00:00:01 Laura

Birth is becoming traumatic, for many women experience birth as a traumatic event and not as a joyful event. We know now there are many research telling us that one in three women experience birth as traumatic.

00:00:21 Hannah

To witness a woman who trusts herself giving birth, opening, channeling life to come forward, is the most beautiful, amazing experience to have. And even when there’s complications, still trust yourself. You have the answers inside. We want to have birth professionals have the tools, the insight, the awareness around the importance of this and the effect that it has on the people that they work with so that they can make a change, so that we can really make a deep change in what’s happening in the world. And for people being born and for mothers and for the feminine aspect that’s been neglected and really needs to be brought back. It’s an opportunity for people to explore their own birth imprinting and to bring healing within themselves as birth professionals and parents. Because as we know in compassionate inquiry, anything that we want to affect on the outer, we have to do that for ourselves on the inner. So we very much brought that into this training.

00:01:47 Rosemary

This is the Gifts of Trauma podcast. Stories of transformation and healing through compassionate inquiry. Welcome to the Gifts of Trauma podcast. Today I’d like to welcome two very special guests, Laura Latina and Hannah Betty Adairs. Welcome to the show. Now, I could read your bios, which you have kindly provided, but what I’d really love to do is to invite you to introduce yourselves to our audience. Who’d like to go first?

00:02:30 Laura

Hannah go.

00:02:30 Hannah

My goal, I’m willing to do that. So introduce myself. Wow, that’s a big thing. I’m a lifelong learner. I’m someone who’s dedicated to the divine feminine for whatever reason. And I think I know some of the reasons. I think it comes from my ancestry I’ve had implanted in my heart and in my soul that the feminine principle is important. It’s essential to life. And I’m not talking about a woman and a woman’s body. I think whatever gender we identify in, we have that feminine principle inside of us. 

00:03:15 Rosemary

Thank you. That’s a beautiful self introduction, and your bio will be provided in the show notes, so everything else people can find there. So thank you, Anna. That was beautiful, Lara.

00:03:27 Laura

I’m also a curious learner, an adventurer, I would say. And I really approach life with curiosity and really wanted to discover a lot of about myself and others. So that’s why after my midwifery university, I left everything and I started traveling around the world. I really wanted to discover more about birth, about midwifery, about myself. And so I started little adventures in Africa, around the world, basically. I can tell you more about some stories. And then everything led me to come back home in Italy, where I live, where I’m settling now, really to find myself back home. But I’m also at service. I’m at service for this humanity, really, with families, with women, couples that are about to give birth. And this is my service I do for this community to really looking after them, accompanying them in this rite of passage that is parenthood. Karen. That’s me.

00:04:51 Rosemary

Beautiful. Thank you so much. Now, to begin this conversation, I’d like to share this quote by Gabor Maté, and it’s a quote that I’ve pulled from the in utero film. He said, “You talk to people about their childhood and they say, I don’t remember, I don’t remember, I don’t remember. The fact is that everybody remembers. They just don’t recall. It’s usually becoming. It’s usually because nothing happened or too much happened. Usually too much happened. One way they dealt with it was to split their attention from what’s going on, so they’re not going to recall. We have the distinction of two important kinds of memories, and so often our lives show up as those imprinted memories, and that imprint starts in utero. What we’re actually looking at is the impact of the multigenerational family history. Stress that affected one generation will be played out very exactly in the next generation to the degree that next generation has understood or not understood it, has dealt with it or not dealt with it so fundamentally, so long as we’re not conscious, we’re going to pass our stress and our trauma to our kids.” So with that being said, I’d love to start by focusing on the spectrum of what unborn children can experience between conception and birth. And this is actually a relatively new understanding that there is awareness. And I would invite Laura, would you like to start?

00:06:38 Laura

Yeah. First of all, I want to say this is big, what you shared, really, when you were reading, I had some kind of reaction in my body. I really felt, oh, my God, this is big. It’s huge. But it’s so important. Yeah. When we were in the womb, and all the babies who are in the womb, they feel everything. They feel their mother’s emotions, they feel what’s going on and their mother’s lives, the stress, the joy, anger, sadness, beauty, everything. So I remember when I was a student midwife, this was never taught in my, was never talked about during my university, there was this belief that baby don’t feel, don’t do anything, don’t feel. They just grow in the womb, that’s all. And then they are born. Maybe there was this concept, maybe they suffer when they are during birth, and then they are born, and then that’s the time where maybe they feel something, or maybe not. We were not really sure. And now with this new awareness, there is so much that actually we can do, and we can really hold space as a community for this baby and this mother and this family that is going through something, because we will always be, and we are always exposed to emotions. We are human beings. Emotions are part of ourselves. But it’s really to be present and validate, and what’s present in that, that mother experienced during pregnant, from conception or even before, until postpartum. So I would leave it like that. I know Hannah has more to share.

