When I found out I was pregnant, I realized that I would need more than the standard information to prepare for each step of what lay ahead. Since I had spent years in the biohacking world, I figured that biohacking my own birth was the only way to go.
But, as life would have it, my story is filled with many unexpected twists and turns.
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Positive Pregnancy Test
When I found out I was pregnant, I was in Greece. Idyllic, right? Yes, I remember reading the positive pregnancy test result from my beach view apartment (very faint line on the day of my missed period, by the way!). I spent the next 7 days enjoying non-alcoholic cocktails and swimming in the Mediterranean.
Once I returned from the vacation, reality kicked in. I found myself in Serbia, my home country, in the midst of a pandemic after years spent in Canada.
Where was I going to give birth? How? Who should I get in touch with? Which supplements can I take? Which foods should I eat more of and which should I avoid? Which tests should I do, when should I see an ObGyn? Can I drink tea? Which tea? Do I need a midwife? What exactly is a doula? Should I simply fly back to Canada pregnant? When is it even safe to fly while pregnant?
In one word, my mind was overwhelmed. My head was pounding with questions. Most of them just made me dizzy at first.
I decided to stay put, try to relax, and take things one step at a time. My priority was hunting down the right information and support.
Wanting a Natural Birth
My heart was deeply in natural birth and I wanted my intuition to guide me. At the same time, I wanted to understand exactly what was happening, what could happen, and what I would do in each scenario. I needed to open myself to every possible scenario.
Some people go through pregnancy, birth, and postpartum life with a strong intuition. We all have this knowing intuition somewhere inside us. Deep down, our bodies know how to birth babies and what to do with them.
So, if you’re among the intuitive bunch, you’re lucky. I wish I was. But I needed to work hard to gain access to my birth intuition.
Generations of culturally-ingrained fear, the medicalization of birth, and a fast-paced urban lifestyle make it harder to tap into our intuition just like that. I sensed that on my own skin.
Also, hearing outdated fear-based advice from family and friends didn’t help. The more I read, the more I learned that the history of childbirth and modern obstetrics is a cultural history. I couldn’t blame people for propagating it, but I didn’t want to take part.
Reclaiming My Birth
My birth experience was a stubborn process of getting past cultural and personal barriers and reclaiming both intuition and science in my life. Nobody was going to stop me from writing my own story, and I believe that nobody should stop you from writing or reclaiming yours either.
I found the support I needed in endless education. I did yoga, breathing exercises, cooked nutritious foods, made my own carefully researched herbal tinctures and cosmetics, and got down to a lot of reading and research. I connected with like-minded people and chose the holistic midwife-led model of care.
I wasn’t happy with many of the resources I found at first. Some were great, but then I needed to dig much deeper than I thought to piece the whole story together. Some were lacking so much information that I couldn’t believe people had to rely on them.
Reclaiming Natural Remedies in Birth Work
I was shocked that I couldn’t find a single in-depth source on safe natural remedies use in pregnancy and birth. Postpartum, I discovered that there’s as little information on safe remedies while breastfeeding too.
Little by little, I started creating a compilation of trustworthy information, evidence-based guidelines, almost forgotten traditional wisdom, birth stories, herbal knowledge, other holistic modalities, and thousands of scientific studies.
Each moment of my pregnancy required careful and informed weighing of the risks and benefits of various foods, supplements, tests, procedures, and exams. An essential part of it was deciding which responsibilities I was ready to take on.
In the end, all the bits and pieces came together… and the moment of birth left me in awe.
Surrendering
I won’t go into the details of my birth in this post (I’ll have a separate post on that!), but I’ll share what I learned from it.
My homebirth was carefully thought out, and at the same time, it taught me that you can’t really plan birth. It taught me to prepare well, be open and safe, and let go of all expectations.
For example, I planned a water birth but didn’t end up using the birth pool at all.
What I learned from my own birth is that you can have a detailed birth plan, but your birth comes down to having the options you want. I’m grateful for that.
I felt safe and empowered in my choice. The bliss of being exactly where I wanted to be during labor and those first postpartum moments, in privacy and intimacy, is beyond words.
My Path to Becoming a Doula
I’m grateful that my own childbirth experience helped me enter the world of doula and birth-keeping support. I’m currently completing birth doula training with Birth Arts International, along with the independent birth research and support I’m passionately involved in.
I feel great that I ended up here, deep in the little-explored realm of natural remedies in birth work.
As I shed light on natural remedies through my research and build a community of like-minded individuals, this dark realm gradually gets filled with more light, little by little.
I’m here to guide you through it with all the information on these remedies that possibly exists.
Read about remedies in the Herbal Doula Database.
If you have any questions, please get in touch! Send me an email at support@herbaldoula.com and I’ll be happy to hear from you.
The founder of Herbal Doula.
Home-birthing mama, independent scientist, natural pharmacist, doula, birthkeeper, and holistic health and birthrights advocate. Endlessly passionate about creating and sharing empowering health information and birth support. Ana has written 150+ and edited 800+ articles, some of which reached over 1 million people
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