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Aug. 12, 2024

Neri Life Choma: Revolutionizing Childbirth Through The Birth Coach Method

Neri Life Choma: Revolutionizing Childbirth Through The Birth Coach Method
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Season 2

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Discover how to transform your childbirth experience with insights from Neri Life Choma, a seasoned childbirth educator, birth doula, and the visionary behind the Birth Coach Method. We delve into the emotional and mental readiness that modern childbirth demands and explore how traditional methods may no longer suffice. Neri shares her vast experience, emphasizing the significance of aligning internal motivations with birthing plans and preparing for potential medical interventions. This episode promises to offer a fresh perspective on childbirth preparation, especially for those facing high-risk pregnancies.

What if societal expectations and medical interventions are shaping your childbirth experience more than you realize? Explore this provocative question with us as we discuss the disconnect between patients' goals and their preparation. Neri and I reflect on personal anecdotes and underline the importance of emotional and mental preparedness. We also touch upon the evolution of menstrual management and how it impacts women's readiness for natural childbirth. Honest and realistic discussions about birth experiences are crucial, and this episode champions just that.

Join us for a deep dive into the dynamics between doulas, nurses, and obstetricians. We highlight the necessity of collaboration and patient-centered care, advocating for the unique roles each professional plays in enhancing the birth experience. Learn practical tips for building patient rapport and strategies for reducing cesarean rates through effective coaching. From fostering self-awareness in expectant parents to the broader impact of transformational coaching on everyday life, this episode is packed with valuable insights aimed at empowering birth support professionals and expectant parents alike. Don't miss this enriching conversation with Neri Life Choma, designed to revolutionize your approach to childbirth.

Connect with Neri here: https://birthcoachmethod.com/

Buy Neri’s book The Art of Coaching for Childbirth here: https://amzn.to/4dDcxTd

Follow The Birth Coach Method on Instagram: https://www.instagram.c

Join the Bump & Beyond Online Community for moms & moms-to-be!

Coaching offer

Kelly Hof: Labor Nurse + Birth Coach
Basically, I'm your birth bestie! With me as your coach, you will tell fear to take a hike!

Support the Show.


Connect with Kelly Hof at kellyhof.com

Medical Disclaimer:
This podcast is intended as a safe space for women to share their birth experiences. It is not intended to provide medical advice. Each woman’s medical course of action is individual and may not appropriately transfer to another similar situation. Please speak to your medical provider before making any medical decisions. Additionally, it is important to keep in mind that evidence based practice evolves as our knowledge of science improves. To the best of my ability I will attempt to present the most current ACOG and AWHONN recommendations at the time the podcast is recorded, but that may not necessarily reflect the best practices at the time the podcast is heard. Additionally, guests sharing their stories have the right to autonomy in their medical decisions, and may share their choice to go against current practice recommendations. I intend to hold space for people to share their decisions. I will attempt to share the current recommendations so that my audience is informed, but it is up to each individual to choose what is best for them.

Chapters

00:00 - Transforming Birth

11:09 - Navigating Internal and External Birth Motivations

21:25 - Empowering Birth Support Through Coaching

37:31 - Navigating the Doula Profession

45:38 - Reinventing Birth Support Together

55:27 - Building Confidence and Agency Through Coaching

01:08:33 - Empowering Birth Support and Rapport

01:17:58 - Reducing Cesarean Rates Through Coaching

01:32:51 - Building Coaching Skills for Birth Support

Transcript
WEBVTT

00:00:00.479 --> 00:00:04.804
Hello, today I have with me Neri Life Choma.

00:00:05.285 --> 00:00:15.576
Neri is a veteran childbirth educator, birth doula and doula trainer, author of the Art of Coaching for Childbirth and founder of the Birth Coach Method.

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Neri has worked with thousands of individuals and couples as they prepared for the transformation of giving birth and becoming parents for the transformation of giving birth and becoming parents.

00:00:24.649 --> 00:00:30.435
During her 24 years of practice, she directed and managed programs at two birth resource centers.

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Her work with parents has been enriched by continuing her education and becoming a transformational coach, hypnotherapist and NLP practitioner.

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Today she trains birth support professionals with the new framework she's developed, showing them how to integrate principles and strategies of transformative coaching into birth and postpartum support.

00:00:52.284 --> 00:01:00.649
Neri also happens to be my mentor and teacher, and I'm currently in the process of getting my certification in the birth coach method.

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Today she's here with me to talk about something that is a passion for me as well the inner game of childbirth, prenatal coaching to overcome the internal resistance and success blockers so one can achieve their desired experiences.

00:01:15.707 --> 00:01:20.605
For more info on how to work with Neri, visit birthcoachmethodcom.

00:01:20.605 --> 00:01:27.180
And that will also be in the show notes, neri welcome, thank you.

00:01:27.200 --> 00:01:27.480
Thank you.

00:01:27.480 --> 00:01:28.022
Thank you for having me.

00:01:28.042 --> 00:01:29.183
Thank you for joining me.

00:01:29.183 --> 00:01:41.343
I am so honored to have you here and I am so honored to be in your program and I just absolutely fully endorse and love and support everything that you're doing in the birth community.

00:01:42.284 --> 00:01:43.408
Oh, thank you, Kelly.

00:01:43.408 --> 00:01:59.569
It is such an honor and also quite a life achievement to have nurses and doulas attend the same program together and have the juicy conversations right that we have in the program.

00:01:59.569 --> 00:02:06.650
So it's been just wonderful to have you in the program and thank you for your support and appreciation for everything that I do.

00:02:07.412 --> 00:02:36.622
Yes, and I would recommend that more nurses come and take your program, because I feel like one of the biggest challenges as a labor nurse is helping people who have shown up in the birth space that aren't necessarily prepared emotionally, or those who are prepared, how to help them with that process and how to understand where they're coming from.

00:02:37.085 --> 00:02:46.812
We are so hung up on the medical part, which is important, don't get me wrong Especially if somebody is there, like my community that I work with is mostly high risk.

00:02:46.812 --> 00:03:47.411
So being able to integrate the things that you teach is so helpful, because there are so many challenges that my patients are facing, and also I want to be able to prepare people in advance people in advance, and so having the ability to use the resources that you provided and the strategies that you've taught to be able to help people prepare for whether it's a physiologically straightforward birth or if it's something that might be a little bit more challenging, the strategies that you teach help us kind of rewire the brain to be able to handle the experiences that occur in birth, whether they are well, let's just be honest, birth is never exactly how we imagined, so absolutely never, and I think this is one of the biggest challenges, especially for millennials, who are the people that are giving birth right now.

00:03:47.980 --> 00:04:01.324
They grew up with a very packed schedule and everything was planned so carefully by their parents Me, my generation, guilty as charged and they need to just show up for a very unpredictable experience.

00:04:01.324 --> 00:04:25.196
Show up for a very unpredictable experience and I loved it that at the very beginning I don't know if you even noticed it when you just started talking about your work with your patients you were talking about showing up, which is a phrase that works so perfectly to explain the value of transformational coaching.

00:04:25.196 --> 00:04:28.348
Because it is about showing up.

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It is about performing at the peak of your ability and going through this very unpredictable, challenging, chaotic, sometimes horrific experience that at some point also involved pain, right, and it's taking you totally out of your comfort zone, and sometimes I want to say you know, the first half of my career before I became a transformational coach no-transcript, the concept is a little bit deceiving, just bear with me.

00:05:27.127 --> 00:05:30.862
Yes, it is in our nature to give birth vaginally.

00:05:30.862 --> 00:05:39.903
However, the experience of going through vaginal birth for a modern woman is not natural.

00:05:39.903 --> 00:05:45.574
It's not part of her everyday life and in this respect, it's not natural.

00:05:45.574 --> 00:05:59.713
And it's funny that we were talking about natural birth and we were talking about the natural birth movement and, at the same time, we were all using the metaphor that childbirth is like a marathon run.

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Well, do you think running a marathon is natural to anyone?

00:06:04.291 --> 00:06:06.668
It is so not natural.

00:06:06.668 --> 00:06:26.146
You need to emotionally, mentally, physically prepare for this run and, in this respect, just telling our students and our clients your body was designed for it, it's natural for your body.

00:06:26.146 --> 00:06:30.752
I must tell you, in the last 10 years, I feel that it is deceiving.

00:06:32.540 --> 00:06:35.927
I agree, and I also think that we both.

00:06:35.927 --> 00:06:51.593
I just remember I think it was in lesson one or two when we both had this moment where we've looked back on our career and realized that the way that we prepare or communicate about birth wasn't necessarily the healthiest way.

00:06:52.920 --> 00:06:54.526
And I feel guilty for that.

00:06:54.607 --> 00:06:54.988
I do too.

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There is a saying in NLP the first assumption that keeps coming to mind is everyone is doing their best with the resources available for them.

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So it has to do with the way that I was trained.

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It has to do with the fact that I'm a dinosaur in the field and I know it's funny, but I am a dinosaur in the field.

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So, being a dinosaur in the field, I'm one of the pioneers, you know, in my motherland, you know, when it comes to being a doula, even no one knew what is the doula and philosophy was the philosophy of really opposing the medicalization of childbirth right?

00:07:33.454 --> 00:07:36.348
And so we've come a long way.

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Are we ready to start having a new conversation around birth?

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And this is the one thing that happened to me when I actually really had a crisis, a professional crisis, and I share it in every masterclass and free webinar that I teach, and I share it in my program and I say look, my transformation started with a professional crisis, you know.

00:08:05.012 --> 00:08:37.961
So I've been a labor doula and a charter educator for about 14 years when I just ran into such a professional fatigue and burnout and also doubt, self-doubt, that what I have to offer, what I bring to the table, isn't working, and the reason that I got to this wasn't really relating to the fact that my personal doula clients were not having a good experience.

00:08:37.961 --> 00:08:40.767
Well, they didn't.

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More and more of them started taking epidural, more and more of them started being induced.

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But overall, generally speaking, if you look at what happened in our field from the 70s, when the natural birth movement started to come to life, and from the 80s, when it was not only childbirth educators talking about natural birth but also the emergence of doulas in the United States, if you look at what happened in reality a dramatic increase in epidurals, a dramatic increase in medical interventions, and so I think that to just be the resistance, the resistors, you know, the natural birth fighters, the protectors, the warriors and think that it's all the fault of the medical system, all the fault of the medical system.

00:09:44.405 --> 00:10:02.400
It's really simplifying what's going on, because what's going on is everyone and I'm talking about everyone, those who practice within the medical system and their patients everyone is coming from fear.

00:10:02.400 --> 00:10:19.037
It goes end in end, and so fear is just increasing fear, increasing fear, and everyone is just struggling around fear and everyone is performing out of fear, and it's not.

