My little boys are quiet and sleeping in our bed, and I’m in the living room reading the subtitles of a French film about midwives. It’s the most beautifully shot film about birth I’ve ever seen. It glances across bodies and lingers on faces, of the midwives and the parents. And they are all beautiful in their unified attention, all immersed in the birth at hand, like it’s a kind of suspension, hovering inches above the ground. A birth space is not quite earthly, though it is human. It is filled with what one might call “rare air.” In so many birth stories (and I’m sure I’ve listened to hundreds at this point), I hear people describe birth as the closest to death they’ve ever felt, with the most alive they’ve ever felt right on the opposite side of that feeling. It certainly felt that way to me, both times I crossed birth’s threshold. Passing through a gate of holy terror, we tremble in the face of what it really means to be alive, and to welcome new life. This film captured that liminality in a way I hadn’t quite seen before.
Still, the film exhausted me. I felt relieved at the end of it, ready to collapse into bed beside my children’s warm bodies. We all sleep together in the only bedroom with a/c right now, one big family bed, Ben’s crib side-carred at one side to make more space for our preschooler to fit — and it’s the happiest sleep of my life. Just past the rare air of the birth space is real life, and the film captured that part of things perfectly. The plight of the midwives feeling understaffed and underpaid, the struggle and danger of juggling too many patients at once, the interpersonal intricacies and zig-zagging efforts. I don’t know enough about the French health care system to know if this was an accurate or dramatized depiction of French public hospitals, but it did leave me feeling heavy in my chest about what it means to birth “in the system” — so to speak. These imperfect systems we have built to care for each other, the things they do well and the ways they fail us all. But there is no perfect birth, just like there is no perfect life, and this film held that nuance really wonderfully. As I move through doula training, preparing to attend births in the hospital in real life (I have some coming up!) — I want to keep my mind wide open. What is here for us, between the rare air and real life. Where does birth land in us, and what does it depend upon?
As I move through training, I feel myself flooded with information and ideas. I already know a lot, but the annals of birth are infinite, there is always more to know. I have been immersing myself in birth in this season of doula training. Almost all of the time I’m not spending time with my kids, I am either moving through coursework, reading books, or listening to podcasts about birth. In many ways it feels incredible to have the mental space to be doing this, after having so much mental space taken up by having babies for so many years. My ability to do this training at all marks a real shift in my life and my mental state. I can see how my capacity has expanded, and I am really proud of myself. But the thing is, I want to be a really good doula. And not just eventually, I want to start that way. I know it’s unrealistic, I know there is so much I can only learn through raw experience — but a really good doula is what even my early clients deserve. Hence, the immersion.
In the imagined rare air of the birth space I remember everything and act perfectly in the strange floating liminality of birth. On just the other side of the door, in real life, I’m a hapless human who does not know everything or have perfect instincts, who makes terrible mistakes, or who just isn’t perfect. Real birth is something in between. It transcends real life but includes it. It’s a dividing day, but it’s still just a day. We still are ourselves when we are giving birth, lifting up out of birth’s altered state sometimes, saying things we usually say, remembering strange details. My own births passed this way, a mixed bag of good and bad, memorable and forgotten, smart and dumb, strong and scared, transcending and crashing back down to earth. There is no perfect birth! And there is no perfect care provider! There is no doula who knows everything! I tell myself all of this as I keep consuming a deluge of information, carrying stacks of books home from the library in the same arms that reached out to hold my own babies at the moment of their births.
Here’s what I think — I’m probably consuming too much information, but also it’s ok. There is no wrong thing. And of course, these are familiar pattens. I did the exact same thing when I was pregnant, reading some of these same books, listening to some of these same podcasts, willing them to prepare me for something I knew I would never actually be fully prepared for until I found myself inside of it. So this is recognizable. It’s how I cope with uncertainty. But my intensive reading wasn’t useless then, and it isn’t useless now. I feel some of it burrowing deep and some of it rolling off my back, and that’s just as it should be I think. The best things being offered to me are the processes and ideas offered by the organization I am training through, things aimed at resilience and resourcefulness that pertain just as much to normal life as they do to birth and birth workers. That perspective helps bring me back to solid ground when I feel like I’m adrift in an ocean of information. Right, this is about people and their real lives. It’s not about birth as some nebulous spiritual concept or the latest evidence-based standard of care, it’s about the day people’s kids are born, and how it feels to get them here. I send poems in emails to my clients, hoping to offer something truly helpful — picturing a morsel of bread or a delicious bite of something nourishing. Can I bless the birth space with my attention alone? Before what I know or what I have amassed within myself, can I come as I am and offer just what I have? Would that be enough?
I know why I am voracious for information. The first, harmless, reason — I am endlessly fascinated by birth. The second, deeper, reason — I am afraid. In the first episode of Britta Bushnell’s new podcast (which I extremely recommend, she is one of my favorite thinkers about birth), she quoted Clarissa Pinkola Estés who said, “Fear is hungry for information.” This struck me so deeply that I wrote it on a post it and stuck it on the wall of my studio. Below it, I posted a question I am sitting with through all of this newness.
