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Hi, friend.
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I have had some amazing conversations with birth experts over the years.
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And for a long time, I've wanted to go back through some of my favorite episodes of the Birth Journeys podcast and pull out some of the greatest nuggets of wisdom that have come from these inspiring conversations.
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I'm starting with my mentor, Neri Life Choma, who has deeply shaped the way I prepare moms for childbirth.
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It's through her birth coach method that I received my certification as a transformational birth support coach.
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Before I play the clip, I want to explain why this conversation matters so much to me.
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Over the years, working as a labor nurse, I started noticing something that I didn't have language for at the time.
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Many moms would come into labor with very clear goals for their birth, but they had never really thought about how they were going to show up for the experience of labor itself.
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And I do not say that with any judgment.
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In many ways, I think moms have been unintentionally set up for failure by the way that natural birth has been talked about for decades.
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The problem is that external motivations, like this is the right thing to do or this is what I should want, are rarely strong enough to carry someone through the intensity of labor.
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Birth is much more like a marathon than a test of willpower.
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No one wakes up one day and runs 26 miles because they believe it's the right thing to do.
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People that successfully run marathons train their body and their nervous system for that experience.
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And much like training for a marathon, people who successfully achieve a natural childbirth and an experience they cherish practice how they will breathe, move, and respond when things get hard.
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And that is where the inner game of childbirth comes in.
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In my prenatal coaching program, I spend a lot of time helping moms connect with their internal motivations, their real reasons for the choices they are making, and we practice the skills that help the body work with labor instead of fighting it.
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My mentor Neri Life Choma explains this beautifully in the conversation you are about to hear.
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Today I have with me Neri Life Choma.
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Neri is a veteran childbirth educator, birth doula, and doula trainer, author of The Art of Coaching for Childbirth, and founder of the Birth Coach Method.
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Today she's here with me to talk about something that is a passion for me as well: the inner game of childbirth, prenatal coaching to overcome the internal resistance and success blockers so one can achieve their desired experiences.
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Neri, welcome.
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Thank you.
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Thank you.
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Thank you for having me.
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I didn't have words for what I was seeing until I started your program.
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And what I've noticed is patients come in with that disconnect between their goals and how they plan to show up for their goals.
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Yes, it is in our nature to give birth vaginally.
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However, the experience of going through vaginal birth for a modern woman is not natural.
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It's not part of her everyday life.
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And in this respect, it's not natural.
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And it's funny that we were talking about the natural birth movement, and at the same time, we were all using the metaphor that childbirth is like a marathon run.
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Well, do you think running a marathon is natural to anyone?
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It is so not natural.
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You need to emotionally, mentally, physically prepare for this run.
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And in this respect, just telling our students and our clients your body was designed for it, it's natural for your body.
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I must tell you, in the last 10 years, I feel that it is deceiving.
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I agree.
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And I also think that we both, I think it was in lesson one or two when we both had this moment where we've looked back on our career and realized that the way that we prepare or communicate about birth wasn't necessarily the healthiest way.
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Right.
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And and I feel guilty for that.
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I do too.
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There is a saying in LLP, the first assumption that keeps come to mind is everyone is doing their best with the resources available for them.
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So it has to do with the way that I was trained, it has to do with the fact that I'm a dinosaur in the field.
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And I know it's funny, but I am a dinosaur in the field.
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So being a dinosaur in the field, I'm one of the pioneers in my motherland, you know, when it comes to being a doula, even no one knew what is the doula.
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And the philosophy was the philosophy of really opposing the medicalization of childbirth, right?
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And so we've come a long way.
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Are we ready to start having a new conversation around birth?
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And this is the one thing that happened to me when I actually really had a crisis, a professional crisis, and I share it in every masterclass and free webinar that I teach, and I share it in my program.
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And I say, look, my transformation started with a professional crisis, you know.
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So I've been a labor doula and a child's educator for about 14 years.
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When I just ran into such a professional fatigue and burnout, and also doubt, self-doubt, that what I have to offer, what I bring to the table, isn't working.
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And the reason that I got to this wasn't really relating to the fact that my personal Abdula clients were not having a good experience.
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Well, more and more of them started taking epidural, more and more of them started being induced.
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And generally speaking, if you look at what happened in our field from the 70s when the natural birth movement started to come to life, and from the 80s, when it was not only childbirth educators talking about natural birth, but also the emergence of doulas in the United States.
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If you look at what happened in reality, a dramatic increase in epidurals, a dramatic increase in medical interventions.
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And so I think that to just be the resistance, the resistance, you know, the natural birth fighters, the protectors, the warriors, and think that it's all the fault of the medical system, it's simplifying, it's really simplifying what's going on.