00:10:19.037 --> 00:10:40.668
You can't be at the peak of your performance when you come from fear and I'm talking about nurses and doctors and I'm talking about my clients, but your patients, right, that was my understanding, and it came out of having a real crisis.

00:10:41.368 --> 00:10:45.634
I was exposed to matter how I tried.

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You know, there was so much fear that was projected and instilled in this childbirth.

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I was just, I felt, I guess I felt like I'm suffocating and can't really show up as a doula in the room and it ended up in having pneumonia and being in bed for two weeks, wow, not being able to breathe.

00:11:08.004 --> 00:11:12.090
And I knew that it was the result of this birth.

00:11:12.090 --> 00:11:15.549
I knew that I just I couldn't handle it.

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I didn't handle it well and I, you know, in those two weeks I looked at what's going on around in my beloved field for support and I was like you know what, nothing that you're doing is working because look at reality, whatever promise you promise to deliver, it's not working.

00:11:37.941 --> 00:11:43.139
So many of them are not getting to achieve their desired experiences.

00:11:43.139 --> 00:11:49.631
So many of them are not getting to push through, show up.

00:11:49.631 --> 00:11:50.553
You know?

00:11:50.553 --> 00:12:01.899
Which reminds me I just had a conversation with a client last week and I think I was sharing it also in the last meeting that we had in the Transformational Bar Support Coaching Program.

00:12:01.899 --> 00:12:06.320
You know, clients that I work with don't always understand.

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They need to show up for the experience and I ask so how are you going to show up for this experience that you desire?

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And they do not know what I'm talking about.

00:12:18.700 --> 00:12:20.125
Well, there's so much dissociation.

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Yes.

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And I don't think people even realize what that is.

00:12:25.125 --> 00:12:25.947
I didn't.

00:12:25.947 --> 00:12:42.707
I was doing so much dissociating as a labor and delivery nurse in parts of my labor and birth and I didn't even know it until somebody in the mental health field told me what it was yes, there is a lot of dissociation when we talk about your patients.

00:12:43.168 --> 00:12:49.504
There's also a disconnect between their internal motivations and external motivations.

00:12:49.504 --> 00:12:55.956
Yes, right, this is huge, this is big, you know.

00:12:55.956 --> 00:12:59.243
So the external motivation says the brain is really bad for me, right.

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The external motivation says bad for me, right.

00:13:01.346 --> 00:13:07.394
The external motivation says natural birth is ideal, natural birth is the best.

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The external motivation says I want to move freely and change positions right.

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These are all things that they hear.

00:13:18.065 --> 00:13:19.967
But what about checking?

00:13:19.967 --> 00:13:22.571
You know about my mindset, my internal motivation?

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If it's really me, how is it aligned with my lifestyle, with the choices I make in my life, for example, going through a natural childbirth and being a person who, since 12 years old, since you got your period, being treated with hormonal contraceptives because your family doctor asked you if you have pains when you're getting your period and you said yes, and they said you don't need to.

00:13:55.100 --> 00:13:59.591
Here are some hormonal contraceptives to alleviate the pain.

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Not to have sex, of course.

00:14:00.813 --> 00:14:03.183
I know, because it happened to me with my daughter.

00:14:03.183 --> 00:14:18.068
I know that I went to a physical normal physical with a 12-year-old girl and she was offered immediately hormonal contraceptives so that she won't have to deal with her period.

00:14:18.068 --> 00:14:25.388
She won't have to miss a day of school, she won't have to miss, maybe, a swim team.

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And I was thinking to myself oh, that's wrong.

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Now take this woman.

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She is now 27 years old.

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If she was treated with hormonal contraceptives, she never experienced herself bleeding.

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She's never experienced menstrual cramps.

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She hasn't been.

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With the monthly practice that I had for childbirth as an ex-generation right, I had a monthly practice for childbirth.

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I had to practice my breathing.

00:14:55.924 --> 00:15:00.467
When I went through cramps, I had to go to the shower.

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I had to use the hot pillow.

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I had to practice some visualization.

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I was staying in bed.

00:15:08.351 --> 00:15:12.708
It wasn't so awful to stay in bed, you know, for a few hours and rest.

00:15:12.708 --> 00:15:20.427
When I was even in pain, when I was ovulating, I even knew every month which side I'm ovulating from.

00:15:20.427 --> 00:15:32.667
Right now you take this current birthgiver that went through very different life and now talking to her about natural childbirth.

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It's deceiving.

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We really need to be honest.

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I want to be honest with her.

00:15:38.980 --> 00:16:03.716
Yeah, and I come from a different side where I believe that let's keep it as natural as possible and overcome the resistance when a medical intervention is necessary, when the risk is greater than the reward for continuing with a completely natural labor.

00:16:03.716 --> 00:16:13.679
And by completely natural I don't mean that you can't have a natural delivery while receiving medical treatment, For instance, if you have preeclampsia.

00:16:13.679 --> 00:16:18.586
I have seen women birth naturally on magnesium.

00:16:19.366 --> 00:16:34.524
It can happen it does take a whole lot of emotional preparation and I didn't have words for what I was seeing until I started your program.

00:16:34.524 --> 00:16:39.634
I noticed so I've been in the medical field for about 25 years as well.

00:16:39.634 --> 00:16:57.649
Just, I wasn't in the labor and delivery like full, full in it until about eight years ago and what I've noticed is patients come in, like you said, with that disconnect between their goals and like how they plan to show up for their goals.

00:16:57.649 --> 00:17:05.750
And, for instance, I'm thinking of someone that that has severe preeclampsia, like their labs show it.

00:17:05.750 --> 00:17:08.480
Their blood pressure is out of control.

00:17:09.201 --> 00:17:20.587
And I see like some of the most extreme cases that really stick with me are denial, continuing to say, oh no, this is white coat syndrome.

00:17:20.587 --> 00:17:23.374
And I'm there trying to explain.

00:17:23.374 --> 00:17:34.807
Well, it's not white coat syndrome when you've maxed out your blood pressure medicine and you're still having this severe range blood pressure that puts you at risk for stroke, that puts you at risk for seizure.

00:17:34.807 --> 00:18:07.273
And we need to give you this treatment of magnesium to prevent seizure and the possibility of a blood clot in your brain or your placenta and having patients believe that that is the end of their natural labor because the potential of the magnesium stalling out the contractions is what they're stuck on and the potential that the Pitocin is going to be too much for them to handle if necessary.

00:18:07.273 --> 00:18:27.436
They're already going down this path of failure in their brain without preparing for the possibility that they could actually continue to succeed or have a wonderful, miraculous birth with help from modern medicine.

00:18:27.436 --> 00:18:30.144
Right, because both can be true.

00:18:31.490 --> 00:18:36.839
Right and I feel that it's a little bit the result of the discourse.

00:18:36.839 --> 00:18:43.669
So in coaching, the language really matters, the words used, they really matter.

00:18:43.669 --> 00:18:59.606
You know, it is a conversational practice and the words that we use in our internal conversations and the words that we use when we speak to others, those matter.

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They build a story, they build reality.

00:19:03.673 --> 00:19:06.900
Words build reality right.

00:19:06.900 --> 00:19:38.328
And so one of the things that I really really loved about coaching is that when I started the very beginning, just understanding the origins of transformational coaching, life coaching, actually the whole profession of coaching, I learned about Tim Galloway saying the opponent within one's head is more formidable than the one on the other side of the net, and to me it felt like a miracle.

00:19:38.328 --> 00:19:43.565
I was thinking to myself Kelly, this is exactly what you're talking about.

00:19:43.565 --> 00:19:56.359
I believe that for many, many years, birth support professionals really saw the medical system as the opponent at the other side of the neck.

00:19:57.141 --> 00:19:57.421
Yeah.

00:19:59.003 --> 00:20:31.875
And failed to realize that there is a bigger one, a lot more formidable one, which is inside our heads, right and so talking like this, having a culture that looks at the childbirth experience, you know, with these oppositions, these dichotomies between natural birth and medical interventions or the medical approach to birth, it builds reality.

00:20:31.875 --> 00:20:35.943
So you're meeting patients that grew up into that.

00:20:35.943 --> 00:20:58.593
We can't have a natural birth because this is how we were trained to believe, and then it's time for us to stop and take a look at our words.

00:20:58.593 --> 00:21:02.830
First of all, I would call it physiological birth rather than natural birth.

00:21:02.830 --> 00:21:14.488
I haven't used the term natural birth for years and years, and years now, because I just realized no, not natural, so physiological birth.

00:21:14.488 --> 00:21:17.869
Now, what does it mean to have physiological birth?

00:21:17.869 --> 00:21:20.750
How do people show up to physiological birth?

00:21:20.750 --> 00:21:31.881
What is the environment that they want birth?

00:21:31.881 --> 00:21:33.083
What is the environment that they want, and since when?

00:21:33.103 --> 00:22:00.492
Being pragmatic is a curse or something that is failure or something that is perceived as being wrong, even if, in cases where I worked with clients that didn't have preeclampsia, didn't have any major conditions, but their births were stalling for 40 hours, do you think that the decision that she needs a pejoral and she is changing her mind, asking for a pejoral?

00:22:00.492 --> 00:22:05.173
Because she really exhausted all the resources that she had.

00:22:05.173 --> 00:22:08.644
She used all her resources for the last 40 hours.

00:22:08.644 --> 00:22:10.529
She used them, that's it.

00:22:10.529 --> 00:22:14.560
She's got no mental capacity, not emotional capacity.

00:22:14.560 --> 00:22:18.169
She was working so hard, she was doing everything that she could.

00:22:19.030 --> 00:22:23.728
The decision that she's not taking epidural, that was a good decision from 40 hours ago.

00:22:23.728 --> 00:22:29.422
How can it be the good decision right now?

00:22:29.422 --> 00:22:33.551
How can it be a failure to ask for epidural?

00:22:33.551 --> 00:22:47.269
Why is it not under being pragmatic and adjusting the plans according to what is in the surface, according to what becomes possible for us?

00:22:47.269 --> 00:23:01.277
So, one of the things like we have in the program, we have a coaching exercise that helps to work with clients through the process of acceptance and adjustment.

00:23:01.277 --> 00:23:25.329
And you need the tools, you need the coaching tools, you need the structure, you need the questions and you need to see that your conversation is following a certain structure and leading to the more pragmatic decision.

00:23:25.329 --> 00:23:27.394
That doesn't feel like failure.

00:23:28.115 --> 00:23:31.306
Yeah, the key is that it doesn't feel like failure.

00:23:31.306 --> 00:23:36.067
Right Right, doing what's right for you does not have to.

00:23:36.067 --> 00:23:37.491
It's not failure.

00:23:38.080 --> 00:23:38.944
Absolutely not.

00:23:39.480 --> 00:23:42.210
And we don't have to abuse ourselves in order to be successful.

00:23:43.519 --> 00:23:47.136
Absolutely not have to abuse ourselves in order to be successful?

