Listening

All the time we are hearing that good communication is the key to relationships. For many of us this translates to if I can just find a way to tell you what I need you to hear you will grant me what I want. Or perhaps you think of it as speaking your truth and assume that the truth will set you free? What if the key to relationships wasn't in the speaking but in the listening?

Julie Nevison, founder of Aware Parents Aware Kids, recently gifted me with a slim little gem of a book called Listening Partnerships for Parents, by Patty Wipfler targeted at listening skills. I have always thought of myself as a good listener and over the years have actively worked on improving my skills. Recently I am finding that there is WAY more for me to learn and put into practice with those I love, clients I work with, and friendships that lighten my life.

Eons ago my husband and I took a class together taught by Steve and Cathy Brody, a psychologist and therapist husband and wife team. We learned the skill of mirroring what someone said. This was supposed to help them feel heard. Unfortunately we only learned the basic rote skill. In practice we simply fed back the other person's words before rushing forward with our own ideas, complaints, or needs. My husband rightly HATED it. I had to wait for more than twenty years to see the art of mirroring done so gracefully by Christi Silva as she facilitated La Leche League meetings. Not only did she mirror but she organized and sorted the random thoughts, feelings and ideas presented without ever interjecting her own ideas or making the speaker feel judged. She handed this back to the speaker as a gift. I listened. I heard you. Thank you for sharing.

Struggling as a parent and feeling I wished to strengthen my relationship with my son I read, "How to Talk So Your Kids Will Listen and  Listen So Your Kids Will Talk" by Faber and Mazlish. Oh ho! So if I wanted my son to talk I needed to STOP talking! Now there's a concept. I still have a hard time with this at times. Sitting and waiting rather than engaging with questions isn't easy for me. Also this was the first time I heard the idea that as the listener, especially as a parent, it isn't your role to give them solutions or fix things for the speaker. If you just wait attentively, supportively, your child will begin to think of their own solutions. Then you can help them "try their solutions on" to see if they feel right to them or have the chance of actually working.

A few years ago taking Tory Blue's NVC class (non-violent communication) again shifted my whole perception of listening. She opened my eyes to all the critical dialogue going on in my head about myself and the person I was listening to; all the ways I thought I would, could, or should "fix" their problem. I also became aware of the concept of unmet needs creating dis-ease commonly felt by us as anger, frustration, sadness, or tension while met needs create happiness, satisfaction and joy. Communication is simply a way of asking to get unmet needs met. Sometimes others are willing and can meet those needs. Sometimes they can't or do not wish to meet the need. Often because meeting your need is in direct conflict with one of THEIR needs. This isn't wrong or bad. It just is. We may have to meet our own need or seek that need being met by a different person or in a different way. And guess what? That's okay!

La Leche League training puts a lot of emphasis on listening skills. We are taught to help a mother observe, look for clues, and sort through her own situation. We give her pertinent information she may not have which could help her clarify what she desires to do. We express confidence in her and her own abilities to know what to do and to do what needs to be done.  We tell her whatever she decides we know it will be best for her and her family. Or perhaps we are expressing confidence in her baby's abilities to learn or conquer a struggle, tap into their innate wisdom and abilities, or the hard wiring of their genetic coding. In essence we are modeling the behavior of listening to her baby rather than any other voices, especially if listening to those voices shakes her confidence in her mothering abilities.

My CranioSacral and Ortho-Bionomy studies and Feldenkrais explorations deepened my understanding of the many ways to "listen" to myself or someone else through physical touch. Again I saw that no real communication would happen if I was anything but completely accepting of what was, rather than what should be. Only after awareness and acceptance could I begin to explore other possibilities. Doors keep opening and new levels of understanding are revealed. Awareness and intention allow us to blend with another physical being through our hands. Permission has to be asked and granted on many levels before another human being will feel safe enough to reveal themselves to you. This is a sacred trust.

As an Intuitive Doula I listen with my head, heart, and hands. I listen to her hopes, dreams and plans. I listen to her birth struggles. I listen to her joy or sadness when the birth is over. So much of what I bring to a birth is simply my attentive presence. Feeling really listened to and honored through the intensity of birth is what is missing in so many women's birth stories. I listen with my ears, my brain, my hands, my intuition, my intention. Listening brings self-awareness.

