EBB 397 – Words of Wisdom about Birth that Can Bring You a Sense of Calm and Peace

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:00:00:

Hey everyone, on today’s podcast, I’m going to share with you some life lessons about birth and some words of comfort and wisdom that hopefully can bring you peace. Welcome to the Evidence Based Birth® Podcast. My name is Rebecca Dekker, and I’m a nurse with my PhD and the founder of Evidence Based Birth®. Join me each week as we work together to get evidence-based information into the hands of families and professionals around the world. As a reminder, this information is not medical advice. See ebbirth.com/disclaimer for more details. Hi everyone, and welcome to today’s episode of the Evidence Based Birth® Podcast. Today’s episode is a special one that I had the idea for a while back and I ran it by our team here at EBB and they said, yes, let’s do it. I know our focus here at Evidence Based Birth® is on the evidence, but today I feel called to share some lessons with you that I’ve learned as a mother, a nurse, and as someone who’s been running Evidence Based Birth® for 14 years now. My hope is that for those of you who are listening today, that some of these words might impart comfort or wisdom and a sense of peace and calm. So if you listened to our episode a month ago about the use of AI in our workplace at EBB, you might’ve learned that our stance at EBB is that we avoid the use of AI as much as possible. So it should go without saying, but I’m going to say anyways, that I wrote this episode for you from my own heart, my own brain, and my own lived experience in my body with no machine involved at all. It’s just me here sharing some lessons I’ve learned with you. So there are five lessons I’ve learned over the past 14 years working at EBB. And I think if you can internalize at least a few of these lessons, it can help further a sense of peace in your body and spirit, especially if you’re pregnant and expecting a baby. But also if you’re listening as a birth worker, I think these lessons might be helpful for how you interact and talk with your clients and also how you take care of yourself. So let’s get started.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:02:05, You Don’t Have to Know Everything About Pregnancy and Birth

The first lesson I wanted to share with you is that you don’t have to know everything about pregnancy and birth. And the main reason for that is because you are not doing this alone. As you’re going through pregnancy or your birth journey, you can build up a loving, supportive, educated team who respects you and cares for you. And your team is there to help you find information when you need it. And yes, you can learn information on a need to know basis. You don’t need to know everything all at once. I agree that sometimes it can be fun to research things before you’re pregnant or while you’re pregnant. And that’s wonderful. And I get emails all the time from listeners who are like, I listened to your podcast for two years before I even tried getting pregnant. And that’s wonderful news to me, but you don’t have to earn an honorary medical or midwifery or nursing degree while you’re pregnant. And I’ve heard many people say that they felt pressure when they were pregnant, that they had to learn it all. They had to learn about everything that could possibly happen to them. So I want to reassure you that you don’t have to learn everything about pregnancy and birth. And even if you need to learn something or you want to learn something, you don’t have to necessarily learn it right now. We all have many stressors of daily life and things can get put on the back burner and that’s okay. For example, maybe you don’t know all the things that go along with being diagnosed with gestational diabetes, like how to check your blood sugar or what kind of food to eat or when to eat. You don’t need to know those things right now. Just wait until if or when you need to know the information and then you can learn about it. One of the beautiful things about the birth world is that we have so many people out there with more wisdom, more experience, and more knowledge than each of us. And we can learn from them.

So maybe you’re learning from a doula who’s helping guide you and your partner and your doula can give you a heads up when there’s a topic coming up that you might want to learn about soon, such as the group B strep test at 35 weeks or the gestational diabetes screening test. Or maybe you’ll take a comprehensive childbirth class and that’s when you’ll be able to talk through each of your worries and anxieties and make a plan for how you’re going to stay comfortable during birth. Or maybe you have a wonderful relationship with your physician or midwife and you can ask questions as needed and learn throughout all of your prenatal visits. And imagine if you’ll be matched during labor with a nurse who can explain anything to you that you need explained in that moment. You can also find the balance of the type of information you need. Right now, maybe listening to empowering birth stories is what you need to hear. Or maybe you want to learn about the research evidence on a few topics that are really important to you. But don’t feel like you have to learn everything about pregnancy and birth. It’s impossible. And I say this even if you are a birth worker. Even if you’ve been attending births for 30 or 40 years, there are still things you will be learning. I have been doing research here at Evidence Based Birth® since 2012. And I’ve been doing research at Evidence Based Birth® full-time for the past 10 years. And I still feel like I have so much left to learn. We never stop learning. So don’t feel like you have to know it all right now. Learn what you enjoy learning about. Make it fun. And learn about things that make you feel confident and empowered. To me personally, life is one long learning opportunity. And we will all keep having opportunities to educate ourselves. We are not born knowing it all. And we don’t get pregnant or expecting a baby knowing it all. There’s plenty of time to learn what you need to.