00:23:47.136 --> 00:23:47.518
Absolutely not.

00:23:47.518 --> 00:23:55.119
And also, you know this whole advocacy is big in our field.

00:23:55.119 --> 00:23:57.602
So birth support professionals call themselves advocates.

00:23:57.602 --> 00:23:59.084
What are you advocating for?

00:23:59.084 --> 00:24:14.063
Are you advocating for a certain experience or are you advocating in the best interest of your client and are you advocating for them?

00:24:14.063 --> 00:24:14.984
Is it possible?

00:24:14.984 --> 00:24:30.529
Is it possible I'm just sending it out there in the world, you know is it possible that sometimes we need to advocate for a cesarean rather than an ordeal that is going to be traumatic for this person?

00:24:30.529 --> 00:24:31.310
Is it possible?

00:24:31.310 --> 00:24:48.988
So I feel that coming with an agenda that is not the client's agenda and not asking them who they are, what motivates them, why are they choosing what they're choosing and this is the power of prenatal coaching we almost like reversing the direction.

00:24:49.528 --> 00:24:52.820
Everything that I was taught about prenatal is that I need to educate.

00:24:52.820 --> 00:25:03.632
I need to educate them about the process and about the phases and about the positions and about the medical system.

00:25:03.632 --> 00:25:14.012
I needed to deliver a lot of knowledge so that they will be able to achieve a good, healthy experience.

00:25:14.012 --> 00:25:27.779
Is it possible that maybe allowing them to inform me about who they are is a better way to have a healthy, good experience, maybe asking questions.

00:25:27.779 --> 00:25:40.001
It's like really redirecting the whole conversation to be around not them asking questions and me as an expert answering them, but doing the other way around Me.

00:25:40.001 --> 00:25:41.463
Asking them questions, they answer, where around me.

00:25:41.463 --> 00:25:44.246
Asking them questions, they answer.

00:25:44.246 --> 00:25:49.529
Then they get to first be more in touch with who they are.

00:25:49.529 --> 00:26:00.077
What are their beliefs, what are the mindsets that they have around their childbirth, what are their motivations, what are their challenges, what strength are they going to rely on?

00:26:00.077 --> 00:26:01.760
They need to hear it.

00:26:01.760 --> 00:26:03.623
They need someone to have these conversations with them right.

00:26:03.623 --> 00:26:04.144
They need to hear it.

00:26:04.144 --> 00:26:05.826
They need someone to have these conversations with them right.

00:26:05.826 --> 00:26:36.505
And when I'm listening to them, they get the practice of being the expert and this is huge, so that when you meet them in L&D they already have agency, a sense of agency that I help them build by conducting those prenatal coaching conversations and putting them in the expert seat and having them practice saying who they are and what they want and what they need right.

00:26:36.986 --> 00:26:52.232
This is an agency that actually, if you think about the doula, which is another agent in birth support, she's not going to have to do the fighting and the wars you know and being the protector and being in between.

00:26:52.232 --> 00:27:06.556
No, your goal is to really get your client ready to feel strong in their ability to talk to their caregivers and tell their caregivers what they want.

00:27:06.556 --> 00:27:21.799
And let's say that this client of mine is being told that she needs some medical intervention, having her ask so why do you want to do this intervention?

00:27:21.799 --> 00:27:23.676
What are the benefits of this intervention?

00:27:23.676 --> 00:27:32.890
You don't need to be the warrior that protects this client if you helped her build her agency and sense of expert.

00:27:32.890 --> 00:27:53.025
I'm an expert in my life and here there's already one professional that I was talking to that was asking me questions and really, really listening to me, active listening and helping me find what I want and make good choices.

00:27:53.025 --> 00:27:58.623
I can trust that the nurse is going to do just the same.

00:27:58.623 --> 00:28:04.779
So you need to build this, because it's not what's going on in our culture right now.

00:28:06.351 --> 00:28:12.343
Yeah, everybody's showing up to fight and it's problematic If you're showing up.

00:28:12.343 --> 00:28:14.516
Like you said, fear begets fear, right?

00:28:14.516 --> 00:28:24.931
So if you're showing up in fear and you're defensive and you're talking to your medical team, or vice versa, right, there's fear on the side of the medical team as well, and we can talk about that in a minute.

00:28:24.931 --> 00:28:39.664
But if you're showing up, then your medical team will feel like they need to emphasize the need for the intervention more, which usually leads to more fear.

00:28:39.664 --> 00:28:44.179
The risks become the focal point, not the benefits.

00:28:44.179 --> 00:28:47.054
We've already explained the benefits of the procedure.

00:28:47.455 --> 00:29:18.462
But if you don't do it, let's talk about the risks and try to persuade somebody to do something that they're not feeling secure about, but if they've already gone through the work and already done the internal work that needs to be done to really know what you're aligned with and really know what kind of outcomes you want, when something comes up that was unexpected as does in all of life and all of parenthood you're never going to make it through unscathed.

00:29:18.462 --> 00:29:26.335
I promise Something's going to happen, someone's going to skin a knee at some point and you have to make decisions on how to handle it.

00:29:26.335 --> 00:29:48.817
You can't just pretend it's not happening and so being able to work with your medical team without feeling threatened is so important in the old school natural birth way, without realizing that we all need to work together and become a team and mentally prepare for that.

00:29:48.817 --> 00:30:00.560
Then it does end up being kind of an adversarial situation where maybe the doula and the medical team are fighting, which is icky, especially if you're the patient or the client that's sitting in the middle of that.

00:30:01.711 --> 00:30:34.090
The other thing that I've noticed since I've started working with you or even since I started realizing that this change needed to happen and then I sought out your program because I realized it I've noticed that when I'm in an emergency, in a delivery, it's a more calm situation and if people are starting to get elevated, I can have conversations with them relatively quickly now to remind them that we don't have to act in fear.

00:30:34.090 --> 00:30:43.500
We're all on the same team, we're all working together and we're going to get through this and everything's going to be okay and we know the next steps.

00:30:43.500 --> 00:30:44.403
We've trained for this.

00:30:44.403 --> 00:30:52.943
We can think clearly, we can work together and we don't have to fear the next stage.

00:30:52.943 --> 00:30:54.553
We can anticipate without fear.

00:30:55.474 --> 00:30:57.038
And we can do all the things we need to do.

00:30:57.038 --> 00:31:10.539
It's a much better environment, Even with other nurses, doctors, patients, anybody that has a tendency toward high anxiety it still works and it makes life so much easier.

00:31:13.593 --> 00:31:32.194
It's very rewarding to hear you reflecting on how the transformational coaching strategies and tool help change even the conversation between the teams.

00:31:32.194 --> 00:31:35.142
You know the staff members that you work with.

00:31:35.142 --> 00:31:38.480
You know something you've never shared before, so thank you for that.

00:31:39.171 --> 00:31:42.900
Oh, I thought I had, but maybe maybe it was in my head that I shared it.

00:31:42.920 --> 00:31:46.670
I thought I had, but maybe it was in my head that I shared it.

00:31:46.670 --> 00:32:09.138
Very rewarding for me to hear that that it's not only changing the dynamics and build a better partnership which is my goal between you and your patients, but that it actually creates a better partnership between you and the other staff members that you work with in situations of emergencies or in moments of stress.

00:32:09.138 --> 00:32:11.282
It's very rewarding for me to hear that.

00:32:12.170 --> 00:32:17.369
Yeah, and that's another reason that nurses should be looking into the birth coach method.

00:32:17.369 --> 00:32:22.403
Because we are birth coaches, that's what we are as nurses Do you look for birth coaches.

00:32:22.872 --> 00:32:34.578
Nurses are birth coaches, and whether you plan to use it in private practice or in the hospital is irrelevant, because you need the skills and I can tell you these are not skills that are given in medical school.

00:32:34.578 --> 00:32:37.093
They're not skills that are given in nursing school.

00:32:37.093 --> 00:32:39.900
The hospitals are not providing us with these skills.

00:32:39.900 --> 00:32:41.051
It's not conflict management.

00:32:41.051 --> 00:32:42.881
That's different, and I think that's what the hospitals think it is.

00:32:42.881 --> 00:32:43.484
It's not conflict management.

00:32:43.484 --> 00:32:45.392
That's different and I think that's what the hospitals think it is.

00:32:45.392 --> 00:32:47.337
It's not because we're not in conflict.

00:32:47.337 --> 00:32:48.922
We don't need to be in conflict.

00:32:49.450 --> 00:32:52.256
It's not at all about being in conflict.

00:32:52.256 --> 00:33:08.067
So here's the thing when you find yourself in conflict, you have a tendency to think about differences in opinions to think about differences in opinions.

00:33:08.166 --> 00:33:30.152
But here's the thing If you build good relationship and you invested in building rapport with the other person, you can go together, work together even through differences of opinion, together, even through differences of opinion.

00:33:30.152 --> 00:33:41.076
So and it's a huge, and this is something that I tell all the doulas that I've trained and everyone that come to my programs Look, nurses have sometimes two minutes to build rapport with patients.

00:33:41.076 --> 00:33:44.881
You spend some hours with them prenatally.

00:33:44.881 --> 00:34:00.294
Well, as a side note, I would say that I think that the way that doulas are trained in many places, to believe that two meetings with their clients are good enough to show up at a person and support a client, I would say this is still old school.

00:34:00.294 --> 00:34:02.356
Why is it old school?

00:34:02.356 --> 00:34:19.432
Because there is a belief, a hidden belief, that no one is talking about, that you can just come to your client's birth with the toolbox of a doula, whatever toolbox it is.

00:34:19.432 --> 00:35:19.402
You know aromatherapy and physio balls and massage balls and ribosomes and changing positions and breathing techniques and relaxation, everything which I work with, and I know it but to assume that you can just show up to the birth with the same toolbox again and again and again, without really providing client-centered care, that's a huge mistake, because then you're doing the same thing that the doctor is doing Yep, a box that calls obstetric gynecology without seeing this specific patient, right, and so if a doula is doing the same thing, not really taking the time to learn who this client is which is why I think that we should have a series of prenatal coaching conversations with our clients, right, and so this is.

00:35:19.402 --> 00:35:40.637
Like you know, I started from one thing, I took it to another thing, because I think this is one of the things that I love about coaching is that it helped me really not to assume that I can just show up at a birth of my client with the same toolbox, with the same routines of care, because, hey, that's exactly what nurses and doctors are doing.

00:35:40.637 --> 00:35:47.650
My clients do not need another agent that is doing just the same thing.

00:35:47.650 --> 00:35:51.838
You know, here is how you go through birth One, two, three, four, five.

00:35:52.420 --> 00:35:59.945
No, we have so many different ways to go through healthy, normal, satisfying birth experience.

00:35:59.945 --> 00:36:04.119
How about learning who this client is so that we can support her through her very unique journey and experience?

