Be Your Best Advocate…

In part two of Vanessa and Eva’s birth story, we are talking about advocacy. Out of hospital education can explain what your options are for birth BUT it is you who need to make your voice heard and advocate for yourself. In this video, Vanessa and Eva tell another section of their birth story where they needed to make a decision to leave the hospital when the doctors approach was not in alignment with the healthcare they wished for. Big choices were the right choices for their little girl’s birth and they followed their hearts. Would you have the guts to walk out if you felt bullied into unnecessary interventions? These moms did!

@bestbirtheverwithkonnie

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Video Transcript:

– Hold on, we’re still gonna do it this way. And it took all the knowledge, it took all the education, it took all the talking with the doulas, it took all the talking with the educators of hypnobirthing, the readings, the research, it took all of those things and it was that knowledge that helped us make one of the hardest decisions that we’ve ever had to make.

– As women, two women, a same sex couple, going into our birth, we knew from being educated, what type of birth we had, we knew that we were gonna be challenged. We as women have been challenged since the beginning of time, and through this education and understanding what our bodies are built to do, we felt empowered to walk into a hospital, full of doctors, full of what society thinks is the safest place, the place where you go for medical advice, to speak to doctors who are–

– who know, who have studied.

– We’re conditioned to believe that they are right that they know the answer. And we’re not saying anything against hospitals. Thank God that they’re here. Thank God that the doctors are there. But, I think it’s really important to talk about the knowingness that we have as women, in our bodies, in our hearts, we have a gut response, knowing what our babies might need. And it’s really hard to go against the conditioning. It’s hard to get to go against the brain.

And, you know, it’s hard to even ask questions sometimes. And I’ll be honest, you know, this experience at the hospital, there was a point where I became very angry, and I was very offended because I was asking questions to a doctor, a professional. And I was asking questions and she actually rolled her eyes at me. I got really angry actually.

And there was a situation where I said, are there any alternatives to this type of drug that you might give us if we have to stay here in induced labor? And she decided to give me an alternate name for the drug that I had already said no to. I said that’s a hard no, we’re not gonna use that drug. And she said, well, we have another drug. It’s this. And and I said, hold on a second. I’m gonna look that up. So I got on Google on my phone as she was standing there in front of me, my wife is on the bed. where she’s hooked up– Bryce is hooked up to the to the heart rate monitor. Everything’s fine. She gives me this alternate name for this drug. I look it up and it’s the same drug just in another form. And honestly, I was pissed. I’m like, do you think you’re just gonna sit here and snow me and tell me that you’re gonna give the same drug that I just said hard no to? And I mean, it’s that type of stuff that, you know, people rely on your ignorance, on your lack of knowledge on something that they’ve gone to school for, and they’re gonna say, hey, let me use another terminology to get you to do what I want you to do. And to go against what you know, you wanna do and what you feel in your gut you know what you wanna do.

– It was as if we were just another number. Here comes another pregnant woman coming through, let’s push her through. Let’s get the baby out and send them on their way.

– And it’s just, it gets me fired up because I’m sitting here remembering the rolling of the eyes. I got heated, I started to sweat. I felt like me maybe I’m wrong for asking these questions. Maybe I’m wrong, you know, and now she’s telling me that there’s possibility that my baby might die. You know, what if I’m wrong, okay, after all, she’s been studying this forever they wanna make sure that the baby lives and this is what we had to fight through to leave the hospital that day and to let Bryce come as she naturally would come. And no sooner that we did do that, she came that same night that they wanted to induce and pump Vanessa with all these drugs to get the baby to come out on their schedule. And yeah, it does fire me up.

And it’s funny because as we were talking about this, Vanessa and I last night, I didn’t even remember that, I didn’t. And I realized myself I didn’t want to, I didn’t want to remember that fight that happened. Because it was the low of my confidence level. It was the low of Vanessa’s confidence level. There we are at the hospital, ready to have a baby and we had to say, hold on, we’re still gonna do it this way. And it took all the knowledge, it took all the education, it took all the talking with the doulas, it took all the talking with the educators of Hypnobirthing, the readings, the research, it took all of those things, and it was that knowledge that helped us make one of the hardest decisions that we’ve ever had to make. And I remember Vanessa looking at me, our baby is dancing in the background because the song came on. But I remember Vanessa looking at me and she said, what do we do? What do we do? And I said, I don’t know, what do we do? And we really had to figure it out. It was–

– Well, we went with our gut and what we knew was right. And.

– And gut, your knowingness as a woman and partners, men, women, like, you guys know too you have the power to know and be attuned and to go to this place like what do we do? What feels right to us? You know, and going to the body to find the answer not to, You know, I’m worried I’m fearful, this is what we should do.

– The doctor said This is what the other people did. This what my friends did and having it become this thing that you think about and make a decision on because of what everyone else did no go to your body. If we went to this place of what is our body telling us to do, we needed to wait. And we did. And it was powerful and this one,

– Came of it.

– Hi baby girl.

– Hi. Are you dancing? Yes?

– Greatest joy. So, do what you know how to do. You guys know how to do it. Women know how to do it. That’s all I have to say about that.