00:08:41 Rosemary

Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you so much, Laura. Hannah, what would you like to say to this?

00:08:48 Hannah

Just how profound that is? What attracted me to Gabor so much into compassionate inquiry is he’s able to say the truth in such a simple, clear way. And just adding on to what Laura was saying, that babies feel, they’re sentient. We’re all sentient beings from the moment of conception, maybe before, who knows? But definitely from conception. And that babies feel everything that’s happening in their mother, in those around them. And it’s not something to be afraid of, that I’m passing something on to my child that may be traumatic, that may be intense, because Gabor also talks about that the cause of trauma is lack of connection. And so an infant, whether in utero, born, whatever, that they be related to as a feeling, being, knowing that they feel everything, and that the parents can talk to them, can let them know that this is going on, that this doesn’t have anything to do with them, but just to nurture that. Knowing that babies feel. Babies know they’re already alive, even in the womb, they’re there just to check.

00:10:13 Rosemary

That I understood you correctly. What you’re saying is while a woman is pregnant, that the family talks to the baby and just begin that dialogue well before the baby’s born.

00:10:25 Hannah

Absolutely. Yeah. Just. Yeah, relate.

00:10:30 Laura

I just want to add that parents are parents from the moment of conception, not from the moment babies are born. So that connection that Hannah was talking about can start, and it’s important that starts from the womb. The talking, caressing the abdomen, and acknowledge the baby, the presence and acknowledging the feeling, and also differentiate and tell the baby mommy is having stress or is going through something, but this is not on you. It’s mine. I feel it’s the first opportunity that parents have to acknowledge their feelings, the emotions, and to teach the baby that emotions are part of life.

00:11:18 Rosemary

Yeah. Beautiful. And I have a small personal example. My daughter is pregnant right now, and she has a puppy who’s been with her for a month or so. And the puppy likes to rest her chin on my daughter’s belly. And it’s like there’s such intuitive knowing amongst creatures, and it’s beautiful. They’re getting to know each other in this very unique, special way. So thank you both for your answers on that. Now I’m wondering if you could share a story, either one of you or both, that illustrates the distinction between memory or recall. I’m just wondering if we can perhaps explore the relationship of imprinted, implicit and explicit memories just to get a sense of what we bring with us into the world through the birth canal.

00:12:17 Laura

So, first of all, an explicit memory is something that we recall. This morning I went to the grocery to buy rice and flour and fruits, and I recall that. And it’s a memory that we can recall easily. And implicit memory, we may not be able to recall, but it’s in our bodies. It lives in our bodies. Birth, pregnancy, experience as a fetus, as a baby, and birth postpartum, we may not recall it, but as memory that we can talk. Yes, I was born C section. Yeah, I know that because my mother told me. But there are few things that our bodies remember knows because it’s imprinted in ourselves and we may access it through compassionate inquiry or other approaches. And so we can bring it to the surface when we are able to access it through the body. So I give you an example of my own birth and my own birth imprint and my own experience. I was born through C section. My mom was very young and she went into the clinic end of pregnancy, and the doctor told her I wasn’t positioned very well and they needed to do a C section. So in my own personal work, healing, I accessed to implicit memories many times also through compassionate inquiry, but also other approaches. And through accessing these implicit memories, I recalled many things of what happened to me. Not rationally, but my body really was shouting aloud on the telling me, like really showing me how it was for me as a fetus, as a baby, that experience. And, for example, in one session, I could feel that somehow I was stuck and my head was stuck somehow. And I know that because if you look at all my pictures, you see my face? My normal posture is a bit tilted. My head is a bit tilted. And I know this comes from my birth. And so I have a kind of a scar, I would say an imprint from my birth, but not only physically, also how I do things in my life. For example, as a c section baby. The classic one is I never finished project because at some point, I stop myself, and I have this belief coming up that I can’t finish project because I’m not good enough or I can’t do it. And I have this pattern that then, once I realized it, I could go back and really welcome it and understanding it and be there with that part of me. With that part of me. There was a baby. So that a little bit. An example of my personal story.

