in the Washington Post

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A long profile of Malika Saada Saar is in the Washington Post last week. She is the founder and Executive Director of the Rebecca Project, whose work on fighting the shackling of pregnant women I’ve written about here before. From the article:

In 2001, while studying at Georgetown University Law Center, she founded the Rebecca Project, which took its name from the biblical figure, as well as a beloved Washington-based mentor of Saada Saar’s named Rebecca Rice. The organization grew out of workshops that encouraged addicts to seek healing through poetry and other forms of artistic expression. In the Rebecca Project’s infancy, Saada Saar and Imani Walker, a mother of four who was recovering from addiction to crack cocaine, shared a single donated desk in the Washington Law Clinic.

One piece that particularly emphasizes The Rebecca Project’s work:

…A core Saada Saar philosophy: It is wrongheaded to incarcerate women whose troubled circumstances have led to drug addiction or prostitution, especially those who have been sexually abused, instead of steering them to treatment options.”The pipeline that channels vulnerable young girls from cradle to sexual abuse to prison must be completely dismantled,” she writes.

The work that they do is going to be crucial to reversing the frightening trend of over-incarceration in this country, which we now serves much much more harm than good.

You can learn more about the Rebecca Project for Human Rights on their website.

Radical Doula Profiles: Aya de Chellis

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Photo of aya de chellis, smiling and wearing a large necklaceAya de Chellis is a radical queer Reproductive Justice freedom-fighter. As a doula she is available to listen and share ideas and comfort techniques that would be helpful to any person. The communities that Aya most often works with are young people, communities of color, Spanish-speaking Latina immigrant women and their families, refugee communities, and LGBTQ people. Primarily, she teaches Lamaze, attends births, and attends abortions, but also goes with people as a support person to get STI testing and treatment. She wants you to remember that you are your own expert and have many valuable tools within yourself. She lives, works, and loves in Pittsburgh, PA and is proud to be from the Rustbelt. She can be reached at aya.doula@gmail.com.

What inspired you to become a Doula?

I became a doula because I believe in girls and women, and I believe in Reproductive Justice. We have no choice if we don’t know what our choices are. For years I did work in abortion advocacy, and now most of my time is spent in pregnancy and birth care. For a number of women that I work with, I have attended both their births and their abortions. The same problems exist across the spectrum of medical care: girls and women are too often treated like they don’t know their own bodies, like they don’t know what’s best for them, and like they need medical intervention to “correct” a “problem.” I want all people to know that their experiences, their wishes, and their truth matters.

What is your favorite thing about being a Doula?

I love being able to create a space for a person to realize their own innate ability to take care of themselves. Moments when someone realizes that they naturally move a certain way or breathe a certain way for comfort and rhythm is amazingly powerful. Environment is everything, and if people are in spaces where they see negative images of themselves or people like them, if they are discouraged, or if they are distracted and stressed out, they can’t feel powerful and capable. Clearing a space and guarding it for someone is an awesome responsibility that I take very seriously and enjoy immensely.

If you could change one thing about birth in the US, what would it be?

I want to stop the inaccurate portrayal of birth and replace it with evidence-based information and true stories of physiological natural birth. One of the most dangerous things to birth is the constant representation in media of how scary and dangerous giving birth is. Starting in early childhood, we all swim in the notion that it is something to be feared and something that can go terribly wrong without a doctor’s supervision. Imagine how different our culture(s) would be if, instead, we heard stories and saw representations of natural homebirth, orgasmic birth, squatting birth, and fierce bellowing birthing mamas as the norm.

Are you a French-speaking midwife or doula?

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Lynn Paltrow, Executive Director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, is looking for US based progressive and French-speaking midwives or doulas. She has a colleague working on a project called Middle Africa Network for Women’s Reproductive Rights: Gabon, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea.

If you are this midwife, or know of someone, you can email Lynn at lmp@advocatesforpregnantwomen.org.

Lynn just informed me that a doula would work as well, so if you’re a French-speaking doula, contact Lynn!

Volunteer Program Spotlight: The Doula Project (NYC)

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I’ve written about The Doula Project before. They used to use the name, The Abortion Doula Project, and Mary Mahoney, one of the founders, was featured in a Radical Doula Profile.

I wanted to highlight their project again because it’s awesome, but also because they just launched a new and expanded website.

I’m proud to say I was a founding member of the Doula Project. While things really got started after I had stopped working directly with the other two founders (due to a move away from NYC) I’m so proud to be connected to them, even in a small way. Their work truly is amazing and has grown so much since those initial conversations.

After one year, we have served over 500 women in the NYC area. In 2010, we will expand our service to at least 2 more NYC clinics to serve women having abortions or experiencing fetal loss, at least 1 hospital/organization to serve women giving birth, and support and train at least 2 affiliate organizations in the U.S.

Their tagline, “supporting people across the spectrum of pregnancy,” really says it all. What is so radical about their work is that they take the concept of a doula to it’s logical end–supporting folks throughout all their reproductive choices: birth, abortion and adoption.

Check out their website here. Congrats Doula Project!