Take my sister-in-law, Krista, for example. In an episode last year, she learned what to expect in her Cesarean just a few hours before it happened. And everything went smoothly, even though it was an urgent surgery. Even though she only had a couple of hours to truly wrap her mind around what was going to happen. Of course, I know that there are many birth workers, especially doulas out there, who wish that some of their clients would know more about the birth process before they got into the labor and delivery room. But I believe that you’re doing the best you can right now. And just the fact that you’re listening to this podcast episode shows that you’re already educating yourself. And feel free to let others around you be the ones with the knowledge to educate you when you need it. And you can also feel free to let others around you, your support team, be the ones with the knowledge to educate you when needed or research things for you when needed. So I hope this takes some of the pressure off you in the moment. And you can let go of the feeling that you’re not educated enough or that you need to learn more or that you need to earn another certification. You’re already doing a great job. And I’m really proud of you. So that is my first lesson for you all, that you don’t have to know everything about pregnancy and birth.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:07:01, Being the Expert of Your Own Body

My second lesson is that you are the expert on your own body and you are an expert in yourself. And this is my opportunity to gently remind all of us to get back in connection with our bodies. And the reason I want to give that reminder is because I can see all the time all around me that a lot of people are not in touch with their bodies anymore. Have you ever noticed people sitting around completely dissociated and hypnotized by their phones? It used to be years ago, you could stand in line somewhere and connect with the others around you or just be with yourself, be with your own thoughts and in your own body. But now with the onslaught of screens all around us at work, in cars, on the couch, in bed, in the shower, on the fridge, in public, in private, we are not always 100% awake or conscious of what’s happening with ourselves, with our bodies, with our emotions, with our mind, with our spirit. We’re not able to properly regulate our bodies because we’re not in tune with them. And we can experience a lot of symptoms without understanding the root cause. Now, we can’t always understand the root cause of every symptom we’re having. But a lot of us are out of tune with our intuition because we’re not spending time with ourselves and with our community anymore. So with this lesson, I have a little experiment that you can try if you like.

Notice what’s happening with yourself, with your breathing. Where are you feeling tense and holding tension? You could try this even right now. Are you feeling shaky and jittery or calm? What is the energy of the other people in the room? If there are any other people or animals in the room? What is the temperature of the air as it touches your skin? If you’re pregnant, do you feel the presence of your baby with you? Are you noticing any kicks or nudges from inside your belly? How does your pelvis feel? Do your feet feel grounded to the floor? How does your stomach feel? Your heart and your chest. Your throat, does it feel open or closed? How does your head feel right now? Are your hands cold or warm? What are you feeling in this moment? Do you feel calm, anxious, worried, sad, happy, stressed, content? I don’t want you to judge yourself. I just want you to notice what you’re feeling. Now I want you to ask yourself, what do I need in this moment? I need to move or stretch or roll my shoulders or stretch my neck or walk around a little bit? Do I need to open a window or roll my window down and take a breath of fresh air? Do I need to warm up a heating pad or get a cold drink or a hot drink? Do I need to empty my bladder? Do I need to close my eyes for 30 seconds and just focus on breathing? Am I hungry? Do I need to eat something nutritious? Do I need a hug from someone or affection from a pet or a person? So many of us are busy, busy, busy taking care of other people. But I would like us to all pause and ask yourself, what do I need in this moment?

