Doula Saga

28/10/2025

Ideén om Förlossning på kvinnors villkor är under ständig attack. Just nu kanske värre än på länge. Jag blev djupt besviken på Doulakåren när nästan inte en enda doula dök upp för att demonstrera mot hem-barnmorskan Agneta Bergenheims yrkesförbud. Är legitimitet i vårdmaskinens ögon viktigare än kvinnors rättigheter, kan jag inte låta bli att undra.

26/04/2025

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🌿𝐎𝐍𝐄 𝐖𝐄𝐄𝐊 𝐋𝐄𝐅𝐓 𝐓𝐎 𝐒𝐈𝐆𝐍 𝐔𝐏 𝐅𝐎𝐑 𝐂𝐋𝐀𝐒𝐒🌿
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Did you know?

In the early 1970's, over 90% of births were vaginal.

The cesarean rate back then? Just 5%.

By the end of the decade, it had crept up to 15% and it’s only skyrocketed since.

So what changed?

❌Not our bodies.
❌Not evolution.
❌Not some sudden inability to birth.

What changed was the system.

➖More interventions.
➖More monitoring.
➖More control.
➖More fear.
➖Less trust.

OBs became less like guardians of normal birth and more like managers of a medical event.

If 90% of births were vaginal just a few decades ago, ask yourself what it would it take to get back there?

And how many of today’s cesareans are truly necessary?

Normal birth isn’t a thing of the past.

It’s still possible.

✨It just needs space.
✨Respect.
✨Support.

⭐️And a system that remembers how to trust it.

🤩𝐉𝐨𝐢𝐧 𝐦𝐞 𝐨𝐧 𝐌𝐚𝐲 𝟒 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐚 𝟒 𝐰𝐞𝐞𝐤 𝐯𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐥 𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐛𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐡 𝐜𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐬!

🔥𝐉𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐰𝐞𝐞𝐤 𝐥𝐞𝐟𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧 𝐮𝐩!!

♦️𝐍𝐎 𝐂𝐋𝐀𝐒𝐒𝐄𝐒 𝐈𝐍 𝐉𝐔𝐍𝐄!

✍🏾𝐈𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧 𝐮𝐩 𝐭𝐨𝐝𝐚𝐲 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐠𝐞𝐭 𝐢𝐦𝐦𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐚𝐜𝐜𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐦𝐲 𝐜𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐬 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝟏.𝟓 𝐡𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐛𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐡 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐯𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐨!

📆𝐄𝐚𝐜𝐡 𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐢𝐬 𝟒 𝐰𝐞𝐞𝐤𝐬 and meets on 𝐒𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐚𝐭 𝟏𝟏𝐚𝐦 𝐩𝐬𝐭!

💻Class is 𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐯𝐢𝐚 𝐳𝐨𝐨𝐦 and 𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 will be available!

🫶🏽𝐁𝐁𝐈𝐏𝐎𝐂 discounts!

🌙𝐔𝐩𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐜𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐬 𝐚𝐯𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧𝐮𝐩𝐬:
➖𝐌𝐚𝐲 𝟒-𝟐𝟔
➖𝐉𝐮𝐥𝐲 𝟔-𝟐𝟕
➖𝐀𝐮𝐠𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝟏𝟎-𝟑𝟏
➖𝐒𝐞𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫 𝟕-𝟐𝟖

𝐒𝐈𝐆𝐍 𝐔𝐏
https://badassmotherbirther.com/childbirth-classes-1

26/12/2023

”Hur många centimeter öppet?” Varför vi måste sluta mäta antalet centimetrar under vaginala förlossningar Vissa saker ter sig rationella, noggranna och mycket precisa vid en första anbl…

17/08/2022

She was really happy when she first got into this relationship. He told her that he had her best interests at heart and that everything he did was to look after her. She believed him and was so excited.

One time she was hurting and she wanted medical assistance but he told her she couldn’t have medical assistance until she agreed to him fi*****ng her. She said no, but he wouldn’t let her get help until she agreed. So she said yes. She still thinks about that now.

