Even Fires Burnout: Here’s why pursing your passion still requires breaks...

September 14, 2018

5min read

One year into birth, and so many amazing things have happened. I’ve met some really dope people, and learned a lot. As a doula It’s been very rewarding to successfully assist families with resources, advocacy, labor, emotional support, and breastfeeding. Finding a way to make space in my life for births/clients. Wellll that’s another story. It’s been quite an adjustment. When I started taking on clients, I would naively cancel or overlook any social activites that were too close to my client’s estimated due dates(EDD). Doulas are on-call two weeks before your EDD, and two weeks after. Because babies come when they want. The anxiety that comes with being on-call used to be terrifying. Hearing text messages dings that were not really there. Smh. Or “hearing” your phone ring, and thinking it was showtime. I was helping all these people but forgetting to refill my cup. Thus the fire and passion I started with was dwindling, and forcing me to rethink my career path.

I was forgetting about myself.

After my training was complete, I was excited that I finally got to do a job that I had waited five years to do. I focused on getting to a numerical birth goal, and taking all the trainings I could, to sharpen my craft. I was running in a race, to only realize I was the only competitor.

God has a funny way of forcing your ass to take breaks. For me some of the more obvious signs, were irritability, lacklusterness, all which attribute to autopilot. A major physical sign was being super exhausted and feeling like I wanted to pass out. My partner saying “you need a break, can you have a day off when you’re actually off?”

2018: The prequel to Learning how to be comfortable without doing anything:

This year I’m at 15 births, and I’ve decided to take my own advice. Which is the same I give to my expecting clients: you have no control over when the baby comes, live your life, have sex, and it’ll happen. I unpaused my life and started being social again.

Currently, The only thing that can be spontaneous in a Doulas life is a birth, everything else must be planned.

This work isn’t easy. I love supporting folks that look like me, and getting monthly updates with the cutest baby pics. In the midst of witnessing the strength of a laboring wombman, I needed to remember my strength, my why:

Why did I choose to support pregnant people?

Why did God show me all these signs before I finally took my Doula training?

Why did I decide to become a birth worker?

Writing down your why’s is great, because when when you start to lose the will to go on, reading your why’s can give you a much needed boost.

You can go and do some shit that makes you happy. Yes I’m a birth worker, but, that’s not my only social role; I’m a friend, girlfriend, daughter, sister, aunty, and “recovering” professional shopper.

Sometimes you have to say fuck the why’s and remember The Who’s. With the most important one being:

Who are you outside of your work?

Quite frankly, the work will continue, with or without you.

Yes, there will always be disgusting stories of birth trauma, but there will always be beautiful ones to Balance shit out. Yes, there will be disrespect in birthing environments, or family members/ friends of the birthing person who don’t fully understand nor support your role. The aforementioned has nothing to do with how you view yourself in this work. Now, I’ve learned to not feel guilty about what I do, or say no to, because I don’t want to be a martyr. I don’t want this work to leave a bitter taste in my mouth. Everything I say yes to comes which much thought, about how much energy it will take from me, and ripple effects of it’s future workload.

When folks ask me how it feels to be a doula? I want to be able to tell them the beautiful things, because that’s who I was before. There are pros and cons in everything, I was naive to think that the love of the work would be the only fuel I needed.

Dealing with daily stressors, such as micro aggressions I refuse to be broken by systemic & institutional racism. Saying it and doing it is two different things. Doulas need to recharge too. Hell humans need to recharge too! When you have to read about health disparities and deal with micro aggressions on a daily basis. You must recharge.

Smithsonian African American Museum September 2018

Are there epidurals for Doulas? Who Doulas the Doula??

May 29, 2017

I decided to write this post, as a form of exfoliation in midst of my gratitude. My first experience as a birth Doula left me feeling very heavy, and for a nanosecond, reassessing my career choice. Don’t get me wrong I was very thankful that I was able to assist Dawn* but I couldn’t shake the mental exhaustion, I had felt from all the passive aggressiveness & negative energy propelled at me in the delivery room. I felt like I was being punished for being a Doula. Why? For assisting women and helping improve their birth outcomes. After everything was over, I thought to myself will all births be this taxing? I’m writing this to look back and see my growth, and hopefully change at least one medical professionals perspective on the role of a Doula. So here goes nothing…

“I felt like I was being punished for being a Doula. Why? For assisting women and helping improve their birth outcomes.”

