Are you pregnant or a parent? Ever had someone tell you how you should give birth to or feed your baby? Of course you have! And that sucks.
The Globe and Mail recently published a story about birth shaming. It spoke to the problem of natural childbirth activists ranking types of birth experiences as best and worst.
For example: according to many people a spontaneous, vaginal birth where no medications were used is a good birth. Same scenario at home? That’s best! Decide with your doctor that an epidural and oxytocin induction is the safest and most desired option for birth? That’s worse. Decide to skip going into labour and have a c-section? That’s the worst of all!
The problem with this is that it’s isolating. Judging people for their health and parenting choices separates them into good and bad. Ultimately noone can be good all the times and parents are perpetually wracked with the guilt of their choices.
Well, that’s bullshit!
Though the article in the Globe talks about doulas as promoting an agenda of non-medicated birth as best, we want to assure you that we do not stand with those doulas.
Hamilton Family Doulas does NOT have an agenda about birth or parenting.
We like to say that our birth and parenting philosophy is your birth and parenting philosophy.
If you look at our site, look at our birth services page or read about our postpartum services you will NOT find language that glorifies natural birthing as an ideal you should be striving towards.
What you will find throughout our website and when you talk to any doula on the Hamilton Family Doulas team is that we want to help you feel calmer and more confident for whatever choices you will be making in birth and parenting. We want to help you get rest, get information, get understanding, get acceptance and get support.
Our doulas are equally good at supporting couples through cesarean birth, highly manged medicated births and births with no interventions. Our doulas are amazing at supporting pregnant women in hospitals in Hamilton, Burlington, Oakville, Brantford and Grimsby. They are also amazing at providing birth support during home birth. Our doulas can provide breastfeeding support when a new mother is struggling or help a woman pump or prepare formula bottles for newborns.
We’re good at what we do. We’re really, really good at it. We’ve spent a long time supporting women and men through birth and we’ve learned about every kind of birth. We can slow dance on the back porch in the middle of the night and quietly cheer a mother on to a peaceful and soul nourishing home birth. We can help a woman in a hospital bed with three IV lines feel calm and cared for during a long medicalised birth so that she can have a soul nourishing birth experience, too.
We have been there when things go smoothly and we’ve been there when nothing seemed to go right and emergency help was needed. We make sure each of those clients, with their different needs and different desires, never feels alone on their journey.
Our doulas will support all options with equal enthusiasm, genuine care and expertise.
Because shaming people for the choices they make is wrong.
That is just one advantage you will find at Hamilton Family Doulas: shame-free birth and postpartum care.