Another time she didn’t want to be there, but he told her she wasn’t allowed to leave until she’d spoken to him whilst he tried to convince her to stay. He had his friends blocking the exits and telling her she had to stay and talk to him, and that she wasn’t allowed to leave. She felt trapped and cornered and scared, and felt like she had no choice but to stay.

Another time she told him she didn’t want to see him anymore, he’d hurt her so many times and left her feeling scared. He told her he’d call social services on her and have her child removed if she didn’t agree to carry on seeing him. So she stayed, terrified for her child.

One time she decided she didn’t want to do something with him, she wanted to stay at home and rest instead. He told her if she didn’t go to him, her and her baby would die and he was the only one that could save them. He failed to mention that actually, going to him put her and her baby at risk even more, but she was too scared by what he was saying to disagree. She wished she’d listened to her intuition.

Another time he asked her if he could touch her. She said no, she didn’t want him to. She overheard him talking with his friends about how he was going to do it anyway.

One time he was fi*****ng her and she started crying and asking him to stop because it was hurting. He said he would be finished in a minute and carried on. She begged him to stop, but instead he said it didn’t hurt that much, she was just being dramatic.

Another time She was in pain and kneeling on her knees, trying to get through it. He told her to lie on her back, even though that made the pain so much worse. When she said no, he got his friends to hold her down on her back and strapped her to the bed. It hurt so much, but he wouldn’t let her get back up.

One time she decided that she trusted her body, and he told her her body was broken and didn’t know what it was doing, and it would fail her. He scared her into distrusting her body.

He told her it was only safe if she stayed with him, and that she’d never make it on her own.

He fat shamed her, told her her body was failing, told her she had medical conditions that She never had, made her take test after test to try and find something conclusively wrong with her so he could prove that she needed him. When he couldn’t find anything wrong, he made things up to scare her into staying with him.

Sometimes he’d tell her that she had things wrong with her, and when she challenged him on that, he’d change the subject or deny ever having said it.

Towards the end of their relationship he pressured her into staying with him, despite her wanting to leave and do things on her own. He told her she’d never make it on her own. Everything started falling apart, and going wrong, every time she tried to take back control he told her if she didn’t listen to him She would die. In the end, she nearly died, because of everything he did, but he said that because she didn’t die, he had saved her. He started telling everyone how he saved her life, and she kept trying to tell them she was only in that position because of him in the first place, he nearly killed her, but they wouldn’t listen. They all praised him, and told her how lucky she was to have him, and she’d have died without him.

She tried to leave again after that, but everyone told her that last time she nearly died, and he had saved her, so she had to stay with him for her own protection and safety. Everyone called her delusional when she tried to explain he nearly killed her, he hadn’t saved her. He’d brainwashed them all to believe she couldn’t cope without him, so nobody supported her when she tried to leave. So She stayed. And it happened again.

Most women are in this relationship at some point in their lives. However it’s not with a boyfriend… it’s with maternity services. If this was a boyfriend, everyone would be up in arms telling her to leave, he’s abusing her, he’s gaslighting her, he’s putting her life in danger… but when it’s a medical service we’ve been conditioned to believe is necessary for us, we just ignore it and accept how we’re treated, class it as normal. It’s time for that to stop.

You have legal rights in pregnancy and birth, just the same as you do in every other aspect of your life. Just because you’re pregnant does not mean you lose your autonomy.

Lauren Marsh - Doula
The Ruby Nest

05/12/2021

Oof.
The first time I heard doulaing referred to as a “profession” and doulas as “professionals” was when I moved to America almost 5 years ago. It was odd to me that lay companionship would be labeled in such a way and that somehow, it was believed that such labels correlated with power and worth, when all I was seeing, was disempowerment and control. Then I got to live and breathe America and it’s systems. I even found myself getting pulled into this rhetoric and using the language, it’s a rapid slippery slope into the Douladom abyss here. Thankfully I’m still at the precipice. Who gains from calling doulaing a profession? It’s certainly not birthing people, nor is it doulas. When doulas strive to have their worth validated by oppressive systems and not birthing people, we are no longer doing what we are meant to do and we are complicit without accountability 👊🏽

02/11/2021

DEBATT. Problemen inom förlossningsvården är akuta och barnmorskorna flyr arbetsplatserna. De födande måste på allvar få förutsättningar att föda på ett tryggt, stärkande och skadefritt sätt, skriver flera organisationer.

