Читать книгу Hello Hello: The Inspirational Guide to Pregnancy - Danielle Jai Watson - Страница 3

It is with humble gratitude and an enormous amount of empathy that I offer you my compassion project. My sole purpose is to create a safe space for you to learn about the task at hand. It requires the strongest amount of human resilience. My desire is to offer the inspiration needed to vitalize an uplifting perspective on motherhood.

With purposeful great sensitivity, this book brings forth information from pre-pregnancy through pregnancy in a means to provide direction and encouragement on topics closest to your heart and experience. I’m not here to convince you of anything other than my belief that one can become exactly who they’ve always dreamed of becoming and I want to offer reassurance that you make it through every struggle, wave of adversity and conscious or subconscious fears that arise in this unpredictable journey.

During my first pregnancy, I was thrust into a whirlwind of emotions. I was so excited and in the same breath, realized I knew nothing about what I was supposed to do next. In the beginning of my journey, I followed the current traditional path of finding an OB-GYN who would give me tons of ultrasounds, so I could collect the pictures for a future scrapbook.

I arrived to the office and was immediately handed a piece of paper: PLEASE SELECT THE KIND OF DELIVERY YOU

DESIRE. I gazed at my husband with a confused look. How was it that in this moment, with my first baby and not even having met a doctor, I could be expected to select a cesarean section (i.e. major surgery)? Why was that even an option for me? Still uninformed about what was happening to my body, I continued to follow protocol. I met with the team (there were five different doctors at the office), each instructing me to “… just relax for the next nine months and enjoy eating for two.”

Yes, they actually told me to sit down and eat.

Five months into my pregnancy, my aunt, Dr. Rashida Cohen, asked me a question that would lead me to write this book: “Have you considered a home birth?” I wasn’t offended by the question. Rather I was upset with myself for still not knowing what was going on with my body or that there were even different options for any number of things including delivery.

In that moment, I went home and started reading and researching — one of the very things my OB-GYNs had instructed me not to do as to avoid “getting scared by information online.”

The more I researched, the more I realized I didn’t know much. The more I realized that I’d been willing to do more research on which hair dye I was going to use — more so than the technicalities of growing a life within me and the options I possessed for childbirth.

The more I researched, the more obvious it became to me that most of us have no clue what is going on until we are knee deep in the game. In time, I discovered how embarrassingly high the United States maternal death rate is (the highest among all industrialized countries). The maternal death rate in the U.S. today is WORSE now than it was 25 years ago.

According to a recent study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it’s estimated that approximately 900 women die from giving birth each year in the U.S. There are also roughly 50,000 near-death experiences that occur each year, with over half of those deemed completely preventable.

Graph by NPR Special Series, Lost Mothers: Maternal Mortality In The U.S.2 The more I read, the more I learned just how often women in the U.S. are subjected to cesarean sections (roughly one out of every three births). Every single one of my peers who’d recently had babies (all under the age of 35 and in exceptional shape as athletes) had cesarean sections. Even with them working out their entire pregnancy, eating healthy and being young, they were all still experiencing the exact same birthing scenarios.

How could each woman be having the same problem?

During my research, I learned that medical intervention during delivery has the propensity to cause more harm to a woman’s body than actually reducing pain. Even when a woman has never had a baby before, we are more likely to assume that an epidural will somehow make delivery much easier. For some of us, this may be the case. For others, the data seems to suggest otherwise. With roughly 92-94% of women deemed low-risk during pregnancy — or, put another way, 92-94% of women more likely to have a satisfactory birthing experience versus an emergency surgery or some sort of trauma — more than 30% of these healthy women are having major surgery in order to deliver babies (that equals to over 1.2 million women each year in the U.S.).3

It became apparent to me that somewhere along the line, mothers have been let down. Interestingly, people were more skeptical of my decision to have both children at home with no medication than they were about a perfectly healthy woman under the age of 35 with no prior medical issues, having major abdominal surgery with opioids and narcotics.

Why was my birthing option deemed less safe when quantifiable evidence shows the opposite?

