When Emmy Kissinger, a birth story listener and mental health professional, gracefully stepped into our studio, she brought with her an air of transformation that many mothers will find familiar. Her journey from the shock of an emergency C-section to the serenity of home births encapsulates the profound impact that childbirth can have on one's life. Emmy's mission is to guide others through the delicate process of birth story listening, offering a sanctuary for those who seek to make peace with their birth experiences.
Throughout our insightful discussion, Emmy touches on the liberation that comes with understanding and accepting labor pain, the significance of mental preparation for childbirth, and the emotional support needed to navigate this journey. We share stories that highlight the power of reframing birth narratives, while also discussing the critical role that healthcare professionals play in shaping these experiences. Emmy's approach brings to the fore the importance of communication and the necessity of a supportive community for transforming birth trauma into tales of strength and resilience.
As we wrap up this profound conversation, Emmy leaves us with the resonating thought of fostering trust within ourselves. She underscores the value of meditation and self-reflection in nurturing this trust, particularly as we approach life-altering events such as welcoming a new life. The ebb and flow of our dialogue serves as a reminder of the unpredictability of childbirth and the empowerment that arises from education, autonomy, and the unwavering belief in our own decisions. Join us on this enlightening journey that could very well reshape the way you view birth and support others in their own stories.
Medical Disclaimer: This podcast is intended as a safe space for women to share their birth experiences. It is not intended to provide medical advice. Each woman’s medical course of action is individual and may not appropriately transfer to another similar situation. Please speak to your medical provider before making any medical decisions. Additionally, it is important to keep in mind that evidence based practice evolves as our knowledge of science improves. To the best of my ability I will attempt to present the most current ACOG and AWHONN recommendations at the time the podcast is recorded, but that may not necessarily reflect the best practices at the time the podcast is heard. Additionally, guests sharing their stories have the right to autonomy in their medical decisions, and may share their choice to go against current practice recommendations. I intend to hold space for people to share their decisions. I will attempt to share the current recommendations so that my audience is informed, but it is up to each individual to choose what is best for them.
When Emmy Kissinger, a birth story listener and mental health professional, gracefully stepped into our studio, she brought with her an air of transformation that many mothers will find familiar. Her journey from the shock of an emergency C-section to the serenity of home births encapsulates the profound impact that childbirth can have on one's life. Emmy's mission is to guide others through the delicate process of birth story listening, offering a sanctuary for those who seek to make peace with their birth experiences.
Throughout our insightful discussion, Emmy touches on the liberation that comes with understanding and accepting labor pain, the significance of mental preparation for childbirth, and the emotional support needed to navigate this journey. We share stories that highlight the power of reframing birth narratives, while also discussing the critical role that healthcare professionals play in shaping these experiences. Emmy's approach brings to the fore the importance of communication and the necessity of a supportive community for transforming birth trauma into tales of strength and resilience.
As we wrap up this profound conversation, Emmy leaves us with the resonating thought of fostering trust within ourselves. She underscores the value of meditation and self-reflection in nurturing this trust, particularly as we approach life-altering events such as welcoming a new life. The ebb and flow of our dialogue serves as a reminder of the unpredictability of childbirth and the empowerment that arises from education, autonomy, and the unwavering belief in our own decisions. Join us on this enlightening journey that could very well reshape the way you view birth and support others in their own stories.
Medical Disclaimer: This podcast is intended as a safe space for women to share their birth experiences. It is not intended to provide medical advice. Each woman’s medical course of action is individual and may not appropriately transfer to another similar situation. Please speak to your medical provider before making any medical decisions. Additionally, it is important to keep in mind that evidence based practice evolves as our knowledge of science improves. To the best of my ability I will attempt to present the most current ACOG and AWHONN recommendations at the time the podcast is recorded, but that may not necessarily reflect the best practices at the time the podcast is heard. Additionally, guests sharing their stories have the right to autonomy in their medical decisions, and may share their choice to go against current practice recommendations. I intend to hold space for people to share their decisions. I will attempt to share the current recommendations so that my audience is informed, but it is up to each individual to choose what is best for them.
Speaker 1:
Hello, today I have with me Emmy Kissinger. Emmy is a mom of three from the Midwest, a certified birth story listener and experienced mental health professional who brings a wealth of diverse birth experiences to her practice. Her journey includes a Caesarean section and two home births. Emmy offers personalized one-on-one sessions for individuals, guiding them toward finding inner peace and acceptance in their unique birth stories. To learn more about her services, workshops or the guided birth story listening process, visit her website at wwwarrivalsstoriesco or connect with her on Instagram at emmykissinger. Emmy. Welcome and thank you so much for joining me.
Speaker 2:
Hello, I'm so excited to be here. This is going to be a fun one.
