ChicagoDoula

Six Months Later

Rachel Dolan Wickersham — Sun, 29 May 2011 04:29:40 +0000

Long, long ago, Amy promised for me that I would post a follow up to her post about the fire that took my family’s home. Today is the six month anniversary of that fire and it’s high time I followed through on the promise. So here we go.

Just now, six months later, we finally had the house demolished. It happened last week. It went down in a day. It felt good to be done with it.

Just now, six months later, I finally got to order my midwifery textbook replacements. I plan to spend the summer studying these books for my autumn CPM (Certified Professional Midwife) exam.

Just now, six months later, we are working through some of the PTSD that still lingers for some members of the family.

Just now, six months later, we are beginning to feel ready for another kitty to join our family.

Just now, six months later, I look back and am grateful for our lives and for the love and support we received from the childbirth and parenting community.

Just now, six months later, I look back and I laugh as I remember how, on the day of the fire , as I sat in the car, a block down the street with two pets and five girls in their pajamas, I pulled out my doula bag and found food, clothing, clogs, toiletries, emergency cash, rescue remedy and lavender – in short, plenty to cover immediate needs and calm us down. To a doula, its nothing – just regular birth bag ingredients, but to a doula whose house was burning down it was desperately needed, not only for the items but for the bit of humor it injected into the situation. As one of my daughters said, “only mom would have stuff like this in her car.” Given that their usual complaint is how I’m weird and not like other mothers, this was a compliment.

Just now, six months months later, my doula bag is packed and ready for the next birth or for any crisis that may come.

Just now six months later, we are still working through a few things, but basically we are doing just fine.

Thanks for reading

Safe Transports Save Lives

Amy Catania — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 02:30:53 +0000

With the defeat (46-71) of the Home Birth Safety Act at the very end of the last legislative session, the Illinois legislature decided that Certified Professional Midwives in Illinois shall remain unlicensed. The Coalition for Illinois Midwifery (CFIM) is re-introducing the bill in the new session and it has a new number, HB2940. In the meantime, however, Illinois home birth families have again been left without legal, licensed providers throughout most of the state.

To help alleviate the danger in which this places home birth mothers and newborns in need of emergency transports, together with this bill, the CFIM is also introducing the Home Birth Integration Act, HB1665. This is a new approach designed to save lives in the event of a hospital transport. This bill would help eliminate the fear of repercussions for transporting to the hospital from a planned home birth with an unlicensed midwife. It is already being compared to infant Safe Haven laws which allow parents in crisis to anonymously bring newborn infants to hospitals, police or fire stations and be shielded from any subsequent arrest or prosecution. The bill has been assigned to a committee and needs to pass through this step before it can be voted on by the full House of Representatives.

Please call or email your reps to voice your support and ask them to sponsor HB1665. Roxann MtJoy at Change.org wrote this article about the bill and the site has also begun a petition you can sign today to ask your Illinois state representative for support.

Call for Birth Stories from LGBTQ parents

Amy Catania — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 20:17:33 +0000

Ever look for a collection of LGBTQ-centered birth stories? Then you may have noticed how hard it is to find one! If you’d like to help remedy this situation:

Fabulous Chicago doula, Kristen Ethier, is collecting birth stories from lesbian/queer/gender non-conforming/FTM transgender parents. Send her your stories or re-post this if you know someone who would!

Closer Than Ever

Amy Catania — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 20:20:54 +0000

Check out this excellent blog entry on the Home Birth Safety Act from the Amie Newman at RH Reality Check. We hope to call the bill today. Meanwhile there is a mama in labor for me to get to.

Wish the bill luck, and if you are an Illinoisan look up your rep and call them to ask for a YES on SB3712! And please also email them the link to this article!

Extremely Grateful

Amy Catania — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 18:56:32 +0000

This is Amy, writing on Rachel’s behalf. This morning, after I returned from a long birth, she and I had our first chance to speak in person since a fire destroyed her family’s home and killed a family cat. Her family and other pets escaped safely. She has begun plucking small salvageable items from the ruins and slowly working on the enormous task of putting things back together again. Helping her through all of this has been a community of amazing folks in Chicago and far beyond – both online and in person.