So the reason I chose this as lesson number two, to know that you are the expert in your own body and to get back in connection with yourself is because you can either be your own best friend or your own worst enemy, or sometimes you can be both. So if you take care of yourself and follow your intuition on what your body needs, at the very minimum, you’ll have a better day. And at the most, you might save your own life or that of your baby or someone else. That’s because when you’re in connection with yourself and your own body and what’s going on around you, you build trust with yourself and with your intuition and you know better what your body needs. I remember when I was pregnant with my third child and a family member was working in the NICU at that time and she started to get anxious for me because she was surrounded by preterm babies every day that had been born too early. And she told me she was worried that I was going to have a preterm birth. I knew that I wasn’t because I knew deep down that I would go to term or later. And my intuition and my body told me that. So I told my family member, don’t worry. And I didn’t waste any time or energy worrying about her worry either. I didn’t let her stress about my pregnancy get to me. I put up a boundary or protective shield or bubble. And if you feel calm and good about how you’re doing and how your body is doing, don’t let other people project their anxiety and their stress onto you. This actually happens all of the time in the birth world, when providers and healthcare workers who are traumatized by their previous experiences may project their trauma onto the current patients they are caring for. This doesn’t mean you should ignore their advice. But if everything is safe and healthy for you right now, and you feel good, you feel well and calm, you don’t need to take on their anxiety as their own. Just because somebody throws a ball at you, their ball of stress and anxiety doesn’t mean that you have to catch it.

So that was my experience with being told, you know, I’m worried about you having a preterm birth and I knew I wasn’t. But someone else might have a different experience where they are in touch with their body and maybe they can sense preterm labor starting, or they can sense that something is wrong and they seek help in a timely manner because they are in touch with what’s happening to them. And maybe they will have to speak up and advocate for themselves because the other person is not believing what they’re telling them. I have heard some incredible stories of women who have saved their own lives by doing this. And again, by talking about this issue, it’s not about building fear, but it’s about building trust with yourself. It’s about knowing yourself and knowing what you need in each moment. And I believe in your ability to do that. And I encourage you to believe in yourself this year, that you are the expert in your own body. So that was my second lesson to get in touch with your body and remember that you are the expert on your own body.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:13:39, Childbirth is Worth It

My third lesson is that childbirth is worth it for those of you who choose to give birth. Before I talk a little bit more about this subject, I want to state that I believe in your right to make decisions about whether or not to enter parenthood and how and when you do that. And I also want to acknowledge that many of you may not have been able to have children when you wanted to, or if you wanted to, or that you may have experienced loss. And that can be excruciating. I know that sometimes we hear this message in our society that a woman’s value is judged by whether or not she bears children and childbirth. But we’re also seeing the growing popularity of another message that parenthood isn’t worth it and that you’re unwise if you choose to build a family by having children. And I hear this all the time. I say all of this so that you know, when I talk about this lesson, that childbirth is worth it. You understand that I see and value you regardless of whether you’ve had children or not, whether you’ve wanted to have children or not, or if you’ve experienced loss or birth or infertility or any combination of these. But for those who choose to and are able to give birth, I just wanted to let you know that on the other side of that journey, that it’s worth it. I’ve had five pregnancies, two miscarriages, and three childbirth experiences. And pregnancy and birth were absolutely worth it for me to have my three amazing children. Not only do I get the honor of raising these three little ones to adulthood and eventually staying in loving connection with them as they grow up and leave the nest, but my children have made me a better person. With each child, I’ve gotten to re-experience the world through an infant’s eyes and through a child’s eyes. Every first word, every first milestone ranging from when they experienced the joy of eating solid food for the first time, to taking their first steps, to making their first best friend, to singing their first song, helping me plant seeds in the garden, their first time helping me bake brownies. All of these first re-inspire me to love life and find joy in the little things. And now my oldest child is about to graduate from high school, believe it or not. And all of those adolescent milestones have been incredible to watch as well.