00:36:04.119 --> 00:36:08.914
How about learning who this client is so that we can support her through her very unique journey and experience?

00:36:08.914 --> 00:36:32.338
Right and that's another thing that when doulas emerged, there was kind of like an internal conflict or an internal dilemma in our profession because it was clear to everyone that we are accountable for the quality of the experience.

00:36:32.338 --> 00:36:37.172
Right, doulas are totally free of liability to the safety.

00:36:37.172 --> 00:36:41.378
Totally right, we bear no liability.

00:36:41.378 --> 00:36:45.445
It's a privilege, it's a huge privilege, it really is.

00:36:46.389 --> 00:37:02.661
So we were supposed to focus on the quality of our clients' experiences, not on the medical practice, not on the medical aspects, somehow along the way the doula profession evolved.

00:37:02.661 --> 00:37:21.929
Now, along the way the doula profession evolved, I find online conversations in doulas groups that are very clinical, going very deep into clinical information, and I'm telling myself you're deviating from your power.

00:37:21.929 --> 00:37:33.304
Yeah, if you're going to try to stand in L&D and advocate stating that you are familiar with a better obstetric practice, you're going to lose the game here.

00:37:33.304 --> 00:37:40.797
You're losing the game immediately, because who do you think your clients are going to follow?

00:37:40.797 --> 00:37:43.882
An obstetric gynecologist that studied how many years?

00:37:53.030 --> 00:37:53.230
Or a doula.

00:37:53.230 --> 00:37:54.632
Well, I've seen it both ways and that's the sad part.

00:37:54.632 --> 00:37:59.364
And not because a normal physiological birth isn't the goal, but because a doula is not necessarily medically trained.

00:37:59.364 --> 00:38:02.878
I say not necessarily because the doula training is non-medical.

00:38:02.878 --> 00:38:07.336
There may be doulas who are also medical, I'm not talking about that.

00:38:07.336 --> 00:38:14.907
But also, if you're in the role of a doula, you should not be using your medical training, because then there's liability.

00:38:14.907 --> 00:38:15.851
There you become liable.

00:38:16.552 --> 00:38:18.094
Absolutely I agree with you so.

00:38:19.235 --> 00:38:21.579
I've seen doulas turn off the Pitocin.

00:38:21.579 --> 00:38:24.684
I've seen doulas mess with the monitors.

00:38:24.684 --> 00:38:27.409
I've seen doulas start pushing with patients.

00:38:27.409 --> 00:38:48.777
I've seen doulas administer medication and supplements during deliveries and doulas taking power away from their patients, and that is highly concerning for me because to me, that constitutes an abuse of power, just like doing things without consent as a medical provider is an abuse of power.

00:38:48.777 --> 00:38:56.166
So, from both ends, we are all guilty of doing what is not in the best interest of the patient.

00:38:56.166 --> 00:39:13.797
What you are trying to, how you are shifting the narrative, is we need to start turning inward and looking towards the patient, both of us not standing in our little silos, not clutching each of our toolboxes right.

00:39:13.797 --> 00:39:15.965
The patient doesn't need all these toolboxes.

00:39:15.965 --> 00:39:21.297
They need support, they need patient-centered care, and that's supposedly what hospitals want.

00:39:22.219 --> 00:39:22.541
Right.

00:39:22.940 --> 00:39:29.936
We aren't given the, the tools to, so to speak, to provide the patients, and you're doing that.

00:39:30.570 --> 00:39:33.637
But I think that nowadays, even doulas are not getting enough tools.

00:39:33.637 --> 00:39:37.820
And I, I love my profession and I love doulas.

00:39:37.820 --> 00:39:39.329
I love doulas.

00:39:39.329 --> 00:39:42.862
I want to see them gain higher professional status.

00:39:43.730 --> 00:39:44.931
I want to see them gain higher professional status.

00:39:44.951 --> 00:39:46.152
I want to gain power.

00:39:46.152 --> 00:39:56.820
What I'm saying is doulas, power is a transformative power, it's a conversational power, it's the power of really.

00:39:56.820 --> 00:40:02.806
It's prenatal power that the nurses do not have and the obstetricians do not have.

00:40:02.806 --> 00:40:04.847
That's the dualist power.

00:40:04.847 --> 00:40:21.280
The more we try to bite pieces or enter the territory of the power of doctors and nurses, the more we lose, if you ask me, the more we lose power because it's not our natural power.

00:40:21.280 --> 00:40:22.523
It's not our natural power.

00:40:22.523 --> 00:40:24.967
It's not what we're bringing to the table.

00:40:24.967 --> 00:40:42.197
What we bring to the table is the time we spend with our clients before you know, the rapport that we build, the trust that we build, getting to understand them, being able to build their confidence that what they know about themselves is important.

00:40:42.197 --> 00:40:54.742
You know, like so many of my clients are surprised when I tell them you know, the system is really interested in building partnership with you.

00:40:55.989 --> 00:41:17.277
The system now knows that partnership between doctors, nurses and their patients is leading to a safe care and they go really Because in their mind, in their mind sometimes, very often, they think that they're hiring me to protect them from the system.

00:41:17.277 --> 00:41:23.443
So, having the prenatal conversation that actually says, hey, hold on a moment, I want you to know something about the system.

00:41:23.443 --> 00:41:26.050
They might not have the best tools the prenatal conversation that actually says, hey, hold on a moment.

00:41:26.050 --> 00:41:27.432
I want you to know something about the system.

00:41:27.432 --> 00:41:30.742
They might not have the best tools, but we can show them how to do it.

00:41:30.742 --> 00:41:33.538
I will be there to show you how to do it.

00:41:34.731 --> 00:41:44.664
I will be there to provide the tools, but I need you to know that the medical system recognizes that patient-centered care is safer.

00:41:44.664 --> 00:41:54.625
That building a partnership with patients and with their family members leads to not only high-quality care but to a safer care.

00:41:54.625 --> 00:42:00.402
That patient engagement is really important now too.

00:42:00.402 --> 00:42:02.253
So we're not opposing.

00:42:02.253 --> 00:42:34.744
So when they hear that what we're bringing to the table is not opposing the medical system but actually is helping the medical system and this is how I train doulas when they hear that all the coaching tools are actually serving the system, the energy changes, and now we enter L&D as a doula or as a patient building rapport in moments right, because we're not guarding, we're not protected, we're not like you did this.

00:42:35.411 --> 00:42:38.920
Yeah, we're not fighting each other, we're not clutching our toolboxes.

00:42:40.010 --> 00:42:45.552
Right, and you mentioned before something that I really appreciate, also about knowledge.

00:42:45.552 --> 00:42:47.773
So here's the thing about knowledge.

00:42:47.773 --> 00:42:52.097
We used to think that we need to educate our clients.

00:42:52.097 --> 00:43:11.268
I think that nowadays they have Dr Google, dr YouTube and Dr Facebook on speed dial, yes, yes, and what we need to help them do is actually sort out the information based on who they are and what's right for them.

00:43:13.829 --> 00:43:13.929
Yeah.

00:43:13.951 --> 00:43:23.244
Customized care, and this is setting them up for success as parents as well, because even as parents, they're going to read so many opposing views.

00:43:23.244 --> 00:43:29.215
As parents, they're going to read so many opposing views.

00:43:29.215 --> 00:43:30.157
Think about sleeping.

00:43:30.157 --> 00:43:30.878
There is sleep training.

00:43:30.878 --> 00:43:31.480
There is the family bed.

00:43:31.480 --> 00:43:34.407
There is oh my God, no, babies are not going into your bed.

00:43:34.407 --> 00:43:38.155
There are so many opposing views.

00:43:38.155 --> 00:43:40.501
There is the continuum principle.

00:43:40.561 --> 00:43:44.574
You know where they tell you that your babies need to be on you for nine months.

00:43:44.574 --> 00:44:07.590
You know, just like monkeys, and I'm like okay, look, if they read all those books and if they Google the keywords and find all those opposing views and schools to how to do things and they don't sort them out based on who they are, they're going to get lost right out based on who they are.

00:44:07.590 --> 00:44:08.572
They're going to get lost right.

00:44:08.572 --> 00:44:09.054
So it starts prenatally.

00:44:09.054 --> 00:44:09.494
It starts prenatally.

00:44:09.494 --> 00:44:13.902
So, like, take the very naive thing you were talking about.

00:44:13.902 --> 00:44:19.601
Well, I don't even want to think about doulas who are attaching the pitocin and increasing it, but you know what?

00:44:19.601 --> 00:44:29.615
Let's talk about a more naive situation, less harmful, that is sought to be within the practice of the doula.

00:44:29.996 --> 00:44:31.139
Your client's water broke.

00:44:31.139 --> 00:44:33.244
Are you telling her to stay home?

00:44:33.244 --> 00:44:36.974
Are you advising to stay home.

00:44:36.974 --> 00:44:39.059
Here's how I was trained.

00:44:39.059 --> 00:44:40.523
I'm going to be honest with you.

00:44:40.523 --> 00:45:00.110
The way that I was trained 24 years ago was clients are more likely to get infected in hospitals rather than at their home, where you know the microbiome is theirs and the bacteria is theirs and their body is familiar with these bacteria.

00:45:00.110 --> 00:45:07.257
So when their water breaks, they better stay at home rather than going to the hospital, especially if they don't have contractions yet.

00:45:07.257 --> 00:45:17.224
Right and so first of all, you tell me telling a client to stay at home after breaking of the waters does this have?

00:45:17.224 --> 00:45:20.016
Does this advice carry liability?

00:45:21.739 --> 00:45:29.630
I mean, I would think so carry liability.

00:45:29.650 --> 00:45:31.112
I mean, I would think so Me too, how I was trained.

00:45:31.112 --> 00:45:33.036
But I was also trained to say that my service bear no liability.

00:45:33.036 --> 00:45:39.635
So there is a conflict, an internal conflict in the profession, and I'm not blaming or shaming anyone.

00:45:39.635 --> 00:45:49.038
I'm really trying to recognize things and help them surface and help us all rethink and reinvent birth support, because we can do it.

00:45:49.038 --> 00:46:02.675
I sign every email of mine let's reinvent birth support together, because I really feel that it's time for us to reinvent birth support and we can do it so much in so much better way.

00:46:03.016 --> 00:46:05.340
So your client's water-brained?

00:46:05.340 --> 00:46:09.695
Okay, let's verify, let's follow code.

00:46:09.695 --> 00:46:11.036
You know, see that we.

00:46:11.036 --> 00:46:13.923
But then let's ask so, how do you feel?

00:46:13.923 --> 00:46:16.213
How do you feel about this?

00:46:16.213 --> 00:46:17.976
What do you want to do?

00:46:17.976 --> 00:46:20.503
How comfortable do you feel staying at home?

00:46:20.503 --> 00:46:28.893
Would you feel more calm at a hospital being watched, or would you feel more calm staying at home?