00:15:51 Rosemary

That’s amazing. That’s a beautiful way to explain the imprint, because it’s almost as if it imprinted your physicality in addition to any other part of you. So thank you. I just got that impression of you with this slight tilt coming into the world, because that’s how you were in the womb. Beautiful. Thank you, Hannah.

00:16:16 Hannah

Yeah, I was smiling, Lara, as you were sharing that, because we’ve been creating the portal training, and now it’s. We need this other thing, and we need this other thing. I’m like, no, it’s finished, Lara. Yeah. Through my experience as a midwife, it became really clear to me that we carry our birth experience in our bodies and working with women and starting to ask them what happened for you when you were born and getting, oh, they’re doing the same thing as a pregnant woman birthing their child and noticing that, bringing it forward so that there was consciousness around it, just even asking and talking about it allowed them to have more choices, allowed them to become aware of that implicit memory that was being held in their bodies, that they were. Were carrying forward. So I started doing rebirthing, which was a breathing technique, which helps people, assist people to access their body memory. And it became the method that I used to support parents in preparation for birth, so that they could become aware of what their own experience had been.

00:17:36 Rosemary

I’m finding that fascinating – what sorts of things. Could someone going through that exercise learn about themselves? If you think back to the people you took through it.

00:17:50 Hannah

Yeah. And just to say, now Lara and I are doing it with compassionate inquiries. There are different methods for accessing birth memory and all kinds of things. For me personally, I got the body memory of that my mother did not feel safe when she was laboring, and that transferred to me. I was born with that lack of safety, the sense of that there’s danger, and so it’s an imprint that I’ve worked with my whole life to come into that sense of safety in my body. But knowing that was there for me from the get go, that was there in my mother, that allows me to show up for that newborn part of me, the in utero part of me, and have compassion. Not just replaying it unconsciously, but be the one that can be there and bring compassion to that little one and what she went through. But people remember all types of things, and it’s not just the experience. It’s also, like we were saying, the lack of connection, so no one being there for them in their birth experience and what they made it mean. The things we learn in compassionate inquiry.

00:19:12 Rosemary

And that’s a beautiful explanation. I wonder, if we looked at it from the opposite end, what could be going on with somebody in their life that might suggest, you know what? If I went through a rebirthing experience, I might get clarity on this. Is there any way we could connect the dots from the outside in, if that makes sense?

00:19:36 Hannah

Oh, yeah, absolutely. In doing a compassionate inquiry session, we ask, how far back does this go? And if they’re not able to find words, if they’re just having a sense of whatever, they can go back. Could this have happened when you were in the womb? What was your mother experiencing? If there’s indicators that it might be a birth or an in utero experience. So you just ask those questions and then it opens up, right?

00:20:09 Rosemary

Yeah.

00:20:09 Hannah

And even if someone doesn’t have the memory their body remembers, so just giving them that permission, what’s your sense of what might have been going on? The one, it gives them the permission to actually access their body memory and to trust it and to go with it, to trust their felt sense.

00:20:32 Rosemary

Thank you. I’m curious about it because I was adopted as a baby and I have no idea what my birth mother’s birth experience was like and I don’t recall. So I would be intrigued to go through that process, but I just wondered if that’s why I asked. The question is, maybe someone’s pregnant and having a difficult time, like early stages, they may want to go back and revisit. I’m just trying to get a sense of where people could be at in their lives, where this might be a pathway to answers. And maybe they’re not in regular therapy, maybe they’re not working with a compassionate inquiry practitioner. I won’t call them red flags, but maybe, like, yellow flags, it’s, ooh, this could relate to that. So thank you for your answer.

00:21:18 Laura

Can I add something?

Just to say that birth is a transition and also in our life, every time we make a transition or we do something or we prepare for something or we create projects or we need to pack our bags and leave for travel, our birth imprint might show up. We might get stressed before a big project or during creating a big project. And as I was saying before leave before it’s completed or procrastinate or believing that we are not good, we are not worth it, whatever it comes up. But our birth imprint might come up in all creative projects and in all transition of our life. For listeners, I would say, pay attention to your transition, how you do things, how you create things, because your birth imprint might show up. And also for in pregnancy, for example, not only transition, not only how you create and how you’re creating your baby, but also for. I know many of my clients, for many of my clients, this is the truth, that during pregnancy, some implicit memory may come to surface, because pregnancy, you are a channel. You are so open and raw. And for some clients, some of their experience in childhood or even during birth might come up. And that’s maybe an opportunity if you want to call a therapist or someone that can really hold space for you and welcome that part of you that maybe now is ready to be seen and integrate.

