An honest approach to birth & recovery

Hannah: 

I thought it would be lovely to start talking about why you are so interested in birth…why this is the work that you want to do? 

Helen: 

For a lot of my pregnancy, I had been so focused on the birth and hadn’t given attention that I needed to on some of the other areas. 

If I were to go through birth again, I would do things very differently. I’m not going to be having another baby. So I feel I’ve got all of that knowledge, the knowledge and experience that I want to put out into the world. 

I came to my own birth after a very long journey of trying to become pregnant. It took me four and a half years to get pregnant with my son.

I felt very unsure of where to go to access the kind of group experience that would be sensitive to that experience. I’m currently working with lots of women who are currently on a fertility journey and they often aren’t quite sure where to go either. 

There’s that feeling of not quite belonging or that your experience is a bit different. 

Hannah: 

What would have felt right? What are you really hoping that we will build? What will the space feel like? 

Helen: 

We will be deeply responsive to the people that are joining us. To provide a safe space. I hold ethics really, really strongly and very close to my heart with everything that I put out into the world. We will do our very best to make it a place where you feel safe and that you belong. 

Hannah: 

Safety really matters. It makes me really cross, sometimes women get lulled into this false sense of safety, where they feel like it is possible to birth without pain or discomfort or difficult decisions. That somehow it is all within their control. 

I’ve worked with lots of women who have done all the research, attended all the courses and walked into birth feeling really safe. But they haven’t actually been given the space or the wrap around care to really reflect on what it will feel like. So then after birth they feel on really unstable ground. That is something that I want to change. 

I want to speak to women after birth and hear what a good experience it was, how they feel like themselves, that they feel really happy with the decisions they made. That it felt like their story. 

Hannah: 

What do you wish to give the women who attend our course? 

Helen: 

One of the things that is a huge thread through all of my work is the nervous system. 

I’m primarily a yoga teacher but I do a lot of work with the breath, a lot of work around anxiety. I don’t really like the word but a toolkit, a sense of knowing what is soothing for you, what helps you to regulate. 

It is unique, a unique blueprint, just for you. What works for one person might not necessarily work for another person. 

I’m excited to offer a whole smorgasbord of things that you might be able to use rather than thinking that one size fits all applies. We are all so different in the way that we experience things. For some people scent is really important, other people might be touchy, we are all different and the biology of what we need is different. I’m fascinated by that. I’m really looking forward to really celebrating their uniqueness. 

Celebrating their uniqueness rather than giving them a set module of how it should be. 

Hannah: 

I agree, it will be really powerful. It is some space where you get to know yourself a little better. To know what works for you. You can apply it at birth but that won’t be the only challenge you face as a mother, so you will use these tools again and again. 

There will be lots of moments where you will need to find deep relaxation. Where you’ll need to make decisions for you and your family. Having that wisdom that you will learn as part of our course, will be invaluable, because you will have a safety net. Tools to help you. 

Helen: 

All the ways I tried to educate myself about what was about to happen to me, to me and my partner, they were all practical. Looking back, I thought there would be a way that would work. So I read a lot and it all sounded so straightforward.

However I was so underprepared for the reality. 

You always say that the birth experience will be what it will be. With the best will in the world, it can be messy, chaotic and it’s how we respond to that. 

Having that inner wisdom to come back to rather than a course that is just about the practical things around birth. 

Hannah: 

That has been my biggest learning over the last five years. I read all the books about caring for a newborn and had all the practical things in place. It is so deliciously appealing because you think if I can just do X,Y and Z then my baby will be on this beautiful trajectory of sleeping more and more and growing more and more and all will be well. 

It didn’t, she was a very unsettled, colicky baby. One of my darker moments was looking up ‘colic’ in the index of Gina Ford to discover that ‘Gina Ford babies don’t experience colic’. I wanted to throw the book out of the window. 

Helen: 

It’s so interesting to hear you say that. Someone gifted me all three of her books while I was in hospital. I had a lot of time on my hands, I read a lot of books. They felt practical, I hadn’t yet discovered practices like gentle parenting. I hadn’t discovered the whole cacophony of parenting advice. 

Once you have a baby that isn’t sleeping…I have these manuals of how to do it and it isn’t working. 

I threw my copy out of the window, it was pouring with rain that day. As we are recording this podcast you can see the spot, exactly where it landed. It stayed there for a week. 

There were weeks where I knew the routine wasn’t working for us but I still kept trying to pull us into it. 

It has served people that I know, it didn’t serve me. I think that’s what it taught me. 

Hannah: 

You have to choose these things for yourself and that has to come from within. You have to learn how to listen to your body and what matters to you as a mum, and what’s important to you. Balancing that with listening to your baby and what’s best for them. 

Me as a human on my own, loves a routine. Sadly my babies did not. 

The thing that is important for me is being able to share the theory, knowing the gentle things you can do but also the freedom and acceptance of what is. To be more in the moment. 

Helen: 

You do get the final say. 

Sometimes we develop a relationship with authors. It needs to be a good one. If it isn't, move on! 