Reading Patty Wipfler's little book I realized I STILL have so much to learn about active, caring listening and acceptance. Some of it was simply a good review; helping me brush up on things I already knew. There were also good reminders of things I had learned but still forget to use effectively in every day life. Most importantly it brought me a new layer of understanding about pain, hurts, and healing. Patty says unhealed childhood hurts leave scars that create rigid, irrational behavior. This makes sense to me. In order to heal those hurts we need to be LISTENED to. Feeling truly heard accepted and loved can help us release tears. Tears allow us to rid our bodies of trapped emotions. Emotional tears contain the harmful chemicals that have been trapped in our cells; frozen in rigidity. From my body work studies I know these unhealed hurts also leave physical scars in the form of physical rigidity or dis-ease trapped throughout our bodies; aching to be listened to, released, and healed. When our body feels listened to it finally is able to let go.

I am lucky to have Julie drop into my life at this time. "When the student is ready the teacher will appear." Thank you Julie.

A Feminist Perspective on Breastfeeding

“Breastfeeding and Work; Let’s Make It Work.” What comes to your mind when you hear the 2015 World Breastfeeding Week’s slogan? Most Americans think of women working outside the home who juggle nourishing their babies at their breasts with the demands of a boss. This calls to mind breast pumps, bags of frozen breastmilk, and bottles left for daycare providers; mothers striving to provide the very best both financially and nutritionally for their families. If you are a politically progressive American, “breastfeeding and work” may evoke images of paid maternity leave, perhaps even as long as some European countries, which provide 1 to 3 years! If you are a woman working in an office job perhaps this slogan sets you dreaming about pretty, private, lactation rooms with cozy chairs, baby photos, relaxing music, a clean sink to wash your pump parts, a refrigerator for storing pumped milk, clean counter space and electrical outlets to plug in your double, hospital-grade, hands-free, electric pump. Or you may be one of the many women yearning for a long-enough break from running a cash register, working the sales floor, making motel beds, tending the sick, picking vegetables, or flipping burgers to drain your full breasts often enough during the day to keep your body producing enough of a milk supply to match your hungry baby’s growing needs.

These are all valid dreams and desires, but as a community lactavist and modern feminist I have a broader vision; a vision better for all of humanity.

Who decided what IS work and what ISN’T work? Men did. Our modern chauvinistic culture decided work was what men did away from home. Therefore, women weren’t working when they stayed home and raised children. Anyone who has raised children knows this is ludicrous. Raising babies into well-functioning, happy, healthy adult human beings is incredibly demanding work. The hours are ridiculously long. Your job description changes every few months. Your day is filled with multitasking, negotiating, and strategic planning. Safeguarding the next generation, assuring the continuation of the species, is arguably the MOST important human endeavor. Regardless, men deemed raising children as less important than making money; therefore, what women did was NOT work.

Sadly when the women of the women’s liberation movement fought for the right to work outside the home they adopted the male paradigm for themselves. Imagine all those career-minded women in their pant suits. Secretaries might wear skirts but any woman who hoped to climb the corporate ladder donned the female equivalent of the coat and tie. Even Hillary Clinton perpetuated this stereotype through much of her last campaign. The 1960’s feminist reasoning went like this. We want to compete in the professional world. The professional world was designed by men for men, therefore we will pretend we are men. We will pretend we don’t grow babies, we don’t birth babies, and we don’t make milk to continue to grow babies. Many of the feminists of the time, such as Gloria Steinem, DIDN’T have babies. Others, like Betty Friedan had children who were older by the time they spearheaded a cultural revolution.

The “Mommy Wars” are a direct outgrowth of this acceptance of the male construct of what is and isn’t work. The media plays into big corporations’ hands when they keep the conversation about women judging each other; “working” mothers versus stay-at-home mothers. Giant formula makers are happy the conversation stays away from the damage we are doing to the long-term physical and mental health of human beings by feeding milk proteins designed for baby cows instead of baby humans.

Purely from a science perspective the verdict is in. Breakthroughs in epigenetics, the human microbiome, gut health, and evolutionary biology all point to the same conclusion; formula feeding is a major health risk in our society, but no one is talking about it except people directly involved with lactation education. We desperately need to make a cultural shift if we want to truly deal with the obesity epidemic. Or tackle lowering our rates of heart disease, autoimmune disease, breast and cervical cancer in our country and much, much more. Studies link all of these health issues to artificial human-milk feeding.

That shift starts by valuing women’s abilities to nurture and sustain life. Acknowledge that women have brains, and uteri, and breasts that lactate. We are the crucial link between the generations. This most important ability needs to be supported by every level of society if we want the human race to thrive. We need to support not only the women who are pumping behind closed office doors, but also the women who need to pump during a break from picking strawberries, and the women who are working at home to raise kids, and the women who are nursing their children while they take calls for their in-home business, and the women who are taking their babies to work. We need to tell all mothers through our laws, through our media representation, through changes in our language, through our politics, and through our economics that all women who are providing breastmilk for their children are doing important work for all our futures. I want us to move beyond the Mommy Wars, to move beyond normalizing breastfeeding, into a culture that values and supports the significant contribution every lactating woman is making for our country, our world and our species.   