00:23:14 Rosemary

Thank you. So it could show up as a dream. It could show up as a flashback or just a hunch that you know something that you didn’t know before. That’s great, Laura. Thank you. Now, is there anything else either of you would like to share about the prenatal experience? You’re both very experienced midwives, and I’m sure there’s not too much that surprises you, but something that our listeners might not know, that maybe surprises a lot of the families that you support.

00:23:57 Hannah

It’s a great question, Rosemary. I think what comes up is just how precious life is, how connected we really are, how important life is. These are big things, pregnancy and birth. They’re sacred times. They’re times of transition, and they’re not medical events. I just want to add that, that something deep is going on. Profound, precious, that sacred, that deserves that level of awareness, that level of support for what’s happening. I think that’s always a surprise, even for me, after however many births I have been gifted to be part of, just that. Sacredness.

00:24:53 Laura

I just want to say that I was thinking the same, Hannah. And I also want to add that pregnancy is an opportunity for that person, the couples, the family, to really connect and reconnect with themselves, listen, getting to know themselves even more. And yes, there is a lot going on in pregnancy, so many checks, so many things to do. But I think the most important thing to do is be and connect and listen and be present to this amazing event that is happening inside you.

00:25:37 Rosemary

Yes, and that’s great advice, because for many women, we aren’t as present during that period as we could be, because it seems like there’s so much to prepare and we want to be ready. I was very present during my maternity leave, postnatal, and that was one of the most beautiful times of my life. But I really appreciate that you said that, Laura, because it’s a magical time. Our bodies are becoming vessels for the creation of another human. And yes, it’s nice to have their nursery ready. However, also very important to really focus on what is happening and being present to that process. So thank you. Now, as we move forward, I have another quote here from Gabor. He says, trauma programs the nervous system, so that it’s constantly in defensive mode, even when there’s no danger, we react as if there was, or we don’t recognize danger when it’s really there. And the problem with being in a defensive mode is that you can survive, but you can’t grow and thrive emotionally. So on reading this quote, I’m wondering, can it be helpful for infants who’ve experienced traumatic births to go back and re-experience their births as adults? We did touch on that a little bit, but does that help them get over the vigilance and the defensiveness that can be with us all our lives? Yeah, just looping back to re-experiencing their births.

00:27:17 Hannah

For me personally, it’s been essential. I can’t imagine having a quality life that I had the honor of having without really being willing to look at what happened to me at birth, what was going on for my mother, my father, all of that, just the ancestral inheritance that happens during that time also. There’s just so much, it feels like the basement of what foreshadow’s there, that’s being held, that is not just a difficulty, but also an opportunity, a doorway for growing. Right? This is the gifts of trauma, the podcast, which I love. So I feel the same way about exploring that early time, because it’s what affects us, it’s what brings the quality of our life. It’s the undercurrent, the undertone of all of it. So why not look at it? Why not explore it? Why not be in touch with all.

00:28:27 Rosemary

Of that it’s a beautiful metaphor because I’m very visual. And I just had a moment imagining living in a house all my life that had a basement, but never exploring it, never going down there. It’s unimaginable. Laura, would you like to add anything?

00:28:45 Laura

Just to say that it has been essential for my life, too, and that it really helped me reconnect with myself and with those parts of myself that were left, at least for me, that was my experience, that were left alone. And by accessing my early memories, it really helped me heal me, heal that part of me that was believing that she was by herself and she needed to do everything by herself. And she’s responsible for everything. So it can be painful to see those and to see those parts of ourselves, but it’s so healing when we reconnect. It gave me so much opportunity to reconnect, even with my intuition, to trust me, because I know my mother at the time was also a bit disconnected. So going back, it really helped me to find connection and to trust myself. That has always been an issue for me, to really trust my intuition. That was, for me, so essential to do that as a midwife, as a compassionate inquiry practitioner. So important to trust our own intuitions and be connected with ourselves.

00:30:16 Rosemary

It certainly is. Thank you, Lara. Beautiful. Obviously, you’re very experienced over the course of your careers in midwifery. I wonder today or recently, have you noticed any trends or changes in the physical challenges and emotional stresses experienced by mothers and their unborn children that like during pregnancy? And the reason I ask as paulo alto.edu defines the effects of emotional trauma during pregnancy as prenatal toxic stress, which have profound implications for both the mother and the developing fetus. Another source expanded this a little further in regards to those implications and said that they can be low birth weight, they could be preterm births, and there could be increased risk for other health problems. And this is all linked to the growing toxicity of our environment, our culture, our food sources. I’m just wondering what you’ve observed that kind of fits within that context.

