Interference in the Birth Room... the Wise Midwife

The Wise Midwife Performs Her Work By Doing Nothing…

Women go to a midwife, choose a home or birth center birth, most often because they believe they will be receiving a different type of care. We may have had a past trauma in a hospital, or may have an instinctual knowing that the hospital is not the place we want to have our first baby… and so we seek what we believe is the most “natural”, and woman-centered care provider we can find. 

I have been a student midwife, doula, and birth attendant as well as home birth/free birthing mother, for over 16 years now, and I can tell you one thing I have noticed and realized in talking with other womben, both mothers and birth workers: 

Midwifery isn’t always better. 

There is a whole political landscape I could let you in on here, and a lot I could say about the way in which licensure and the medical model, as well as laws which do not protect home birthing families’ true rights and autonomy, plays into this. But instead of getting super politically charged right off with you, I want to speak to something deeper… In other words, rather than revealing the reasons I believe this is happening, I want to speak to what is happening first, because I do believe that midwives and other birth attendants have more ability to bring greater self-reflection and better practices into their repertoire NOW, rather than assuming that we have no choice in the matter. 

I will never forget my second child’s birth. Laila was born at home, in the water, with a midwife and her apprentice present, in addition to my partner and older son ‘Io who was 7 at the time. It was four hours from the first real contraction and breaking of my water, until birth. 

I had, as you may know by now, an unintended free birth with my first child. But this time I still believed having a midwife was best, and I had been a midwifery apprentice in the time between my first and second baby. I chose a woman who I felt was one of the more experienced midwives in the area, with over 30 years under her belt. I talked to them about my desire for autonomy, and they agreed it was a reasonable request. I thought we were on the same page. 

But then, they arrived. Immediately, my sweet, candle lit environment was lit by the overhead light. I “negotiated” for the dimmer switch to be employed to turn it down, but she insisted some light was necessary (beyond 20 candles?) to take notes and so on. Being in hard labor already, I didn’t feel like I had the bandwidth, and frankly the guts at that stage in my life, to insist otherwise. 

Meanwhile, they sat in the other room as I requested, whispering away. And then came time for some of the last centimeters dilation, the transition… and I felt a bit stuck. Everything about the presence of the midwives felt invasive, even that which was relatively benign… because I had experienced the exact opposite with my first birth, where no one was there except my partner, and I was able to labor through in the dark with zero distractions. 

They didn’t mean to disrupt, but they also did. I checked my own cervix, and found myself with a little lip of cervix left. My mistake, if you will, was that I told the midwife what I discovered. Out came the homeopathics, a relatively gentle medicine, but still effective to a degree which increased my contractions to a level that was unnaturally strong feeling. 

And then I let it be, as I knew my body would figure it out. I waited, felt the head begin to come out, felt it recede… I was much too in my head and actively trying to let her know what was happening while she looked on from the side, watching every movement… She urged me to push, and so I did a little. Thankfully, my body did the rest, and fetal ejection reflex kicked in, bringing her out swiftly just as with my other babies. Little harm done, right? I didn’t tear. Everything seemed fine, despite my feeling a little annoyed that it wasn’t a more quiet, dark, private birth room.

But then a bit under a week later I developed a big, painfully swollen hematoma in my vaginal wall. There are of course many possibilities of why this could have happened but I couldn’t help but feel as if it wouldn’t have happened had I been left alone, without the unusually strong contractions and coached pushes… 

I recognize my part in the midwife’s choices. Had I not worried about the cervical lip, they may not have given me the homeopathics… But here’s the thing: the midwife herself has two choices in any situation. She can feed the fear, or feed the calm.

In a four hour, otherwise absolutely normally progressing labor, there is no reason why a cervical lip should be seen as anything other than a mama needing a bit more time to work through that last bit of dilation. It was posing no problem. I was in my head, because in retrospect, those around me were in  their heads. 

Those in the room with a laboring mother, may serve best from a place of being able to drop into deep, meditative presence, fully aware still, but in a deeper brainwave state more compatible with that of the laboring mother who is entering an altered state. Being in your own monkey mind, has the inevitable effect of entraining the mother’s brainwaves to your own, bringing her out of that altered state and into a Beta thinking brain herself. 