00:46:28.893 --> 00:46:30.980
Okay, I hear you.

00:46:30.980 --> 00:46:36.114
You say that you feel that you're going to be more calm going to the hospital.

00:46:36.574 --> 00:46:40.251
Let me just share something about what's going to happen in the hospital.

00:46:40.251 --> 00:46:41.695
You're going to get there.

00:46:41.695 --> 00:46:46.974
The staff is going to think that you came so that they will take care of you.

00:46:46.974 --> 00:46:52.512
You cannot show up at the hospital and not being taken care of by the staff.

00:46:52.512 --> 00:46:54.297
That's not an option.

00:46:54.297 --> 00:46:59.451
When we show up at the hospital, it means we need medical care.

00:46:59.451 --> 00:47:02.675
So let's think about it.

00:47:02.675 --> 00:47:04.438
Do you need medical care?

00:47:04.438 --> 00:47:13.123
This conversation it needs to happen prenatally and then when the things happen and the water breaks.

00:47:13.123 --> 00:47:28.469
You know, the clients are just so well prepared mentally, emotionally You've already been through so many conversations with them understand who they are, understand how their thinking process work, understand what triggers them, what are their motivations.

00:47:28.469 --> 00:47:38.817
You need all that so that they can really go through labor and delivery smoothly, you know with a lot of agency.

00:47:38.896 --> 00:47:40.842
You know that's what you're trying to do.

00:47:41.851 --> 00:47:49.403
Well, I think one of the things that I try to offer is to help clients find providers that they align with.

00:47:49.403 --> 00:47:55.362
First of all, let's not go to a provider that prefers a lot of interventions if that's not what you want.

00:47:55.362 --> 00:48:01.003
But if you feel safer with a lot of interventions, then that might be the best provider for you.

00:48:01.003 --> 00:48:08.221
But also, these are conversations that we could be teaching the client how to have with their provider so that they know what to expect.

00:48:08.221 --> 00:48:09.411
And the moment.

00:48:09.411 --> 00:48:18.536
So often I work with midwives and doctors, obviously because I'm in a hospital, but the midwives will get calls all the time.

00:48:18.536 --> 00:48:19.518
I think my water broke.

00:48:19.518 --> 00:48:20.902
Okay, well, are you in labor?

00:48:20.902 --> 00:48:22.452
What color is the fluid?

00:48:22.452 --> 00:48:24.215
Are you group beta, strep positive?

00:48:24.215 --> 00:48:26.619
And then we talk about what you want.

00:48:26.619 --> 00:48:31.313
What is the timeframe that we have to consider coming to the hospital?

00:48:31.313 --> 00:48:33.159
There's a lot that goes into it.

00:48:33.159 --> 00:48:37.677
It's not just a stay home or don't stay home, and there's a lot to consider.

00:48:37.777 --> 00:49:06.920
And then we have kind of the timeframe of when we would like contractions to start, so that we don't get to the point where our water is broken for so long that we've increased the risk for infection which, if you're giving birth in a hospital, then the NICU if you have one or the pediatricians will then, after a certain amount of time with your water broken, want to start doing interventions after the baby's born to make sure that the baby doesn't have signs of infection and that might look like the baby getting heel sticks.

00:49:07.322 --> 00:49:33.012
Everything has a result that it's important to be aware of and to be able to make informed decisions about, because I know that when my baby was getting heel sticks it was traumatic for me and while I recognize it was necessary because we were looking for Billy Rubin and there was risk and he was yellow and it was slightly high and so we had to continue to do heel sticks.

00:49:33.012 --> 00:49:47.501
Having to do that because I chose to stay ruptured for a certain amount of time, hypothetically, and that's the only reason that my child's getting heel sticks that wouldn't feel right to me and I would want somebody to help me work through that.

00:49:47.501 --> 00:50:10.554
I believe that not having thought about how those things might affect you and how you might choose one path or another, having not talked about that beforehand, I think that leads to trauma, because when you're hit with the heel sticks that you weren't anticipating, because you made a choice that felt better at the time, but it wasn't fully informed.

00:50:10.554 --> 00:50:11.976
That leads to trauma.

00:50:12.637 --> 00:50:27.525
So here's the thing we can't anticipate prenatally every situation that our client is going to encounter and there's not a lot of point in trying to be prepared even for every situation.

00:50:27.525 --> 00:50:46.193
So what we actually build in the prenatal process and this is why it's so important is the practice of looking in, finding what's your priority being able to make choices, being able to have agency, being able to have agency, being able to make adjustments.

00:50:46.193 --> 00:50:48.418
We build it conversation.

00:50:48.418 --> 00:50:56.503
We can't really prepare for each situation, but you know, your clients are they.

00:50:56.503 --> 00:51:00.331
They have a practice which no one actually told us to think about.

00:51:00.893 --> 00:51:03.275
Think about my clients, your patients.

00:51:03.275 --> 00:51:10.246
They go through the school system for so many years and no one has those conversations with them about who they are.

00:51:10.246 --> 00:51:23.903
Everybody's delivering, delivering, delivering, thinking that they are an empty container, right, and no one really helps them to form a sense of agency of this is me.

00:51:23.903 --> 00:51:31.539
This is where I begin, this is where I end, this is my belief system and it is okay if I think different than the other person.

00:51:31.539 --> 00:51:33.543
These are my priorities.

00:51:33.543 --> 00:51:38.077
I prioritize my baby not getting heel sick.

00:51:38.077 --> 00:51:39.500
This is my priority.

00:51:39.559 --> 00:51:43.539
If I have to have a cesarean, so that I will prevent it, this is what I'm going to do because that's my priority.

00:51:43.539 --> 00:51:46.512
If I have to have a cesarean, so that I will prevent it, this is what I'm going to do because that's my priority.

00:51:46.512 --> 00:51:54.922
I've heard clients you know at the moment that you open even the conversation saying I'd rather have a cesarean than have a vacuum.

00:51:54.922 --> 00:52:08.192
Someone needs to create this self-confidence and agency to say it, and that's how you go through life and how are you going to be a parent without it?

00:52:08.192 --> 00:52:09.235
Exactly.

00:52:09.235 --> 00:52:18.387
So, the way that I look at it, prenatal coaching conversations are setting them up for success as parents, as people.

00:52:18.387 --> 00:52:19.632
Right?

00:52:19.632 --> 00:52:25.974
If the woman doesn't know how to advocate in L&D for herself, do you think she's going to know how to advocate for her child?

00:52:28.365 --> 00:52:29.447
It's so much harder too.

00:52:29.447 --> 00:52:33.958
There's so much more emotion involved when advocating for your child.

00:52:34.565 --> 00:52:59.916
So I see a continuity here, right, a continuity of pushing through moments of fear, pushing through moments of doubt, with what I know about myself, with what I know about my partner, having a system that helps me to deal with conflicts, to deal with situations that were unpredictable.

00:52:59.916 --> 00:53:01.378
This is what we build.

00:53:01.378 --> 00:53:02.840
We build it.

00:53:02.840 --> 00:53:08.297
It's funny I say that we're building it through the process of preparing for childbirth.

00:53:08.297 --> 00:53:12.336
It's not only building them as parents, I think it's building them as people.

00:53:12.336 --> 00:53:35.655
One of my students who came to the Transformation on Birth Support Coaching Program telling me that she had to go to the bank to ask for a loan and she was practicing everything that I taught her and she got the loan, even though she knew she went there thinking there's no way that she's going to get the loan because she's not a good fit, you know, and they can't trust her.

00:53:35.655 --> 00:53:46.672
But she was practicing everything that I taught her about mirroring, about representational systems, about you know everything about creating rapport and she got the loan.

00:53:46.672 --> 00:53:51.690
That's amazing, right, it's pulling you for life.

00:53:51.690 --> 00:53:54.217
It is so crucial, so crucial.

00:53:54.217 --> 00:54:06.902
So it happened to me the way that things happen where you know, I saw I was telling you about the crisis that I went and the self-doubt began, with a huge lack of faith, losing my passion.

00:54:06.902 --> 00:54:13.847
I didn't lose my passion, actually, because if I were to lose my passion, I wouldn't go back to being a birth support professional.

00:54:13.847 --> 00:54:14.489
And I did.

00:54:14.530 --> 00:54:32.318
Eventually, I was thinking about a career change, going into transformational coaching, and I took a year long program and throughout the year I was thinking about a career change going into transformational coaching and I took a year-long program and throughout the year I was beating myself and I just kept thinking, ah, if I only knew how to do it when I practiced as a doula.

00:54:32.318 --> 00:54:44.856
And then one day I shared it with my teacher and she felt that I'm, you know, beating myself and she says, mary, hey, hey, you're really unfair to yourself Because, remember, we're saying everyone is doing the best with the resources available for them.

00:54:44.856 --> 00:54:46.090
You were doing just the same.

00:54:46.090 --> 00:54:48.052
You didn't have those resources.

00:54:48.052 --> 00:54:53.818
You didn't have all those coaching exercises, all those coaching strategies.

00:54:53.818 --> 00:55:01.134
You were trained differently, with a lot of hands-on support tools, not so much with conversational coaching skills.

00:55:01.134 --> 00:55:06.954
Stop beating yourself, let's think how you can do things differently.

00:55:07.606 --> 00:55:10.751
How about writing your final paper for the course about that?

00:55:10.751 --> 00:55:15.789
And I thought to myself, wow, I can do that and it became my book.

00:55:15.789 --> 00:55:19.925
So the art of coaching for childbirth is actually well.

00:55:19.925 --> 00:55:31.518
Of course, I worked on it a little bit more and it's already in its second edition, so a lot more has been developed since I wrote it as my final paper.

00:55:32.467 --> 00:55:50.469
But that's exactly what happened in transformational coaching all the exercises, all the structures, all the models of leading conversations, everything that I've learned, all the strategies and I thought, okay, now I'm going to have this in my field.

00:55:50.469 --> 00:55:52.873
How am I going to work with my clients?

00:55:52.873 --> 00:56:10.150
And it's not hands-on, so it's actually prenatally, or you can also lead those transformative coaching conversations in the postpartum period, right, and you also create a continuity because you started working with them prenatally instead of them working with another postpartum doula.

00:56:10.150 --> 00:56:26.574
You need to work with the same professional who actually already took so much time to learn who they are and what's working for them, and then you continue working with them and building the same capacities abilities in the postpartum period.

00:56:26.574 --> 00:56:44.438
And so I took everything and just it ignited my passion to birth support and it's amazing that I didn't even know that the result of it is going to be that I'm going to spend a third of the time with my clients in labor.

00:56:44.438 --> 00:56:45.891
I didn't know that.

00:56:45.891 --> 00:56:47.690
That was a nice surprise.

00:56:48.365 --> 00:56:54.193
So I started focusing on a longer prenatal coaching series.