28/10/2021

i gave up calling myself a doula a little more than a year ago since i felt, and still feel, i cannot be a person who enables this extremely misogynic system to continue. now all the head midwives of one of swedens biggest maternity ward is quitting for basically the same reason…

26/10/2021

31/08/2021

Doulas need to start a new conversation that recalibrates Douladom and takes into account the bigger picture, the future of both the doula role and the need for doulas to stand in their power to ultimately protect the rights of birthing people.

Let’s have a conversation about:

👊🏽 Doulas centering the human right of birthing people to chose their birth partners based on the birthing person’s own criteria
👊🏽 Doulas acknowledging that birthing people chose and recognize doulas as being essential to THEIR birth support team and NOT essential to the maternity care team within the MIC
👊🏽 Doulas standing firm in their autonomy and their non licensed, non regulated status
👊🏽 Doulas identifying that the MIC should not dictate or control their role as they are not employed by them
👊🏽 Doulas recognizing that their role is not to fulfill the requirements of the maternity care system and is always to center the preferences of the birthing person they have been hired to support
👊🏽 Doulas being clear about their role as advocates
👊🏽 Doulas actively challenging over control of their autonomous role by the MIC
👊🏽 Doulas recognizing and challenging over control by the doula training industrial complex
👊🏽 Doulas critically thinking about the implications of striving to become “essential members of a maternity care system”, or an “approved vendor doula” and the impact of these on the rights of birthing people, disparities in health outcomes, obstetric violence, birth trauma, mental health, primal health, breastfeeding and families and future generations

25/03/2021

Just a thought 🤷🏻‍♀️

What about our skills as:

👊🏽 activists
👊🏽 advocates
👊🏽 evidence analyzers
👊🏽 critical thinkers
👊🏽 educators
👊🏽 communicators
👊🏽 team builders
👊🏽 legislation changers
👊🏽 trauma preventers
👊🏽 rights protectors
👊🏽 harm reductionists

And much more .... that ultimately center those we serve and protect their right to a safe experience within a traumatized system of care? 🤔

01/02/2021

The power struggle and conflict with the system continues to own and disempower us. We have become consumed in proving our “professionalism”, focusing our attention on scope, credentials and jumping hoops to prove our worth to a system that has no interest in valuing our worth, only controlling it.

The wake up call is this - we are not owned by the system. The system does not define who we are, who we serve, where we serve and definitely not, how we do it. It is perplexing that as doulas , we are shocked to find ourselves so deeply embedded within the grasp of the system, when all along, we have looked there for validation of our worth and in doing so, we have rendered ourselves powerless. There is certainly no room for “we can change things from the inside” or being told “We value doulas BUT....”

So what do we do? We hold ourselves individually and collectively accountable for our disempowerment, complicit behavior in a harmful system and the centering of the system over the rights and needs of those we serve. We pull all of this apart, look at the bigger picture and sit with what it means to truly hold birthing people in their autonomy in a harmful system. We heal ourselves and we seek the skills that enable us to navigate a traumatized system that neither owns us, nor employs us 👊🏽

22/11/2020

a must read for all doulas

Stinger. It’s tough to face our own discomfort and unease within a system that is most definitely working against our inherent identity as Doulas. Advocacy requires deep internal work. The willingness to sit with who we are, our beliefs about birth, our own stories and traumas, our relationship and oppression with the system, our own power, autonomy and self advocacy and our submission and helplessness with the hierarchy of healthcare. Advocacy is not just a set of skills or something you say or do. It begins with knowing who you are and what you need to fully step into your own power as an advocate. Disempowered doulas cannot effectively center birthing people in their power within an oppressive system. “But Doulas don’t advocate” is one of the clearest symptoms of our oppression as Doulas. If 2020 has given us anything, it has given us the message that we need to step into our own power. Know who you are. Know what you need to do. Know what and who can help you get there . If you believe “but Doulas don’t advocate”, take the first step into creating something new by asking yourself why you hold this belief 👊🏽