With home births and hospital births showing no disparity among the infant mortality rate — yet hospital births showing a drastic increase in the number of maternal death rates versus home birth, I knew there was something missing for us. And it was, simply: information. Information given in a way that was empathic, nonjudgmental, sensitive, heartfelt and from actual mothers. Whether you decide to birth at home, a birthing center, or hospital, there needs to be a safe space presenting this information in one place, with one goal: to empower!

The more books I found, the more I discovered that men are the ones at the head of the ship, deciding the best practices for women during our most vulnerable times. With men never even experiencing a menstrual cramp, let alone understanding the emotional ordeal that a woman experiences through during this journey, I knew it was time to take back our power.

The more videos and documentaries I saw, the more I realized how fearful I was of this entire ordeal. The more I opened my eyes, the more I discovered that everything in my entire life had set me up for a presumption that this would be the most traumatic experience of my life. Movies and television shows exemplifying the terror that women face is beyond the pale of necessity: always portraying women as incapable of controlling their minds and emotions during birth; blaming husbands who stand by frantically as if a partner can never be consoling; always rushing into a hospital as if there wasn’t a more calming environment in which a woman could bring forth life. I felt manipulated and brainwashed and I knew that others deserved to know every bit of information I’d learned from a place of pure empathy and compassion.

Months into my first pregnancy, I knew I had to take the less-traveled road.

Leaving my OB-GYN’s office, I met a woman who not only changed my life, but inspired the newest trajectory my life would take. My midwife, Davi Khalsa, gave me information that I knew had to be shared. It had to extend beyond my world and reach those like myself — who are less likely to learn the information and less likely to be sought after. She not only made me feel capable, worthy and strong enough to birth my babies, but she made me feel like I was never alone. She normalized every single feeling I had and that level of personal understanding was something I believe every single woman deserves during this journey.

I knew that my calling was to reach women and reaffirm the power we all inherently possess.

I knew I had to share of my experiences and inspire women to find their own truth and best self during this entire experience — not be told. The judgment that mothers face is extreme and the psychological scar tissue many of us are dealing with (due to traumatic birthing experiences, stress, postpartum care, et cetera) is an underserved topic that has completely taken over my heart. Maternal death rates are staggering. Yet, they can dramatically change. Through education and empowered perspectives on the entire birthing process, we’ll begin to take back our power and find comfort in the journey. We will find peace through our education and healing through shared experience.

It is my desire that as you read this book, you find within yourself the resolve to release any fear, guilt or perfectionist ideologies of controlling things outside of your realm. In the same breath, I hope to strengthen your belief in the ability to be powerful right now. It’s my goal to encourage you to seek more information on the topics discussed here, in order to best apply them to your life in the most beneficial ways. It is my deepest hope that you never feel judged or bad for any choices you make with your body. This personal journey of motherhood is different for every single woman. And it’s my aspiration that I encourage a level of empathy and sensitivity, understanding and care, open-mindedness and curiosity for this most important moment in time.

As a perpetual student of life, it has become increasingly clear to me that people would much rather remain in a state of misinformation, misunderstanding or ignorance toward a topic if made to feel inadequate, insufficient or degraded. I’ve worked with every breath in my body to ensure you are never made to feel as such.

With care and grave attention to my words, I hope to only embolden curiosity about your body and the wonder you were designed to fabricate. With such a sensitive topic comes a great deal of responsibility and it’s something I do not take lightly.

It is with great love that I’ve created this book in hopes of changing the world in powerful ways. For it’s through our knowledge as women that we will become empowered enough to take back our birthright, to birth how we see fit and to survive. It’s our responsibility to produce life and keep the universal life-force thriving and the time is more relevant than ever to get back in the driver’s seat of our own birth stories.

I pray you are as inspired by this book as I am by you.

Your beauty, strength, resilience and faith aren’t lost on me now, nor will they ever be.

You are a remarkable human being. You were built for this.

I hope by the end of this read, you’ll feel the same way. With love,

Danielle Jai Watson