13 “In Total Reverence Of Her Power” and “I Just Got Deleted From The Whatsapp Group”

Guest 1

Well, I can still remember the first ever birth I attended. It was a caesarean birth. And I was a student midwife. And they were kind of like, okay, there's, you know, a woman who's going for us Zarya, and birth would you like to go, and I was just like, oh my gosh, I'm gonna see your baby be born today. I remember so vividly, when they lifted this baby up and kind of held him up in the air so that the mom could could see him. And they lowered down the drapes. And it kind of felt like there was a moment where time stopped, you felt so silent until the baby let let out its first cry. What's my job, I decided to train to become a hypnobirthing practitioner, maybe when I was two years into working as a midwife. And I realised that when you meet someone, for the first time, in the birth room, it's really hard to be in a place to be able to provide education information, especially if someone is labouring.

It's not a space to take in new information, the couples or the people who had done some form of preparation, before they were there, you know, they were informed they had, you know, an idea about how to, you know, the birth partner had an idea about how to support the birthing person, they, you know, kind of knew some of the preferences that they might like to have, I noticed that those couples being part of those experiences, I left them and I felt really just elated, you know, and mainly because it felt like they were at, they were truly at the centre of that experience, you know, they were in their power. So I went on to train to become a hypnobirthing practitioner, this is a small part of the whole programme. So really, it is about empowering with knowledge, tools, preparation and support, so that you feel comfortable to navigate the intensity of labour Do you also feel that there's such a need for a lot more support, even prior to conception, because obviously, a conception looks so different for so many different families. Hypno birthing is also for any kind of birth, it's not just for, you know, physiological births.

It also does support people that are choosing to birth by caesarean, you know, induction of labour, hospital births, home births. So I've been teaching the course for three and a half years, because it's so powerful to be in a room with, you know, other people that are preparing. And I think my favourite thing about birth, however a baby is born is that confidence that can come in the person that's birthing coming out the other side of that, like how empowered they feel, then moving into parenthood, I'd say all of my favourite births have some element of how they felt about how true they were to what felt right for them. And then there are a lot of births that have kind of really stuck with me for different different reasons. during birth, there are so many things that kind of arise for for someone.

You know, there are a lot of fears that arise in the lead up with the birth that really kind of stand out to me and that kind of imprint you have imprinted in my mind are the ones that I've formed like a really trusting bond with the person that that's birthing do, you could really witness them in their vulnerability. I think the birth that really a very profound for me are the ones where the birth team were able to kind of wrap around the person that's birthing. So for example, I have one birth, it was a woman, a solo mom by choice having her baby. And she was supported by her doula. And she very much understood that the process and the challenges that would arise during birth for her about who would this baby look like? What would they what would they look like when they're born? You know, how am I going to do this by myself, like, you know, all of these fears that become so amplified, when you're then in this very raw and vulnerable state, but when you have the right support, being able to kind of move through them, it can be very empowering. She was just so trusting of her body, and this is intense. This is overwhelming, yes.

But that doesn't mean it's wrong. And that moment where she she got into the bath, as soon as she sat down in the water, her body just released and you know, her little baby was born out into the water and just like that moment that she pulled them up on to her chest and was just just in total reverence of her power, you know, like fully just in I just did that. Of course, they just did that. And it's something obviously that I'm considering. Well, I would like to become a parent. Probably within the next couple of years. I've spoken to so many people and asked you know what, before you decided To become a parent, what did that work look like for you? And a lot of people, it really is just oh, well, I started, you know, eating better and maybe worked out a bit more, I took some like prenatals or I started looking into the process. And it's like, but But was there anything else you did with your, you know, your partner? Was there anything you did about, you know, how you were raised? And how you would want to raise your children? And, you know, navigating? Well, what fears do I have not just about the process of birth, but of the changes that are occurring in your life, and a lot of people I'm realising, haven't really done any of that before, but often, you hit the ground running on the other side of birth, any big traumatic experience, we often create space, for rest, for healing for support. However, when it comes to birth, we've just gone through the biggest, most vulnerable, the raw wrist experience of our life, and many people that can either feel very empowered, but can also feel that it's left them really questioning their identity. But now you have a new person to care for.

Naty

Hey, folks, it's Naty. We'll be back with more right after this break.

Guest 2

Yeah, they just deleted me from the WhatsApp group. And I was like, Cool. And I like Effective immediately, then I was like, I probably shouldn't have done that. Because now I have no job at the time where all the Christmas temp jobs have been taken. And I was like, financially ruined. For me, I wasn't in a good position anyway, because I still kind of like going from, I've been a tech bro with a good job to I'm throwing my life away.

