Why I am No Longer A Doula

Like many women, my journey into birth work began with the birth of my first daughter, 9 years ago. I was profoundly lucky with her birth, a hospital birth with minimal meddling. I didn’t understand just how lucky I was until I attended hospital births as a doula. Her birth lit a fire in me. I wanted every woman to know what I had felt: power, strength, life, pure magic. This fire led me to doula training and I dove into doula work thinking that I had found my calling. I believed what we were told in doula class - maybe I could make a difference for someone else. Maybe my presence at her birth would help the mother, comfort her, support her and she would walk away with a “positive birth experience”. For many years, I embraced and promoted doula rhetoric: “Every birth is beautiful”, “Outcomes aren’t what matters; what matters is if the woman felt like SHE made the decisions”, “Hospital birth, home birth, I don’t care what you choose; I care that you made an INFORMED choice”. The problem was that with every birth I attended I saw threads of deceit built into these words.
*Not every birth is beautiful; some are full of pain and trauma. Yes, the welcoming of a new life to this earth is, in essence, beautiful. But what about when that welcoming is along side of unnecessary harm? When the baby is ripped out with metal forceps, or the mother’s genitals are unnecessarily mutilated, or the mother is coerced into a operative birth or the baby ends up in the NICU because of negligence? Are those births also beautiful?*
*Outcomes DO matter; HOW a birth unfolds has a lasting impact on the mother and baby! As for the mother making the decisions, women are coerced, manipulated, flat out lied to CONSTANTLY during obstetrical birth. Birthing women are incredibly vulnerable. Who wouldn’t say yes to a procedure when you are asked if you want your baby to live?*
*Informed choice should be renamed. The very words themselves suggest that when a woman is ‘informed’ she will make the choice that is being presented to her. And that is exactly how it is handled in the obstetrical birth. There is never a complete conversation where a woman truly understands what is at stake, then decides the best course of action for HER with no fear of judgement. There is only suggesting, convincing, manipulation and outright coercion until she makes her “choice.”*

I attended hospital birth after hospital birth witnessing abuse, violence against women and babies, condescension, coercion, pain: trauma unfolding before me, and I, helpless to stop it. I would leave the hospital replaying every pivotal moment, trying to figure out what I could have done differently, what I could have said differently, anything to prevent what had just happened. I would cry for days, sob and rage, then desperately tell myself next time would be different. I would do better, be more honest with the next woman, tell her the truth about where her decisions might lead. I would be stronger. I would stop trying to straddle the fence between ‘supporting her decisions’ and ‘respecting the care provider’. I would tell myself, “THIS IS NOT YOUR BIRTH”, trying to create some space between what I experienced and witnessed and my own person life and experiences.

For far too long, I wondered if perhaps it was me. Perhaps I was just a really terrible doula. Perhaps these women were better off without me.

But it was never about me. I was as likely to stop what these women were going to experience as I could stop a moving train with my bare hands.

I am ever grateful to the women who invited me to witness their home births for opening my eyes. Birth - obstetrical, managed, clinical birth should never be called by the same name as real birth - physiological, biological, raw and free birth. They are simply incomparable. At the centre of it all is this truth, which far too few understand: birth, for all its power, is incredibly delicate. When you change just one element, you change everything.

The home births I witnessed and the subsequent home births of my next two daughters changed everything for me. I knew the truth about birth. This truth is powerful; it changes you. I continued to call myself a doula, to attended hospital births, to speak the rhetoric but the inner evolution had begun.

It’s been over a year since I attended a hospital birth as a doula. I walked out of that birth - perhaps the worst I have ever witnessed - and the inner evolution solidified.

I was done.

I would never again let a woman pay me to hold her hand while she was violated.

I would never again willingly witness obstetrical rape and violence.

I would never again throw myself in front of the train, praying that this time it would stop.

I was DONE being a doula.

This decision was so heartbreakingly difficult. For many months, I didn’t know what the direction forward would look like. But I knew that women deserved to know the truth about birth. With my first daughter, I didn’t even consider staying home because I didn’t know that was an option. The words “freebirth” or “family birth” were utterly foreign to me. Even if I had known, I had no resources, no one to turn to for support. The Freebirth Sisters was born out of this need. This is our heart, our passion, our gift: support, community, resources for autonomous birth.

written by Christina Bakanec