In the second edition of the Radical Doula Profiles, we have the awesome Sasa Ynoa from the Dar a Luz Project. It’s really a beautiful website, so be sure to check it out! She’s also working on a film project, so stay tuned for more information about that.
Radical Doula: How does your Doula work and birth activism fit into your broader political beliefs? My birth activism revolves around the vision that birthing should be as healthy and beautiful as possible even if there are complications or moms have health conditions. I feel like this vision extends farther than the actual room and experience but to the policies, insurance companies, and institutions that implement very inconvenient protocols/policies that make birthing in hospitals undesirable.
There really is a birthing crisis - with serious cuts in access to prenatal care facilities and hospitals closing their L&D units yearly. It’s not profitable to hospitals. This also affects birth centers as they rely on nearby hospitals to transfer laboring mothers with complications. It is quite involved and I ultimately think it starts with education. Lack of facilities affect a child’s future and a mom’s health. There are simple things that screening and nutritional advice can prevent. Although I strongly advocate midwives, the reality is that there are some women who may not be a candidate for a birth center/homebirth or midwife care. Their pregnancy maybe complicated by a health condition. How are they going get to their Ob/Gyn? This can become especially difficult when the visits become more frequent in the third trimester aside from their work and/or family responsibilities. These are concrete obstacles that pose serious health risks. Just like we talk about environmental sustainability, foreign policy, and the economy we must elevate Childbirth and Prenatal Care to the forefront of political discussions where it becomes an umbrella in and of itself. Prenatal care is disparate among communities of people. We know that this is the case when it comes to education, food, and public services, and disparities in prenatal care fall along the same socio-economic lines. This is reflected in an infant mortality rate that is twice as high among Black women than for White woman in the United States. This in essence is a violent crime on our children, moms, and communities. Change can not occur until our voices are heard.
RD: What is your favorite thing about being a Doula? Knowing that I was present to a momentous experience in a woman and child’s life. I love seeing the excitement from family to see a new life on earth. I used to swell up with tears. As a labor and delivery nurse, I still get very excited.
RD: If you could change one thing about the way women birth in the US, what would it be? Many of the moms I see are young and their pregnancies are often times unplanned. I observe that some of these moms often approach their pregnancy in a very hands off manner. Many expect to relinquish complete control to the hands of health care practitioners. I would like to see more mothers and moms-to-be involved in attaining a healthy pregnancy and learning coping strategies throughout labor. I know that there are programs for young moms but I would like to see more as a standard of care. Childbirth education should be free and accessible community wide. I feel when women, especially those marginalized, become more educated and gain confidence in their power to birth, the result will be a beneficial shift in our birthing culture and in our communities.
There are many things about the queer community in DC that are really positive. It’s a close knit community, people are really welcoming, there is a very visible LGBT presence across the city. There are lots of bars and clubs for gay men and there a few for lesbian women as well. Unfortunately, there are some huge downsides to being part of this community as well.
LGBT related hate crimes have been on the rise in the district lately. There have been at least three incidents in the last few weeks, involving young gay men being brutally beaten while out in the streets. We’re not talking about people who were out really late at night, or even walking alone. One of the most recent victims, Tony Randolph Hunter, died yesterday from his injuries. It hasn’t been confirmed that these incidents were hate crimes, but it’s probable.
I know that my friends and I are pretty scared. I would say that I’m quite visibly queer, and that makes me feel like a target. Nationally, around 16% of hate crimes are LGBT related. In DC, it’s 60%.
It’s such a complicated issue. Crime in DC is pretty severe–it ranks in the top five nationally in terms of crime rates. A lot of my friends have been mugged, it’s a common occurrence. One of the reasons that might explain the disparity in hate crimes rates is the Gay and Lesbian Liasion Unit of the DC police department. So reporting in DC might be better than in other cities, where crimes that could be considered LGBT related hate crimes are not reported. Also, the visibility of the community might contribute to the rate. Poverty is also pretty serious in DC, as well as racial tensions. It’s a majority African-American city, and the gay community is overwhelmingly white. The gentrification issues I mentioned earlier also probably have an impact.
If you happen to be in DC, a group has arisen to try and address these recent crimes. The next meeting is on Monday, I know I will be there.
Interesting new film about the effect of childbirth practices on newborn babies. It’s pretty extreme stuff, but I think there is a lot of truth to it. We need to question the way babies are treated right after birth. It makes sense that those first few moments are really important, and the panic mode of a hospital birthing room right after the birth is not calming or peaceful. The baby is also poked, prodded, gooped up and jostled immediately after birth. I love that midwives but the baby directly on the breast immediately after the birth. This seems to crucial to me for bonding.
