Choosing your Care Provider
After a series of natural childbirth intentions have turned into medical birth experiences, I have been struggling to discern what my position, as a doula, is to help other couples avoid the glaring pitfalls that have befallen their predecessors. How should I breach the subject of their choice in care provider with clients or potential clients. Is it even remotely my place to put doubt in the man or woman they are trusting their lives and the life of their unborn child(ren)? How do I live with myself if I don’t speak my thoughts/experiences and their “natural childbirth” dream goes down quicker than the pitocin drips into their IV? Is it all part of the goal of the Informed Choice to also be informed as to the type of birth to expect from the care provider selected?
Our comparison for years has been that women won’t even change hairdressers after a bad haircut let alone change health care providers. “How would it look? What would they think or say about me?” Care during the yearly Women Well Visit can be a different beast altogether from maternity care. Just because you LOVE your GYN doesn’t mean they are the best fit for your OB goals. But the overwhelming bias “not to offend” has saturated our thinking to the point we look the other way or hear only the things that prove we are making a good choice by staying with the same practice. Even if a previous birth experience was very disappointing, women still remain with the same care providers with the thought it will be different. Gotta love ole Al Einstein’s quote “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”.
I am reading the new Henci Goer book Optimal Care in Childbirth: The Case for a Physiologic Approach. I am going to quote something that has brought it into crystal clear focus for me.
“Two oppositional philosophies underlie the competing concepts of good maternity care. Medical management practitioners start from the premise that pregnancy and birth are intrinsically difficult and potentially dangerous processes that, when left to occur naturally, frequently result in poor outcomes. It follows that childbearing women require intensive monitoring for complications and aggressive interventions to prevent and treat them in order to achieve the best outcomes. Proponents of physiologic care hold that pregnancy and childbirth are healthy, normal experiences for the vast majority of women and their babies. The best outcomes will be achieved when caregivers promote and facilitate the natural process and reserve medical intervention for times when these measures prove inadequate.”
This is it!! Now the dilemma is how do I prepare students and clients and women in general to discern the difference? Are red flags enough? You know when you are talking with your doctor and you can tell they are placating you. Telling you what you want to hear but at the end subtly taking it all back but you still walk out the door going…“I think that went well!” It is just easier, perhaps, to just say “Yes, of course we put the baby right on you”….“Yes, we…