Speaker 1:
Oh yeah, absolutely. I am so excited about what you do. We talked briefly before we hit record and we realized that we are kind of kind of kindred spirits in what we're doing with birthing people. I would definitely agree with that. So where did you start in your mental health professional career? What kind of happened that inspired you to go down this path?
Speaker 2:
Oh, that is such a great question. So we're going, we're dialing way back. So I attended grad school and became a licensed school psychologist and during grad school I actually became pregnant right before I graduated. So then I started out my professional career. I was 23 years old. I had my son right before Christmas that year that I had started. So I had been in the profession for about six months. It was my internship year and I had a beautiful vision for my birth. I wanted a natural birth in the hospital.
Speaker 2:
It sort of that cascade of interventions happened and ended up with an emergency cesarean and I was actually sedated for the entire operation process. So, waking up, everyone in my family had met my baby, was completely devastated by the fact that I was not there to welcome him when he entered this world and that actually no one in our family had been there to welcome him when he was pulled out in the operating room. So, being very devastated by that, I experienced pretty extreme birth trauma and started doing things to try to process that trauma Writing my birth story, talking to my sister a lot who had been at the birth, joining the International Cesarean Awareness Network, where I actually ended up going to their national conference. So there I ended up being in a workshop with Pam England, who is the person who created birth story listening and the birth story medicine process, and over time realized that my heart and my passion is truly aligned with helping people find peace after their birth If they experience birth trauma.
Speaker 2:
It's so common in our culture to have lots of thoughts and feelings that are maybe not super positive about our birth but feel like maybe we can't share them, we don't have a way to process them. There's no one who is really trained to listen to those stories and provide insights or feedback that can actually help us to find peace and acceptance and closure with that story so that we can move forward and live our life and have more children if we want to. So that's sort of the beginning and how I've landed here. It was a nine-year process. My son actually just turned nine.
Speaker 1:
Wow, so can you elaborate a little more about what a certified birth story listener is, because that's not something that I'd heard of before, but I think it's brilliant.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I would be happy to. So you might think that someone who is a certified birth story listener would be someone who sits down with you, listens to your story, summarizes a little bit, provides a little bit of active listening support. It's kind of like a therapy session, that sort of process, but it's really not like that at all. It's truly a guided process. It's meant to be sort of one or two, mainly one and done.
Speaker 2:
You sit down, you set an intention, you work through a very specific line of steps that you talk through together with someone like me or someone who's trained like me, and then you work your way to the end of the process where you are identifying the limiting belief that you gained from that experience, figuring out where the trauma in your body is actually sitting from that experience so that your body can start to make that mind-body connection.
Speaker 2:
Boiling down the experience to figure out what it is exactly that you are kind of hung up on in your experience, because our birth stories can sometimes seem so big, they can seem so daunting. There are so many things that were emotionally challenging in that story, but if we can really boil it down, what was the exact thing that was really? That's really, really your heart is hung up on and then start to figure out where that's sitting. We can actually apply some of those somatic processes to work through that. We can develop a new belief around that experience and we can truly transform that story to have more meaning so that you can move forward.
Speaker 1:
That is so interesting. It's kind of what I did with my first birth, without really knowing it, just because I'm a labor and delivery nurse. What I realized was my biggest issue was so I had an amnesia, without being told that I had an amnesia, okay, and the provider didn't explain it afterwards. It wasn't until I got to postpartum where my colleagues said, oh yeah, you have the sepsiaotomy and a second degree tear, that's a lot. And I was like, well, what happened?
Speaker 1:
And one year later is when I became a labor and delivery nurse and then after that I asked for my records and found out that the position my daughter was in and the fact that she had the cord around her neck made the birth more emergent than I understood or was led to believe, I think, because I don't think they were trying to freak me out. But they said you know, you need to get her out in this one push, and that's when they did the apesiaotomy and I didn't realize it. So, knowing what I know now the position that her head was in when she came out according to the records, plus the cord being wrapped around her neck it completely reframed my belief about what had happened Doesn't excuse the fact that nobody told me what happened, but it no longer is something that holds a lot of trauma or fear or Sadness like it did before. Yeah, that's really interesting.
Speaker 1:
I love that there's actually a process that people are using for that.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, it's, I'm so grateful for it. I know that when I actually went through the birth story listening process myself, I experienced great transformation from it and was definitely able to walk out of that room sort of feeling like a new woman, realizing, oh, like this is the thing that was holding so much grief and so much heaviness for me, and now I feel like that's lifted just enough where I can take a deep breath for the first time in 20 months.
Speaker 1:
Wow. So when was it that you said this was a nine-year process? When was it that you changed your focus and started working on the birth story listening?
