When most doulas get hired for attending a birth, our thoughts are on the birth of a beautiful baby. We don’t anticipate anything other than that. But too often that’s not the case. Some doulas are hired specifically because they have grief and loss training. Other doulas stumble into the role. Still others become doulas because of the loss they’ve personally suffered. But at the end of the day, a birth is a birth. It doesn’t matter if you’re 5 weeks or 42 weeks or anywhere in between. You had a baby growing in your body and soon you won’t. The process of that change in your body means you’re giving birth. That means you deserve support.
Giving birth to a baby when you’re barely pregnant is a process of change. It’s a long process as your body responds to birth hormones the same way you would if you were many months pregnant. Hip squeezes, massages, the cuddles that bring the oxytocin boosts, your birth affirmations and positive statements from your spouse, doula and birth team, and laughter, yes, laughter, all help the birthing process. You deserve support no matter how far along you are, if you desire it.
The reason for this heavy topic? The month of October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month (#PAIL). This is also the time I suffered the loss of my first baby, Joseph Andrew III, or Joey. It’s also about the same time we discovered we were having a baby that would then not make it to our first post-holidays prenatal appointment. This baby we intuitively felt was a girl, and we were toying with the name Astor, because a stor mo chroi means “treasure of my heart” in Gaelic. It was the phrase my husband had used to say to me for the first time that he loved me (without me knowing what he was saying). These losses are of the many reasons that have driven me to the work of grief and bereavement support. This work would go on to move me to bolster the training I’ve had as a doula and then in bereavement doula training.
The losses of Joey and Astor and the ones that were too soon to name or know changed me as a person and as a mother. They molded my feelings toward pregnancy, toward parenting and toward how birth looks. You are still a parent, still someone who carried a baby in your body, and still deserve support through the process of birthing your baby and afterward.
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