On Friday May 19th, my client called me a quarter to 7pm, and informed me that her mucous plug came out. She told me she was going to get into the shower, and that she would return my call. Side note: I was so proud of her for remaining calm. One point to Gryffindor! Hours passed before I heard anything. Around 11pm a family member reached out, and told me that the mom was requesting my presence. During those four hours of radio silence, and failed attempts to reach out, my mind was all over the place. I tried to think positively but it was hard to not feel defeated. I know I’m not the one laboring, and that it’s supposed to be all about the mom, But I have feelings too! When you build a bond it’s hard not to have any emotions, especially when your M.I.A. for the golden hour you both have been preparing for. As I began to get ready I had the knots in my stomach, but nonetheless I was excited. I had already packed my Doula bag, so I just changed my clothes, and went on my way. During the Uber ride there, I tried to ease my tension by letting the wind hit my face, and took deep breaths. I went to grab my water bottle from my bag, and realized I forgot it rushing out of the house. It was a short ride to the hospital, so I decided to get water at a vending machine there.

At 11:40pm I arrived, and was dumbfounded when the elevator I used during the day wasn’t responding to my calls. I learned right then and there, that It’s a different world in the hospital at the night. Different elevator access, different security protocols, a different vibe period! Having to reassess everything, added to my anxiety but I walked swiftly into the maze of confusion, and managed to get my water, and make it upstairs. I didn’t let the changes throw me off balance and deter me from the goal. Ten minutes later, I walked into the room and began helping Dawn cope with breathing techniques.

“When you build a bond, it’s hard not to have any emotions, especially when your M.I.A. for the golden hour you both have been preparing for.”

Helping my client labor ended up being the easiest part of my job that night. What was extremely overwhelming was the emotional baggage from the hospital staff. My peers had warned about this hospital, I was told that they weren’t the friendliest. So I had an idea, of what I was getting myself into, but to what extent I had no clue. Dawn’s plan was to have a natural birth, and she did just that. Besides being hooked up to a couple of machines, everything went well.

Those of us in the reproductive health world, learn that every birth is different, but outcomes strongly depend on the behavior of the staff. That night I learned, I must develop my own techniques for addressing unethical bullshit & egos.

There’s a thin line between advocacy and wanting to curse someone out. I held my tongue for fear of retaliation on the mom. They were so rude, and in the worst passive aggressive way! After a few minutes in the room I decided to break the ice by engaging the night nurse in light conversation.

Me: reads name tag “How are you tonight Grinchy* ?” a minute went by before she responded. Grinchy Jones* scolded me and said, my error was that I used her first name and mistakenly assumed we were friends, “ You don’t know me like that to call me by my first name, my name is Ms. Jones.” *Gasp* My response was “oh. kay” During labor the Midwife and the nurse seemed to be in a continuous power struggle. I thought our collective goal was the well being of the mom, and not who decides who gets to move, while extracting medicine into a syringe?

“Grinchy Jones* scolded me and said, my error was that I used her first name and mistakenly assumed we were friends,”

Grinchy is definitely in need of a quality control workshop. We all have issues sis, but leave that shit at home. Easier said than done, but suck it up. Unacceptable. There was one nice doctor; while I translated, he helped coach the mom through labor by reinforcing breathing techniques. It was a pleasure working with him. I didn’t feel like my role was less important, because it was obvious we had the same interest at hand. Bravo to him.

“If i was given knowledge of my experience beforehand, and asked if i would help Dawn all over again, I would.”

After the baby was born, and mom got skin to skin, Grinchy, the night nurse overheard the mom, asking me to assist her in breastfeeding, to which her unsolicited response was “yeah, aren’t you the Doula? Help her breastfeed,” I thought to myself why didn’t she call out today lord? Why? Despite that breastfeeding was a success. When it was time to move mom into recovery, she was instructed to change beds. While doing so, she began to moan out in pain, you know because she just pushed a tiny human out of her vagina. A different nurse comments:

“ I don’t know why you people do this?”

Me a little experienced, and annoyed now “ do what?”

“Why you make these women think they can give birth naturally. Look at her *pointing to mom* she’s suffering”

me: mentally... In the name of the father…. Sun…. “ Guess what?!

Her: “what?”