I do wish they had featured some partners who weren’t men in the film, but it’s not surprising they didn’t. Sigh.
The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force just launched a new national survey on Transgender Discrimination.
I just went to a briefing a few days ago on Capitol Hill hosted by the National LGBT Health Coalition about how little data we have nationally about LGBT people. Why? Because federal surveys refuse to include questions about sexual orientation and gender identity. Without data, we have no way of knowing what the disparities are and no way of asking for funding to address them. Huge problem.
One way organizations get around this data issue is by creating their own surveys like this one.
“This is an absolutely critical national effort. We urge all transgender and gender non-conforming people to take the survey to help guide us in making better laws and policies that will improve the quality of life for all transgender people. We need everyone’s voice in this, everyone’s participation.”
– Mara Keisling, Executive Director, National Center for Transgender Equality
In the wake of one of the most violent years on record of assaults on transgender people, the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force have teamed up on a comprehensive national survey to collect data on discrimination against transgender people in housing, employment, public accommodations, healthcare, education, family life and criminal justice.
To date, in 2008, several young gender non-conforming people of color have been murdered, including California junior high school student Lawrence King, who was shot in public during the school day. King’s murder, and the murders of Simmie Williams in South Carolina and Angie Zapata in Greeley, Colorado come in a year in which we are still working to include transgender provisions in a federal bill to protect lesbian, gay and bisexual workers from discrimination in employment.
I don’t know how many of you are keeping up with the political circus that is the last few weeks (it’s pretty hard to avoid) but I know I can’t really ignore it since I live in our nation’s capital, where everyone is obsessed with politics.
This Open Letter to Sarah Palin by Lynn Paltrow of the National Advocates for Pregnant Women was a refreshing bit of logic in the last few weeks of fury around this Republican VP candidate.
Your last pregnancy, the one that has become the topic of widespread discussion and speculation provides an important opportunity to demonstrate how this could be true.
According to press reports your water broke while you were giving a keynote speech in Texas at the Republican Governors’ Energy Conference. You did not immediately go to the hospital — instead you gave your speech and then waited at least 11 hours to get to a hospital. You evaluated the risks, made a choice, and were able to carry on your life without state interference. Texas Governor Rick Perry worried about your pregnancy but didn’t stop you from speaking or take you into custody to protect the rights of the fetus.
After Ayesha Madyun’s water broke, she went to the hospital where she hoped and planned to have a vaginal birth. When she didn’t give birth in a time-frame comfortable to her doctors, they argued that she should have a C-section. The doctors asserted that the fetus faced a 50-75 percent chance of infection if not delivered surgically. (Risks of infection are believed by some health care providers to increase with each hour after a woman’s water has broken and she hasn’t delivered).
The court, believing like you that fetuses have a right to life, said, “[a]ll that stood between the Madyun fetus and its independent existence, separate from its mother, was put simply, a doctor’s scalpel.” With that, the court granted the order and the scalpel sliced through Ms. Madyun’s flesh, the muscles of her abdominal wall, and her uterus. The core principle justifying an end to legal abortion in the U.S. provided the same grounds used to deprive this pregnant and laboring woman of her rights to due process, bodily integrity, and physical liberty. When the procedure was done, there was no evidence of infection.
According to the press reports, instead of going straight to a hospital you chose to get on a long airplane flight back to Alaska.
Paltrow goes on to make the important connection between anti-choice fetus rights activism and women’s ability to control how, when and by what means they give birth. Paltrow, as usual, is right on. Read the rest of the letter here.
I’ve been a reader of your blog and feministing for some time now. I always really enjoyed reading about doulas, midwives and reproductive rights, but it was in the abstract for me. I am currently pregnant(!) which changes alot for me.
Suddenly I am alot more passionate about these topics. Right now I am lined up with a doctor to give birth in our local hospital, but the more I read and the more I talk to other women I am convinced I want to give birth at home.
I am wondering if you knew any midwives in the SE corner of WA (I live in Walla Walla), and if not, if you knew the regulations on a homebirth not attended by a midwife. Can I even do that?
Thanks for your time and writing!
If you are (or know of) any midwives in the Southeastern part of Washington state, email me at radicaldoula@gmail.com and I will pass the information along to this reader! Or feel free to post in comments. Thanks!
