ALLISON LORNE MSN, CNM RN
Holistic Health Provider
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Birth Story Project
Early in my career, whenever I told people I was a midwife, people started sharing their birth stories!
Sometimes, people want to tell me how much they love the midwife they had at their birth, or how everything was amazing. Other times, stories are full of painful disappointment, shame and guilt. I came to realize people need audience, they need to tell their stories! And I also began to understand the incredible amount of healing potential around taumatic birth stories.
In 2019 I began recording birth stories and building podcast material to share these stories. I'd love to hear your story so to share it with others. My hope in this work is that people identify a shared experience, understand that they're not alone, that sometimes things don't go perfectly and there's a way to overcome that through opening to their story.
As I'd complete postpartum rounds I was always excited to hear the patient's perspective of the birth. These visits are just as much about checking on the family's physical well-being as observing the integration of this life changing experience. If it was a complicated birth, all the more important to attend to the patient's integrated resolution of the experience. Reviewing the importance of self care and early signs of baby blues and post-partum depression are a necessary component of the immediate post-partum visit.
Outside of my professional setting, people openly share their stories in almost any venue; at yoga class, a concert, a school play. There is often a sense of urgency to sharing these stories, as if there may not be adequate opportunity to be heard. The stories may be decades old, but suddenly are alive again in the space between the storyteller and the listener. The protaganist is often right back in the midst of the experience. It's clear people want to tell their stories and there is a need for a format to share and access these stories. Current attitude around Traumatic Birth and adverse events in Reproductive Health turns away from listening to personal account. We have been taught these stories are inappropriate or indecent. It wasn't that long ago women weren't able to show their ankles in public, or vote, for that matter! is By sharing these stories, normalizing birth and the recovery from adverse events, we will rewrite the paradigm of birth culture which for too long has creating taboo around empowered birth and even more so a suppression of indelicate birth.
Please contact us directly to record your story! Contributing to the audio library may have immeasurable impact as others listen and know they are not alone in their experience.