Speaker 2:
I actually started the birth story listening certification program in, I believe, march of this year. So I started. It's Four month program that you go through and throughout it you're expected to Do birth story listening sessions all throughout. So I got lots and lots of experience and practice while I was in the program and then also have been doing sessions with people since then. That's amazing.
Speaker 1:
And you said that you had two home births afterwards. Yes, I would assume you did some healing work in between.
Speaker 2:
Yeah.
Speaker 2:
So the conference that I mentioned, the birth story listening session that I did at the conference all of that was before my second child was born.
Speaker 2:
So all of that healing work truly needed to be done Before I was ready to kind of go down that road again, because there was sort of like a spiral of Sadness I don't want to call it depression, because that's truly not what it was for me. I've experienced depression and trauma and depression were kind of different things for me, but it was sort of an unraveling and then, once I was able to kind of draw that line in the sand, feel like things had been shifted for me. I was able to start to rebuild, become more empowered, become more disciplined, develop the characteristics I needed to develop as a person in order to have the birth that I wanted. Because during my first birth I know that one of my huge hang-ups was I was so afraid of the fear of the waves and the Contractions that I was experiencing. It was really really hard to manage those, and so I knew there was a lot of work to do in terms of being able to manage that discomfort the next time.
Speaker 1:
And what were you able to do to manage that I?
Speaker 2:
did a lot of things. The main thing that I did was I read childbirth without fear. That's a really, really helpful resource about understanding that fear and pain kind of go hand in hand. Fear is the piece that we let have power over us, and pain is a natural part of life and a part of childbirth. So for me, I took that message and I was like, okay, that makes perfect sense to me. And then, all throughout my second pregnancy, or my pregnancy with my daughter, I did have a miscarriage in between also, but the pregnancy where I had my next live birth, every time I experienced pain whether that was a stub toe, whether that was a leg cramp I used that opportunity to not let that pain that I was experiencing hold power over me. I would experience it, I would feel it, but I wouldn't run from it. I wouldn't fear it. That's really amazing.
Speaker 1:
I'm writing that down because I think that is so important. Yes, pain is a part of life, and sometimes it's telling us something that we need to pay attention to. I mean a stubbed toe, if it's not broken, probably not as much, but Definitely. Most of childbirth is a normal physiological process, as long as there's not a complication developing. So the people that I know that have had successful natural births I am not one of them have had normal physiological Births. Their birth was not dysregulated, there weren't any complications, everything went smoothly, and so I think it's important to keep in mind that, as long as everything is progressing Baby looks good, you look good, you're not feeling anything that feels pathophysiological Then the pain shouldn't have to hold power over you exactly. So I really like that mindset.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, it was really, really helpful for me because I definitely come from a family where your mission in life almost was like you avoid Pain at all costs. You take Tylenol, you take ibuprofen, you Do whatever you have to do to avoid pain. And I realized as an adult you get, you can't avoid pain. Pain is part of being a human and it's especially a part of childbirth, no matter how you cut it. So, whether that's through the recovery or the actual birth itself or the breastfeeding or whatever, yeah. There's gonna be discomfort, that's true.
Speaker 1:
So then you had your C-section. Do you mind if we go back to that at first, because you did mention that you had a different mindset surrounding the pain and that there was an intervention cascade and you ended up in, you said, an emergency C-section and you had to Be sedated for that. Would you be open to walking me through that so that my listeners can kind of understand what that might look like?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, sure, so you want to hear the actual kind of how the birth unfolded.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, because I feel like there's gonna be a lot of value in how you went from there, processing that trauma and then changing Everything so that you could have two successful births at home without those interventions. I would assume that the labors were similar and there wasn't anything. Was there anything additional going on that would have required the emergency C-section?
Speaker 2:
No, definitely not so okay. The way that things sort of want was I'll share first that I Definitely had a home birth on my heart for that first birth. But I definitely was not in a place where I was empowered enough to truly make that decision on my own and stand in my own Power in a place where I was like this is what I want, this is what we're gonna do. So I sort of let people shift my perspective a little bit and I did find a lovely hospital birth midwife, a CNM, who was available and able to take my case on at our local hospital about 20 minutes away from me. So great pregnancy, nothing really concerning at all. I did go to. I was 42 weeks and Baby was not here yet. We did schedule an induction but thankfully I had gone into labor that night before my scheduled induction. So you know, as a labor and delivery nurse, the recommendation was definitely like labor at home for as long as you can, if you truly want a natural child birth, you should try to try to stay home and make as much progress as you can there. So I tried that. But the contractions I was feeling were so overwhelming to me they were something I had not expected. I just truly could not wrap my head around what was happening with my body. It felt so intense to me, so naturally, as a very naive young woman, this must be it. My baby must be on the way. So we raced into the hospital and Got there in the middle of the night and of course my adrenaline was high because we had made this transition and my contractions pretty much just stopped and we spent the rest of the day just hanging out in the delivery room and Didn't do too much active laboring throughout the day. Once nightfall came, my contractions picked up again, which was really great. I took a couple of baths and at that point it had been about 23 hours. So you know the clocks ticking, the baby needs to be born, even though I truly had not really been in active labor most of the day.