00:56:54.193 --> 00:56:58.980
Not two meetings, sometimes six, sometimes seven.

00:56:58.980 --> 00:57:03.387
But you know what it's such a quality time that you spend with your clients.

00:57:03.387 --> 00:57:06.532
They're not in pain, there is no stress.

00:57:06.532 --> 00:57:18.199
You're sitting together, whether on Zoom or in your practice, and you have juicy, impactful, result-oriented conversations.

00:57:18.199 --> 00:57:22.626
You follow up on things, you follow up on actions that they need to take.

00:57:22.626 --> 00:57:31.347
You know also coaching our clients to understand that talking about things or writing them down is not enough.

00:57:31.347 --> 00:57:35.117
There has to come a question what actions are you taking?

00:57:35.117 --> 00:57:38.670
And I, when I work with nurses, I do the same thing.

00:57:38.670 --> 00:57:39.753
I teach them the same thing.

00:57:39.793 --> 00:57:57.976
So when I go to nursing workshops and they say, well, clients are coming with a big birth plan, very long birth plan, very detailed birth plan, but it's obvious that they don't know how to go through this experience, that they wrote and I say, okay, so did you have a conversation about that?

00:57:57.976 --> 00:58:00.628
What did you do when you got the birth plan?

00:58:00.628 --> 00:58:03.132
When they handed you the birth plan, what did you do?

00:58:03.132 --> 00:58:07.539
Well, I read to see if we can approve everything and I said, well, that's not the idea.

00:58:07.539 --> 00:58:19.742
The idea is not to just scan through the birth plan and think about whether or not you can allow the clients to go through labor, the way that they write.

00:58:19.742 --> 00:58:23.074
The idea is to have a conversation and get to know them.

00:58:23.074 --> 00:58:28.336
They're giving you a document that is telling you who they are.

00:58:28.336 --> 00:58:34.871
Now let's go through a conversation based on this birth plan, for example, you can ask them.

00:58:34.871 --> 00:58:40.197
So tell me three things that you did to prepare for this experience.

00:58:41.365 --> 00:58:42.047
I love that.

00:58:42.047 --> 00:58:46.628
Step one I downloaded a birth plan.

00:58:46.628 --> 00:58:48.594
Step two I checked off boxes.

00:58:48.594 --> 00:58:50.871
Step three I printed off the birth plan.

00:58:52.547 --> 00:58:55.637
I am loving expectant individuals.

00:58:55.637 --> 00:59:00.112
I do not try, I'm not trying to put them down, I'm really trying to elevate them.

00:59:00.112 --> 00:59:00.454
I am too, and also this is what I see not try.

00:59:00.454 --> 00:59:01.240
I'm not trying to put them down, I'm really trying to elevate them.

00:59:01.925 --> 00:59:08.250
I am too, and also this is what I see every day and we need to change it.

00:59:08.250 --> 00:59:09.594
It needs to be changed.

00:59:09.594 --> 00:59:10.255
We can do better.

00:59:10.704 --> 00:59:13.891
The role of the child recitator and the doula.

00:59:13.891 --> 00:59:17.958
That was their role, because that's what I do.

00:59:17.958 --> 00:59:23.237
So what actions are you taking so that you will be able to achieve it?

00:59:23.237 --> 00:59:26.297
What skills are you building so that you will be able to?

00:59:26.297 --> 00:59:31.655
Whether it's advocacy skills, whether it's coping technique skills, what are you doing?

00:59:31.655 --> 00:59:32.195
What steps?

00:59:32.195 --> 00:59:44.340
So, during a longer transformational coaching series, I also assign or design with them actions, and you know we follow up on those actions.

00:59:44.340 --> 00:59:46.570
The next time that I see them, I ask them.

00:59:46.652 --> 00:59:53.307
So tell me about this area of practice or these actions that you were committing to last time.

00:59:53.307 --> 00:59:54.710
How did it go?

00:59:54.710 --> 00:59:56.132
What did you do?

00:59:56.132 --> 00:59:58.175
How do you feel it empowered you?

00:59:58.175 --> 01:00:00.898
What was the gain in doing it?

01:00:00.898 --> 01:00:08.737
So you build them up, you know, toward being able to perform in the way that they want to perform.

01:00:08.737 --> 01:00:13.373
And I love I use the word to perform because it's coming from the coaching world.

01:00:13.894 --> 01:00:27.693
So the coaching world is all about increasing people's performance level, helping them show up, helping them perform at the peak of their abilities, with what becomes possible and available for them.

01:00:27.693 --> 01:00:28.094
Right.

01:00:28.094 --> 01:00:32.072
But we're doing it not only in childbirth.

01:00:32.072 --> 01:00:39.653
We're doing it in all other areas of coaching, whether it's career coaching or relationship, coaching or it doesn't matter in what field.

01:00:39.653 --> 01:00:48.867
We are increasing performance, level and accountability without attachment to the outcome, and this is something that I really want to stress here.

01:00:48.867 --> 01:00:52.414
We're not attached to a certain outcome.

01:00:52.414 --> 01:00:58.670
We're attached to the level of performance, and I'm using the coaching terminology.

01:00:59.211 --> 01:01:07.391
But I want to talk about Penny Simpkin, the biggest teacher that taught all of us, and we lost her this year.

01:01:07.391 --> 01:01:13.849
So it's really important for me to say Penny our beloved Penny was talking about.

01:01:13.849 --> 01:01:30.021
Her studies were showing us that birth giver satisfaction is found in how they feel that they were conducting themselves, not in what became available for them in their birth experience.

01:01:30.021 --> 01:01:41.231
Whether they took a vigil or not, whether they ended up having a juice, whether they ended up having a cesarean, this is not where their satisfaction is found.

01:01:41.231 --> 01:01:44.068
It's in how they feel that they were conducted themselves.

01:01:44.068 --> 01:01:47.217
So it's without attachment to the outcome.

01:01:47.826 --> 01:02:19.378
When a birth giver had a prolonged prenatal coaching series and she's learned how to conduct herself and she has taken actions toward achieving, she knows that she took all the right actions so that she could achieve her desired birth experience and even if it didn't end up being exactly what the birth plan was asking for, she's going to feel good.

01:02:19.378 --> 01:02:21.150
She's going to feel good.

01:02:21.150 --> 01:02:22.706
She's not going to feel like a failure.

01:02:22.706 --> 01:02:35.585
She's not going to feel like her birth experience was stolen from her, like things were imposed on her because she was engaged and she was part of the decision-making process.

01:02:35.585 --> 01:02:40.735
She had agency in how it unfolded and that's the most important part.

01:02:40.795 --> 01:02:52.226
So I find so much value in prenatal transformational coaching and birth giver satisfaction, because Penny was saying just the same.

01:02:52.226 --> 01:03:06.253
Saying that birth giver satisfaction relies on how they are conducting themselves is just as saying how they perform during their birth and toward the experience right.

01:03:06.253 --> 01:03:30.336
So it bears so much value, not to mention the value that it brings to the to-do list themselves, who get to spend less hours in L&D, who their work is less hands-on and is creating less fatigue, you know, less burned out, because their clients are so much more prepared to cope and to advocate.

01:03:30.336 --> 01:03:31.298
Just the same.

01:03:31.565 --> 01:03:38.648
Yeah, I totally agree, and something that was coming up for me was your work with nurses and talking about how to approach the birth plan.

01:03:38.648 --> 01:03:42.117
My colleagues are some of the people that listen to this podcast the most.

01:03:42.117 --> 01:03:56.235
And when my colleagues are being trained I'm a preceptor for nurses and I have other colleagues that are preceptors for nurses and oftentimes they'll say, listen to Kelly's podcast, because she talks about, you know, the pelvis and how to achieve alignment and all this stuff.

01:03:56.235 --> 01:04:21.860
What I want new nurses to understand is, when a mom comes in and she has her little birth plan checked off but hasn't put in any action to try to achieve that, what can we say to empower and support in the moment where we are also trying to empower and support other patients?

01:04:22.425 --> 01:04:25.695
I love it and thank you for asking me that.

01:04:25.695 --> 01:04:29.748
Here's the thing you can't empower before you build rapport.

01:04:29.748 --> 01:04:32.833
Right, they're not taking anything from you.

01:04:32.833 --> 01:04:35.059
They don't know who you are, right?

01:04:35.059 --> 01:04:36.952
Right, you're a stranger, exactly.

01:04:36.952 --> 01:04:44.777
Right, you're a stranger, exactly, and you're an expert in obstetric gynecology.

01:04:44.777 --> 01:04:54.364
So first of all, let's build their trust that you're an expert in empowerment.

01:05:01.724 --> 01:05:05.985
So the first thing that I'm saying is I see nurses talking to their patients, attending to the computer at the center.

01:05:05.985 --> 01:05:19.394
I know it is a huge demand, I know that you need to record everything, I know, but asking questions and looking at the computer is not building rapport.

01:05:19.394 --> 01:05:38.954
I also see nurses entering the room when the client is moving because her body is asking her to move and she's breathing and she's huffing and puffing, and they go inside the room and they stand in front of her like this.

01:05:38.954 --> 01:05:42.653
This is not building rapport.

01:05:42.653 --> 01:05:49.454
Your client, your patient, is moving, standing in front of her for two minutes.

01:05:49.454 --> 01:05:52.434
I ask for two minutes of your time.

01:05:52.434 --> 01:05:54.592
It's not an exaggeration, right?

01:05:54.592 --> 01:05:56.650
Two minutes of your time.

01:05:56.650 --> 01:06:07.994
Wait with the computer, enter the room, start moving with her Mirror, her Start making this connection.

01:06:07.994 --> 01:06:10.809
You know they say how does it go?

01:06:10.809 --> 01:06:11.351
This thing?

01:06:11.351 --> 01:06:22.615
You need to walk in someone else's shoes, mirror, start working with them, breathe with them, make rapport, make rapport, make connection.

01:06:22.615 --> 01:06:26.054
First of all, don't even start talking, don't.

01:06:26.054 --> 01:06:31.737
If there are any physical barriers between you and the patient, you can't empower them.

01:06:31.737 --> 01:06:48.130
So if, unfortunately, the room was designed so that the computer is here, the bed is here and the patient is there, you can't.

01:06:48.130 --> 01:06:54.378
You have to find a way to be with the patient in the same space.

01:06:54.378 --> 01:07:09.375
Yeah, so we can either have the client go around, come to us, you know like really go hold hands, move with them a little bit, and they say let's continue doing it next to the computer.

01:07:09.375 --> 01:07:20.293
I'm going to continue breathing with you, we're going to continue moving, but every now and then, between contractions, I'm going to just attend to the computer and when you have a contraction I'm going to continue doing it.

01:07:20.293 --> 01:07:24.666
And then you build something, you build connection, you build rapport.