Jennifer Stover is the education chair of the Central Coast Breastfeeding Coalition, based in San Luis Obispo, CA. She has been a La Leche League leader for 5 years and a certified birth and postpartum doula for over 20 years, and founder of the Birth & Baby Resource Network.

Classic Hospital Bed Meets Ancient Wisdom

So you have read Ina May's Guide to Childbirth and plan to birth in an active, upright position. Bravo! You have taken the first step in reclaiming your birth instincts. As a first time mother you have chosen to do a "homebirth in a hospital." You took classes, hired a doula, and crafted a birth plan. Being well educated when labor began you did not rush to the hospital with the first contraction. Instead you listened to your doulas suggestions of eating, showering, baking, gardening on hands and knees, rocking in a rocking chair, swaying on a birth ball, dancing, cuddling, hanging within your partner's loving embrace, climbing up and down your stairs, and going out for a walk or two or three. 

At last the time has come to drive to the hospital. You climb in the car and instinctively know that leaning back in that bucket seat while you sit to ride to the hospital is NOT going to be fun. Each contraction is intensified without being more productive. You are so glad to be able to get out of the car. You get on your feet and instinctively lean forward, drop your knees a bit and sway gently with the contraction that hit as soon as you stood up. Strong but doable you tell yourself. 

Next stop the emergency room doors and waiting for a wheel chair to take you to your room. Now they want you to sit in a chair and wait for a chair. The idea of not having to walk sounds inviting as your labor hormones are coming on strong and making you feel drifty but the actuality is something very different. Labor sensations while in a wheel chair moving forward causes your head to swim and you grip the arms of the chair causing tension through your neck and back intensifying your pain. The pressure of the seat on your bottom causes you to lift one cheek and list to one side. Too late you realize walking would have been much better than this. You traded in your feelings of competency and confidence in exchange for a quicker way to access the privacy of your birth room because you have a strong desire to be away from the bright lights and staring eyes of strangers. 

You finally arrive at the room where you will meet your baby face-to-face and there it is; the bed. It's presence dominates the room. Next to it stands all the technology money can bring to birth; fetal heart monitor, contraction monitor, computer, read out screens, audio controls, blood pressure reader, oxygen saturation tester, IV pole with computerized medication administration box attached, in other words, all "the machines that go beep". Still it is the bed that seems to suck the life out of your idea of an active birth; an instinctual birth. Your nurse cheerily asks you to pee in a cup and climb into the bed. So after all that walking, and sitting, and rocking, and kneeling what should you say or do?  

U.S. mothers are faced with this dilemma every day or more likely night. How should you handle this moment. It will be the opening moment in the long negotiation of your birth. If you have already had a baby and experienced that moment what DID you do? How do you feel about it now? Would you do it again?

This is the theme for July's Positive Birth Movement; the hospital bed's impact on your birth. PBM started in Great Britain and is spreading around the world. I am proud to be the SLO facilitator. We will be discussing the topic of labor beds from many different angles at my coffee & conversation in July.

It is important for modern American women to fill their mind with images of many possible birthing positions. Positions that can be done in or out of a hospital bed. How many different positions do you see portrayed in this short film? Notice how many different ways one may "squat". How deep the squat is, how far apart her feet are set, whether or not she is rounding or arching her back, pushing her feet against something or someone, or pulling on something all make the physics and body mechanics different.  <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0J5xlBmJHTI?list=PL197D9817EDD8A137" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> 

For anyone to make the general statement that squatting causes babies to descend too rapidly or causes tearing isn't educated enough about squatting to see all the many nuances that can be obtained. <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Q3wbuDSio74?list=PL197D9817EDD8A137" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Many of our doctors and nurse midwives are comfortable with mothers moving into a variety of laboring positions but once the mother is in the pushing phase still desire to take over and control the process by moving her into positions they, the care providers, are most comfortable in regardless of the mothers instincts or desires. In which of these birth positions do you think your care provider will be comfortable catching? Which ones will he or she have ever done? <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HiCgDlxdmPI?list=PL197D9817EDD8A137" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

In many ways I see the pushing phase of labor as the final frontier of the struggle I have been part of for so many years; the struggle to return birth to the birthing woman. As a doula the hospital labor bed represents the Berlin Wall that stands between women and their innate abilities. It is long past time to “Tear down this wall!”