Speaker 2:
So talked with my midwife and we decided to to rupture my waters and that's sort of the the line in the sand where we're like okay. So my waters were released and that's when my contractions became Way more than I I felt like I could handle. Just as a person who was fearful of pain. I really wanted to be alone, but there were just so many people around. So at one point they tried to put more water back in me type of thing or say lean or whatever it was, to kind of like Take some pressure off the baby.
Speaker 2:
We labored for a while longer and I was just way out of sorts and Told my midwife like I would like to do something else. I am not interested in an epidural, I am not interested in any pain medication, and I think I sort of became unruly at this point, and so the doctor was thinking maybe there were some heart decels. So the team pretty much decided on an emergency C-section. I don't think I really fully understood what that meant at the time, but an anesthesiologist did talk to me. I did sign paperwork, everything was consented to technically and then was wheeled off, but definitely did not recognize in those moments that my husband would not be with me, that my sister would not be with me in the operating room. They had my husband completely dressed in scrubs.
Speaker 2:
It wasn't until we were actually in the operating room that the decision was made that they needed to skip a lot of the protocols moving into a C-section, because they felt like it needed to happen right away, and so that's why my husband apparently was not allowed to be in the room.
Speaker 2:
So then it was about four hours later that I woke up and my husband had been doing skin to skin with the baby. My whole family had sort of met the baby already. Then they brought the baby into me and we had a wonderful, beautiful bonding experience, and that was definitely one of the most magical moments of my life. I felt so at home, becoming a mom for the first time. My husband and I named him and definitely in those moments felt like, oh, thank goodness I was at the hospital, Thank goodness I was with a team of people who were able to support me through this emergency situation, but realizing with my subsequent births that it was truly making the decision to go to the hospital, a place that I was not truly aligned with birthing, that that was probably the reason that the cascade of interventions kind of went the way it did. So did you?
Speaker 1:
ever find out what they thought the concern was with the heartbeat? Was it? Was your water broken and did they explain what was going on there?
Speaker 2:
I did request my records at one point and I actually still have them, but I decided that that information was not essential for me in my healing journey. I am much more interested in the beliefs I developed about myself during that experience and not as interested in necessarily what the doctors had to say about the experience. I definitely know that rupturing those waters and having it be before I felt like my body was ready for that was the thing that kind of shifted things for the negative.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, do you remember about how long that took? So it was like- the water was broken and they did the. I'm assuming you're talking about maybe a couple of hours.
Speaker 2:
It was probably a couple hours Maybe. It's hard to say, I don't remember a lot of that time. I think I was probably at the point where I was nearing transition. Like you know, your brain kind of gets a little fuzzy. My sister actually really remembers those moments really really well and I don't remember them as well. And that's just how childbirth is right.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's so interesting. Yeah, I just feel like there's a lot of missing information about why you ended up having to go back so urgently. And I mean, if you didn't have an epidural, I could see, if the heart rate was staying down continuously, why they chose to have generally an anesthesia which would require you to have a breathing tube. And then that's what makes it so that nobody else can come in the room, because there's more. It's way more in depth as far as making sure that you're breathing, and the anesthesiologist has to be a lot more in tune to what's going on.
Speaker 2:
That makes sense. I did have a breathing tube, for sure, I remember.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, yeah. It just becomes a lot more emergent in that situation, and so having someone hanging out next to you waiting for the baby not as safe. The MSC section is the only surgery that they ever allow people in the OR, so there's a line where you can't cross that because they want to keep you safe.
Speaker 1:
It always is traumatic and I think that there is definitely a lot more that we could do, that we need to do to help families feel a lot more positive about that experience, because it is terrifying to suddenly have to have all these things happen to you and not fully have that explained. Did they debrief it all afterwards?
Speaker 2:
I did have one meeting with the surgeon after the fact. I think I was about two weeks postpartum, and that meeting in and of itself was extremely traumatic, just because he said to me see you in two years, implying that I would be back with my next baby for a repeat cesarean, which is perfectly acceptable. Some people might choose that option. I knew that that option already was not the option for me and so that was probably like a catalyst for like okay, what do I have to do to make sure that that self-fulfilling prophecy does not come true?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, that's interesting because I think a lot of us say that if you've expressed the interest of having more children, we know we'll probably see you again. It's kind of just a fun little thing that we say like welcome back.
Speaker 2:
But it doesn't Right, and I think, when a nurse says it or a doctor, but when the surgeon says it, it definitely has, it implies different something different.