Having my own children has also reminded me of the importance of babies and children in our society. They are so often devalued. So many people in our current society today look down on children. They see them as a nuisance or an irritation or something that gets in the way of achieving our goals or having the life we want to live. But having my own children reminded me of the inherent value and importance of protecting and nurturing children so that they can thrive, not just for my children, but for all of the children in our community, it really makes me think outside myself and think more about the bonds with my community. Having children has also built my resilience. Went from someone who could do whatever I wanted after dinner, and I honestly can’t remember now what I used to do with the hours between 6 and 10 p.m., to someone who had responsibilities for someone other than myself. I had to learn how to juggle life around naptimes and bedtimes and lack of sleep. And this made me both tired, more tired than before sometimes, but also made me stronger and more flexible than I was before and more understanding of other people’s life situations, such as other people who need to balance life around taking care of their elders, for example. Now, this doesn’t mean that it hasn’t been hard to be a parent. The first three years in particular for each child was really hard for me with sleep deprivation. And if you’re like me and you have multiple children under the age of five, it was a lot. But now that I made it through, I’m on the other side of kind of that sleep deprivation. I now get to benefit from decades and decades moving forward where I can be in relationship with my children and watch as they each go on their own journey in life. Giving birth and having children also helped me break down some negative family traumas or generational sticking points. As I watched my children grow up, I have thought more about my own childhood and how I wish some things had been done differently when I was little. And so this has made me think about how I can help my children be more resilient, how I can teach them how to set better boundaries, how they can cope better with hardships and setbacks, how to take care of themselves and their bodies.

And in the process of coaching them through these hardships of their own, these little kids when they have their hardships, it’s helped me coach myself and heal my inner child and take better care of myself. And I want to make it clear that I’m not doing any of these things in a vacuum because we are not meant to do parenthood alone. Having children forced me to learn how to get help. I know everyone has a different level of support in their life. And I acknowledge that how much support you have can shift your perception of how easy and joyful or difficult and painful parenthood can be, especially in the U.S., where the dominant culture has an expectation that it’s simply the nuclear family that has to do all of the child raising on their own without help from your village. And I experienced that for sure. For the first three years of parenthood, Dan and I did not have any grandparents living close by. But by the time our next two children were born, we did have grandparents living in our community and it definitely made a big difference. So if you’re in that same situation where you don’t have grandparents or family nearby, start thinking about how you can build up your village and whether there are any honorary grandparents or honorary aunts and uncles who can help because parenthood and raising children isn’t meant to be done in isolation. And it’s a time when you should be getting help. And honestly, when I say childbirth is worth it, I really do mean it. I went from giving birth to my firstborn to having her leave the nest in a little less than 18 years or what feels like a blink of an eye. And it feels so empowering to know that together we have built this family. Nothing about it was perfect. And there were lots of times that were hard, but it was life. And we’ve had joys. We’ve had sleepless nights. We’ve had sorrows. And we’re experiencing it all. We’re learning to live in the moment. We’re cherishing the past and looking forward to the future. And I’m so excited to watch the next generation grow and blossom, not just of my kids, but of other kids in the community. So that’s my third lesson, that you can affirm to yourself that yes, this is hard. And yes, it’s also worth it. What you’re doing is important.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:20:46, It is Possible to Have an Empowering Childbirth Experience

My fourth lesson for you today is that it is possible to have an empowering childbirth experience. I know a lot of you are listening to EBB because you want to have a better childbirth experience or you want to help your clients have a better childbirth experience. And one way you’re doing that is by educating yourself about evidence-based care and kind of immersing yourself by listening to these podcasts. So if you’re expecting a baby right now, or if you’re planning to get pregnant in the future, please know that you can have an empowering birth, no matter what type of birth it is. I’ve met many, many families who are motivated by a negative experience to seek more supportive evidence-based care the second time around. And I am meeting more and more families who are seeking evidence-based care with their first pregnancy and birth in hopes of avoiding a negative experience. And of course, many of our listeners are birth professionals in the field who that’s their main goal, right? Is they want their clients to feel empowered and have a positive childbirth. So I’m going to give you a crash course in how to have an empowering childbirth experience. And my first tip is to find a compassionate, skilled healthcare provider. My second tip is to hire a doula if possible. My third is to get educated. Although like we talked about before, don’t feel like you have to get a doctorate in birth in order to have a great birth. You can work with your birth partner and your birth team to prep your birth plan or your preferences and any backup plans. And I want you to know that you can do this. You can feel supported and empowered in birth no matter what type of birth it ends up being. If you’re not pregnant yet and you’re planning on getting pregnant in the future, you have plenty of time to research and figure out the best birthplace and the provider that will be the most supportive for you.

