Guestblog from Muneera Fontaine: About the ICTC Full Circle Doula Training

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Muneera generously offered to write a guestblog about her experiences with the ICTC doula training.

About Muneera: Muneera Fontaine is a wife, busy mother of two, doctoral student at ICDL Grad School, Infant Special Educator, and Full Circle Provisional Doula. She should be writing a research paper instead of this blog post but saving our babies can’t wait…and the research can. When not juggling all the different hats she wears, she can be found at Doulas of Color or curled up with a good book and some herbal tea!

I offered to do a guest blog for Radical Doula on my doula training with the International Center for Traditional Childbearing (ICTC). For the record I do not work for ICTC and I have no personal gain by writing this blog. I just felt compelled to let others know about this amazing training that I was able to take that really changed my life. I am going to try and keep it short and simple because I could go on and on about most any topic related to birth. 🙂

I initially wanted to become a doula because of my own personal experience with having my first son by Un-necesearian ( a whole other blog post!) and then my daughter eight years later by a midwife in a birthing center. The difference in support and control that I felt were unmeasurable. It was then that I realized that I wanted every woman to be able to claim that as their own. I felt that every woman deserved to feel the empowerment of visualizing and achieving the birth where she was an active participant. In particular as women of color, I felt that we are already so dis-empowered on a regular basis that we come to expect it. My personal observation was that we are less informed because we are often not given the same amount of information as others. You cannot have power without choice and you cannot have choice without information. And ICTC definitely sends you home with lots and lots of information!

There are five main topics that I think are distinct to the ICTC doula philosophy which was developed from a traditional midwifery model of care. That means they strive to be community based, and work to “empower families to improve birth outcomes, breastfeeding rates, and reduce premature birth” (Shafia Monroe, African American Infant Mortality), especially in communities of African-American women and other women of color. We have the worst infant mortality statistics here in the United States and the goal is to change that from within our own communities.

Read the rest after the jump!

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Thoughts from comments: On doula certification

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Often times people will find old posts I’ve written and add their thoughts to the comments. Many times it’s really great stuff and it makes me sad that it gets buried on old posts. So I’d like to highlight this comment from a soon to be radical doula Mel on my post about DONA and doula certification:

this blog (in totality) is air to me. thank you. i just found the blog a few days ago, and getting to this post is right on time…as i’m preparing for DONA workshops and certification starting tomorrow. i’m not a doula, yet. i’m a partnered queer woman of color (qwoc) and worry about finding a doula and midwife that get us. my partner and i are planning our first baby, and in figuring out my own birth plan…a natural-at-home-in-the-water-orgasmic-birth…i thought, “dang, if i knew about this ten years ago i would’ve gone to midwifery school!” i talked to a co-worker about my feelings and she said, “why not become a doula.” my research began and i made my decision. i do not intend to quit my job (teaching) to become a full-time doula. i recognize that quitting my job would force me to charge high fees for support, which would make it so that white upper-class women make up the bulk of clients. i want to be really clear…i’m neither anti-white, nor anti-wealth. however, the reality is that options are already abound in these communities. many american born/cultivated Q/WOC don’t even know what doulas are, or have no idea of the benefits of having a doula assist birth (in addition to having no idea how dangerous it is giving birth in a hospital!)…i want to work with qwoc, because historically we have fewer resources, less access and higher statistics. so you can pretty much guess that reading about how DONA ignores issues of race, class, gender, etc…comes as a bummer. HOWEVER…i wonder if abstaining from being DONA certified is the best response to this issue. wouldn’t it be beneficial to become certified…become a trainer…and give affordable or free workshops in our communities to empower doulas of the future? or do the same and provide workshops outside of our communities that force folks to look at and grapple with these issues? perhaps it’s my inexperience in the birthing community coming to the surface in my response…but in having dealt with other types of “fucking with the system”…i see that this may be an instance where you need to be in the system, if only for a minute, to fuck up the system. who knows, in 3 sundays i may have a different view 😉

You can read more from Mel here.

Now that I am looking into beginning my volunteer doula work again, this question of whether I made the right choice in not getting certified comes up again and again. I hear many different view points, including the thought this commenter shares. Isn’t it better to get as much training as possible, and then use that to create our own new system?

I’m going to try and do this every once in a while, to bring attention back to older threads with great comments.

Support diverse midwifery education!

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Please read the message below and sign the petition to support diverse and evidence based midwifery education! Today is the last day to sign.

From NARM:

Dear Friend of Midwives,

Only ONE more day to add your name to the NARM petition in support of all routes to midwifery education. NARM’s hope is that this amazing response will send a clear message to the ACNM that the time has come to end internal strife and work together to move midwifery forward. By Wednesday, NARM will close the petition and prepare to present it to the ACNM Executive Committee at the end of the week at the annual ACNM convention in Seattle. If you haven’t signed it yet, NOW is the time. If you have already signed it, please ask any additional family, friends, and colleagues to sign on. Let’s hit 5000 names! Sign the petition here.