Speaker 1:
That's funny because the surgeon and the doctor are the same person most of the time, but I guess it does have yeah, it does have a different implication when it's for you that person was the surgeon.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, if it was at all, and he was the only person.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, who's only the surgeon? Wow, it's interesting to hear different perspectives because, coming from the hospitals that I work at, where it's all one team, I mean I'm going to really think about it before I make sure it's not like a traumatic birth experience. I don't know that.
Speaker 2:
I say that when it is a traumatic birth experience, but yeah, but I think that just your podcast in general, of sort of bridging this gap, of let's take some of these experiences, let's take these conversations and make providers aware of them and vice versa, like, let's help both sides of the coin understand so that everybody can have a better experience. I think that that's such important work.
Speaker 1:
Gosh, I can't even tell you how much I've learned in the past year since I started this podcast, Just hearing other people's perspectives. Because a big problem is we as nurses only see people in the hospital in that moment in time. We never get to see them again, so we never unless they ride or review we never hear what they thought about the experience. Most people don't comment. Most who will just give it. If they do comment, they'll just give a generic everything was fine. Or if it was a completely negative experience, then they give all this negative feedback and you're not even sure where it came from, because we're not out there trying to cause harm, Emotional or physical. So it's really hard to hear when what you do with one person is seen as positive versus what you do with another is seen as completely negative. So it's sometimes hard. So I think it's definitely necessary to have these conversations because providers just truly don't know where we're going wrong.
Speaker 2:
I completely agree, and I think that a lot of times, specifically with people who come for a birth story listening session, are coming because of a story that's sort of this underlying narrative in their subconscious. It's this thing that they keep kind of perseverating on. They're thinking about it a lot and there's no one really to tell it to, because you could tell your doctor but it's not really going to shift anything or change anything, nor is it even meant to. It's a very personal experience that needs to be worked through, and so leaving a review or sending a letter or something like that isn't necessarily going to be a catalyst for shifting the birthing person's mindset. So that's why I think the process can be so effective, because you're telling your story to someone who can actually help you work through it.
Speaker 1:
So, from the perspective of someone that works as a labor and delivery nurse with providers, I see providers who have their own trauma.
Speaker 1:
I, as a healthcare professional, have my own trauma, right? Yes, so I would imagine if I were to try to put myself in the shoes of your provider, your surgeon or whoever was involved with your birth. They were doing the best that they knew how to do in the moment, given the parameters under which they were practicing and by that I mean you were probably not the only one in the hospital on the labor and delivery unit at the time. They were considering the people that they knew were coming in. They were considering the people they knew were already there and a lot of that is where parents tend to feel maybe rushed into this labor process. And so, therefore, the decision was made not sure what all the factors were, but I just listed some potentials. I'm not sure if that was what was happening. The decision was made for your water to be broken. Then, after that, the cascade of interventions occurred and the providers chose to do what they felt was best to maintain the physical health of you and your baby.
Speaker 2:
I 100% agree. I still see the doctor and the midwife. I have wonderful relationships with them. I trust them both so much. I just know that the place for me to birth, for my future births, was not there.
Speaker 1:
That is the most fair thing that I've ever heard anybody say about their birth, because I think that there's a lot of how do I put it? Demonization on both sides. So the provider, when they hear the feedback of you made me have a C-section they feel defensive and say I wanted you to have a live baby, right, yes, and I'm not here because one, the potential of having not received a live baby is horrible. But also we are leaving out this whole person that was involved in the process. And while that person physically perhaps came out healthy, or at least the incision was sewn up and maybe there weren't complications, what about the emotional impact on that person?
Speaker 1:
And when you're trying to save two lives, that's where the provider trauma comes in. So what's hard is when you are inflicting those procedures and interventions on people. You know that it's going to probably cause some emotional and very definitely physical scars, and yet you have to do it anyway. And so then you're traumatized and you have to stuff it down, you being the provider, I being the professional that assists the provider. It's really hard. And so then there's this cycle of those things happening continuously, and then we don't have conversations afterwards on how to fix it, and so we're just re-traumatized and re-traumatizing other people, and it's just this vicious circle and birth story listening sessions.
Speaker 2:
It's very common to do them with providers, actually, because you can carry, like you just said, trauma from someone else's birth and so oh, I do. Yeah, that's part of why I'm doing this podcast and I'm really come and work through those sessions as well, you know, for anyone who is a birth storyteller.
Speaker 1:
So that could be, and suddenly I have so many clients for you, let me just give your card to everybody I know.