And if you’re pregnant now, you still have time to figure out if you have the best team possible and if you need to make any changes to your support team. I have personally known people to switch providers in the last week of pregnancy and even during labor itself. We have a lot of podcast episodes here at EBB about how to figure out if you have a supportive healthcare provider, including birth stories where people kept the same provider they’ve had all along and really liked them, and birth stories where people switched in the first, second, or third trimester because their gut instinct told them that their prior provider was not safe. And I’ll link to some of those episodes about how they switched care providers in the show notes for this episode. These people switched providers to someone who truly supported them because they knew that being able to trust their provider is so important. So when you’re thinking about who your care provider is in this moment, ask yourself, what does my care provider routinely do? In birth. Not will they make an exception for my birth plan.

For example, if you find out that your provider routinely induces all of their patients at 39 weeks, if you find out that they require all of their patients to have vaginal exams plus membrane sweeping starting at 37 weeks, if they start predicting a big baby when you’re only like 26 weeks pregnant, if they roll their eyes when you’re asking them questions, or if they make you feel like you’re inferior or lesser than, those are all big red flags. And it’s important to believe people when they show you who you are in prenatal visits. It’s also important to find out if your provider will give respectful care in the birth room. One way to find out how a care provider behaves in the birth room is to ask doulas in your community their honest opinion about how they’ve seen your provider act during labor and delivery. Many communities around the world have Facebook groups or other social media groups for local birth workers or for people who are advocates and working towards better birth outcomes. So an example post you could make is, I’d like to hear your honest opinion. My OB and midwife practice name is blank. Have you ever seen anyone from their practice coerce someone in their care during pregnancy or labor or in any way disrespect a patient? Chances are someone from your community would be willing to speak up and share if they’ve witnessed positive or negative interactions with your provider. And one of the reasons I suggest asking about the entire practice, not just the individual provider you’ve chosen, is because it’s very common around the world for you not to give birth with the provider you’ve chosen, but with one of their colleagues who is on call the time you give birth. So it can be helpful to ask the screening question about the whole practice.

For example, I have a friend who is local to me who isn’t pregnant now, but is planning on having another child in the future. And even though she’s already given birth in a specific obstetric practice and had a good experience with them, they’ve since added several new practitioners. So she asks me, because she knows I’m her childbirth educator, what do you know about the current providers in this practice? You know, are all of them good? Are there any I should be worried about? And I was able to tell her everything I’ve heard from birth workers on the ground. I told her that she would be in great hands with any of the providers in that practice. And that’s the ideal situation. And that’s what we encourage people here to do at EBB, to seek out that kind of care where everybody in the practice provides supportive, evidence-based, respectful care. But if you have a provider or practice that’s showing some red flags and you can’t switch. Let’s say you’re giving birth in a rural area where there’s only one option, or your insurance limits who you’re able to see, or you don’t have transportation to be able to get to a different part of town. Then focus on building up your education and the education of the rest of your support team. Make sure your birth partner knows your wishes and they know how to advocate for you. Get a skilled doula if possible. And when you go into labor or go to have your baby, request a labor and delivery nurse who enjoys working with patients with your type of birth plan. And just know that even if things don’t go as planned, as long as you are treated with respect, given options, given information, and you feel supported, you can still have an empowering birth experience. Birth doesn’t have to turn out as planned in order to be empowering. So that was my fourth lesson that it is possible to have an empowering birth experience.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:27:11, Controlling What You Can and Letting Go of What You Can’t

