BIRTHING A RESISTANCE. HOW BEING A VOLUNTEER DOULA HELPED ME FIGHT BACK.
By: Jessica Galli
Tags: Birth, Doula, Sex Education, Revolution

Note: I wrote this in 2018. Working as a volunteer Doula helped me understand that revolutionary work can be as subtle as telling someone, “You’re strong. You can do this.” I will forever appreciate the opportunity I had to work and talk with BIPOC Women and Mothers at San Francisco General Hospital. However, this essay does not address the privilege I’ve inherted through white-body supremacy. While I work to better understand white-body supremacy and dismantle its terror on BIPOC communities, I remain in humble respect to the women who welcomed me into their space of complete power and transformation.

The names of the laboring women in this essay have been changed to protect their identities and privacy​​.

“So you’re a volunteer doula?” asked the towering supervising surgeon. ​Yes, I volunteer for a program that supports low income families and families without homes through pregnancy and labor​, but I said only, “Yeah,” because I was unsure of what I actually offered.

“That’s incredible. I can’t believe you’re here at two in the morning. I’m getting paid a lot a money to be here and you’re here for free.”

“Yeah.” I couldn’t believe it either.

Earlier that day I was working at the bakery, filmy with soot and sweat, slowly lowering a peel of proud golden bread from the oven. It’s a hustle living in San Francisco on a baker’s salary, but when I got called to the hospital after working a laborious twelve-hour shift, I didn’t hesitate. There were reasons more important than money.

In the dim light hospital room, I took my time cleaning Serena’s numb limbs with antibacterial sage wipes, wondering if I was doing it right. She was 23, living between shelters and couches, about to have her first child. In the operating room, I sat next to her in a light blue bunny suit, behind a matching blue curtain.

“I’m scared,” she said underneath quaking breath. It was our first cesarean section. “You’re strong. You can do this. How about we breathe together?”

We locked eyes and with a sturdy inhale and exhale, we smoothed her shaking tremors. Within ten long minutes her daughter was born, and lifted into sight. I documented the squirming, burgundy baby girl on her android phone.

The rush of my first c-section brought me back to the night three years prior when a few friends convinced me I would make a fantastic doula. At that time I had a vague idea of what it means to be a doula: emotionally support pregnant women. Yet, I was totally unaware of the physiological details of pregnancy and labor.

Truthfully, I was scared of pregnancy, hated my period, and wished for early menopause. Sex-ed at my liberal, California public high school detailed STDs, contraception, and reproductive anatomy. When I became sexually active, I had the tools to make informed choices. On matters of my body, I was taught to believe ​I have a choice​, but no one ever told me what happens after I decide to have a baby.

“In order to have these deeper conversations, we have to standardize sex-education,” says Brittney McBride of Advocates for Youth, an organization that partners with youth-allies to provide fact-based knowledge about sexual health. “It’s a difficult step to take when there is so much abstinence only education money flooding our states. Young people don’t get those necessary, foundational conversations on how their body works.”

Only 20 states in the US require sex and HIV education in public schools. I was lucky to have received comprehensive sex-education, but nationwide there is a huge gap in pregnancy and labor education. Most women first learn about labor when they’re in the labor room.

At nearly thirty, it was time to conduct my own education. The more I learned about dilating cervixes, nutrient rich placentas, and that dreamy love-drug: oxytocin, the stronger I felt. A woman’s body — my body — is powerful.

Why are women denied access to this power? I asked midwife Kara Engelbrecht, member of The Root a San Francisco midwifery collective. She believes it grows from old paternalistic systems that cast shame on women’s bodies.

“We have to stand up to say, ​I want to be heard…​ Pregnancy and labor has the power to completely change us. For that reason it is important to make choices for how you want to give birth… In the end, you have to be empowered to speak for your child.” The capacity to make these choices begins with understanding, “biology works well and our biology works well.”

Women’s health care needs to start at an earlier age, “If we can start educating young women in high school about their bodies and their sexuality, they will then go on to make more informed health care decisions as they grow up. They will know how to care for their own bodies.”