Speaker 2:
But it is really challenging and trauma can happen in truly any setting, so it's not just a hospital problem. Trauma is simply when your mind can't keep up with whatever happened in your body physically, very much like a polar bear who was shot by a dart, you know, and fell asleep, like any time that you are in a scenario where your mind couldn't fully comprehend what happened to your body, or your mind couldn't fully comprehend kind of what happened in a certain scenario, trauma can happen, and so that can be part of the fertility process, it can be part of the breastfeeding process, it can be part of a miscarriage. There's so many opportunities for difficult scenarios to come up during the early motherhood or early parenting experience, and so it's great to have someone and a process for somewhere to go to talk about it.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I love that. I think that's amazing. So then, from that experience that you had with your first baby, what were the steps that you took to become confident in the home birth experience, and who did you surround yourself with in order to feel empowered to do that?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, that's such a great question. I would say what ultimately happened and I think something that you said earlier made me think of this was that I truly became a person who could take responsibility for my own decisions. I made the decision to go to the hospital. I made this decision to have a hospital midwife. I made the decision to have my waters ruptured. I made the decision to have a C-section. Those were all my responsibility. They were not my provider's fault. There were no victims to blame. There were no villains in my story.
Speaker 2:
My healing journey was realizing, if I didn't like those decisions that I made in the past, that past Emmy made, and she made the right decisions for her at the time. She didn't have to make those same decisions again. She could stand in her power and be a person who could make decisions that were truly aligned with her heart in the future. So the process that I went through in order to get to that place, which was a long and grueling process for sure, with a lot of work that needed to be done I started out by truly connecting with people in my community who had experienced similar things. We had a doula who was running a postpartum group at the time. So I ended up in a room very fresh postpartum, with other women who found a lot of meaning in their birth experience, who expressed that it was a big deal to them, no matter how it went. So I knew right off the bat I wasn't alone and that if I felt really strong feelings, a heaviness about this birth that I had experienced, that was okay, that was normal, that was something that lots of people experienced. So that gave me the permission to kind of start talking about it a lot and to start trying to find resources to figure out the next step for me. And so I actually came across two really important books. One of them is Burthing from Within by Pam England, and it outlines a process for doing birth trauma healing artwork. And so I started doing a lot of that and the purpose for that is truly finding a pathway for working that trauma out of your body through moving your hands and getting in motion. And then I also came across the book Healing Trauma by Peter Levine, and he has a somatic process, all of these exercises in his book for working trauma out of the body.
Speaker 2:
And so what I would do was I would feel really, really triggered when I had a friend who was about to give birth, when I knew anybody was going to the hospital to give birth, when I knew people went into labor, when people told me their birth stories all of these things would fill me with such a discomfort. It was like my face got red, like all of those signs of feeling triggered, and so I would actually just go to a separate space. I would kind of feel into my body and be like, okay, like it's sitting on my chest or feel like it's coming up my throat and I would just jog in place or do whatever I needed to do to sort of work that feeling out of my body. And that really helped me to begin to shift and make that mind-body connection for where my trauma was actually sitting. And luckily I'm a psychologist so I knew a lot of these things. I had this background that most people did not have or would not have in this situation. I had lots and lots of knowledge of trauma and triggers and I know what it looks like because I saw it in my job every day with kids who have behavior challenges, and so those were definitely the initial steps.
Speaker 2:
But then learning about birth story listening I've done two sessions now, one for two different births, one for myself and one for the birth I attended for my sister.
Speaker 2:
That didn't really necessarily go as planned and all of those things sort of led me to transform the trauma I had experienced, to release it from my body, to feel like I can confidently speak about my birth, like I'm doing today.
Speaker 2:
I can speak about that past situation up until about three years after the birth. I would stay, I would still break down in tears if I would try to tell that story to anyone and from there the healing journey or the transformative journey of feeling like an empowered person, was truly developing that discipline. So for my second birth, saying I feel like I really want to be physically fit for this birth. I feel like I really want to know about spinning babies and do birth yoga to prepare my body for my birth so that my baby can be in the best position possible, and having the discipline to say I'm going to do that yoga routine every other day, I'm going to tell my baby her birth story. I'm going to visualize the birth that I want to have. I'm going to do the physical and spiritual work in the hopes of having the birth that I want to have.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, that is. There's so much. That came up for me when you were describing all of that. That's amazing, one of the things that I think that we see, that I see, especially when someone is talking about their birth story or, like you had said, when people say that they're going to go into the hospital to give birth, I see a lot of recently delivered people kind of dumping their birth story onto those people. I feel like it doesn't have to be recently delivered, actually, like, if you think about it, that's where some of that ancestral trauma comes in, where it's like your mom, your mom's mom, all these people talk about how their birth went down and how it's like they still have, they haven't healed from that.
