As a doula and childbirth educator, I strive to give my clients the tools and education they need in order to have an empowered birth.
Empowerment is a hot topic in childbirth right now, but what does it really mean to have an empowered birth?
To empower someone means to give them authority. So an empowered birth is a birth where mom is the lead decision maker. This is a very uncommon model in America birth, as most women give authority to their obstetrician. It is assumed by most that handing over birth decisions to a qualified, third party would improve birth. But science says otherwise.
Lack of decision-making is one of the top predictors for a woman viewing her birth as a negative experience. It also contributes to the over-use of birth interventions, which invite risk and damage outcomes. Data tells us that moms should be the lead decision makers! When a woman decides to take the lead in her birth, she views her birth much differently. She is more invested, engaged, and she learns that birth is something she does, rather than something that is done to her.
Empowerment can feel overwhelming, considering that the average women is fearful of birth, and many are not educated enough in regards to birth to know how to make birthing decisions. So I’d like to outline a few steps to help women not only want to feel empowered during their birth, but know how to use that empowerment safely and wisely.
We innately want to make decisions that lead to optimal health and safety. Our gut instinct is rarely wrong, and we seem to somehow know when something isn’t good for us. But it’s hard to follow our gut during birth because our decisions affect ourselves and our children. This makes us second guess ourselves. But mothers also innately make choices that keep their children safe, and it is safe to trust yourself during your birth.
Birth is a natural event that succeeds over 90% of the time without intervention. Even though birth is culturally viewed as a medical event, birth is actually a naturally occurring event that only needs medical intervention approximately 10% of the time. It is ok to trust the process. Trusting the process will help you trust yourself, and will help you overcome fear and anxiety.
Education leads to confident empowerment. A woman who needs to make a decision without any information is just going to feel anxious and overwhelmed. Pregnancy should be a time of studying birthing options and learning the benefits and risks of each option. This type of education will help a woman when she needs to make quick decisions during her labor because she will already have a basic understanding of available interventions, and will be able to decipher when an intervention is truly needed, or when one can be chosen for comfort or personal preference.
Education should be evidence-based, not opinion based. Find a childbirth class that fits your needs, an experienced doula, and a good reading resource like my new book, “The Sacred Gift of Childbirth: Making Empowered Choices for You and Your Baby”. Make sure the blogs you are reading use citations with links to actual studies to ensure that the information you are getting is factual.
The right support enhances empowerment. For a woman to truly be empowered, her support team must respect that authority and only impose on it if there is a life-threatening situation. But, empowered decision-making isn’t lonely! Women should be given unbiased information from their support team, and then respected and supported once a decision is made. The doctor, midwife, and doula should all be providing the woman with evidence-based information so she can make an informed decision based on benefits and risks, as well as her own personal beliefs, values, and desires. If there is a decision that she doesn’t know how to make, others should help her navigate her options without trying to sway her to any conclusion. A respectful support team will help a woman feel more confident in her ability to make decisions, not make her second guess them.
The great thing about empowerment is it allows each woman to choose for herself which type of birth will be most satisfying and personally rewarding. For one woman, that will mean an induction with an epidural, and for another it will mean a home birth with no intervention. But both women can leave their births feeling empowered because they were able to choose what would be best for them.