Hello,
Welcome to my blog. I have been a labor and delivery nurse for about 17 years now. When I started out I thought I was doing the best thing for the mamas I cared for, after all I went to nursing school to help others. Over the years I followed the orders of the doctors and didn’t question their orders to often, unless I new it would obviously harm patients. I told my patients things such as “this is whats best for you and your baby” or this is how we keep you and your baby safe” All the time just really believing that continuous monitoring, nothing by mouth except for ice chips, elective inductions, and the list goes on, were all safe and necessary practices. We as nurses, are taught very little if anything about true physiologic birth and the bodies abilities during childbirth and motherhood transition. Another thing we are rarely taught, is how to support a women in labor (other then through medical intervention). And for the nurses who are skilled in comfort measures, most of the time they don’t have the time to support them because we have more then one patient.
A few years ago I had the pleasure to join a group of women who changed my whole view on childbirth, this group blew my mind telling me about their natural births. At the same time it also made me feel very disappointed in myself as a nurse. Many women told me stories of how there nurses were not supportive and they were looked at like they were crazy for wanting a natural birth, and many of their doctors were not supportive either. This did not surprise me, as I think back throughout my career, I made jokes about women that wanted to go natural, I couldn’t understand why anyone would do that, I used to say “God gave us the ability to create an epidural so we didn’t have to suffer” we joked about birth plans and called them “written c-section plans.
So I began researching for myself natural childbirth, I have read so many books and listen to so many birth stories, and I continue to be amazed. Last year a came across a website called Evidence Based Birth, and I read a story of a nurse who had a terrible labor experience, which led her to research the evidence behind the many interventions that were pushed upon her during the birth of her first child. This led her to start a blog which turned into an amazing resource for women all around the world, including nurse and other birth professionals as well as parents. So I jumped on board and became an Evidence Based Birth instructor. My dream and my goal is to help empower and educate women, to enter into birth not only with peace of mind but with knowledge and power.
I hope you all will follow along as I share what I have seen, what I have learned and what I continue to learn. And help partners navigate the birth world. I am not saying epidurals are bad, or natural birth is the only way. I am here to tell you, “you have options, you have a voice” this its not just what the doctor or nurse says is what you have to do. Feel free to message me if you have a question or a topic you would like me to discuss.
God Bless
I would love to know why becoming a doula isn’t a prerequisite for working L&D. I also wonder how stats would change in the hospital setting, in regards to C-sections, if there were doulas and doula trained nurses caring for the patients. Thank you for speaking out!
Hello Kourtney,
Thank you for reading. Unfortunately nurse are not taught comfort measures automatically, its something they have to seek out on their own unless they get lucky and work on a unit that encourages it and sends their nurses to classes and workshops. Mercy is actually making great progress with this, they send their nurses to spinning babies conferences and they also paid for 20 of their nurses to come to my comfort measures workshops. Unfortuantely, even when nurses are trained in these comfort measure techniques, they don’t have time to support couples as most of the time we are doubled up with 2 active labor patients. So we cant be at the bedside with both. I just posted a new post about induction, and I actually mention the decrease in cesarean rates with continuous support as well as upright birthing positions and hand held auscultation rather then continuous monitoring. Thank you for the question, keep them coming.
Looking forward to hearing your perspective!
Hello Rebecca,
Thank you. If you have anything specific you would like to here please let me know.
Thank you for being so vulnerable and honest. I look forward to reading your blog!
Hello Amanda,
Thank you for reading. I hope not to disappoint. Please let me know if you have a topic you would like me to cover.