Rachel wants everyone to know how extremely grateful she is for the outpouring of support she and her family have received from loved ones and strangers alike. She said:

“Please just let everyone know I am just so grateful, so overwhelmed by all of the love and support we’ve received. My family and I feel like, for people who have had their house burn down, we are some of the luckiest people ever.”

She says she is still in survival mode, but already realizing how thinking like a doula and midwife student helped get her through. And when she is able, she knows she will have some stories to tell! In the meantime, she appreciates you holding her and her family in your thoughts and prayers. Thank you.

Importing Midwives and Exporting Babies: Illinois’ Little Secret Gets National Attention

Rachel Dolan Wickersham — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 15:05:17 +0000

Illinois midwifery and home birth have gotten a lot of national attention lately. In late August, there was a Time Magazine article on the controversies surrounding home birth in the U.S.A. In the opening paragraph, there was a description of an Illinois home birth mama who eventually jumped the border to have her baby in Missouri because the home birth situation in Illinois was so full of angst.

Late last week, the New York Times published an entire article about Illinois home birth. The title was (to us activists) exciting and provocative – “Use of Midwives Rises, Challenging the State to Respond”. This article features an Illinois student midwife who crossed the border, moving to Wisconsin to complete her education and work legally. Also in the same article, is an Illinois mama who moved to Wisconsin to follow her midwife.

Is there a pattern here?? Yes – moms and midwives crossing the border into friendlier states. It’s as if there are signs at the border pointing AWAY from our state → This Way To A Better Birth.

This is only half the story, however. The Coalition for Illinois Midwifery is also aware of women bringing midwives IN to Illinois. Although not clearly stated in the NYT article, some of the mamas interviewed actually imported their home birth midwives from other states. And they’re not the only ones. Over the past several years Illinois home birth mothers have brought midwives in from Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, Oregon, Montana, California, and probably quite a few more.

Bringing a midwife in or taking a jaunt across the border are both viable options for women, but are they really the best options?

Comfort is an issue. Anyone who remembers the last few weeks of their pregnancy knows the last thing they want to do is take a long drive anywhere, much less in labor.

Safety is an issue. Should a woman need a higher level of care, her imported midwife is unlikely to be familiar with the local options. And for mamas who have traveled, ending up in a strange hospital, miles from their supportive network of friends and family, can negatively impact their well-being.

Pride is an issue. Can we not serve our own?

With national attention finally on the subject, we can hope that our state legislature will find it in their hearts to make sure that women who choose home birth in Illinois, have enough providers willing to serve them. Given that we have at least 30 years of evidence that nurse-midwives and physicians cannot and will not meet that demand, it is time to recognize those who will and assure that they have met national certification standards. Licensure of certified professional midwives (CPMs) is the only way.

Otherwise we’d better start building those border signs.

Heard in Conversation This Week

Amy Catania — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 19:06:59 +0000

Here’s a little love for all my fellow doulas. We know that every mama has a perfect doula match out there somewhere, but not every doula will fit the bill. So it is okay and expected that every potential client interview or phone call won’t result in a match.

Even still, it would be nice if they did, no? So when an expectant mama in her third trimester said this to me a couple of days ago it gave me a good belly laugh and is still making me smile: “I’ve never met a doula who was like, a bitch.”

Who Is ChicagoDoula?

Rachel Dolan Wickersham — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 06:31:38 +0000

So Amy is trying to get me to blog. I have to say, I have never considered this and am not so sure how good I’ll be at this. I’m only here because she has the smarts and the drive to get us both here. Maybe I can start by giving you the back story. For the past 15 years, I’ve practiced as a childbirth educator, doula, doula trainer and occasional midwife’s assistant. I’ve used the web since the beginning and have always used the screen name identity “ChicagoDoula.” But as the web developed, I remained a very basic user – email, the occasional instant message, web-browsing.

I always thought I should make more of it. I even took a website design class. I created a draft version of a very pretty website. And it sat there on my computer for years. I had no idea how to get it published. Two years ago I finally figured out that I needed to purchase a domain name. So I did. But that sat there too. When Facebook came along, I figured it out to some degree, though I only have personal pages – no business page.