In an effort to promote all of the amazing doulas out there doing this great work, I’m going to start posting profiles of Radical Doulas. I hope you enjoy meeting these doulas! If you have suggestions for doulas you think I should profile, email me at radicaldoula@gmail.com.
Radical Doula: What inspired you to become a Doula?
Anne: In order to tell you how I became a Doula, I first have to explain how I became a mother.
In 2002, I was working as a paralegal when I became pregnant. I had a fairly easy pregnancy except for some morning sickness that was startlingly regular. My mother flew in from Los Angeles on the first day of my maternity leave. I was a bit frustrated that she chose to come so early, thinking I was going to have to entertain her for weeks. That night we sat down for dinner and my water broke. Later on she told me she had a dream that she would miss the birth if she came on time, so she flew up early. What can I say? Mother intuition is a powerful thing.
True to what I had been taught in my childbirth education class, I called my OBGYN, who ordered me to the hospital. What followed was a classic medically managed birth. It started with Pitocin upon admission, followed by narcotics, followed by epidural, and ended in a cesarean section 24 hours later. Unfortunately for me, what had been a benign heart murmur for most of life nearly killed me during the surgery and led to an extended stay in the hospital. The worst part was when I was told I couldn’t breast feed because they couldn’t figure out what was wrong, so they had me on heavy blood thinning drugs. On the third day of my hospital stay I sat in a chair weeping when a woman I had never met opened the door. “Why are you crying?” she asked. I told her that nothing had gone as planned and now I couldn’t even breastfeed. I was such a failure at birth. She frowned and said, “I’ll be right back.” She returned 2 minutes later with a breast pump and spent the next hour talking to me about my birth, showing me how to “pump and dump” and generally telling me I wasn’t a bad person. I will never forget her kindness.
Four years later, I found myself in Eugene, Oregon hoping I could repay that kindness by serving others as a Doula. Read the rest of this entry »
Could my challenging circumstance be another’s wonderful opportunity?
I opened the Natural Birth Center in October of 2007. It is one of only two birth centers in Virginia, and is operated currently by licensed CPMs. It is located in Buena Vista, near Southern Virginia University. Myself and my midwifery partner, as Rockbridge Midwifery Care, have been practicing from there, making great progress both responding to and generating a good deal of interest in the region around birth center and home birth.
Due to my husband working in California, I made the enormously difficult decision to leave the practice and reunite my family there. My midwifery partner, Emily Friar, CPM, LM., plans to continue as Rockbridge Midwifery Care and scale back to a homebirth-only practice with an office elsewhere. This leaves open the question as to what to do with the beloved Natural Birth Center building/home.
Ideally, the Natural Birth Center could be leased (at a negotiable rate) to a midwife, as is, set up and functional. This makes it an opportunity to begin your own birth center practice with much lower start-up costs, in an established location. See the tour at www.rockbridgemidwifery.com, or contact me for photos. It looks even nicer currently. There is the possibility of a birth cottage or two being eventually added–replacing the rear sheds–a privacy fence and an outdoor play area for visiting children.
The great documentary in the making, At Your Cervix, needs your help! They are part of a contest at ideablob.com and if they get enough votes they might be eligible to win 10,000 toward finishing their film. A reminder about this great project:
The documentary At Your Cervix explores the connection between the way medical and nursing students are taught pelvic exams and the reality that most women experience them as painful and disempowering. The film breaks the silence around unethical methods used by medical and nursing schools to teach students how to perform pelvic exams; the most egregious being on unconsenting, anesthetized women. The film highlights the Gynecological Teaching Associates, women who teach exams using their own bodies.
Help us start a movement to end the exploitation of vulnerable patients, to demand transparency in medical education and to improve painful exams. See our trailer: www.atyourcervixmovie.com.
We will use $10,000 to pay for editing costs, color correction, a sound mix, our composer and other post-production costs. This film has been an absolute labor of love and a grassroots effort to change a system that puts women’s bodies at risk, humiliates and disregards patients, and teaches students that it’s not important to get informed consent. We need funds to finish this film, get it out into the world and create change. Post production is costly and the only thing holding us up is lack of finishing funds. Please support this very important project! Vote At Your Cervix and contribute to conversations about how pelvic exams can be more respectful and comfortable.
Miriam Pérez is a writer, blogger and Senior Advocacy Associate at the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health. She has been a doula since 2004.
Posted by radicaldoula
Posted by radicaldoula
Posted by radicaldoula
