When I first became pregnant, there was nothing in this world more important to me than being the first person to have an impact on my child's life. And the truth is that as my child was growing inside of me, I knew that this was my chance to impact him in ways that no one could. A little evening prayer while rubbing my belly, a story time while rocking on a chair or sometimes a lullaby was my way of connecting with my unborn baby. As we approached the time of his entrance into the world, the urge to being the first person to impact his arrival overtook me. I call it my first act as a mother. I wanted my first act as a mother to be the most positive one given the circumstance of his birth.
I read everything about birthing that I could find and hired a doula to help with the birthing process. I learned that I had a choice between having a "no medical intervention", "less medical intervention" and "highest level of medical intervention". After reading about all those choices, I choose that my first act as a mother would be to provide the most natural possible venue for my child to enter this world. Which meant the "no medical intervention".
As a woman, this first act as a mother is a very natural response to wanting the best for your child. It is absolutely our nature's call to be protective of our little ones. Most of the time, we look at medical intervention as a harmful birth method. And anything that can cause harm to our babies, we want to avoid.
Fortunately, I was able to deliver my child without any medical intervention. However, while going through developing my birth plan, because of my background as a business analyst, I knew that in order for any plan to be achieved successfully, I had to think about the "what if" scenarios: What if my labor didn't progress? What if my baby got couldn't go through my pelvics? What if I developped preeclamsia?.... what if things didn't go as planned? What then?
I've lived enough life to know that life doesn't always throw at us the best possible scenario. As murphy's law says: "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong". Not that I am a pessimist nor even a realist. But knowing that there are always chances that things wouldn't go my way, I had to prepare myself for when things didn't go as planned.
I see and talk to so many mothers who see themselves as failures because they weren't able to protect their child from the medical procedures. Or I see women who are ashamed to share their birth stories because they weren't the birth they had planned for. The dissapointement and discouragement of these mothers breaks my heart.
As a doula, I have learned and am learning to always talk to mothers to be about birth plan contengencies. A birth plan contengency is one that provides a success scenario, one where everything goes as she dreams and a few other scenarios that would allow her to think through any major road block that may be thrown her way. The idea is to ensure that regardless of what happens, that the mother does get her dream or part of her dream. Mothers who have been put in a not so desirable circumstance, must understand that they are still protecting their child and providing them with the best entrance into this world.
If a mother was to have some complication with her birth and she or the baby was in any danger, then any medical intervention that could have saved her life or that of her baby is the best path to take given the circumstance.
It's very important to develop those birth plan contengencies in order to lessen the disappointement and discouragement that any mother may have if her birth plan doesn't follow the success scenario
No comments:
Post a Comment