A Painful Journey--The Healing of Certification.

When I first received my educator's training materials from ALACE, I began reading with much excitement. Soon, though, as I made my way through books such as Open Season and Birth As An American Rite of Passage, other emotions began to surface.

All the memories of my birth experiences were suddenly being held up next to facts and feelings that somewhere I had known all along. Every decision and mistake my doctors, husband, and I had made were laid before me along with the reality of what was happening to so many other women. As I read, I also cried, got chills, and found a welling anger within myself.

Over time (and after a gut-pouring e-mail to Director of Teacher Training, Karen Pestlin), I felt the emotions tame themselves enough that I could move forward in my training and not feel quite so raw. I examined my memories and made peace with myself the best I could. Finally, so many of my sadnesses were validated and I found I had been right to feel violated by my first experience. I also found I could still trust my current doctor who had attended our second labor and birth of our daughter.

My frustration at having received this new knowledge after my delivery settled into a passionate resign to pass it all on. But my anger settled into what I consider a "slow burn." This fury and passion about the handling of women and birth has since remained at my core enough to keep me motivated, but not enough to hurt me. At times I have felt if I truly thought about all of it as deeply as I could, I would not be able to deal with that pain and sadness, so I keep it kindling inside.

In the last few days, though, I found myself at the other extreme. After watching the TV show A Baby Story for the first time, I saw four or five episodes dealing very clearly with the "domino theory of intervention." Yet after all that was done to these women in labor and delivery, the), were so very thrilled to hold those precious babies. I felt their joy along with them, and remembered that moment with both my children. I started wondering why we should even care so much about how the baby gets here. This is society now--this is how it is done. Is it not just another ideal dream to expect women to pass up these "advances" in medicine, just because we think birth should be more "natural"?

Then I remembered (on my son's fifth birthday) how I felt after that euphoria of birth wore off. So many things came back to me then--how they took him away to the nursery and I tried to walk to the bathroom in so much pain, how they brought him to me in the middle of the night and I could barely walk to change his diaper; how, with my second birth, the nurses told me there was no food available because dinner had already been served, so I starved all night while my husband was at home with our son as wi. had agreed. I knew something was missing, and five years later I discovered how very much had been absent. If only I had known....

How many other women, and their partners, walk around with those same thoughts? How would their choices have differed if they had been given more knowledge, more information, more choices to make in the first place? How much damage (physical and emotional) could be avoided if all women had access to all the information they need?

So I carry my anger, but my anger is coupled with knowledge and the resources that I will use as a teacher. The anger I carried before, as many women do, only eats at the hearts and souls of new mothers. This is a role I have accepted as a childbirth educator. It is the role we accept when we become labor assistants and midwives and, sometimes, nurses. We will carry all that we can and pass on all that we have to as many women as we can reach. We will keep that slow burn as our on-going motivation to learn more and teach more, with nothing but the purest intent. So, maybe, they can walk with a lighter heart, and then, so will we.

--Mary Elisabeth Pound is a provisionally certified Childbirth Educator with A LAC E and is currently certifying with DONA (Doulas of North America). She has two children; Ethan who is five and Gilli who is 2. Her husband, David, is an artist and they have been married for 7 years. They homeschool the children and are both working on bachelor's degrees. They live in Cookeville, Tennessee.