00:31:30 Laura

First of all, I want to mention the study, the adverse babyhood experience. We have the adverse childhood experience that you talked in the previous podcast, but we also have the adverse babyhood experience that basically it’s a study by Veronique Mead, who wrote in this article how experiencing pregnancy, birth and early postpartum can impact the baby’s life forever. And that’s everything that you said, the environment, what we eat, and what the mother is experiencing. So what I’m noticing as a midwife is the lack of emotional support during pregnancy, the old rite of passage, pregnancy, birth, and postpartum is becoming so medicalized that sometimes we forget who we have in front of us. The person that is going through unexperienced emotions, maybe stress, and there is no time to even ask a question. How are you? What’s going on in your life? Are you stressed? What emotions are present for you? It’s just that tick box of tasks to do, and which I’m not saying is not important. Of course, it’s important to do some multinational checks, but I feel it’s equally and even more important to be present with the experience of the person that we have in front of us and to welcome and to co regulate that environment where we are with that person, with the couple, with the family. So I’m seeing a lot of lack of support, and I work privately. The people that come to me many times are couples and women, mothers that leave the mainstream maternity care because they don’t find any space for their emotions, for their stress, for their experience. And we. I’m also witnessing, and not only me, also other colleagues, but also studies, research that we have is that birth is becoming traumatic for many women experience birth as a traumatic event and not as a joyful event. And we know now there are many research telling us that one in three women experience birth as traumatic. And I want to add postpartum as well, that many women and partners show symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder. And also there is a lack of support in postpartum isolation and lack of community of people supporting that. Families going through a big transformation.

00:34:56 Rosemary

Yeah. Very well said, Laura. As I was listening to your answer, I was thinking, of course a family is growing. A pregnant mom could be looking at moving house. If she’s been working, she’s looking at a loss of income, and if she’s having a difficult pregnancy, relationship with her partner may not be great. And if there’s existing children, it’s figuring out how to make it all work. When the new members in the family. There’s a lot going on. Hannah, would you like to say anything about trends or changes you’ve noticed?

00:35:29 Hannah

Yeah, I just. Laura covered a lot, and I just want to add that I started attending births in the 1970s, so that kind of ages me. And what I notice now is there’s a culture of fear around birth that’s just movies, books, just being pregnant, walking into a grocery store, and for some reason, other people telling their horror stories of birth. It’s just like there’s so much fear around birth, and it does not support a woman to be afraid of herself, of her body. Pregnant people need support. They need connection. They need to know that it’s okay, it’s right for them to trust their bodies, that they have the answers inside, so that they can relax, because their body knows what to do. Their body knows how to give birth. And in that environment of safety and trust and support, that they can relax and that birth can happen for themselves and for their child. So just bringing that forward more is so needed.

00:36:49 Rosemary

Yeah, and your answer couldn’t be more perfect, because I’d like to share a quote from Gordon Neufelt with you on the role of unconditional parental love, which speaks to what you just said, and then come back to each of you for your perspectives. He says, unconditional parental love is the indispensable nutrient for the child’s healthy emotional growth. The first task is to create space in the child’s heart for the certainty that she is precisely the person the parents want and love. She does not have to do anything or be any different to earn that love. In fact, she cannot do anything since that love cannot be won or lost. The child can be ornery, unpleasant, whiny, uncooperative, and plain rude. And that parent still lets her feel loved. Ways have to be found to convey the unacceptability of certain behaviors without making the child herself feel unaccepted. She has to be able to bring her unrest, her least likable characteristics, to the parent and still receive the parents absolutely satisfying, security inducing, unconditional love. Now, what would either of you like to say about what Gordon Neufeld defined as the indispensable nutrient for the child’s healthy emotional growth.

00:38:11 Hannah

I totally agree. And when you were reading that, I could feel my body just relax. I don’t know how it was for others, that that’s what’s necessary, and it’s what’s necessary for the pregnant person, the family, also, just to have that unconditional space where they can come forward, where all of their feelings and whatever is there can come forward so that they can connect with that, deepen wisdom in themselves, and then bring that to their child.

