The support they want may surprise you.

I attended a birth this past weekend that reminded me of how sometimes the support people want, looks and feels really UNsupportive! 

Let me explain. 

In addition to our hands-on support, some forms of support are an extension of our empathy. As doulas or loving partners, we express our non-judgmental understanding when we say that we get how hard or impossible labor feels, at times. We get that nothing’s helping. We believe you, that it feels like so much pressure, too much. It is! (Never really too much, but it can feel that way toward the end.) We validate your experience with absolute compassion.

In other moments, when you’re in those “I can’t do this”, “it’s too hard” moments of birth, rather than validate, we might offer reassurance or encouragement. “You CAN do it”, “you ARE doing it”, “it’s because you’re so close to meeting your baby”. These are all things a doula might say during active labor, transition, or pushing.

Through the years I’ve learned that none of these methods of support are inherently misguided. There are those and there are those, as they say. Our aim is to be attuned to our clients.

Some will feel utterly discounted and dismissed by some of these words. Others will cling precisely to this kind of support. Please, tell me I can, so I can express how much I feel like I can’t, while cuing the responsive “you can” and “you are” from my birth team, thus completing the circuit, from despair to hope, and doubt to belief. Reassurance and encouragement can be a lifeline for many people.

But what about when they want none of that? Not the verbal support, not the physical support. I teach about that in my classes all the time that sometimes our touch is not wanted. Perhaps it was helpful at some point but then not. Either way, it’s not personal. 

Well, that’s exactly what happened with this last client. Mind you she invited a lot of people to her birth, at home. There were at least 5 of us there, sitting around the birth tub, to support and hold space, between me, another doula friend, and 2 others, friends and spiritual mentors, in addition to the midwife and birth assistant, not to mention her partner who came in and out. 

As each of us joined in, she would shush us when we tried to offer any of the above. “Shhhh...quiet”, “no coaching” she'd snap. It was in part about needing the silence to focus, but there was more to it than that. She had even messaged me months before the birth that she had anticipated complaining a lot as a coping mechanism. 

And indeed when her birthing day came, that was exactly what she wanted. To be able to complain, to be able to exclaim how terrible, impossible and awful it felt, how much she hated it, without a word from any of us. No words of empathy. No words of encouragement. She didn’t need our compassion. She didn't want to be rescued. She knew this is just what her birth was asking of her. 

But she wanted to be seen. She wanted to be witnessed in her out of control, messy, loud way of birthing her baby. She wanted to be allowed. That was the support she needed.

It was truly an awesome scene to watch all of us sitting there still and silent, withholding any impulse to say or do anything to “help”. Exactly as she wanted it. Her way of fully surrendering to the experience, knowing there was no way out but through her muck and inner resistance.

In fact that was the card I pulled from our Wisdom of Birth deck (in its final sample printing process at this moment), the “Birth is Messy” card. Physically, mentally, emotionally, it is a messy moment. From the blood, sweat, and poop, to the yelling and tears. And while it may not FEEL supportive in moments to watch someone feeling miserable and in pain, without saying or doing anything, sometimes that is exactly the support they want from us.