Speaker 2:
Exactly exactly, and that's truly why I got into this work, because I have experienced and lots of people I know who are childbearing age definitely do this trauma dumping, I like to call it, where we tell everyone the really bad things that happened to us during our birth. And the birth story listening process offers a different opportunity where we can share our story with someone, a trusted professional, who can help guide us through it and then also help us to find the wisdom in the meaning in the story that we carry. So we can share that instead of the horrifying things, because sharing our negative story with someone else most likely isn't going to help Be a cautionary tale to someone else that's going to actually help them navigate the process.
Speaker 1:
That's almost never the case, Right that's just gonna scare them and make the process harder for them. Right, right, yeah, that's definitely not what we want. So then, along those same lines, first of all, if someone does feel like they have the urge to do the trauma dumping, would you agree that that's probably a sign that they need to process that experience that they've been through?
Speaker 2:
So a lot of times I would say yes. I think a lot of people are not necessarily at the point where they would maybe Receive that feedback, where they would say, oh, like I agree with you right, because and the reason for that is in our birth story listening training, we actually learn about seven different story gates that a birth storyteller goes through. So a birth story actually transforms many times. So we initially have that part, that story, that we tell when we're still in the hospital, where we're like there might be this Saviour idea like, oh my gosh, thank goodness I was here. This is the medicalized version of the story.
Speaker 2:
The story Transforms when we get home and we tell a different story to the people in our family who come over to visit the baby and then, as time goes on, tell a story that's you know the short, quick version that will tell somebody at the park who asked oh, how did your birth go? And then from there it Transitions into I have this story and I'm wondering about these parts of it. I'm I'm seeking more information and I'm curious about why this happened, and then it continues to shift from there. So if we think about all of the different ways the story changes, we can have a better understanding of where we're at in that process, where we're at in our own Processing of our story, so that we know what the right intervention for us Us is at the time.
Speaker 2:
Because when I first experienced my birth and all of the heavy emotions that came with it, I was definitely not ready to do a birth story listening session. I shoved that story down for a while, I wasn't ready to talk about it, and then I became more ready to talk about it, but I definitely wouldn't have told anyone except my sister type of situation and as time goes on I was seeking resources. And then you know, everybody goes through their own process when they're working through something really hard, something really emotional and that Expands way beyond, you know, birth stories, any kind of trauma that someone might experience, a car accident or a medical situation or the death of someone yeah, I definitely identify with that processing.
Speaker 1:
I mean, I went through the. I was lucky that I had labor and delivery nurses to talk to.
Speaker 1:
Yeah so I really I wonder how other people do it when they don't have those people. So it's fascinating to me that there's resources out there and I want to be able to help people tap into those. The other thing that came up for me you talked about a while back, when you said that you didn't have any negative feelings towards your doctor or your midwife. That really resonated with me because I felt the same way. So I delivered.
Speaker 1:
I went into labor naturally with my daughter, which was more important to me than scheduling an induction so that I could have the provider than I knew and trusted. Since I worked at the Hospital that I Delivered at, I had a general sense of who the providers were and what their track record was. So when I got the doctor that I got, I was a little Nervous because her intervention rates were higher than others, but she had a very good bedside manner and I think what I learned from that scenario is like you were talking about you're the one Making the decisions and it doesn't just because somebody's recommending something doesn't always mean you have to accept it, but I would invite you to truly understand why they're recommending it. I was a little bit more defensive than normal, I think. Because of this, I knew this provider had higher C-section rates and Intervention rates in general, so I ultimately sought a second opinion from a trusted friend, which I'm not sure if I recommend that I.
Speaker 2:
Can go away. I mean, it can go well and it can not go well right.
Speaker 1:
Providers don't like that. But in that situation I got who I got and so I pushed back and I did not accept the C-section. I was allowed to labor for a little bit longer and luckily somebody else was required more attention on the floor and because I was mostly status quo, it was fine. But I don't feel like the provider had the worst intentions. I don't think she had negative intentions at all and I still Believe that she is a good person and good provider. I'd not.
Speaker 1:
It's not personal. So I think that keeping that mindset like you're talking about, where you can be accountable for your decisions and also seek to understand why somebody is recommending them and Also ask if it's imperative that these things happen, I feel like that's kind of like the trifecta for maintaining your autonomy in the hospital setting. Because if those three pieces are not all in place, then you start to wonder if you made the right decision, because it was your first birth and you were feeling like you were consenting to the things that they recommended. Because you took them as this is what needs to happen, then you felt a little bit like you lost some of your power in that decision, even though you did consent to it.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, yeah and I would definitely say it's very normal and okay for that perspective to shift over time. So, like right after my birth, I was so grateful for my providers. A little ways out, I was angry with them, I was mad, I blamed them and as time went on, I stepped into being an adult woman where I was like okay, well, I made that decision to be there, it was my responsibility to be educated, it was my responsibility to birth where I wanted to birth and that's what I chose and that's what I got. And now I have to figure out where to go from here.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I had that exact same feeling.