NARM has taken a stand in support of all routes of midwifery education, including a formal, structured apprenticeship. We would like to be able to inform you of our progress with influencing the ACNM to change its Position Statement against apprenticeship education. We also know that as we work to make more CPMs available to more women, we will continue to face opposition to our training, our standards of individualized and woman-centered practice, and our very existence as a viable profession in the US. Your voice is what gives us the power and authority to demand a seat at the table over health care reform, access to quality maternity care for all women, and implementation of programs on the state and federal level that will enable more women to have the choice to hire CPMs for their care.

If you would like to be notified of the results of this petition, please take a moment to register your contact information into a protected database controlled by NARM that will allow us to directly contact you with this information and other opportunities to take similar action at the state and federal level for midwifery. You will be able to select areas of interest to you and also remove yourself at any time from our subscription list. NARM pledges to never share your name with any commercial entity and to only use your contact info for the purpose of direct notification of urgent issues and updates regarding promotion of the CPM credential. Again, thank you for your continued support and for helping us to preserve apprentice based midwifery education in the US.

Join NARM’s protected advocacy list here.

Midwives and Students! One more way to get connected is through the new NARM Forum. This forum is for open discussions about all things related to CPMs and the women they serve. Please join us!

Thank you!

The NARM Board

Via Citizens for Midwifery

From the clinic: How we make choices about birth providers

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So I’ve been volunteering at a clinic, helping a midwife with translation (and other odd tasks) with her mostly Latina immigrant client base.

I’m really loving it, working with pregnant women again, doing direct service with latinas. I’ve missed being in a healthcare provider setting, and I miss doing doula work too. I’m working on it.

The women who come to the clinic get to decide where to give birth and with what type of provider. Her options are:

1) Hospital birth at teaching hospital with residents

2) Birth Center birth with Certified Nurse Midwives (CNMs)

3) Birth in the teaching hospital, but with care from CNMs from the birth center

This third option is really cool and not one I’d heard of previously. Most of the time, CNMs that deliver in hospitals are staff of the hospital and have a practice based there.

So the majority of the women this midwife sees choose hospital births. Now that midwives are an option in the hospital, it’s presenting a new possibility. But many of these women (like all women) have LOTS of preconceived notions about midwives. One woman who is almost due illustrates this really well:

Maria (not her real name) is from Honduras. She’s a spanish speaking immigrant and is pregnant with her third child. When we presented the possibility of having a midwife attend her birth in the hospital, she told me (after a little prodding) that her partner was really against her having a midwife. She said that he was born to a midwife at home in Honduras, and that the midwife dropped him on his head during the birth, which caused him to have a permanent eye deformity. Maria didn’t think it was worth it to fight with him about it, even though she was open to having a midwife there instead.

Ok, a few things about this. First, obviously the power dynamics between mom and partner are intense. Second, immigrants bring with them to the US all sorts of preconceived notions about how people should give birth. Some of it is based on life experience, like this, some of it is based on hearsay, feelings about class and health care models, a ton of things.

It’s very possible that her partner was delivered by a midwife at home. It’s also very possible that he was dropped at birth. It’s not necessarily true though, that it caused his eye deformity. The point is, it doesn’t matter, because this is the story he believes. And it’s informing his choices now. That’s a lot for providers here to contend with.

My main take away from all of this is that the issue of educating people about their birth options is so complex. It’s not just about what we’ve seen on tv, what we’ve heard from our families. There are layers upon layers of knowledge and preconceived notions we have to unpack to change the choices people make about how to birth. For immigrants we have to deal with a whole other cultural context, role for midwives, medical system and structure. Understanding this is the just the beginning of culturally competent care.

New video about doulas, with one glaring omission

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Doulas of color.

I’m all for videos that promote the work of doulas, but we need these materials to reflect all doulas and moms. It may be a small group, but they are out there. We’re never going to be able to reach out to a wide range of mothers if we don’t show people that doula care, midwifery care, out-of-hospital care, is not just for affluent white people.

Let’s work on this, please?

Livechat with me today about access to home birth at RH Reality Check

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Photobucket

I’ll be doing a live chat with JayVon Muhammad, a Certified Professional Midwife, about access to home birth for low-income women at RH Reality Check today, Wednesday, at 12pm EST.

Information here.

Hope you can join!

Genderqueer Mommy

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PhotobucketFrom Bilerico, a really sweet interview between a woman and her genderqueer partner (pictured left, photo from Bilerico), about their identity as “mommy” and being a genderqueer parent.

In honor of Mother’s Day, I asked her to talk with me about mothering from beyond the gender binary. In the course of our conversation, we touched on t-ball, chest surgery, field trips, and bathrooms.

Paige: Although people on the street tend to call you “sir,” around our house, you’re known as “mommy.” Can you talk about your identity and how motherhood figures in?

