Trudi Dawson is Director of Engagement at Doula UK, the non-profit organisation of doulas in the UK. She has been a doula since 2007 and has worked as a birth doula as well as a postnatal doula. You can find Trudi via her website or on Instagram.
In the spring we posted part one of our interview with Trudi. It’s all about what doulas do, why people use them and what explains their rising popularity. Below you’ll find part two where things got a bit spicier..
How do references to the ‘magical’ or ‘golden’ first hour after birth affect experiences and expectations in the early postnatal period?
So those terms are really loaded and I think this is another area a doula can help with preparing you for. We often spend quite a lot of energy learning antenatally about contractions, positions, breathing and some of the interventions we might be offered. Often we completely skip what it's going to feel like, smell like, look like in those first few minutes and hours and they can be really, really overwhelming.
They can be golden and not so golden and all the shades in between.
A doula should help prepare you for what to expect. I actually run a whole course for parents about preparing for the first hours and weeks because people should feel empowered and confident during that time. That’s what sets them up well for the rest of their mothering or fathering journey.
But just calling it the golden hour without really unpacking what is and isn’t going on and why it matters, is a bit like me saying to you ‘Oh my God. Go to this place. It's amazing. I loved it. It's really, really important that you get it right and that you see everything’. I don't give you a guidebook. I don't give you a map. I don't give you any idea of how hot it's going to be or whether it's going to be noisy or quiet. I give you no clue at all.
So when you get there you might not even know you're in the right place, and that leads to fear, which leads to anxiety and disempowerment.
How well do you think our antenatal education prepares us for motherhood?
I think our antenatal education starts from when we are little girls. You’re given a dolly with a bottle. On TV we see images of birthing people on their backs, screaming.
That’s no preparation at all. It’s grooming.
We’re being groomed to be compliant - to lie down in a pristine robe and do what we’re told rather than knowing our bodies and feeling their power.
I’ve been a doula for 17 years and I’ve never been to a birth that looks like how it is on TV.
Our networks of family and friends influence our antenatal education too. If you grew up around people breastfeeding, that will have an impact. If your mum, sister, aunt, friends say that birth is something you should ‘grin and bear’ or an experience that was wonderful for them that’s also going to influence you.
So by the time we get to antenatal classes, we’ve actually already got a lot of images, expectations and preconceptions. Some courses are great, and some are not so great, and a lot depends on the individual. If there was one course that was guaranteed to make everyone giving birth feel assured and informed and empowered we would all do that course. If I could make that course I would be a millionaire. But it’s not that simple. People need different things.
I think we should focus less on how birth looks or how it plays out on paper and more about how it feels.
Our goal should be to make sure that people can look back on their experience of giving birth and feel that the choices made were their own and that they were listened to.
I think the picture is improving, but there is still a long way to go.
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