Speaker 1:
I did not feel comfortable with a home birth and I knew in the hospital that those interventions were a possibility and more likely and that I had to be defensive, which is sad but also lends itself to how important it is to have a provider that you align with and to really do that Definitely Pre-work and understand what you're getting yourself into, what it entails to have a birth, what the possible complications are, and if you're in that moment which I just want all birthing people to know when you're in that moment you are not in the same frame of mind ever as you are normally.
Speaker 1:
That's definitely true. Yes, your brain will not be braining on the same level, right, you are not the same human being. So that prep work is so important and the ability to look at your provider and trust them fully, because you know that you have the same philosophy on interventions. That is imperative, because I literally have the same birth experience. It was copy-paste, other than an additional intervention with my second child, and it had zero trauma, so it wasn't the interventions that caused the trauma.
Speaker 1:
It was my lack of preparation that caused the trauma and my lack of being able to fully trust my provider. So I just I cannot stress enough how key it is to be prepared and to know that your provider is someone you fully trust.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, and I would also say, for me it boiled down to trusting myself fully in those moments where a difficult question comes up, do I trust myself to listen to my heart and say what's true for me? In those moments, will I make an aligned decision or will I sway a little bit because of what someone else is telling me?
Speaker 2:
And like you said, you know, get all of the information, get all the details, get all of the facts, but you still have to be able to trust yourself to make the decisions that you want to make.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, yeah, that is really important. I'm trying to think of how we can advise listeners to be able to even do that, and I guess I'm still just going back to prep work and making sure that you have a provider that you align with. Maybe you could also have a conversation with whoever your support person is and just you know really express your wishes and what your priorities are and talk to people, like if you have a doula or a midwife or your OB provider, about what additional questions should my spouse be asking, or my partner or my mom, whoever it is, it's at the bedside with you If I start to not be able to make those decisions, if I'm just so overwhelmed that I don't ask the right questions.
Speaker 2:
Right.
Speaker 1:
But you do have to have somebody that you trust that's in the procedural driver's seat for all that to happen anyway. So I wish there was like some just magic formula work. We could be like this is how you have a successful birth, but it is so nuanced and there's so much, there's so much that goes into it and even then it's like whoops, that's not how I planned it.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, we're mammals, so there will always be the opportunity for things to not go as planned. That's just how our bodies are made. But for me, I know learning to trust myself truly started with meditation and being able to sit quietly and hear what my intuition had to say before making a decision. And that doesn't necessarily apply to birth, because you don't do a lot of sitting quietly during birth, but it's the practice, it's the doing it over and over again. Where you're like I felt that pain or I felt you know I was able to articulate what I heard during the time that I was spent listening to myself, and for others that might be prayer, you know, whenever we're sitting quiet, that's how we we learn to listen. And then, from learning to listen and take action on that information, that's how we learn to trust ourselves. And we can practice that many, many, many, many times before we actually go into a birthing experience.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, that's true. Yeah, learning to trust yourself is really, really important, and it doesn't necessarily. I think there's one key part of that. If you're not a meditating person like I'm not a meditating person or if you're someone that you know doesn't do a whole lot of sitting quietly, there's a pause that you can take where you just ask yourself is this one step that I'm about to take the one that's going to take me in the right direction? Because I think it's really easy to get overwhelmed by all of the stuff that's going on, and if you could just dial it back to just that one next step like this is I'm still on the pathway? Am I still on the pathway that I want to be on? Am I still going towards my goal, even though it's all the way over there? Am I still on the right path? And it doesn't have to be this huge, overwhelming thing. You can just make one step that keeps you in the right direction, and if you break it down to that, I think it's a little bit less scary, I definitely agree.
Speaker 2:
One time someone told me imagine you're rolling a dice before it lands. You know what you want it to land on in those moments right before it lands. So that can kind of be another guiding light, that's your focus.
Speaker 1:
That's what you're hoping for, because you need more tips and strategies on.
Speaker 2:
you know also, how does that decision work?
Speaker 1:
Well, I mean was there anything else that we didn't talk about that you wanted to bring up? I don't think so.
Speaker 2:
I think we covered so much. I feel like we had such a deep, meaningful conversation. I've just really enjoyed talking to you.
Speaker 1:
Same. I'm looking down and I'm like, wow, 55 minutes, how did that happen? Time just flew Well. I'm looking forward to seeing what you're doing in the future and sending some providers your way, man Like and nurses. There's a lot of us that need to like go back and relive some of our experiences and reframe them.
Speaker 2:
Yes, for sure, and it's not because it's anybody's fault, it's just because this is what being a human is. It's having different experiences and having them feel different ways. That is profound, I mean. Thank you so much.