Koonce: My identity is trans-genderqueer-butch-dyke-mommy. “Mommy” is the word I used as a kid to describe the person who could take all the pain away or support me when I needed it…To say “I want my mommy” meant “I want a kind of omnipotent force to swoop down and take care of this problem.” So, when our son Waylon was born, I chose “Mommy” as a name because I loved the idea of being that force for someone in this crazy world of ours. When I found myself really attached to the idea of being someone’s mom, I realized that my gender identity was–at least for this time–landing squarely in the middle and I really love it that way. I love to hear the word “mommy” and to be called “mom” sometimes. But that has no real bearing as to how I feel in my body. For I am often not at home there.

Paige: You had top surgery when our son was 18 months old. It strikes me that there are still so few resources for transgender parents, and especially few stories about parents who transform their bodies without the goal of full transition. Can you talk about what it was like to get chest surgery as a mom?

Koonce: Well, getting chest surgery was way more anti-climactic than I anticipated. Waylon did not look up and say, “Are you my mommy?” There were no marked changes in the amount of “sirs” I receive. My psychotherapy clients did not decompensate without the breasts; they seem to have stayed latched on to the metaphorical breast. The biggest change has been the absence of my private bathroom struggle with the mirror. Tight t-shirts are now my friends and my happiness with my physical presentation has by far made me a happier mommy.

I love these examples of queering parenting, particularly introducing the gender bending aspects of it. Parenting, and reproduction are seen as the quintessential examples of heteronormativity and gendernormativity, but there are many parents who are reimagining these roles along with their gendered identities.

H/T to Tanya for the link

Mothers Day good news: Better access to home birth in Washington State

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It’s nice to have some good news to share on Mother’s Day. I recently interviewed some advocate, midwives and doulas in Washington State about out-of-hospital birth options there. It’s good news and their model is really making headway for other states and access to midwifery. I elaborate on this in a new article over at Reproductive Health Reality Check, Barriers to Home Birth Fall in Washington State:

Nationally, only a small portion of women give birth outside of hospitals (around 1%) and very few of those women are low-income. In a recent piece for RH Reality Check, The Cost of Being Born at Home, I painted a grim picture of the options afforded to low-income women around the country who are considering out-of-hospital birth. Few out-of-hospital childbirth providers are registered with Medicaid. Cost and physical space available at women’s homes are also significant prohibiting factors. And lack of knowledge of the practice, as well as lack of targeting from media and advocacy promoting home birth (such as the pro-home birth film The Business of Being Born), impact low-income women’s decisions about where to birth.

But there’s at least one exception to this national trend, brought up by the advocates I interviewed and by commenters responding to my original piece-Washington State. In fact, thanks to a history of expansive access to midwifery care and a number of big legislative gains, low-income women in Washington State now have more birthing options than most women around the country.

According to Audrey Levine, President of the Midwives Association of Washington State (MAWS), 2.3% of births statewide in 2007 were performed out-of-hospital.  While still a low percentage, that’s more than twice the national average of 1%. What is even more impressive is the number of those births that are reimbursed by Medicaid.  According to Levine, around 45% of out-of-hospital births attended by midwives in the state are Medicaid births. That mirrors the percentage of births to women on Medicaid overall in the state-also around 46-47%. (Of the 26 states that license CPMs, only 9 allow CPMs to participate in Medicaid, so this percentage is a significant departure from the situation nationally.)

Read the rest here.

Also stay tuned for details about a home birth and low-income access live chat with me and a midwife at RHRC next week!

What birthing women definitely DO NOT need

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The due date is quickly approaching…..
Everyone is eagerly waiting to see the new addition to the family. The pictures that are taken will be in the albums forever…..
but wait, who is that unrecognizable monster in a hospital gown?
NOT YOU!

Finally there is A Dressed Up Delivery!

We at Pretty Pushers believe that you deserve to look your best when you work your hardest. The enclosed five items are sure to keep you feeling fabulous until the job is done!

I’m sure you’re dying to know what these five magical items are. 1) Pink lip gloss and a mirror 2) A “delivery dress” 3) A headband 4) A lemon-water towelette 5) Heated massage oil

As a doula who has accompanied women during childbirth I can tell you that the only useful thing in the kit is the massage oil and maybe the headband. Massage can be great for pain mediation during labor, and if your hair is long you might want it out of your face. Oh, and the mirror could come in handy, because some women like to see what they are doing as they push.

Perpetuating screwed up ideas about women’s beauty is already infuriating enough, but now we need to mix it in with childbirth. If you’ve ever actually been with a woman after she’s given birth, I’d say she looks pretty damn beautiful, sweat and all.

Cross posted at Feministing.com

Beautiful home birth video sells mattresses?

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Via AFY_Mer at amplify, a beautiful video about a family’s home birth, complete with crowning shot. The catch? It’s a mattress commercial.

It’s a little hard to believe that home birth could be a selling point for mattresses, but who knows. I guess if I was going to give birth at home, in my bed, I would want a comfortable mattress. Either way I’m psyched to see this kind of imagery out there, and on the corporate dollar!

For those who don’t speak spanish, the tagline at the end reads: “Tu cama. El lugar mas importante del mundo.” which means “Your bed. The most important place in the world.”

Thanks to Kathy for the link