Access + Privilege

Olive was born at home. I have been hesitant to share much of my birth story because it is so incredibly steeped in privilege. Lots of people talk about home birth as if it is somehow a heroic act, or superior to other ways of birthing. I just feel like it was an incredible privilege.

I got to make my own choices about how I wanted my care to look, what interventions I would embrace or reject, who I wanted to touch me and when. I got to prepare and recover exactly the way I wanted to - in my own home, with my own food, in my own clothes, my own bed with my daughter and husband beside me. I had access to all the herbs and supplements and nourishing broths and infusions. And did I mention, my care came with built-in postpartum visits? In my own home!!

But what's upsetting about all this is that it's not the norm. What's upsetting is that there are lots of people, most people, who don't get to have this experience. What's upsetting is that in order to have an experience like this I had to have the money to buy it AND the prior knowledge and education to seek it out. I'm not saying that everybody should have a home birth or make the choices I made, but I do think that everybody should have the option. I do think that every single birthing person should be fully informed and given tools for understanding and then allowed to choose exactly how they want to birth. I do think, at a bare minimum, that every single birthing person should be treated by their care providers with the same respect and trust and dignity that I was. 

Way over on the end of the spectrum anyone who lacks the education to know better (or the money to hire a doula) is being sold a bunch of useless, unnecessary interventions that do more harm than good (while making things simpler and more efficient for their care providers). Anyone who doesn't fit into the narrow standards of "optimal" weight and health is being forced to birth with little or no autonomy according to the strictest guidelines "for their own safety" (in order to limit the liability of their care providers). And the maternal mortality rate for black women is still 4 TIMES as high as it is for their white counterparts, with most of those deaths occuring in the postpartum period (due to the overtly racist treatment they receive from their care providers). 

All of this is unacceptable. How we birth = how we live. How we recover from birth affects us for the rest of our lives. And yet, how many of us can actually afford a postpartum doula? How many of us can afford bodywork to help us heal? How many of us can even afford nourishing food?

Getting to birth the way that I did set me up for an optimal postpartum period. It allowed me to step across the threshold feeling empowered and supported. Things have not gone exactly as I'd imagined or hoped but I'm still ok, because I came into it from such a nourished place.

I talk a lot about postpartum awareness and how important it is to be honest about the real difficulties of this period, but we also need the solutions to those difficulties to be affordable and accessible to every. single. birthing. person. We need to establish a standard of care that doesn't leave the most vulnerable of us behind. We need to make collective postpartum healing plans that center those who have the least privilege and the least access.

A nourished postpartum isn't truly nourishing if it isn't for all of us.

(This post was inspired by the Nourished Postpartum Challenge, which was created and organized by my mentors at Birdsong Brooklyn. Go to birdsongbrooklyn.com to learn more about them and their advocacy work in the postpartum space.)

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