Information is neutral (and often needed! and helpful!), and gathering it does not always indicate fear, but this quote rings true for me in this moment. I do feel afraid. Birth is a big and heavy world to step into, and I want to do it justice. But I think the fear is something I just need to sit with. I can’t “information” it away. Preparing to do birth work is like preparing to give birth. You do all you can do, all that is in you and makes sense, to prepare — then at certain point, you just have to surrender. And that’s where I am slowly moving toward, through all my piles of books and gentle coursework and deep study. Yes, of course I want to know as much as I can know. But what’s already in me? What do I really need to know?
It’s funny, I have experienced motherhood as an immersion too, but an opposite one. Instead of being immersed in information, in motherhood I have been immersed in pure experience — oceans of experience. Drowning in it sometimes, giving birth for one (raw experience!), and then those newborn daynightdaynights. So much of it has felt so far out of the realm of information that I don’t know how to even talk about it, though I try and try. I was underwater for about four straight years. Only recently, I’ve felt myself surface and shift into a new version of myself who isn’t only immersed in the internal dramas of taking care of my kids. Moving from immersion to integration is challenging though. In some ways, it is simpler to be “all in.” Who am I now, in this multiplicity? How much to give, how much to keep close? I feel worried about how my work as a doula will affect my family — attending births, being on call, giving some of my energy to other people instead of them. I want to believe there is enough of me to go around. The other question I wrote on a green post it note and stuck on my studio wall, a true question of my heart in this season — HOW AM I EXPANSIVE? How much can I take in and hold? And, just as important, who is holding me?
Oh, always more questions than answers. I’m really excited for all of this doula preparation to shift from information to experience. That part is coming, and soon. It’s all flowing, and that’s the most encouraging part. So, already, this work is offering me that expansiveness I hope for. It has me meeting new people, trying new things, holding new ideas, opening my ears and heart. It has me looking at my own family and my own experiences of birth with new lenses of love and happiness. It is shifting my paradigm. It is helping me see everyone around me a little differently. And all of that is so good, and all I could hope for. I wish for more. Bigger, wider, deeper, stretching and growing and seeing how much I can hold — for this season at least. How am I expansive? Let’s see!
I’ll end with a quote I just read while scrolling Substack notes, shared by my friend
.
Intimacy in learning means developing an ongoing relationship to that discipline, allowing it to morph and change, which requires humility. Mastery is a myth. THIS is what I hope to move toward as I step into birth work. When I can lift myself up out of the fear I feel, this is what the stack of books is about, and what it was about in the past, when I was reading voraciously about birth and matrescence before I ever knew I would become a birth worker. This is what it has always been about — this ongoing relationship, this “fascination with and protection of a subject’s inherent value.” It has always been about intimacy. The certainty will never come because it does not exist — intimacy is where I come from and where I am going. It is why I am doing this work at all. Because growing and birthing my babies and learning how to care for them dismantled my life and offered it back to me, new. Because I experienced an unsteady transformation that I will never forget. Because I know what it feels like to feel alone in the birth space, and I know what it feels like to feel accompanied. Because becoming a parent is a holy process that is not simple. Because birth is SO FREAKING COOL! Because birth requires so much of us, and we expand to give it! Because, because because! Immersion that is intimate, immersion that is earnest. That is where I am. Developing a tenderness toward birth and all it demands of us and offers back.
Watching part of the film I mentioned at the beginning of the essay with me, my husband got a little squeamish. He looked at me, and asked “do you really want to go through this again and again with people?” It didn’t feel belittling, it felt like a searching question from someone who loves me. My answer was a confident yes. “We do this for each other.” I said. A moment lifting my head up out of the sea of information into cool fresh air, utter clarity. “We help each other have babies. It’s just something we do.”
Are you a birth worker? Wanna chat? I’ve really been enjoying meeting other people and hearing about their experiences. Send a note, would love to hear your perspective!
Quick plug for a novel I really enjoyed — The Girls Who Grew Big by Leila Mottley (who works as a doula when she isn’t writing novels). This book was unlike anything I’ve ever read before. It’s not a perfect novel, but as someone immersed in birth it was revelatory. I loved it.
My website for my doula practice is up and running! You can check it out here. It’s not COMPLETELY fleshed out, there are a few broken links, etc., but it’s most the way there. I’m really excited to publish some new birth and postpartum centric zines, that’s a huge thing I am working toward, so keep an eye out for that! Deciding how I wanted the website to look and what language I wanted to use to describe the services I will offer was such an incredible process of preparation. I put a lot of thought into it, and I am really proud of what I am building. It feels right. You can check it out below!
Just for fun, I also made some playlists for clients that you are welcome to enjoy too! They’re still a work in progress. Really, everything is.
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Read my books, Broken Waters, There is a Future, and How To Sew Clothes.
Check out my zines, all written and published during my first year postpartum with my second baby.
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underwater,
Amy
Hi Amy. Great newsletter ❤️ I got certified as a doula back in 2021. Unfortunately I came to understand that it didn’t fit with also being a stay at home mom, since finding on-call childcare was not do-able for me. So now I just do it for friends or family who ask, like an occasional thing. My last birth was in May and it astonished me how every birth I’ve attended is so different and beautiful. It’s truly so amazing to stand witness to the beginning of life, and to even be a helpful presence in the midst of it.
Your question of expansion caught my attention. My experience of motherly expansion through not only my body but my emotional and spiritual landscape took me by total surprise. Life continues to expand somehow… what a mystery! Love that Julie Bogart’s quote spoke to you!