That brings me to my fifth and final lesson for you today. And that is to control what you can control in pregnancy and birth and learn how to let go of what you can’t control. One of my hardest earned life lessons is this. It’s a waste of energy to try and control things and people that you can’t control. Yes, I believe you can influence people directly or indirectly. I would agree with that, but it is a waste of time and it’s a waste of your own precious energy to try and control people and get them to do what you want when they don’t want to do it. For example, in the context of pregnancy and birth, you cannot control other people and how they behave in the clinic when you’re seeking care or in the labor and delivery room when you’re giving birth. And it can help to take a step back. Remember that the other people in the room are, they’re a separate person. They’re on their own completely different journey in this world. Your paths may have intersected for the time being, and you will be interacting with them, but you cannot, and you should not attempt to control each other. They should not be trying to control you and you cannot control them. Even if you really want them to agree to something that you want for your birth experience, obviously you have control over your own body. And we’ve already talked about being in touch with your own body. So you have the right to refuse something that they want to do. But likewise, you can’t force someone else to think or behave in a certain way, at least not in a way that will work well if they’re forced or without retaliation. But one of the beautiful things about letting go of trying to control and fix other people’s behavior and poor decisions. Is that once you truly let go and realize that they have agency and control in their own life, is that it tends to naturally magnetize them back towards you. This is something that I truly didn’t understand until I got into the middle phase of my life. And then all of a sudden, I learned this lesson. This happened to me once, and then it happened again, and then it happened again.

And I’ll just give a brief example. I was in a customer service experience, and I was trying to get them to help my child. And they were clearly resistant to helping my child in this situation, but they were the ones with the power to make a change. And after I talked through all of the options and issues with this person, I began to realize, like, they really don’t want to help me, and they probably won’t. And I ask myself, okay, you know, talking to myself in this moment, if nothing changed, we’ll be okay. Like we’ll figure out a way forward. And so I really came to terms towards the close of that 30 minute phone call. It’s okay if they don’t help me, we will be okay no matter what. And then I said that out loud. I basically said, hey, you know, it’s okay. I really respect your position. And I totally understand that this likely won’t work out. And if you’re not able to do this thing, I’ll accept that. And then what do you know? In less than a minute, I think it was literally in the next sentence, they paused and they said, actually, I think I’m going to help you. And I didn’t beg. I didn’t make threats. I was not rude. I was not overly sweet. I thought about it for a while afterwards. And then this happened again in like three or four more customer service situations in the same month. And I decided that I think there are some like spiritual and psychological reasons for this in this situation and in other situations I’ve been in by me backing off, letting go control of the situation. It let the other person on the other side be in the position of being the helper, the healer, the bestower of happiness. And most people in general would prefer to be thought of as generous rather than being backed into a corner and forced to do something. But however it works, this technique has worked surprisingly well for me over the past couple of years. So you might want to try it with a simple customer service situation where you need something and they’re not giving it to you. You can just experiment a little. My lesson though, is you cannot do this with the purpose of manipulating or controlling something that will not work. You truly have to let go of your desire to control the situation. For me, that means, you know, remaining respectful and polite. I’ve stated my need, what we need or what we like. I affirm that the other person has the decision-making power and I know that I’ll be okay with whatever outcome occurs. And I have found that this can really shift the energy in the situation. Not only will I be okay, no matter what happens, because I have truly let go, but often it brings the other person right back to my side and all of a sudden we’re on the same team. So we can apply this principle to birth.

How this lesson can be applied to birth is that when it comes to birth, there are some things you can control and others you cannot control. For example, you can control how you educate yourself, what podcast episodes you listen to. You know, if you take a class together with your partner, you can do your best to control who will be with you during the birth experience. You can control some aspects of your life and how you take care of yourself during pregnancy and birth. You can control if you say yes or no to different interventions that are offered to you. But at the same time, there are countless things you cannot control in pregnancy. You can’t control your age, your family of origin, your past traumas, complications you might be experiencing, where you live at the moment, your past medical history or mental health history. You can’t control exactly which staff will walk into your room at any given moment while you’re in labor or when someone might walk into your room. Can’t control if you go into labor at 3 a.m. Or 3 p.m. You can’t control if you really wanted the labor tub, but it’s not available because somebody’s using that room. There are so many things you can’t control, and it will drive you up the wall if you try to control uncontrollable things. It can put you into a state of hypervigilance and overarching stress. So I’d like you to imagine what if you tried a little experiment and tried letting go mentally of a few of these things that you’re worrying about and trying to control but you can’t control. For example, let’s say you’re planning an unmedicated labor, and you’re worried about which nurse will be assigned to you in labor and whether or not that nurse will be a good fit for you because you’re having an unmedicated labor, and maybe this hospital mostly does labors with epidurals. So here’s one thing you could try. You could control what you can control, let go of the rest. How you might do that is by letting your partner and or your doula know, hey, when we get to the hospital, please ask for a nurse who enjoys unmedicated birth. That’s all you can do, right? Because who knows which nurses are on duty that day or night or which one has an opening to take you on as a patient. We can’t know that and we can’t control that. So make your initial plan and then let go of the rest.