00:38:51 Laura

I know because of the women I looked after around the world. And they have taught me to accept who we are, how we are, and to accept life, that what we are going through is perfect. And that unconditional acceptance and love, that is the teaching that I always take with me everywhere I go, with every person, really, to see a person in front of me and just be with who the person is with love and compassion.

00:39:28 Rosemary

That is a very distinct difference to six minutes in with your obstetrician, checking boxes and dealing with all the medical paraphernalia. So thank you, Laura. That’s great. I’d love for you both to shine some light on the darkness of postpartum depression and its effect on all mom baby partners families. But first, I’d like to share a couple of quotes that offer very different perspectives, really just to illustrate how individual this experience can be and how varied it can be as well. The degree and intensity of my postpartum depression shocked me. I am predisposed to depression, but what surprised me this time was the physical pain. I hadn’t realized the depths to which you can ache. Limbs, back, torso, head, everything hurt and it went on for 15 months. I felt as if I was covered in tar and everything took 50 times more effort than normal. I wished I could have cried, but there was no relief during that time. My version of depression is almost below crying where there is just despondency. Amazingly, it didn’t hinder the creative process and I wrote the album havoc and bright lights. I had various therapies and now I feel all light and springy. Thankfully, it didn’t interfere with the bond with my son, although I think that has strengthened since I got better. And that’s a quote from Alanis Morissette, if you’re wondering. With the reference to the album she was able to write. And here’s the next quote. I had severe postpartum depression. When I got to the point of postpartum depression, there was no reason to get out of bed. I was too overwhelmed to get dressed. It was just so dark. I think that’s the only word I can explain to. I finally just handed my baby over to the babysitter, gave her my credit cards in cash and said, something’s wrong with me. And I got into the car and drove away. I think I was trying to drive my car off a cliff probably five times. But you know what? I was raised as a Christian and I knew here, pointing at her heart, that was the stupidest thing in the world. But I knew here she pointed to her head. It felt so right that I really felt that everybody would be better off without me. That is the biggest lie of depression. There’s nothing good in leaving anybody behind. So if you’re feeling that, please know that there will be light and get help, because that is the absolute lie. My mother tracked me down. She said when I had your brother, my last child. I did the same thing you did. I got into a car and I drove away. And she said, I made it through and so will you. And I never believed that was possible, but I believed my mother. And that quote was from Marie Osment. So very different perspectives. But these are publicly shared quotes, so it’s fair to share them here. Now, I wonder what you’d like to say about postpartum depression. And I’m also a little bit curious as to whether, what we discussed before about the increasing toxicity of the world, the increasing social isolation of people, if that’s all playing into the frequency of postpartum depression with women you either work with or women that you’ve heard about. Laura, would you like to start?

00:43:00 Laura

Yeah. I want to start saying that postpartum is really neglected. We, at least in the medical world, we talk a lot about the birth is a main event, but actually birth, an event that maybe lasts 12 hours or less or more, and then postpartum arrives, and many women are told to go home if they gave birth in the hospital. And then what? They arrive home, and many of them are by themselves or alone or they don’t have any support or they can’t afford support for every woman is different. And that also depends, yes, of what you were describing before they experienced their trauma. They’re experiencing before pregnancy, their childhood, and if they had support before. And that will impact their experience in postpartum, their diet, what they eat. And also women give a lot in postpartum for those one who breastfeed, they produce milk. And sometimes, I know many women that by themselves, they can’t cook all the time or they don’t have time to eat or they eat something quick. Many women have deprivation of vitamins. And so these all impact postpartum. As we said before, their perception, their perspective depends on who they are as a person, their experience before pregnancy. I noticed that many women that have a traumatic experience at birth, they might not have a great postpartum experience, but majority of them is because of their previous experience, their trauma that maybe they haven’t dealt before pregnancy. And they arrive in postpartum, where you take care of a baby. If you are a couple, you’re not a couple anymore. You are a family. There is a lot going on, a lot of emotions as well. And there is this famous quote, to raise a child, you need a village. And I don’t think that a mother is meant to deal this big transformation by herself. In fact, when I was in Africa, what I witnessed is that women are with other women, are with their communities, and the child belongs to everyone. The child can be left with the aunt, with the grandmother, with another person. If the woman needs to do something, needs to cook for other children, I think it’s better if there is a lot of support and acknowledgement of what is going through them, what they are experiencing. That could be the darkest experience to the brightest experience, and every single emotion, everything is okay. Can we just accept that they can be had with love and acceptance and compassion, and that this also will pass? And this is a big transformation?