Then along came Amy, a new doula on the block, with some really neat ideas. She hoped to develop a website and call it ChicagoDoula.net. I agreed to this because after all, though I’d been using the name for years, I did not yet have a website and thought I would never get around to it. Amy began building the site and after a time we realized it was something we could work on together. We began to think of ChicagoDoula as a concept rather than a specific person and several months later, here we are.

Who is ChicagoDoula? She is a little bit of everything, just like the city she serves. She is an activist, a doula, a mother, a midwife (of babies or ideas or communities), a mentor and a student. She is experienced and wise, yet she is fresh and enthusiastic and full of new ideas. She is knowledgeable about a variety of childbirth preparation techniques and is comfortable working with them. She believes that life is precious and she also believes in a woman’s right to make a full range of decisions about her reproductive health care – whether that means choosing to terminate a pregnancy, choosing an epidural for labor, or choosing a homebirth with an underground midwife. She strives to help women understand the full implications of their choices and help them find their innate power, so their choices are not driven by fear. She understands that there is no single right answer for any given situation. She is willing to support women in whatever choice is right for them.

ChicagoDoula loves her city and the people in it. She joyfully serves families from all walks of life. She is ever-hopeful with a strong vein of cynical, anti-racist, queer-friendly, working on recognizing her privileges as well as her own internalized oppression, challenging others and herself to see and understand things differently. When faced with obstacles, she looks for creative solutions rather than struggling to achieve particular outcomes.

She envisions a world where all women get the support they need across the spectrum of pregnancy, labor, birth and parenting – a world where every woman in every community has access to the information and support she wants and needs so that she can be affirmed in her choices.

She envisions a world where women are respected, safe, honored and empowered.

In short, ChicagoDoula is many things. We invite you to get to know her, us, as we continue posting here and continue building our websites.

Thirty Years Too Long

Rachel Dolan Wickersham — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 19:37:07 +0000

Journalist Amanda Robert’s story highlighting the homebirth situation in Illinois, says it all in the tag line: “Thirty years later, Illinois midwives fight for birth rights.”

For 30 years the state of Illinois has been aware that some 800 – 1000 Illinois women per year choose home birth and choose the care of a midwife especially trained to attend home deliveries - a direct-entry midwife (entering the profession directly rather than through nursing – sometimes also called lay midwife).

Thirty years ago midwives and families lobbied the state to license such midwives and were turned down. Every so many years they went back and were turned down again. Yet home birth persisted. It did not go away.

Since the year 2000, home birth and midwifery advocates have gone to Springfield for every session under the banner of the Coalition for Illinois Midwifery. As the Coalition, we’ve developed the language of the licensing bill to reflect the standards of the time. Instead of talking about lay midwives we are talking about CPMs (Certified Professional Midwives) – women (or men) with years of training, who have passed a national exam administered by a credentialing organization that is accredited by the very same organization that accredits the nurse-midwives organization.

We’ve gained the support of the Illinois Public Health Association, the Illinois Society of Advanced Practice Nurses, the Illinois Maternal Child Health Coalition, and even the AFL-CIO. And most importantly, we’ve set the highest level of educational requirements for state licensure of CPMs in the nation.

House Bill 226, the Home Birth Safety Act, is currently is gaining momentum in the Illinois House.

Home Birth STILL persists and rates are climbing –increasing 5% from 1990 to 2006, according to the CDC. It is time for our state legislature to take action and finally license and regulate the midwives who are out there attending it. Thirty years is a long time to stay underground.

Birth Story of a Doula’s Doula

Amy Catania — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 16:00:51 +0000

Holly Barhamand is a mother, doula and childbirth educator in Chicago and is also one of my real life, everyday heroines. Holly was one of the doulas at my labor with my second baby and has since become a wonderful mentor and friend.

Whenever I need to work something out about teaching childbirth classes or have a complicated labor to get pointers on, she is eager to listen and help – and always seems to have the right thing to say.

This week Holly gave birth! Oh and did I mention that she is a fantastic writer? I love a good birth story and am delighted to pass this one on.

Congratulations on welcoming your newest baby, Franklin Darius, into the world, Holly! And thank you for sharing your incredible story. Much love and light to you.