Another thing you can do when you let go of control is to visualize everything going well. You could try visualizing that when you get to the hospital and the nurse gets into the room and they introduce themselves, then they’re caring and they express compassion and they start being helpful right away. And then you find out you have all these things in common with your nurse. Wouldn’t that be amazing if it all goes well just like that and that the right nurse finds you at the right time, you can visualize that and hold on to that. And then if for some reason it doesn’t go well or it doesn’t go like you visualized, that’s okay. You let go again because another thing you can control is your advocacy. So your partner or your doula can work with you to advocate for you if the nurse happens to be the wrong fit. Knowing that you have advocacy in your back pocket, your body can release a little bit more and labor can go a little bit more smoothly. So every time you relinquish trying to control the situation, you recognize that you’ve done your best, you’ve done your preparation, and now you’re going to let go and plan for the best, knowing that there’s always a backup plan and people supporting you who can advocate for you. Every time you do this, it adds up. Your nervous system can regulate and feel a little bit more safe. And the more safe and more protected you feel, the more empowered and positive of a birth experience you will have. Now, this may all sound really hard for some of you, because if you’re used to trying to control as many aspects of your life as possible, which is very common, it can be difficult to let go control of these uncontrollable things. So you might want to take some tiny baby steps first, practice letting go control of little things that are uncontrollable before you get to the big ones and just work on it bit by bit. Parenthood in general and taking care of a baby is a lifelong lesson in controlling what you can control and letting go of what you cannot. So starting practicing this during pregnancy can be really helpful before baby is born. So these have been five lessons from my lived experience as a mother, a nurse, and the founder of Evidence Based Birth®. You don’t have to know everything. You are the expert in your own body. For those of you who choose to give birth, birth is worth it. You can have an empowering birth experience. And control what you can control and let go of what you can’t. So I hope you found at least one of these lessons that I’ve shared comforting. It might bring you some peace or calm or maybe inspire you to try something new. And I know that pregnancy and birth can be a stressful time of life for many.

Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:36:56, Final Thoughts and Words of Comfort

And that brings me to my final bonus lesson and some words of comfort for you. If you’re pregnant right now or if you’re going to be pregnant soon, try to enjoy the experience. No matter what challenges you’re facing, you’re never going to be pregnant with this baby again. So try to make the most of this experience for what it is. This is an incredibly special time in your life. And speaking from someone whose baby is about to graduate high school and leave home, it goes by super fast, even though it feels like it’s taking forever. So I’d like to encourage you to live in the present moment, find those special moments of joy that you can appreciate, and happy Mother’s Day to all of you who celebrate, including those of you who have given birth, those of you who are raising children, those of you who have experienced loss or hope to have a child someday, those of you who have not been able to have a child, and those of you who care for children in our communities. I appreciate you and I send my love and best wishes to you. Thanks for listening and I’ll see you again next week. Bye. This podcast episode was brought to you by the Evidence Based Birth® Childbirth Class. This is Rebecca speaking. When I walked into the hospital to have my first baby, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Since then, I’ve met countless parents who felt that they too were unprepared for the birth process in navigating the healthcare system. The next time I had a baby, I learned that in order to have the most empowering birth possible, I needed to learn the evidence on childbirth practices. We are now offering the Evidence Based Birth® Childbirth Class totally online. In your class, you will work with an instructor who will skillfully mentor you and your partner in Evidence Based Care, comfort measures, and advocacy. So that you can both embrace your birth and parenting experiences with courage and confidence. Get empowered with an interactive online childbirth class you and your partner will love. Visit evidencebasedbirth.com/childbirthclass to find your class now.