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[00:00:00] Divya Kapoor: [00:00:00] Hey, hi, welcome to Mommy track Daddy Whispers Podcast's bite-size pregnancy series. The aim of it is to provide you a lot of information so that you are able to make informed decisions throughout pregnancy and childbirth. My name is and today we are going to discuss who is a birth doula, who is a midwife, and how do you know if you need it?
[00:00:23] And there are really interesting goats out there on birth doulas that emphasize on the role of emotional support during childbirth. And I want to share them with you right here, but before, let me tell you what we discussed. Last we discussed what questions you should ask your health care provider and the boat, please, before you choose them for your birding.
[00:00:45] Trust is a very important factor in your childbirth process. And trust develops when you and your healthcare providers have the same ideologies. So work on that. You have the right to informed consent. So get all the [00:01:00] information from your healthcare providers and the boat's place that you choose before you actually choose them.
[00:01:06] And I'm very keen to know if that episode helped you in any way. And in the next episode, we will. The early pregnancy symptoms and what are the reasons for them? And now the court, it is not just the making of babies, but mothers that a birth doula or a midwife sees as a miracle. This is a gorgeous from Barbara Katz, Rotman, who is a professor of sociology and has worked immensely in the field of childbirth and midwifery, how beautiful it is.
[00:01:41] Mothers are born at the same time the children are born. So that experience is equally important for a mother, which is why we have to humanize this entire process of childbirth. Provide as much support as less interventions unless it's [00:02:00] necessary and make this a wonderful, beautiful experience for a mother, because this is something that will linger with her for the rest of it.
[00:02:11] This can be the biggest moment for her. How beautiful. So now who are birth to do less. If I were to say that childbirth is a bridge to bringing a new life onto earth, but doulas are going to be your support pillars on this bridge of childbirth process rests that drained and experienced in childhood.
[00:02:36] Now they do not deliver the baby birth to laws, do not deliver the baby because they traditionally do not have a medical background. They, what they do is they provide you a lot of knowledge. They are there in the labor room, they assist you. What they provide you is an emotional support. They instill confidence in you and your partner.
[00:02:57] They're going to help you progress in the [00:03:00] different stages of labor. They're going to tell you what to do when there are seemingly non concerning situations that may become concerning later. So they provide you constant support before in, and even after childbirth. So there are postpartum doulas as well.
[00:03:17] And from here, I would like to stress upon the emotional support factor in child. You know, would that increased understanding of how physiological changes happen, how our body changes or transforms for different stages of life. And here in our case, the stages of childbirth, you know, the opening of the cervix, the body becoming really loose to let the baby come out for smile, smile, you know, um, opening.
[00:03:49] How does that happen? And that's very natural as to say animals do it. And we are animals, essentially. It is the mind. [00:04:00] It is the emotional state of the human beings that guides those physiological changes is that the emotional state of the brain is very important. It acts as the guide for the physiological changes.
[00:04:18] They make said in the first episode of season two, that if a woman is if a woman has feared and a lot of it during childbirth, what can happen is her body can tense up the body that is aimed at relaxing because of the hormone that is released oxytocin. It can tense up the muscles can. Which further complicated the childbirth process, because it wouldn't be as relaxed opened to allow the baby to sail through and come out into this beautiful foot, which is why it's very important that a woman is relaxed and has all the emotionals.
[00:04:53] And it's very it's. I think it's it's with everything. If you have trust in yourself [00:05:00] in an exam, your brain can bring answers from something you read months ago. It's not important how much you read right before the exam. And it's very important for your brain to act for your brain to guide you through your process, that you are emotionally supported.
[00:05:19] And there's a study that is done by NCBI the U S national center for biotechnology information. That did a study on the men who were provided emotional support during childbirth, as against women who did not have any support during the process of childbirth, they may have attended both classes or must have had knowledge, but what they lacked was the emotional support.
[00:05:40] And that studied, revealed that mothers who had an emotional support during childbirth, but better satisfied with their birth experiences. They had little complications, they had less intervention. And they were significantly more likely to initiate breast feeding as soon as they delivered [00:06:00] how important that is.
[00:06:04] And similarly midwives, they also provide you emotional support during labor. What they can do additionally to about doula is that they can deliver your baby birth. Doula will not deliver your baby because of made vibe. Generally can be a nurse, can have a medical bag. Which is why they can assist home birth, but a birth doula will not assist home birds.
[00:06:26] They will always assist you in the hospital. They will not deliver the baby. They will only provide you emotional support and guidance throughout the process of childbirth. So that is the difference between a midwife and a birth doula. And the board will refer you to a doctor in case there is something serious and urgent.
[00:06:46] Now, I also wanted to talk to you. Why is some birth experiences linger with us as dramatic and bad from my own experience from the women that I vote throughout this [00:07:00] journey of podcasting, as well as from family and friends. I heard that in most of our cases, we had little to no control over our child birth stories.
[00:07:12] It is only vile. We are in Liebert while we are presented with. Situations where we need to make a decision. We realize how helpless and how miserable we can be. Sometimes we may also feel exploited and cheated because the kind of support that we expect is in our medical care providers was probably not present.
[00:07:37] We were not a participant in our own childbirth process, which is why knowledge is very important, which is why preparation is very important. Little did we know that our participation during childbirth has to be planned and prepared even before the time comes? It is in these situations that one can [00:08:00] consider having an emotional support during childbirth from a midwife or a birth doula.
[00:08:07] Emotional support becomes very, very important. One important thing to note here is. Every birth doula or a midwife would have their own way of practice. So before you go on to choose any of them for your child birth process, you should definitely ask them questions that help you figure out who can you trust.
[00:08:32] So those questions can be the same questions that we discussed in the last episode. And they can be your fears, your perceptions, your own, uh, ideologies, but it's very important to ask questions. You can find birth to laws in birth networks in India. You can also Google them, but I think in India it would rather be helpful and feasible.
[00:08:52] If you join some birth, Netflix, I will give you some of them in the show notes of this episode. So you can go there and check out if there is [00:09:00] a birth doula or midwife you want to hire for your childbirth. But make sure that you exercise the right to informed consent and choose the one that aligns with your ideologies.
[00:09:13] Now, before we wrap up, I would also like to tell you that, you know, a birth doula or a midwife or an emotional support can also come from your husband, your mother, your sister, or your family. But you need to prepare them for the Talbert process. And how do we do that? That we will discuss that in the next episode, alongside pregnancy symptoms.
[00:09:35] And we will wrap this up because we are bound by time sending you lots of love, lots of motivation to equip yourself with knowledge, learn sale this journey with confidence. And remember you got the path, stay tuned.