00:46:23 Rosemary

And I love the idea of the village because our modern culture, we’re all cocooned in our individual houses. And Gabor also references the indigenous communities being some of the best parenting he’s ever seen, because the extended family, the extended support.

00:46:40 Hannah

I just want to agree that it’s the social isolation that women experience birthing people experience that’s so unnatural. It’s not how we’re meant to be parenting at all. And I had the good fortune of being a midwife in a Mormon, predominantly Mormon community, where there was the mothers, the grandmothers, which would be there at the births, and there was just so much support for what they were doing, the value of mothering, of parenting. So the social isolation and then the medicalization of birth is where it’s not recognized for the sacred event that it is. When that sacredness is not there, it takes something away from the soul of what’s happening. And then the woman, the postpartum woman, has the belief, what’s wrong with me? That I’m feeling these things? Why can I not have my mothering instincts that I know should be there and believes that it’s her? And there she is in isolation with that and with those thoughts. And it’s not about her at all. It’s about how she’s been treated. It’s about how there’s been lack of awareness of the sacredness, of who she is and what she is doing, bringing life forward. So we want to remember that again when the indigenous people know this so much and we bring that in for ourselves, for all people.

00:48:24 Rosemary

Yeah, yeah. And beautifully said, and you’ve just made me chuckle. I was thinking back to a comment my daughter’s dad made at the end of my maternity leave, which in those days, it took seven months off. He said, you’ve had all this time off. Why didn’t you do something useful? Teach yourself Photoshop? So it can come very close. It can come from inside the house as well, the lack of understanding. But I think I didn’t. And I still don’t have an answer for that because he just didn’t get it. Not only do we not have the extended community, most of the time we can have our partner within the home just not getting what this experience is all about. On that note, I’d like to shift a little bit to the training program that you have just launched and you’ve both been very involved in developing. It’s called the portal. It’s part of the compassionate inquiry suite of training programs. And would it be fair to say that you are co creators of this program?

00:49:27 Hannah

Definitely. I would say Lara was the instigator and I was the willing co conspirator of it. Yeah.

00:49:37 Rosemary

Okay, great. So I wonder if you could share, what’s your vision for this program? How might it change both the participants, the trainees, in how they view this whole prenatal, perinatal, postnatal experience and how they’re able to support families and infants through their own unique experiences?

00:50:04 Hannah

We have big desire and big dream for this training, that it’s an opportunity for people to explore their own birth imprinting and to bring healing within themselves as birth professionals and parents. Because as we know in compassionate inquiry, anything that we want to affect on the outer, we have to do that for ourselves on the inner. So we very much brought that into this training. We want to have birth professionals have the tools, the insight, the awareness around the importance of this time and the effect that it has on the people that they work with so that they can make a change, so that we can really make a deep change what’s happening in the world and for people being born and for mothers and for the feminine aspect that’s been neglected and really needs to be brought back in the health.

00:51:06 Rosemary

Thank you. Thank you for doing that. And thank you for sharing that. It seems like it also could be really pivotal training for family therapists, for therapists who work with children, anybody who touches that realm. So thank you, Laura.

00:51:20 Laura

When I birthed this dream, it was few years ago and I was on my last job in a hospital setting, and I was so frustrated. I was actually starting the professional training, compassionate inquiry professional training. And I could see it. I’m a person that as visions and visualize my thing. So I was seeing how compassionate inquiry would fit in my work as a midwife and for every birth worker or perinatal therapist. And I was very frustrated because mainly the hospital setting, the medical system didn’t online with me anymore. I really felt inside me that for me, was toxic to be to work in that environment. And I was frustrated because I wanted to change things, but it was too much for me and to do it by myself. I really wanted ally and I really wanted to bring another approach to our culture, birthing culture, especially in the hospital, in the medical system. Yes, I had a big vision and a big dream, and it came true. And we created, Hannah and I in the last year created portal. And I really hold this big vision of there is another way that we can support people, parents, mothers, fathers, in a more compassionate way. I was really tired and frustrated on the blaming and shaming culture that there is and the fear around birth. I was done with that. And I really birthed this idea with objective of it’s possible to bring compassion in the birthing world. It’s possible to to be human in front of another human. Leave aside, it’s my fault. It’s your fault. You’re wrong. I’m right. Something is gonna happen or you’re gonna have this if you don’t do this. No, it didn’t align with me anymore. I really want to have that relationship with my client. That is the main thing that changed everything for a pregnant woman, person, couple, family, the relationship that we establish with them.

