Supporting women in their pregnancy

When I reflected on my own experience trying to get pregnant, then carrying my daughter through to giving birth to her and surviving those difficult first months I now see how much women need more support.

There are so many things we don’t talk about in society.

So many things that are considered disgusting or taboo. Like periods. Or child birth, the menopause. They are things that we go through, many of us, every month.

We need to normalise these subjects so that women are never again told to have a happy period by marketeers.

To allow women to know their bodies better and to be confident in their knowledge. So that they understand the boundaries of what is possible. To encourage ownership of their birthing experience. So that when an expert who is not inside their body or mind, tells them that they are going to intervene, they realise that they have more power within themselves. They have a choice. They can resist this potentially unnecessary intervention. Or that they need that intervention. And then to accept it and its consequences and to reconcile themselves with the outcomes.

I am studying to be a pregnancy yoga teacher.

The first module was like an emotional rollercoaster for me. It went through the ins and outs (no pun intended) of getting pregnant. I went through IVF. I was only too aware of the different phases of insemination through to blastocyst, implantation and pregnancy. Unfortunately I had a negative outcome as they describe it in the fertility clinic.

Then in our course we went through the different phases of labour. Again the wave of emotions came as I remembered that I didn’t get to feel any contractions because my daughter was in a breech position and nothing we did could move her. I had wanted to have a natural childbirth. Instead I had an elective cesarean. More terminology that is hard to take when you really aren’t happy to choose that path.

By the second module when we all came together again to reflect on how we felt and what we learned in module one I confessed that I felt like a fraud. Trying to support women in childbirth when my child had been lifted out of my womb and handed to me over a blue blanket.

Listening to the other women in the room it was reassuring to hear that many women felt as I did.

Everyone held an insecurity of some kind. Many women end up experiencing a different birthing situation than what they had planned for.

So I’m excited. I love to learn. I love what I do now. Supporting other people and helping them through their own journey fits better with my soul. I have a lot more training and observing to do. I’m looking forward to the moment in the New Year when I’m able to join women on the mat and offer them some tools to help them stand in their power when the time comes.

Namasté