Discrimination in Childbirth Education
- Lisa Dowling
- Jul 8, 2015
- 4 min read
As a birth professional choosing the right childbirth education program to certify with can be a mine field. Just like a Mom choosing which childbirth education program to do whilst pregnant, choosing which program will best suit your philosophy surrounding birth and your business can be a difficult road to navigate.
I find it interesting that some birth professionals choose to certify with organizations that openly discriminate against women who, in their eyes, didn't live up to their standards of what birth should be. In particular, organizations that will only allow childbirth educators to certify with them if they have had a natural childbirth themselves. What is that??? I’ve had a 32 hour induction ending in a cesarean and I’ve also had a VBAC with just nitrous oxide. Is that what makes me a good childbirth educator? I don't believe so. What makes me good at what I do is the fact I choose to teach a program that supports all women and their vision of what a positive birth is - not mine.
I teach GentleBirth. My colleagues and fellow instructors are a wonderful community of women who have had unmedicated births, cesareans, VBAC, women who have not yet had children and a male midwife. What do they all have in common? The belief that a positive birth comes in many forms. A belief that if you work on building Moms emotional resilience then no matter what happens on the day she can still have a positive birth experience - as defined by mom - not her childbirth educator. A belief that true empowerment in birth comes not from having a unmedicated birth, but by finding the strength within to accept whatever path your birth takes and owning it. What I mean by owning it is keeping your birth on your terms even if your birth preferences go out the window.
If an organization will only allow people to certify to teach their ‘method’ if they have had a natural childbirth themselves, what does that say about their ability to properly prepare women for birth? To me it shows a huge lack of understanding surrounding the outside factors that women cannot control. For example, if a woman is preparing for a natural birth with one of these organizations and then on the day baby goes into distress and a cesarean is urgently needed, how have these organizations prepared women for that? If they won’t allow instructors in that have not had a natural childbirth, to me that sounds like they see a natural childbirth as superior in some way to a medicated birth or cesarean. So they see the instructors who have not had that type of birth as inferior. In my humble opinion that also passes on to the women who I’ve heard referred to as having a “failed X method” birth. I cannot even put into words how horrified I was to hear that expression. Not only are they not preparing women for if things don’t go the way they wanted, they are labelling them as failing at birth and then obviously that women could not go on to teach that method if they wanted to in the future due to their monumental failure. To me, it is these organizations that are failing women. If as a childbirth education program you cannot understand the basic fact that birth can be unpredictable and that a woman’s desires for pain relief etc., can change during the course of their labor then you are not educated enough about birth to teach anyone.
GentleBirth for me, is a program that does so much more than prepare women for the perfect birth. It can turn a birth that could have potentially left Mom feeling overwhelmed, disappointed and rail-roaded through their labor into an empowering experience where Mom still stayed in control through mindfulness and training her brain to adapt positively to whatever comes out of left field on the day. We can all want to birth a specific way and when that happens it’s great, but blindly assuming that it will go that way for every woman is setting women up for a fall should things take a turn.
Women cannot “fail” at birth but childbirth educators can certainly fail their clients. Whether you have a homebirth, a hospital birth with an epidural or not, a planned cesarean or even a homebirth turn transfer and cesarean it can still be a GentleBirth.
As a GentleBirth Instructor you are not restricted by narrow minded views on what birth should be. You are teaching women a coping mechanism that will carry them whatever type of birth they have and into the postpartum period and long beyond. We teach life skills - not just birth skills GentleBirth does not rely on one tool to get women through labor. Like self-hypnosis for example, it’s a great tool to have but not everyone is equally hypnotizable so relying on that alone is never a good idea. Building your labor tool kit so you have back up after back up ensures that Mom and Dad are well equipped with everything they need.
As doulas and childbirth educators we advise moms to not put all their eggs in one basket when preparing for birth and I'd give any birth professional exploring CBE certification options the same advice.
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