Birth Words: Language For a Better Birth

In this week's episode, therapist Sarah Adelmann of Resilient Birth shares guidelines about how to mindfully choose our words as part of giving trauma-informed care to survivors of trauma and abuse.

Learn more about Resilient Birth at https://www.resilientbirth.com/

TRANSCRIPT:

Sara P.:

Sarah is an advocate, counselor and educator whose focus is on supporting those with grief and trauma. She specializes in working with survivors of sexual and intimate partner violence in the perinatal period. Sarah has an MA in counseling psychology from Boston College, and a certification in traumatic stress studies from the Justice Resource Institute. She co-founded Resilient Birth, which provides strength-based and trauma-informed care and education for birthing people and providers. Sarah, welcome.

Sarah A:

Thank you so much for having me, Sara.

Sara P.:

I'm looking forward to chatting with you. And so will you just start by introducing yourself to our listeners? What is your background with birth work and how did you get involved?

Sarah A.:

My experience postpartum, actually, is what led me into birth work. And I was an educator and a mental health counselor, but was completely caught off guard by the postpartum period with my first child. There's no support, no check-ins. And I was basically on my own trying to figure things out. And trying to figure out how to take care of a newborn after having a C-section. And I was so sure that as a mental health counselor, I would be able to see the signs, or if I was struggling, advocate for myself, as I did tell my clients to do, but that is not how my experience went at all.

And looking back, I realized I was suffering from postpartum anxiety. But I didn't realize how debilitating that was. Until this distinct moment that stands out to me, where this like shift happened, which then sent me on this trajectory of birth work. I was lying in bed and, you know, another sleepless night of a newborn, which I know many birthing people and parents have experienced, and I just wanted to sleep. And I thought at this point that I actually might die if I didn't get sleep. And then the very next thought that was in my head was like, but if you were dead, you'd be sleeping. So. And that's when I had a pausing moment. And I realized that what I was experiencing wasn't normal. And that I needed to take that step back and find the care and support for myself. And I had no intention of wanting to leave my child or leave my family. And I feel like it was my mind’s way of reminding me that I existed, and that I mattered. And that was my catalyst where I saw my own counseling and I saw my own support.

And before I had given birth and became a mother, my counseling work was centered around trauma and grief, and I particularly work supporting survivors of violence in my counseling practice. And after this experience, my counseling work shifted to perinatal mental health and wanting to be that advocate, and that supporter that my counselor was to me, and give them a healthy mind and a healthy body and a healthy spirit as they went into this journey.

And then I had the blessing of meeting Justine Leach. And she and I came together to create Resilient Birth, which then mirrored both my passions of trauma and grief and supporting survivors with this new identity of being a mom. And our work centers around how do we support survivors who are in birth, pregnancy, postpartum, or anybody who's experienced a trauma in their past lives, because we all have stories, and they all come out to play in this incredible shift that we experience when we give birth. And this company supports people in finding what they need, learning what they might need and learning how the stories may come up in birth. And we also work with providers, and how do you help people who are coming in with stories and give them the most healing, best ideal birth that you can, by being more trauma-informed, and coming at it from the strength-based model. So that's how I got to this work, was through my own needing of healing.

Sara P.:

I think... I just love the beauty of your story. Because as you tell it, I can just feel your heart just reaching out to all of these survivors and those who have experienced trauma and new parents trying to figure this all out. And I just love the work that you do and what you do with Justine, having been at your session at the conference, at Evidence Based Birth, and then following you on social Media, I know that you both are just like these huge-hearted women that reach out to people that really have a need for that huge heart to just wrap around them. So I'm so grateful for the work that you're doing and that I get to talk with you tonight about it.

Sarah A.:

And thank you for your kind words, it makes my heart feel so full. ...

In this episode, I tackle the hot topic of consent in the birth space.

TRANSCRIPT:

Before we jump into the content on today's episode, I wanted to encourage you to head on over to www.birthwords.com, check out the new website and all the features there. You'll notice a few things. There's a Classes tab, where you can sign up for one-on-one video consults. And I'd love to meet with you that way, either for expectant families or birth professionals. Stay tuned, in a while those will turn into full fledged online courses, but for now, you can have the one-on-one if you sign up there. You can also check out the Shop tab which has birth affirmations cards that you can choose from the ones that speak to you or customize your own and order from there. And, if you use the promo code podcast for either of those purchases, you can get 15% off, so head on over to www.birthwords.com. Come and check it out.

Hi, welcome to today's episode about informed consent. This is a big phrase in the birth world. I know doulas who have T-shirts that say “informed consent is my jam.” And it's important and people are passionate about it, because it doesn't always happen the way that it should. I've talked a little bit about this topic previously. I'm thinking about my conversation with Rebecca Dekker that was aired on October 28. Go back and check that one out if you haven't. We talked a little bit about informed consent or informed choice in that episode. And it's a really important topic that we'll continue to touch on and dig into in upcoming episodes. Today I want to talk about this progression from no consent, to consent, to informed consent, to informed choice.

So, no consent, unfortunately happens in the birth space more than people would like to admit. Occasionally it makes headlines, but most of the time it doesn't. And most of the time, this looks like things like the nurse saying: “Okay, the doctor wants me to turn up your Pitocin," so she turns it up, not waiting for any sort of consent, not waiting for a verbal “Yes, that's okay.” So, I'm thinking of when you fly in an airplane, if you're seated in an exit row, they tell you the roles and responsibilities of being seated in that row and what you would need to be able to help with in the event of an emergency and the plane will not take off until each person and an exit row has given a verbal “Yes.”