Beyond this, of course, I have a plethora of things to say about the subtle and not so subtle ways that birth attendants mess with the vibe that allows women to drop deeper, and find their animal body instincts. Too much light, sound, asking questions, hovering over, touching, giving medicines, or otherwise imposing one’s own will and needs on the birth space, inevitably has the result of bringing a woman out of Delta or Theta brainwaves, and back up to the Beta brain. 

Every single action and word we take must be weighed against the potential it has for interference and distraction of the mother from her deep dive into her own center. 

Any action we take has the potential to move the woman’s locus of power, her Center, from within her, to us. As I noticed with my own midwife-assisted birth, my sense of needing to inform the midwife, through my own vaginal exams, or as most women would experience, through the midwife’s exams, brings the focus away from our deep inner landscape in the veil between worlds, and into the realm of the “living”. Beta brain. 

Beyond just distracting, there are also infinite ways that well-meaning doulas and midwives impose their own will on the birthing mother, rather than asking themselves if it is even necessary. Or, as in the case of needing lights on to take notes, is there any other way that I can get my needs met that does not impose my will on the birthing mother? 

Any time we find ourselves asking a mom or dad to do a certain thing, or Goddess forgive, doing something to the laboring womban, we are imposing our will upon them. 

That isn’t to say that there is never a time or way to suggest things, but it is definitely best to keep clear communication with a focus on suggestion rather than telling or even asking. In other words, we ask for consent, and give gentle ideas if a womban asks for help… and even then I ask myself, does she really need my guidance or words right now, or does she need me to simply tell her, even wordlessly, that she is exactly where she needs to be? 

I sincerely believe that most womben, if we just calmly remind them that there is nowhere but here, and now, and that they’re doing it, will find that extra reserve to dig deeper into and find the answer they are seeking, without my guidance at all!

This requires of us a deep sense of wonder, awe, reverence for the birth process… as well as deep trust that womben are capable of undisturbed, instinctual birth. 

It also, of course, requires that we put down any egotistical need to be involved, both from the vantage of wanting to stroke our own ego, as well as more subtly feeling the need to justify our being there. If I find myself wondering why I am there, rather than try to find a way to act in order to justify it, perhaps it’s a sign I ought to sit on my hands even more, or leave the room entirely, so the laboring womban can dig deeper. 

Perhaps the need to check the baby comes not from a sense of care for the welfare of the baby, but from a deeper sense of needing to be busy, active, and useful in a situation which is inevitably rarely actually going to call upon our deepest midwifery faculties. Are we sure that we need to be checking on the baby or the cervix, or is this just something we have become accustomed to the redundancy of, and have forgotten the sacredness and potential for interference of each of these actions?

This calls us to reveal a deeper capacity to be with womben… to step into a place of reverential containment, into our own spiritual root which allows us to enter a meditative, wordless state, from which intuition of our own can arise. We have to be willing to allow and accept that a womban ultimately is the authority of her own birth experience, and only she knows exactly how she needs to move, position herself, intonate, and so on to get that baby out. 

Our expertise may come in handy if she is truly stuck, needing help, or experiencing an emergency… but even in an emergency, it may actually be moreso the way in which we handle a situation, rather than the actual skills used, which help resolve the issue. This is something I will get into more deeply in another article, perhaps. 

So, as a womban having a baby, how do you find a provider who understands this nuance, and is not simply going to manipulate your birth experience to her own ideologies, legal parameters, and personal needs and ego?

This is something I delve into in depth, in great detail, in my free resources, particularly the Choosing Your Birth Attendant workbook. You have a lot to think about in pregnancy, and it can be very overwhelming trying to figure out what questions to even ask. That’s why I’ve created these resources… to help you ask the questions you didn’t even know to ask, and begin to curate your own birth blueprint as well as finding the provider that is right for you. 

You can find this free resource on my Free Resources Portal at https://nourishedwatersbirth.com