01:07:24.666 --> 01:07:27.713
Now, after that they hand you their birth plan.

01:07:27.713 --> 01:07:31.349
Because actually what I know is the birth plan is the last part.

01:07:31.349 --> 01:07:36.289
You know, like after you put everything here, you did the admission, you know, comes the birth plan.

01:07:36.289 --> 01:07:37.911
You're asking for the birth plan.

01:07:37.911 --> 01:07:39.753
They do have a birth plan.

01:07:39.753 --> 01:07:44.791
You say this is so wonderful that you're mindful about your birth and you wrote a birth plan.

01:07:44.791 --> 01:07:47.391
It's a great vision.

01:07:47.391 --> 01:08:00.338
But here's the thing it's a vision and sometimes not all the details of a vision are put in place.

01:08:00.338 --> 01:08:08.411
Details of a vision are put in place, but the vision can still remain a positive and a good and a healthy one, right?

01:08:08.411 --> 01:08:11.360
Did you hear me talking about the metaphor that I?

01:08:11.360 --> 01:08:13.806
I use this metaphor with my birth clients.

01:08:13.806 --> 01:08:17.193
I tell them so here's the thing.

01:08:17.292 --> 01:08:24.474
I went to Trader Joe's and I had a full list of 15 things and four of them I couldn't find on the shelf.

01:08:24.474 --> 01:08:25.777
They missed them.

01:08:25.777 --> 01:08:37.195
But on the way to Trader Joe's I saw a rainbow, the best rainbow I've seen this winter.

01:08:37.195 --> 01:08:46.454
And at the store I met an old doll that I didn't see for so many years and we exchanged phones and we said we're going to get together next week.

01:08:46.454 --> 01:08:49.811
Was that a good visit at Trader Joe's or not?

01:08:49.811 --> 01:08:54.386
You tell me, definitely good, definitely One of the best.

01:08:54.386 --> 01:08:58.353
I don't care about those four things that I didn't find on the shelf, right?

01:08:58.353 --> 01:09:02.720
About the experience, right?

01:09:02.720 --> 01:09:05.748
So we don't get attached to the details.

01:09:06.029 --> 01:09:16.328
So that's a coaching conversation that a nurse can do Absolutely All the components of an excellent coaching conversation.

01:09:16.328 --> 01:09:17.368
It has metaphor.

01:09:17.368 --> 01:09:20.409
Metaphors are working so beautifully in coaching.

01:09:20.409 --> 01:09:25.393
It has metaphor, it clicks right in.

01:09:25.393 --> 01:09:33.377
It's like oh yeah, this can be a good, positive experience, even if I need Pitocin.

01:09:33.898 --> 01:09:54.234
So right at the get-go, saying this is so great that you have a vision for your birth and just like any vision, just remember, it's a vision, it's an experience and it's going to be great, even if some of the details here are not going to be met.

01:09:54.234 --> 01:09:55.917
How do you think about that?

01:09:55.917 --> 01:09:56.739
So that's one thing.

01:09:56.739 --> 01:10:04.024
The other thing, as I said, I think that we want to ask the patients how did they prepare themselves for this experience?

01:10:04.024 --> 01:10:08.235
I think it's an important question that reflects to them.

01:10:08.235 --> 01:10:18.130
If they have prepared very well for this, they're going to tell you we've been to a chopper's education class, da-da-da-da-da, okay, great.

01:10:18.130 --> 01:10:27.875
Tell me, for example, I'm talking about those patients of yours that want to achieve natural, physiological, healthy birth without interventions.

01:10:27.875 --> 01:10:32.091
Tell me three things you're going to rely on and I'm going to write it on the whiteboard here.

01:10:32.773 --> 01:10:33.454
I love that.

01:10:33.454 --> 01:10:39.268
That helps nurses so much too, because you know that whiteboard is being looked at by the charge nurse and the administrators.

01:10:39.789 --> 01:10:43.613
Let's write three things or, if you have more, tell me more.

01:10:43.613 --> 01:10:52.158
What are you going to rely on during this birth experience that is going to make you achieve your birth plan?

01:10:52.158 --> 01:10:53.831
Write them on the board.

01:10:53.831 --> 01:10:57.376
It's creating continuity with the next shift.

01:10:57.376 --> 01:10:59.752
If there is a next shift, right.

01:10:59.752 --> 01:11:09.095
Everyone goes into the room, can look at it and see, and and you build accountability in L and D, right yeah.

01:11:09.095 --> 01:11:14.557
Ability to really push through and achieve things Right yeah.

01:11:14.557 --> 01:11:17.213
So here's the truth.

01:11:17.213 --> 01:11:21.295
The system is really interested in reducing cesarean rates.

01:11:21.716 --> 01:11:21.975
Yeah.

01:11:23.064 --> 01:11:26.296
Vaginal birth initiative is all across, right.

01:11:26.296 --> 01:11:30.737
It doesn't matter which city or state, right?

01:11:30.737 --> 01:11:44.760
We're all interested in reducing cesarean rates, and so I'm asking myself who is your ideal patient that you need to focus on to reduce cesarean rates.

01:11:45.225 --> 01:11:46.430
The one that has the plan.

01:11:47.586 --> 01:11:52.532
And it's actually not the one that came without a plan and it's not the one that is high risk.

01:11:52.532 --> 01:11:58.238
It's the one that had the plan and wrote in it that she would like to have a physiological, natural birth.

01:11:58.238 --> 01:12:02.033
She's not a cuckoo that you need to ignore.

01:12:02.033 --> 01:12:08.371
She's not the one that you need to think, ah yeah, the moment that the contractions are going to be very strong, she's going to aspiropedrola.

01:12:08.371 --> 01:12:09.931
I know I've seen thousands like her.

01:12:09.931 --> 01:12:12.993
No, she's the one you need to focus on.

01:12:12.993 --> 01:12:18.536
She is the perfect candidate to reduce cesarean rates.

01:12:18.536 --> 01:12:22.753
Right, you don't dismiss her, right?

01:12:22.753 --> 01:12:34.748
I think that, unfortunately, the system is not focusing on her, but this is who you should focus on if you are really interested to reduce cesarean rates and increase vaginal birth.

01:12:34.748 --> 01:12:36.935
Yeah, right, I agree.

01:12:36.935 --> 01:12:49.654
And so you focus on her and you find the time to go more into her room, more often than the others, actually, and you find the time to engage in conversations with her.

01:12:49.654 --> 01:12:52.824
You know, I'm really impressed with the fact that you want to have a natural birth.

01:12:52.824 --> 01:12:54.110
What motivated you?

01:12:54.110 --> 01:13:06.533
Then, when she has doubts, you tap on this motivation and you say remember how you told me that you want to Remember how you told me that it's so important to you.

01:13:06.533 --> 01:13:16.292
So here's the thing I'm going to help you achieve the first plan because I know how important it is for you too and you repeat her motivation.

01:13:16.292 --> 01:13:30.376
And then you say we're just going to make a short-term plan for the next 20 minutes, yeah, and you break the whole process to short-term plans.

01:13:30.376 --> 01:13:33.547
So for the next 20 minutes we're going to do this.

01:13:35.431 --> 01:13:37.216
Usually it lasts for 40 minutes.

01:13:37.216 --> 01:13:39.847
They don't even notice, they go right.

01:13:39.847 --> 01:13:42.274
You show the partner what to do.

01:13:42.274 --> 01:13:44.007
You don't have to be there.

01:13:44.007 --> 01:13:50.069
Engage the partner, show them what to do and then leave them and then say I'm going to come check on you.

01:13:50.069 --> 01:13:55.006
But here's the thing I know how important it was for you to repeat her motivation.

01:13:55.006 --> 01:13:57.208
She needs to hear it.

01:13:57.208 --> 01:13:59.110
She needs to hear it time and again.

01:13:59.110 --> 01:14:01.693
You know this is a nurse who's a coach.

01:14:01.693 --> 01:14:07.677
If you ask me, that's a nurse who's practicing coaching, right?

01:14:07.677 --> 01:14:12.341
So I'm hoping that all the nurses that are listening to your podcast are writing down.

01:14:12.744 --> 01:14:16.806
Write it down, take notes, listen to it again Build rapport with mirroring.

01:14:16.886 --> 01:14:19.471
You can go to YouTube and see what's.

01:14:19.471 --> 01:14:23.698
And, by the way, Kelly, I have an online program for nurses.

01:14:23.698 --> 01:14:32.034
I know there is an online program that provides them with 11 CEUs because I'm approved by the Board of Regents of Nursing.

01:14:32.034 --> 01:14:43.257
My program Birth Coach Method programs are approved by the Board of Regents of Nursing, so I'm giving CEUs so they can either join doulas, which I think.

01:14:43.257 --> 01:14:49.439
I want to ask you, why didn't you take the online program for nurses?

01:14:50.324 --> 01:14:52.932
Because I wanted to be able to.

01:14:52.932 --> 01:15:05.270
I wanted to be able to be a birth coach, like a prenatal birth coach, because I felt like waiting till they get to me in labor and delivery was not necessarily as helpful.

01:15:05.270 --> 01:15:08.886
I mean it is, I can do something with it, but I'm not with them the whole time.

01:15:08.886 --> 01:15:11.497
I'm also not necessarily with them the whole shift.

01:15:11.497 --> 01:15:13.664
My other patient might deliver.

01:15:13.664 --> 01:15:18.591
So I felt limited in my scope when I'm at the bedside.

01:15:18.591 --> 01:15:29.434
And I wanted to be able to provide prenatal coaching because I've taught prenatal classes and I didn't feel like they were helpful.

01:15:29.434 --> 01:15:31.979
The knowledge isn't helpful.

01:15:35.105 --> 01:15:36.447
There is a saying that I love.

01:15:36.447 --> 01:15:39.631
You know it, but your audience doesn't know it.

01:15:39.631 --> 01:15:47.140
But what I say is childbirth education is good if your client is about to deliver knowledge, yeah.

01:15:47.140 --> 01:15:52.077
To deliver a baby coaching is better, right.

01:15:52.077 --> 01:15:59.171
There is no value, almost there is very little value in learning about, right.

01:15:59.171 --> 01:16:00.993
There is very little value in learning about, right.

01:16:00.993 --> 01:16:10.317
But being coached how to push through and be with the experience of childbirth, that's meaningful, right.

01:16:10.317 --> 01:16:11.377
So that's what I say.

01:16:11.377 --> 01:16:22.162
You know, like the knowledge doesn't really build the capacity to be with the experience, yeah, or to, by the way, make good choices.

01:16:22.162 --> 01:16:34.822
So, for example, assuming and I was everything that I say, by the way, it's really important for me to say that everything that I say come from mistake, that I feel that I've done.

01:16:35.626 --> 01:16:37.854
Oh, I can say the same thing for me.