“ She’s had this idea way before she met me, I just helped her achieve that goal. Besides she did it, and she will be fine”

Why did I have to explain that to her? Justifying that the mom had a choice. It’s one thing to have an opinion about birth, but the problem arises when you put your two cents in, to shame a patient. That is never the job of the provider, to shame, especially in a moment of need.

“ I reaffirmed that it was OK to be tired, and that she had just accomplished something major. Childbirth.”

During our first postpartum visit, She thanked me when I came to visit her next day, and said “I heard you asking for skin-to-skin, and asking (for the right time) to take pictures. Thank you.” That is priceless. The most memorable thing was the joy the mom felt seeing her baby boy for the first time. During the two hours before mom was moved into recovery, felt like the twilight hours, it was magical but eerie. Something I can’t quite explain. The mom was left alone in the delivery room w/o any checkups from the nurse, ( Grinchy did mention she had a lot of paperwork to do, before she moved the mom). I WAS there for her, she told me numerous times it was OK to leave but it wouldn’t have felt right. I stayed and gave her water from the bottle I purchased earlier in the evening, and feed her crackers. I reaffirmed that it was OK to be tired, and that she had just accomplished something major. Childbirth. Those twilight hours helped reaffirmed to me why Doulas are important.

*changed names for privacy

Death by suicide, the night a stranger told me he wanted to die.

April 21, 2017

Tonight (4/18/17), as I was walking home and seconds away from turning the corner onto my block, I saw a young man on the phone; he looked like he had gotten the most devastating news. As he threw himself on the gate I could tell he was hurting from the news, he began folding into himself with tears streamed down his face. I knew I had to say something; I couldn’t just walk away in that all to familiar New Yorker “Let me mind my business” attitude.

His body language screamed defeat. I approached him and asked if he was ok? As he slid down the gate saying, “No! I’m not ok”, I humbled myself and joined him on the sidewalk. I spent the next hour talking to him. He told ME, a complete STRANGER his deepest secrets of trauma and abuse & that he contemplated suicide. I spoke to K* and reassured him that he was brought into this world for a reason. No way did you beat all those sperm cells in that race for you to not think you’re special. The more I spoke to this young man; I realized how smart and gifted he was.

I was blown away as he told me he tried to get help at a mental facility and he felt they didn’t helped him, and released him. I told him that the medical system is fucked up and that, there’s always other places he could get help. I tried to make him see his worth. We talked about numerology, the impact the media has, art, culture shock of moving to a new country, family, the taboo of black people seeking mental health, and most importantly self-love and making time for you and the things you love. I invited him to wait for me in my lobby, as I ran upstairs to use the bathroom. I KNOW I KNOW? You’re probably asking “How could she invite a complete stranger into her building?” At that point I could feel the positive energy and decided to go with my instincts. Before I returned downstairs, I could tell he had been self-medicating so I returned with water, napkins and a banana. I could’ve judged him and looked down on him, But how would that be beneficial to him. If you’re going to make the decision to listen to someone you must be willing to put your feelings to the side, and swallow a piece of humble pie. I was supposed to get home earlier than I did tonight, but a classmate and I got on the wrong train. I was kind of baffled by the train situation. I couldn't comprehend how out of all the times I've taken said train; we would choose this night to go in the wrong direction. Now I see that everything happens, as it should, and that the universe and God are truly amazing. Unfortunately, I had to use the bathroom again, and by the time I returned he was gone. I'm sad because I didn't get to offer him resources, or exchange numbers. I sincerely hope that I made a lasting impression on him, and that he never doubts his self worth again.

I was hesitant in writing this post because I didn’t want to feel like I was exploiting him, but I felt compelled to as a since of release for myself, and encouragement for others. Maybe the next time you see someone in distress, step outside of your comfort zone and ask him or her if they're OK. You never know what impact you'll have on them. Sometimes people just want someone to listen to them. If they don’t let you in, simply say you’re not alone, and keep it moving. No harm no foul.

I’ve recently been introduced to different skill sets to being a counselor, a role we often take on by circumstances, and when dealing with the avoidable Intersectionalities. If you learned anything from my encounter please remember that sympathy and empathy are two different things. I'm forever grateful that I had the trauma, and mental health training because I wouldn't have known how to react, and may have just walked on by. Another important acronym that I learned is A.L.G.E.E.*

A- Assess for risk of suicide or harm

L- Listen nonjudgementally

G- Give reassurance & information

E-Encourage appropriate professional help

E- Encourage self-help & other support strategies