I was doing grocery delivery for Sainsbury's. And we had this new manager join. And she was a nice person, but a really, really bad manager, like she was not good at managing people like, and that is her job. There were a couple of shifts where I would turn up. And they're like, oh, yeah, so your shift has changed. And you're now going to be finishing it this time. Something that I found very frustrating was the fact that like, they were saying, We want you to do really, really good customer service. But also we want you to rush and hurry everything. And plus a lot of the people that I will be delivering to are like quite vulnerable people who like don't really leave their house.

And so one of the women that I like see would like be like, Oh, you're gonna sit down and just be go through the stuff and make sure she's got everything because that's how one opportunity to get her shot. So I've put it in her fridge for you, though, because the computer allotted me seven minutes for this drop, and I'd taken 15 minutes I was behind. Okay, but I can't not do the thing that is the right nice person thing to do, because that is what I care about. And my manager was like, oh, you know, it's just part of the course. And I'm like, no part of the course is it you give me a shift time I work the shift time and I go home, but not what I'm going to be finishing at the time that I say I'm finished and she's like, can you stop arguing me you never text and get on with the job. So I was very close to to being like, I'm gonna leave when I want to leave. And that's that. But I looked down my list of customers. And the last person on my list was this woman who I'd seen the week before.

And she just had like a hip replacement. And I was like, okay, so I finished the shift. And then I went back to the Depo and just wrote on like the back of one of the letters like some letter paper or whatever, like dear management team, please accept this as my resignation. It's been a pleasure working with some of you that I never turned off again. And I just got deleted from the WhatsApp group. And then I never heard from anyone ever again. Yeah, and then I was like, very depressed. very depressed and very poor. I did like farm work, cash in hand farm work for flight through the winter. Just so I could afford we eat. So yeah, and then I was like, Okay, well, I'm just gonna apply for anything.

And then I saw like, Okay, well, there's loads of care jobs, because there always is. And it's always been something that I've been like, I don't really want to do care, because I don't feel like I'm actually like, able to look after myself. So how on earth am I able to look off someone else? And I went in for the interview got on really, really well with the manager, the interviewer who's now like, I am service manager. And they had like one of the people that they support in the interview as well. And that was like, really interesting, because I've never experienced like that at all. And he was like, yeah, like, I'll be calling you tomorrow to offer you the job. Just so you know. And I was like, okay, cool. Like you must be desperate for people.

And like to some degree, they kind of are but it turns out I'm quite good at what I do. So it's now I can't really remember not being there. I really, really love Have my jobs or not? Yeah, I'm a support worker now for adults with learning disabilities in a sort of date and time. One of them's verbal, but non speaking, one of them speaking, but is like very, very specific in like the amount of phrases that He can use and does use some of the people like need really, really in controlled environments. So we've got this one guy look after who's got various, quite like very severe autism.

And he's, he can speak but he has very, very distinct speech patterns, which you have to learn to be able to calm has anxiety for what was happening around him, because otherwise he gets really anxious than just act out. And by acting out, I mean, like, he'll go and smash something or going through a food over someone or like, you'll go and like rip off all his clothes and the toilet or, you know, like, there's lots of different behaviours and stuff that I you know, never encountered before. But now I sort of very much part of my daily life with him, we take him out, we go, poster better and aren't like chasing down the road to get to the letterbox and he really, he really likes going in like putting things in rubbish bins, so we find like nice rubbish bins, we get like a bunch of flowers, and we drive to a cemetery. And he goes around and puts like, the flowers on the graves and stuff. So like, you know, strange little acts of kindness around around he, his way of communicating has been like, telling you what kind of cars he's seeing or asking what the person is doing. And it's like, constant dialogue for about two or three hours.

Like, it's a really interesting thing, being part of a community that is so like intentional, because you have all the intentional support workers who were like, I'm just teared, because I genuinely just want to help people have a nice kind of an improved, improve a person's quality of life. And then you have all the parents that have had to do this really difficult thing, which is like allowing other people to have that close access to their kid. And you'll, you'll often encounter single mums. In these kind of environments, or mums that are mostly kind of like the lead on the care. And the dads sort of like, well, I have got to work a lot now. Because, you know, having a child with severe learning disabilities, obviously, the council can help with some things, but a lot of other stuff has to be covered by the families themselves. So you kind of end up like developing these quite like interesting relationships with the parents, especially the mothers who are like, you know, it's all about like, oh, so I do this thing this way. And a lot of people were like, Oh, well, why bother? And it's like, well, if you want that person to feel like they can trust you, because I've, I've learned so much about communication. In the last like, six months that I've been there other people's routines have really, really like helped my life in a way that I never would have expected it to. The communication thing in general was just a really, really fascinating aspect of it. And it's, it's definitely helped in my own like personal relationships and stuff as well, which I'm really really grateful for because life's been a lot better.

Naty

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