01:16:38.545 --> 01:17:01.733
I am not judging, not shaming, not blaming anyone who still practiced in a certain way, because I was doing it for so many years before I became a transformational coach and decided to just bring it into birth support and started doing things differently and then wrote the book and blah, blah, blah, blah and all that you know, like I was doing the same thing.

01:17:01.733 --> 01:17:16.496
But assuming that if I'm, as a childbirth educator, going to tell the couples that sits with me about the risks of taking a pedural, then it's really going to help them to avoid a pedural.

01:17:16.496 --> 01:17:20.826
Huge mistake, huge, big, big.

01:17:20.826 --> 01:17:25.096
All of us know we need to exercise daily or exercising.

01:17:25.096 --> 01:17:28.912
All of us know we are not supposed to drink alcohol.

01:17:28.912 --> 01:17:31.545
All of us know we're not supposed to eat sugar.

01:17:31.545 --> 01:17:33.747
We know so many things.

01:17:33.747 --> 01:17:37.970
How are you telling us to conduct ourselves differently in our life?

01:17:38.712 --> 01:17:38.912
No.

01:17:38.931 --> 01:17:40.432
It's not Right.

01:17:40.432 --> 01:17:49.421
So knowledge, you know knowledge doesn't help us make better choices and engage in better actions.

01:17:49.421 --> 01:18:09.698
Coaching does, because it's igniting on motivation, it helps set up priorities, it helps to adopt better perspectives, get rid of mythology, get rid of perspectives that do not serve us, create new habits of thinking, creates new habits of doing.

01:18:09.698 --> 01:18:13.113
It's all about coaching, it's not knowledge right.

01:18:13.625 --> 01:18:17.159
So I even assumed that, oh my God, if I was sitting.

01:18:17.159 --> 01:18:28.097
I was a childbirth education for so many years and I sat down time and again and during the reunion, when I met those couples, so many of them took epidural.

01:18:28.097 --> 01:18:34.837
Because the decision to take epidural is not related at all to what you know about epidural.

01:18:34.837 --> 01:18:36.291
It's the result of fear.

01:18:36.291 --> 01:18:43.382
So if you want to reduce epidural rates, you need to work with the fear right.

01:18:43.382 --> 01:18:54.467
It's not about knowledge and that's a huge, huge shift that only transformational coaching really brings in to birth support.

01:18:55.470 --> 01:18:59.476
I agree and I feel like that's what is missing in medicine.

01:18:59.476 --> 01:19:00.800
It's what's missing in nursing.

01:19:00.800 --> 01:19:05.413
It was what was missing from birth education and doula care.

01:19:05.413 --> 01:19:06.154
We have to.

01:19:06.154 --> 01:19:13.478
It's not even just about customizing it to the client, because that feels like you're telling them what they want to hear.

01:19:13.478 --> 01:19:26.529
They're making the discovery on their own when they're going through transformational birth coaching, they're learning how to trust themselves and go inward and find the right answers for them in their life.

01:19:26.529 --> 01:19:37.212
It's not just birth, it's just it's showing you how to do that in life, and it's so valuable and I want to say it can be challenging for the birth support professional herself.

01:19:37.774 --> 01:19:44.507
I know that there are clients that I'm working with that challenge my belief system.

01:19:44.507 --> 01:19:59.952
So, for example, even right now I was sharing just last live sessions that we have, because we have live sessions every Wednesday and I was actually consulting with my group of students because I'm extremely challenged.

01:19:59.952 --> 01:20:05.300
I have a client that is hospitalized already for 10 days.

01:20:05.300 --> 01:20:15.613
She is scheduled for an induction on July 24th and she doesn't.

01:20:15.613 --> 01:20:17.354
She's she.

01:20:17.354 --> 01:20:27.143
Everything that she says is by the book, but everything that I get on my skin is she is not going to show up for the induction.

01:20:27.143 --> 01:20:32.569
She is in a lot of fear and I can't even coach her through.

01:20:35.552 --> 01:20:57.856
The challenge is that I'm asking myself well, if you feel, if your gut and your skin I'm a very intuitive person Everything tells you that this induction that is going to happen on July 24 is going to be so traumatic for her because she is not, she doesn't have the resources to show up for it.

01:20:57.856 --> 01:21:02.020
Why aren't you just surrendering to a cesarean?

01:21:02.020 --> 01:21:05.670
And do I need to ask her that?

01:21:05.670 --> 01:21:39.657
As a coach, do I need to be the one who opens the door and say, hey, you know, I've been coaching you for so long and I feel that there is a barrier, there is a resistance, and I don't feel that we were really successful to getting you to a place where I know you're going to show up for the experience, and yet the staff is giving you either a cesarean or an induction, and you choose induction and I don't understand why Do I ask her as a coach or not.

01:21:40.849 --> 01:21:41.576
I think you can.

01:21:41.576 --> 01:21:43.787
I think it's just a matter of how you word it.

01:21:44.989 --> 01:21:48.317
It's very challenging because, of course, it's a first birth.

01:21:48.317 --> 01:21:55.439
The last thing that I think is good for her, for anyone Right and this is their end raises.

01:21:55.439 --> 01:21:58.726
So it's a major abdominal surgery.

01:21:58.726 --> 01:22:08.091
And then what about her second birth, if she wants to have another child, you know, and a VBAC, tolac, vbac, whatever comes after that, but then I don't know.

01:22:08.091 --> 01:22:16.920
I also feel that she doesn't have the resources and the capacity to show up for an induction, which is a very long process.

01:22:18.148 --> 01:22:35.886
I mean, what I think I'm hearing you say is that you believe that she'll probably end up in a C-section anyway Probably probably, and so how much more traumatic is that going to be and difficult to heal from, when you've been through the labor process and then end up in a C-section?

01:22:36.306 --> 01:22:53.261
There's also the emotional aspect, that the only reason that she doesn't choose right now to go with a cesarean in my mind, the way that I read her, the way that I work with her, is that she knows from an external motivation that she shouldn't.

01:22:53.261 --> 01:22:54.783
It's the should.

01:22:56.305 --> 01:22:57.108
Shouldn't trust herself.

01:22:59.756 --> 01:23:02.073
Yeah, so coaching is not easy.

01:23:02.886 --> 01:23:03.670
No, it's not.

01:23:03.670 --> 01:23:18.796
I very much identify with working with a patient like that, because I have that a lot in the hospital, because we have these severely high-risk people that come in and they want what they think they should want Exactly.

01:23:18.885 --> 01:23:20.390
They want what they think they should want.

01:23:20.390 --> 01:23:21.966
I loved how you phrased it.

01:23:21.966 --> 01:23:22.847
I love it.

01:23:22.847 --> 01:23:25.835
They want what they think they should want.

01:23:26.617 --> 01:23:29.189
Then later, when they have the experience that they think they should want.

01:23:29.189 --> 01:23:32.377
They didn't like it and that is so sad.

01:23:32.377 --> 01:23:43.608
I want my patients and my clients to be in love with their birth experience because they have made the decisions that aligned with their values.

01:23:44.369 --> 01:23:49.140
Exactly, exactly, the birth story of a woman.

01:23:49.140 --> 01:24:06.381
It goes for generations, yeah, and if she feels bad and feels that things were imposed on her, and if she feels that it was traumatic, it builds also our collective awareness at the end.

01:24:06.381 --> 01:24:30.679
And it is so important that she feels she is not only cared for but also listened to, that people ask her questions and we're really interested in her psyche, asked her questions and were really interested in her psych and how she feels about things and what will make her feel better, and that those people come with zero agenda.

01:24:30.679 --> 01:24:42.039
They can say well, of course, major abdominal surgery is less healthy than an induction that might end in a vaginal birth.

01:24:42.039 --> 01:24:47.356
However, for an induction you will need to show up.

01:24:47.356 --> 01:24:53.451
For a caesarean, you do not need to show up you show up differently, you show up differently.

01:24:53.511 --> 01:24:55.591
Yeah, you need to surrender.

01:24:56.313 --> 01:24:56.514
Yes.

01:24:57.024 --> 01:25:04.154
There's no performance Correct From your end for an induction.

01:25:04.154 --> 01:25:11.560
You need to show up long it's going to be a long time.

01:25:11.560 --> 01:25:17.451
It's going to be uncomfortable, um, you're going to be restricted for many hours.

01:25:18.372 --> 01:25:32.668
You need to show up yeah, yeah, I agree well this has been such a wonderful conversation and I knew it was gonna be a long conversation and I'm so happy about that me too.

01:25:32.748 --> 01:25:44.411
Me too, I want to say you know, the last thing that I want to say is it's a set of strategies, is a set of strategies and coaching exercises.

01:25:44.411 --> 01:25:57.412
That what I was doing is taking coaching exercises from the field and adopting them and designing them to be suitable for our field, and it's not easy.

01:25:57.412 --> 01:26:15.935
You need to, just like any other skill, if you want to build this skill, you need to learn and practice, learn and practice, and that's why we're meeting weekly and that's why you can also subscribe, like you subscribe to continue showing up and continue practicing, because you're really building a new set of skills.

01:26:16.817 --> 01:26:17.405
Yeah, and it's.

01:26:17.405 --> 01:26:20.073
It's a for, at least from the medical perspective.

01:26:20.073 --> 01:26:33.305
It's a change in the way that you think and I had in my heart that change, like I knew I needed to reach out and find those resources because I knew what we were doing wasn't working, and so I just think it's so important.

01:26:33.625 --> 01:26:34.286
Thanks so much.

01:26:34.286 --> 01:26:54.978
Yeah, I appreciate the fact that you saw the program and it was so beneficial for doulas in the program to hear the perspective that you and there was another nurse in the program right and you were both bringing the perspective that comes from the medical system.

01:26:54.978 --> 01:26:56.729
I think it was so delicious.

01:26:57.552 --> 01:26:58.314
Yeah, it was great.

01:26:58.314 --> 01:27:15.016
We had some great conversations and I mean it's it's something that I will be continuing because I want to keep having conversations like that, like I need that reality check I need to check in with, because it's so hard to go to the hospital and have all the things happen that happen and they just, you know, be out there alone.

01:27:16.385 --> 01:27:17.086
You're amazing.

01:27:17.086 --> 01:27:18.527
Thank you, you too.

01:27:18.527 --> 01:27:19.708
You're amazing.

01:27:19.708 --> 01:27:20.288
Thank you, you too.

01:27:20.288 --> 01:27:30.979
Patients are very, very lucky to have invested and so passionate about bringing your highest purpose and your best care.

01:27:30.979 --> 01:27:32.860
It's very inspiring.

01:27:34.345 --> 01:27:35.128
Well, thank you.

01:27:35.128 --> 01:27:36.394
I mean, I'm inspired by you.

01:27:36.394 --> 01:27:38.427
So thank you so much.

01:27:39.485 --> 01:27:40.229
Thank you, Kelly.