So that moment, throwing the book out of the window, was really empowering. I realised I had to do something else. 

Letting go of the idea that there was a right way through was really pivotal for me. 

Hannah: 

Is there any one specific element of the course that we’ve put together that you are most excited to teach? 

Helen: 

I love teaching about the breath. The breath is a loyal thing. It is always with you. 

It is part of the nervous system that you can really do something with. 

I really like that when I think about our course, it isn’t just a series of chapters. It is more fluid than that. I really love that we will reconnect after the birth and you will share your beautiful baby massage. 

Hannah: 

Thinking about the nervous system and coming back to yourself, calming down, soothing, another thing that is so powerful is touch. So baby massage is really special for both mother and baby. A real point of connection. 

Reconnection is so important. To share some reminders of the things we learnt and that opportunity to close down and honour the experience will be really special. 

Helen: 

My own experience in the fourth trimester was that I felt invisible. People were coming to see the baby. Nobody was really checking in with me. We did have a baby massage but it was very much about the babies… 

I felt like I’d vanished. I didn’t even know the fourth trimester was a thing. I had read a lot of quite competitive stories on Mumsnet about recovery after a c-section. This narrative of ‘snap back’ your body will snap back and you are going to snack back. We don’t snap back. 

I don’t think that is celebrated. It is a re-birth for you too, that deserves to be celebrated.

In that reconnection we need to celebrate the mother afterwards. When you are pregnant you are queen bee. Everyone wants a piece of you and then all of a sudden, everything feels very, very different.

Hannah: 

Yes, I agree…

Someone very dear to me had a traumatic birth last week. All anyone is saying about that is ‘all that matters is that the baby is okay’. Of course it matters that the baby is okay. But the parents' experience and the birth also matters very much. This attitude needs to change. 

There is this feeling that if the baby is okay then of course mum is okay. Instead, in reality, if mum is doing well then baby will be doing well. 

Hannah: 

Is there anything that you would like to share with anyone who is listening to this who is pregnant at the moment. What would be your recommendation if they are swimming through all the books, all the information, all the internet… 

Helen: 

The thing that I wish I could tell myself when I was pregnant is to really think about what you want those first 12 weeks to look like. 

And I say 12 weeks but it’s the rest of your life! 

But those early days, those early months, when you come home. Your Fourth Trimester. The Golden Month. 

What do you actually want it to look like? How do you want to feel? What do you really want? Do you really want people coming over the minute that you have got home with your tiny baby? Are you doing things to be polite? 

What would feel nourishing? What would feel like you are celebrating yourself? 

I spent an awful lot of time focusing on the buggy, the nursery (which we didn’t even use for the first two years). Do those things really matter to you? 

Who are going to be your luminary people to have around you that are going to make you feel really nourished? 

What are the things that you would like to do to honour what you have gone through? 

What is going to be your process, for having your experience witnessed and heard? 

For me, it would very much be thinking about beyond the birth. 

Hannah: 

I would love to encourage women to plan for the most amount of rest. More than you would ever think you might need. It is always easier to be ahead of where you thought you would be, to invite more in. 

It is much harder to find more, to notice that you are feeling exhausted, depleted and overwhelmed and then in that vulnerable place start to try to carve it back out again. 

Wouldn’t it be nicer to have this luxurious space that you can move through at your own pace. If you need any support, you have already had the conversations to put it in place, you have some meals planned so you don’t need to cook. You have a cosy, comfortable place in your house with a nice view where you can sit. It’s all there waiting for you, just in case. 

No one plans for a c-section, no one plans for an induction but they happen. I think the figure is somewhere around 30% for induction, so it is going to be part of the story for a lot of women. Why not plan your recovery to be the most restful, the most caring and if you then don’t need it, fantastic. 

Helen: 

People are desperate to tell you how to do things. That was a shock. I came home after my c-section, the midwife came and I was in bed. She told me you need to get up now, next time I come I don’t want to see you in bed. 

The good girl narrative was I’m not doing well enough, I need to be up, I need to be dressed, I need to look good. It was quite shocking. 

I think having the confidence that if somebody says those kinds of things to you, you’ve got that trust in yourself. An unshakeable trust in yourself. So you can choose who you listen too. 

Hannah:  

It is my wish for women to listen to themselves first and know that they know themselves and they know their baby. 

Lots of people will have opinions about things. But most women have only had the direct experience of one, two or three babies in their lifetime. It is a limited understanding of your situation. 

You have to walk the journey that is right for you. 

There is no perfect way through. I don’t know a single person who feels they have put all the ticks in the boxes along the way. At some point you have to give up the people pleasing good girl as it isn’t possible to do it ‘right’. 

I actually think it is the best thing that ever happened to me. The realisation that it is okay to be imperfect and that you need to live your life for you and your family. 

Helen: 

No one ever said to me, you have an innate knowing. 

You only have to look at any animal with its young. 

We have an innate knowing that has come through our ancestors through the millennia. 

If there were no books. No Dr Google. We would know what is right for our family. 

Don’t forget you always have that innate knowing. You have to stop and breathe and take the time to listen but that wisdom is always there.