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Those who practice within the medical system and their patients.
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Everyone is coming from fear, it goes hand in hand, and so fear is just increasing fear, increasing fear, and everyone is just struggling around fear, and everyone is performing out of fear, and it's not you can't be at the peak of your performance when you come from fear.
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And I'm talking about nurses and doctors, and I'm talking about my clients, the your patients, right?
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Yeah, that's that was my understanding, and it came out of being having a real crisis.
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I was exposed to just secondhand trauma with one of my clients.
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I felt that no matter how I tried, you know, there was so much fear um that was projected and instilled in this childbirth.
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I was just I felt I I guess I felt like I'm suffocating and can't really show up as a dooley in the room.
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And it ended up in having pneumonia and being in bed for two weeks without being able to breathe.
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And I knew that it was the result of this birth.
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I knew that I just I didn't handle it well.
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And I in those two weeks I looked at what's going on around in my beloved field for support, and I was like, you know what?
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Nothing that you're doing is working because look at reality.
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Whatever promise you promise to deliver, it's not working.
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So many of them are not getting to achieve their desired experiences, so many of them are not getting to push through, show up, which reminds me, I just had a conversation with a client last week, and I think I was sharing it also in the last meeting that we had in the Transformational Birth Support Coaching Program.
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Clients that I worked with don't always understand, they need to show up for the experience.
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And I asked, so how are you gonna show up for this experience that you desire?
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And they do not know what I'm talking about.
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Well, there's so much dissociation, yes, and I don't think people even realize what that is.
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I didn't.
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I was doing so much dissociating as a labor and delivery nurse in parts of my labor and birth, and I didn't even know it until somebody in the mental health field told me what it was.
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Yes, there is a lot of dissociation when we talk about your patients.
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There's also a disconnect between their internal motivations and external motivation.
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Yes, right?
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This is huge, this is big, you know.
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So the external motivation says really bad for me, right?
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The external motivation says natural birth is ideal, natural birth is the best.
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The external motivation says I want to move freely and change positions, right?
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These are all things that they hear.
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But what about checking about my mindset, my internal motivation?
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It is really me.
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How is it aligned with my lifestyle, with the choices I make in my life?
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For example, going through a natural childbirth and being a person who all your life were since 12 years old, since you got your period, being treated with hormonal contraceptives because your family doctor asked you if you have pains when you're getting your period, and you said yes, and they said you don't need to.
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Here are some hormonal contraceptives to alleviate the pain, not to have sex, of course.
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I know because it happened to me with my daughter.
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Yeah, so I know that I went to a physical, normal physical with a 12-year-old girl, and she was offered immediately hormonal contraceptives so that she won't have to deal with her period, she won't have to miss a day of school, she won't have to miss maybe a swim training, one of the meetings of the swim team.
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Now, take this woman, she is now 27 years old.
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If she was treated with hormonal contraceptives, she never experienced self-bleeding, she's never experienced menstrual cramps, she hasn't been with the monthly practice that I had for childbirth as an ex-generation, right?
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I had a monthly practice for childbirth, I had to practice my breathing when I went through cramps, I had to go to the shower, I had to use the hot pillow, I had to practice some visualization, I was staying in bed.
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It wasn't so awful to stay in bed, you know, for a few hours and rest.
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I was even in pain when I was ovulating.
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I even knew every month which side I'm ovulating from.
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Right now, you take this current birthgiver that went through very different life.
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And now talking to her about natural childbirth is it's deceiving.
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We really need to be honest.
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I want to be honest with you.
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I hope you enjoyed this conversation with my mentor, Neri Life Choma.
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This insight changed the way I prepare moms for birth.
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For so many years, the message around natural birth has sounded like this.
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If your body was made to do it, and if you want it badly enough, you should be able to push through it.
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Birth is not a test of willpower.
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Birth is much more like a marathon.
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It's an intense physical and emotional experience that asks a lot of the body and the nervous system.
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And just like a marathon, it deserves preparation, respect, and training.
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What Neri helped me understand is that preparation is not just about learning information.
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It is about learning your internal motivations and learning how to work with your body when things become intense.
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When someone knows their why, when they have practiced the skills that help them soften instead of bracing for impact, move through the moment instead of freezing, and stay connected instead of dissociating.
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They are able to show up for birth in a completely different way.
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And even if the birth does not unfold exactly the way they hoped, they walk away knowing they made their decisions from a place of clarity instead of fear.
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That is the work we do together in prenatal coaching.
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We don't try to control birth.
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We prepare for it.
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We train the body and the mind for the experience so that when labor begins, you meet it with confidence instead of fear.