00:54:06 Rosemary

Beautiful.

00:54:08 Laura

So that was how I started to dream about.

00:54:11 Rosemary

And your face lights up when you talk about it. I’m sure people can hear the energy in your voice, but I get to see your face and you’re just glowing as you were describing that. So it’s funny, I remember Hannah saying earlier that you keep wanting to add things on, but it seems from what you’ve said, this is exactly what they need to know. The challenge, as we did an episode with Aisling Quiery, who’s an MD, a GP, and working within the constraints of the healthcare system. That’s a whole other thing that physicians need to deal with when they take more time and they actually ask the questions that Gabor asked of his patients. How are you? What’s going on at home, what’s going on at work, what’s happening in your life? And it’s so needed. So thank you. Thank you to you both for initiating this program and bringing this vision to life. It sounds like the perfect partnership. I have one last question for you because I realize we’re at the end of our time together, but. And, yeah, it’s really having the last word, if you will, with the listeners. So what would you like to say to parents or prospective parents who are either embarking or considering embarking on the pregnancy journey in this day and age, with all there is to be dealt with. What would you like to whisper in their ear as they contemplate this big life change?

00:55:42 Laura

Can I start? Like sharing a little story.

00:55:48 Rosemary

Love that.

00:55:50 Laura

I remember it was in South Sudan, and there was this woman who was pregnant of twins. The first one was born, and then the ambulance was called and I went to pick her up because the baby was not in a very good position to be born. So I take her on the ambulance, we go back to the birth center, and she was telling me, I don’t want c section. I don’t want a caesarean section. I want to birth this baby. I know I can do it. You have plenty of resources, so invent something. I trust you, but don’t cut me, because I don’t want that. I know this is possible. And then we managed to, with her permission, to do a maneuver to have the baby to be born. And it did happen. So I’m telling this story because it was so important for me to say that when I studied midwifery, they taught me so many things. You have to do this, check for this. You have to use this tool for that one. You can’t not do something because then this will happen and it will be tragic. I was taught that I always had to do something. I always had to interfere in the birthing process to prevent something that maybe will never happen. When I arrived in Africa and I didn’t have any resource, I just had myself, my presence, my hand. I was lost because actually I learned that I didn’t need anything, that the women were giving birth by themselves. They didn’t even need me. And I really learned that everyone, especially here we are talking about birth, the parenthood journey, that everything is inside us. And these women that I looked after, they taught me that. They taught me, I don’t want c section. I don’t want this intervention, because I know I can do it. I just need some support. They knew what they wanted because they had their answers. They were connected with their intuition. And so my message is for parents to be, to really find your own way, whatever it is, to really look inside you and to have supporters around you that really believe in you, in your ability to do this and to remind you this all the time, and to really look inside you because you have all the answers. You know exactly what you need to do. So I want to just share what so many women around the world taught me, which makes me very emotional to say that and to share.

00:59:12 Rosemary

Thank you. Well said. Very well said. Hannah, what words would you like to share with our listeners?

00:59:24 Hannah

I would like to encourage each of us to trust in ourselves. I would say trust in yourself. Surround yourself with people who trust you, who can foster that sense of trust. Also to witness a woman who trusts herself giving birth, opening, channeling life to come forward, is the most beautiful, amazing experience to have. And even when there’s complications, still trust yourself. You have the answers inside. So that’s the main message that I would want to convey. And the other one is work on your trauma. You’re not broken. You’re not broken in any way, shape or form. And you can bring love and healing to those places in yourself. And guaranteed as a parent, whatever trauma you have that you’re still holding at every age, when your child becomes that age, that trauma will come forward. So just to make it a habit of self love and self care, to do the inner work, because you’re doing it for yourself, you’re doing it for your family, you’re doing it for the world. It’s important, necessary work. And it’s not because there’s anything wrong with you. It’s not because you’re broken. It’s because that’s the sacred wound where the gift can come forward.

01:01:09 Rosemary

Beautifully said. Thank you, Hannah, and thank you both. I can hear in your voices how creating the portal truly was a labor of love. Pun intended. Congratulations. It’s a lot of work and I’m sure it’s going to do so much for so many. So thank you. Thank you for that. And thank you for both being here today on the gifts of Trauma podcast. It’s been an absolute delight to have you both.

01:01:34 Hannah

Thank you so much, Rosemary, for having us.