And sometimes, in the birth space, that verbal “Yes,” is not waited for and it can have traumatic, long-lasting effects. I'm thinking of unconsented episiotomies--have a huge effect. And, just other things that are done during the birth process that don't recognize and honor a woman as a life-giving agent, engaged in a praiseworthy work, right? Somebody who's bringing new life into the world, who has carried this life within her own body for nine months, and is now emerging, and is now inviting that baby to be born, the birthgiver is playing a critical role in the ongoing drama of life. And, acting for her, acting upon her, without her consent is completely counter to the truth of the work that she is doing, and the beauty of it.

So let's talk about consent, then. We talked about no consent, let's talk about consent: "compliance in or approval of what is done or proposed by another." That's Merriam Webster, there: "compliance in or approval of what is done or proposed by another.” So still here, that agent, the actor is the care provider. Saying: “Hey, I'm going to do this,” but it does in this case, wait for that “yes. That's okay. You can proceed with that."

Still, with the power in the hands of the care provider, with the nurse or doctor or midwife being the one proposing or doing a course of action, and then leaving the role of the birth giver to be simply to consent, again, I argue does not honor the beautiful, life-giving, life changing work that she's doing in bringing that baby into the world. And of course, people will argue, and I will not disagree, that in some emergency situations, this is appropriate for the care provider to be the one really proposing the course of action. And, then we'll go into the next step of informing as much as possible, as much as emergency allows, and then moving forward with it.

In some cases, that's appropriate.

But in most cases, as I talked about in episode one and episode three, birth is typically emergence, not emergency, and sometimes we act as if it's the other way around. So, let's take another step forward into informed consent. Google says that informed consent is “permission granted in the knowledge of the possible consequences, typically that which is given by a patient to a doctor for treatment with full knowledge of the possible risks and benefits.” So, with this model, who is granting the permission? The patient. It's a step up in that the pat...

In this episode, my friend Joanie tells the story of her first birth. Joanie says that if she had to describe her birth experience in just one word, she'd call it ​transformational.

In this episode, Sara gives an overview of the different branches of linguistics and coins the term "perinatal linguistics" to describe the work at the intersection of birth work and applied linguistics. As a perinatal linguist, Sara uses the knowledge, theories, and frameworks of linguistics to describe situations and experiences within pregnancy and birth and aims to improve the pregnancy and birth experience for birthgivers.

URLS mentioned in this episode:

www.summitbirthutah.com/birthwords

TRANSCRIPT:

Hi. Welcome, welcome to the second episode of the Birth Words podcast, where we talk about linguistics.

I think linguistics is one of those words that people have heard, but are kind of only generally aware of what it really means. And to be honest, those that study linguistics don't necessarily all agree. So we'll talk generally about what linguistics means.

The first clarification that I want to give is that linguistics is not about rules about how you should speak. But it's about studying instead, how people do speak. Why do they speak in the ways that they do, and to what effect? What difference does it make when people speak in certain ways, and what underlies the choices that people make in the words that they choose? So in linguistics, we talk about language as a semiotic system: Signs are used to communicate meaning. In some languages, like American Sign Language, this is very obvious—that literally a sign is used to communicate meaning. But when you think about language, that's really all that words are as well: a sign. A verbal sign that communicates meaning to those in a given community that use the same signs to communicate similar meaning. And it's not always the same for every person. But there's generally a level of mutual intelligibility among speakers of the same language, and specifically the same dialect of a language.

So, some questions to consider as we think about language as a semiotic system: (Again, that means signs are used to communicate to meaning.) Questions we can ask: what meaning is being communicated? Is the meaning that's being communicated the intended meaning? And what effect does it have on the hearer? Is it empowering or disempowering to the hearer? Is it respectful? Is it a language, a dialect that your interlocutor, the person that you're speaking with, also speaks? Or is there some interplay of different native dialects going on?

So I turned today for my introductory linguistics episode to a favorite textbook from college. And back when I thought that I was going to study English and minor in editing, I took a basic course in English language and the textbook for the course was Linguistics for Non-Linguists. And I loved it. I underlined like way too much really, really nerdy stuff in it. Kept it on the shelf for years. And I plan to use it as a reference for this podcast quite a bit, as its title is Linguistics for Non-Linguists, and non-linguists are my target audience for this podcast.

So Parker and Riley, the authors of the book, tell us that linguistic theory is “the study of the psychological system of language.” And they clarify “psychological system” to mean “the internalized, unconscious knowledge that enables a speaker to produce and understand utterances in his or her native language.” So again, when we speak, there's so much going on underneath it that's internalized and unconscious, that enables us to communicate.

And so linguists really look at,

How is that meaning communicated?

To what effect? and

Why is it communicated in the way that it is? and

What does it all mean?

So linguists study observable data, namely how people are speaking. They make hypotheses about what it indicates about the speakers’ internal psychological linguistic system, and then they make theories to attempt to explain the system. There are lots of branches of linguistics. Pragmatics means how language is used to communicate within a context. Semantics looks at the meaning of words, sentences and phrases. Syntax is the study of phrases, clauses and sentences. Morphology is the study of word formation. You notice we're getting narrower and narrower with each of these categories. Phonology is the study of sound systems of language and pronunciation.

And then there are other lots and lots of other branches that we can look at with linguistics. We can talk about linguistic variation among different social different regions, ethnicities and genders. We can study language acquisition—how does that happen? What are the norms? What happens when there's an intersection of different language communities? And we can talk about language processing. How do we understand one another through language? Psycholinguistics looks a...

In this episode, I pick the brains of Julie Francom and Meagan Heaton of The VBAC Link. We discuss the important way that the words we choose affect the experiences of women giving birth after a previous cesarean.

URLS mentioned in this episode:

www.thevbaclink.com