That Dame Doula

08/31/2023

The woman is the expert in her body, her baby, and her birth!!!!!!!!!!!!

"When we insist that pregnancy length is fixed and not fluid, when we force women to follow due dates defined by machines and not their own bodies, when we constantly prioritise medical definitions over women's own instincts, we undermine a vital source of information and a well of trust."

I wrote that to try to explain a huge problem that we have today.

Our knowledge about our bodies is being undermined by the very systems and advances that we have created to try and help ourselves.

Our technologies and machines are wonderful when they are really needed.

But they are overused.

And when we pay more attention to their output and stop looking at the bigger picture (including our own knowledge about our bodies), we can do more harm than good.

Over the years, I have talked to many women who have personal stories about this.

Some women have known the exact date they conceived because their partner was stationed abroad and they only saw him for one weekend in three months.

Others had IVF and also knew the exact date of conception.

Yet they were told that "the dating scan knows best" and they had to battle the system because the date calculated by a machine was given more credit than their own knowledge.

They weren't believed.

My website contains lots of information about normality, due dates and induction of labour.

I have also written two books about this: Inducing Labour: making informed decisions and In Your Own Time: how western medicine controls the start of labour and why this needs to stop.

Find out more at www.sarawickham.com/iol

07/31/2023

07/19/2023

Here is an awesome birth story to listen to from a mom who has 3 very different pregnancy and birth experiences (c section, home birth with midwife, free birth)

In this episode of Taking Back Birth, I talk to Paala about her journey from C-Section, to home birth, to free birth.Just press PLAY below to listen.Download this podcast transcriptYou can read Paala's birth story here.

07/12/2023

So fitting! Women are portals to other galaxies and worlds!

💫 Galaxy Babe💫 I have been asked if I photoshopped the pool around mom and baby. I am flattered that some think I can do this with photoshop but I have never used it before. This is a birth tub with a rope light that was white/blue/purple. The combination of blood and after birth made the pool like the galaxy. I remember pointing it out to everyone in the room as well. I thought it was so beautiful! I stood up on my handy dandy step stool that I take to all my births and took this photo. In Lightroom, I blacked out the background as well as the top of the blue pool to make it look like they were floating in space.✨

Mother Wolf with

06/29/2023

https://indiebirth.org/tapping-into-motherwit-amber-rainmas-powerful-sovereign-birth-story/

Amidst her Saturn return, Amber RainMa made the decision to end her job, sell her house, and gift most of her belongings in service to a higher calling - embarking on a soul journey throughout the world that led to the sacred conception and pregnancy of her son, Blessing. Amongst her 'A' team - ange...

06/26/2023

Patience isn’t cultivated in our culture.

The transformational spaces of limbo aren’t honoured.

Shed fat in a day,
Make a million this way,
Choose the babies birthday.

The patriarchy seeps into birth in the form of yoni exams not only during labour but in the weeks before.

Our society digs around in vaginas and stretches cervices.

It doesn’t wait for full completion of vaginal sphincter dilation because only the widening of the cervix seems to matter.

Forget placentas being left to vacate in the comfort of a dark space.

There’s no patience for pause.
For the Quietitude.

There’s emphasis on work.

Is it any wonder that we have a world of women who are subliminally devoted to the Saint archetype?

The grandmothers accounts of washing floors and making bread and tending to children, basically being as a means of bringing a baby down are overtaken by only the old wives tales that meet the rushed pace: eat this, stimulate that, even s*x is made into a chore rather than a pleasure, a way to get ‘er done rather than an organic intimate process that naturally facilities the oxytocin state.

Common ease that’s costs nothing is now relegated to fancy.

When women are left to their own devices and given space from expectations they are juicy and open. When they’re told what’s not working, they’re brittle and tight.

We open to birth like we open to love making. On demand hardly cuts it.

Those who tend birth, we have a responsibility to stop. this. s**t.

Not being cavalier, just shining a light on patience.

It’s our role to mirror back to mothers the capability of their body rather than providing her with insidious messages that she isn’t performing, which come through in the form of ‘to do’ lists and projections of what ‘we can do if baby isn’t here by this date’.

It’s uncomfortable waiting to be born but you can’t just push past that.

No more get up, get at it, get through it.

More delta brainwave.

More juice.

More yes.

We tend birth because we understand that being a gatekeeper is about preventing breaking and entering, not becoming a part of it.

Submitting to the latter means spiritual burn out. Gosh, I’ve been there.

We can be...so...gentle.

-Reposted from Siân Marie Pilkington