For this month’s blog post I wanted to take this opportunity to talk to you about how a doula can help with the birth process. It is common when you’re pregnant after a loss to feel an increased amount of anxiety about giving birth. A doula can help with the emotional and physical side of labor.
For this article I interviewed Alli Ryan from Lumos
Julie: So Alli what is a doula?
Alli: A doula provides physical, emotional and informational support. Most folks think that is just to a pregnant person thats giving birth but a doula can extend into birth and postpartum. At a birth we may help you with coping strategies, with positions, we’re going to help you with if your planning a hospital birth so we can navigate some of the hospital systems stuff and know what are your choices, but we can do those same things in pregnancy. We are not medical care providers we don’t give medical advice. We are not midwives- midwives are medical and emotional. As our doula our role is just informational, physical and emotional support.
Julie: How can you help support someone that pregnant after a loss?
Alli: Leaning into that emotional support peace. All people come into birth with a story and sometimes you know what your story is because you have had early pregnancy loss or loss at any point so those emotions are really big. It is finding a safe space. The hormone in labor is oxytocin and oxytocin is the hormone of feeling safe and supported. The way our brain is structured the fear hormones actually compete with our labor hormones. To be able to have someone to set you up to feel safe in not only pregnancy but labor really does allow those hormones to flow a little bit better. It is someone that understands you. We can help you move the staff through so you don’t have to tell your story over and over again. We help you to know what your options are. There can be options available specific to pregnancy after loss such as labor positions that might bring up a lot of feelings for you. We find their are stages along the way like oh I did not realize I had put a lot of energy into getting past 20 weeks or in that ultrasound in our last pregnancy is when things got hard. It is helping you move through some of those milestones. Usually folks that want doula support want all of their feelings honored. They also want information, support and facts.
Julie: Are their commonalities that you see in the labor and delivery room for people pregnant after a loss?
Alli: Moving through pregnancy their are these milestones that you have to get through like I knew I was going to have a hard time getting through that. We can help you think about those things ahead of time, move through those things and coming up with a plan. Sometimes I will find early labor can feel like some of those sensations of an early pregnancy loss and so having a person you can call and say I am having really hard feelings, we aren’t necessarily going to be there to fix them and this is where mental health providers can help with tools but we can be those safe people to help remind you of what your tools are when all of that kind of goes out the window. We can help you bring in your past losses so if you named your babies or put some sort of energy or labels or icons or symbols or teddy bears we can normalize that. That is very normal. It is very normal to help you feel connection in those experiences.
I also think most folks don’t understand how hard the postpartum is.
There can be a big huge wave of grief that comes in waves because you start to realize what you lost in a way that is like in your arms. Their can be a lot of complicated feelings. To lean into the support team that you have created, those are all really important things to do.
Julie: That’s such a good point. I also feel that people are hesitant to have a doula in the room because they are very private and it can be hard enough to be in front of your medical team. Can you speak to that?
Alli: We hear that from a lot from all folks not just from people pregnant after a loss. What we hear now is that a doula actually hear that a doula helps keep things private. We aren’t a stranger thats a weirdo in the room. We’ve also been to a lot of births. If you guys need us to disappear for a while because you need a moment we are going to know that without you even saying it and we are going to kind of blend into the background. We’re also going to in particular in a hospital environment we are going to help that hospital feel more private. We may be able to communicate to stay hey they are just going to have a little time together and can we keep folks out and help you ask for that as a patient. Advocate for what you need. Helping that environment feel like your nest, this is your experience and not a sterile hospital room. There are simple things we can do like turning down the lights and bringing twinkle lights and having is smell different and thinking about your music. But there is also a lot that just comes with our presence a doula in and of itself is a communication tool that we want this labor to take into account our emotions. We want it to feel like an individual experience. We want to understand what is happening around us and we want support. Just having a doula present makes that experience a little more private.
Julie: Do you want to speak why you are interested in working with pregnancy after loss?
Alli: I had been a doula for a couple of years, my husband and I hadn’t had any complications getting pregnant. We seemed to get pregnant very easily but we weren’t able to stay pregnant very easily. My big rainbow, we use the terminology rainbow at our house, pregnancy after loss, was born and then got pregnant again and then almost term we had our daughter who was born via stillbirth. She is a huge part of our life, her name is Vivian and pretty quickly realized that was going to transform the birth work and postpartum work that I was already doing. So I come to doula work in a way that is believing and trusting that people can figure out there way through it but that we need support to figure our own way through. I don’t come with this perspective of this is how I did it, I come with the perspective that is more I understand how hard this is to do this, there are a lot of great professionals in our community that can understand that whether or not they have had loss, I can understand it in a way that is a little bit different. So, right it transformed my work as a doula and then really did. We also went onto to have another brother, so another rainbow and my work was transformed.
Julie: Thank you for sharing that and willing to be vulnerable. If someone is interested in working with you how can they get in contact with you?
Alli: So I own a business called Lumos you can go to our website at welcometolumos.com. We work with other doulas all who have some level of experience working with all different sorts of families of shapes and sizes. Those that have experienced loss as well.