Even after discovering the power of the female anatomy, it wasn’t until Trump was elected on a platform that promised policies to actively disempower women, that I felt drawn to action. Basic rights like choice and access to health care and education could simply disappear. I urgently needed to advocate for women’s rights, for my rights — fight back by showing up for women who need to be reminded of their own strength.

I took doula classes and signed up to be a volunteer at the Homeless Prenatal Program. Within three weeks I was assigned my first client.

Mary and I were both 30, but years of abuse and living on streets and in parks aged her beyond me. Despite our differences, we needed each other. I had no labor experience, no trauma-sensitive support advice, nothing to offer other than the promise I would be there for her whenever she needed me. Her trust in me was stronger than my self-doubt. It was our first baby and neither of us knew what to expect.

She once lived in a eucalyptus grove on the edge of the Pacific Ocean. At sunrise a heavy, damp blanket of fog diffused morning light, chilling the air. Labor and Delivery Room 9 was colder. I sat on the couch with her family, watching her and her husband eat french fries on the hospital bed. Waiting for a cervix to dilate can feel like watching water boil.

Among the chatter, the quiet moments and the periods of seizing intensity when her contractions strengthened, I kept noticing Mary in bed alone. She was in a room full of family members who came to support her, but no one could hold space for her. They were too full of their own expectations and fears to be emotionally present and free of judgement.

When I felt my own muscles grip with the fear of doing or saying the wrong thing, I thought of my mother’s fingernails dancing on my back, like fairies ice-skating on a pond. It made me feel safe. I gave Mary fairies on her head and shoulders after she got an epidural. She soon fell asleep. Several hours and two pushes later she delivered a baby girl. The birth went exactly as Mary had wished to me in her own words, “I want to sleep through the whole thing and wake up to a baby.”

After Mary, I helped Serena and several other women, all of them wanting support they could not afford. Last month I was called to Labor and Delivery Room 9, again — for 34-year-old Denise.

I could faintly smell the double instant coffee I mixed for Denise’s boyfriend when the nurse implored, “You have to tell us what she’s saying if we’re going to help!”

“SHE’S SAYING SHE WANTS TO DIE!” he bellowed, throwing his hands in the air.

Denise’s boyfriend hadn’t slept in nearly 30 hours. She wouldn’t let him leave her side. The wide-eyed nurse slowly backed away.

I didn’t know much about Denise, only that her hair was bleached the color of white corn and that she spoke Portuguese and a little Spanish. In a rolling tongue she kept repeating ​minhas costas, a dor, my back, the pain.​ Despite the epidural, she lay paralyzed by back-pain, fearing it would never go away. She didn’t want to be moved or touched. All of the ways I knew how to physically help were useless. I had no idea what to do. I felt like I was just taking up space.

Still, I stood by her side, cooling her sweaty brow with cold damp towels, clumsily whispering the three Spanish support words I knew:​respira, breathe, tu fuerta, you’re strong, sepueda, youcan.​ When it came time to push, I straddled her foot with my forearm and pulled it back, miraculously alleviating her back pain. After an hour she gave birth to a long, large baby boy. We all cheered.

Denise thanked me with teary eyes. She said, “Facebook?” and made a gesture that felt like friendship. Our brief connection was forged simply by sharing an experience together. Compared to the skilled medical team, I didn’t do much. For Denise, showing up was enough.

I left the hospital and drove to the place where the eucalyptus meets the ocean. Under a lattice of ribboning clouds, I stripped down and walked into the swelling tides. Doulas often compare contractions to crashing waves. Redefining pain as an intense, temporary sensation makes it easier for people to feel in control. Standing up against the Pacific’s surge overwhelmed me, like the night Trump won the election. That night I felt a heavy weight in my heart, a tight knot in my stomach. I was so afraid, I cried. When I read news about Supreme Court Justices trying to overturn Roe v. Wade and lawmakers defunding Planned Parenthood, I feel utter despair. I’m not monied or privileged like that supervising surgeon, but that’s not where I’ve found strength to fight back. It grows from showing up for women like Mary, Serena and Denise. When I say, ​you’re strong, you can do this,​ I believe it myself. A wave can’t peak forever. After its frothy crash subsides, the waters are smooth and still. It’s in this moment, still standing in the rolling surf, I give myself the space to be proud of the work I’ve done.