The Naked Doula

[Wingingmotherhood]

This is just insane. I’ve had two babies, vaginally, working with gravity, relaxed jaw and body etc etc but it still fucking hurts. It’s not pleasure. She is fooling people into a false sense of security and those people will feel they’ve failed when they are in labour and feel pain. It’s also ironic that a woman who gave birth via c section spouts all of this, putting pressure on women not to feel pain when it is bloody painful!

 

[Flozzie]

It genuinely scares me the amount of women who follower her and are taking her word as gospel. I read an article Lauren Goodger did after her tragic loss. She did name Emma and said she was with her as her doula during her labour. It's speculation from my part but from what she posts, advice she gives its scary to think how clouded Lauren's head may have been whilst in labour. Its heartbreaking. The advice she gives is very one sided. What are the statistics like for women who refuse induction, refuse help and advice from trained professionals? There aren't any statistics just testmonies written in bright coloured posts of women where its gone right. Wheres Lauren's story? Wheres here brightly coloured grid post? There isn't one because her birth ended the worst possible way. There's no awareness raised by Emma, she's brushed her involvement under the carpet and carried on with her hypocritical self promotion and advice xx

 

[Wingingmotherhood]

I think the reason she’s taken so long to share her birth story is that it’s taken her a long time to accept she couldn’t manifest her child out of the womb and she wasn’t able to give birth vaginally pain free while dancing and fingering herself.

i bet now she’s has a second section she wishes she’d just done in straight off so sh didn’t have to wait

 

[reetacheeta]

This woman is so dangerous if you have strep b it can and has killed babies, why would you advise against antibiotics that will save a babies life?? And putting off people having a sweep too, when i had mine i was told i was nowhere near ready to give birth and they booked me in for an induction a week later, but that night i did go into labour and thank god i did as it saved my babies lifeView attachment 1445523View attachment 1445524

Her giving advice on medical issues is completely out of her realm. Especially advice that is contradictory to professional opinion.

 

[Lulamay]

I can tell she’s trying to put a super positive spin on it but she must be absolutely gutted about it really. She’s preached and preached about this home birth before she even got pregnant, she was going to smile through contractions and breathe her baby out. I think she never expected in a million years that she wouldn’t give birth vaginally because she thought she was so much superior and had all this amazing knowledge. I would have much more respect for her if she just owned it and said “you know what, it was really shit and I’m gutted it ended this way” rather than still trying to make out that all of her methods really helped her

 

[definitelynotvlad]

She’s telling people to whip out a vibrator when they’re in labour now. Jesus fucking wept

I’ve been at a birth where someone did this once. It was an uncomfortable working environment, to say the least.

 

[TreeTrunksApplePie]

The honest midwife has just done a post that could be aimed at Emma tbh. This is something I’ve said here before and people sometimes get defensive but I stand by it, the hypnobirthing movement and people like Emma have a lot to answer for when it comes to the trauma some experience in birth because they didn’t get “waves” and they couldn’t just “breathe their baby out”. Maybe THM has worded it better.
I know this isn’t all there is to trauma and I ended up with a traumatic birth and post partum period myself, but we’re being taught to shy away from the realities and go into it all with unnecessary unrealistic expectations. It’s criminal IMHO

 

[Blair-Waldorf]

I know there’s no proof (yet) but I’d bet my house she was there during Lauren goodgers labour

I can’t believe she’s now encouraging those with breech babies to have a vagina birth when she herself opted for a c section

 

[TreeTrunksApplePie]

From the sounds of her explanation (which again, was hard to follow) they would have been in the pédiatrics ward not NICU as they got sent home then readmitted.

But I totally agree her entitlement around it was insane. We had a 4 month stay in NICU/SCBU last year with my little boy and she needs to check herself. I didn’t get to stay in the same room as him until we roomed in before discharge when he was 4 months old. You can guarantee the other parents on that ward must think she’s a right twat also if I’d listened to someone like her (I had severe sudden onset preeclampsia at 27 weeks despite being low risk) me and my baby would have died. He had to have numerous tests, IVs, blood transfusions and an operation. She would have me refusing all of it no doubt and he wouldn’t be here today.

Sorry for the rant, but I am furious that she’s trying to pull her (delusional) rank re:neonatal care now. She is dangerous AF.

What she seems to consistently describe is not her acting in her baby’s best interests but wanting to be defiant against the evil doctors and NHS. She just comes across as a moron putting herself and her baby at riskstill.

Also her passive aggressive quotation marks do my head in. The baby was doing better so the doctor was “happy” to discharge him. What is that even meant to mean? it seems like she’s trying to say the doctor wasn’t really happy. A doctor, who looks after sick children for a living, on the overstretched NHS, is just soooooo desperate to keep her well child in the hospital. She seriously needs to stop posting this shit. She’s a liability and completely deluded.

 

[Lotus101]

She’s been reading here clearly

My good god she’s a fucking twat.
“I’m blessed to not be restricted by medical guidelines”
What the guidelines that are in place so people don’t ya know, die??
Guidelines that are constantly updated & changed as new research comes out ?

Yeah I’d hate a doctor who followed guidelines what a nerd they must be .

 

[SassyLad8]

I thought the same. That they prioritised a PHOTOGRAPHER over a father seeing his baby baby born?!

 

[Wingingmotherhood]

i cannot believe they chose a photographer over the father. Fucking weird. Shows her priorities. Content (money) over memories

 

[SassyLad8]

I think her mum died of cancer and she understandably had a lot of trauma as that happened just before she had her first child. I can’t imagine how hard that would be.

And then as others have said, she didn’t get that second healing birth experience she wanted / really believed she was going to get. So it’s probably brought up a lot of the trauma from her first birth too. Although she shouldn’t feel bad about either birth. The first was because her baby was breech and the second was just one of those things - not all births are straightforward.

What is toxic is that she’s created a business around the lie that you can manifest a “perfect” complication-free birth and breathe your baby out super easily. Living and working in that space whilst processing trauma around death and birth must be hard.

But then, that doesn’t justify an attack on people with cancer / charities trying to fundraise in a pretty innocent way!!

 

[SellYerMawForASubwaySalad]

Why isn't she trusting her baby's body to do its own thing and not cutting his tongue?

 

[definitelynotvlad]

When doulas do their job properly they’re great, when they act in the supportive friend / sister role they’re supposed to. The problem is that some of them overstep the mark into giving out medical advice which they aren’t trained to give, and then there’s no accountability. They need to be registered with a central body and there should be a way of reporting the ones who cause harm. I’ve worked with lots of doulas, most have been lovely, but I’ve met some who have given worrying advice, which women have followed, and in some of those cases babies have died. The doulas just disappear when that happens.
And they’re not wrong when they say you don’t have to have antibiotics, or a test for GDM or anything else you don’t want in pregnancy, we’re all free to make our own choices, but deciding to decline care should be a result of a balanced conversation with a senior midwife or obstetrician and with full understanding of all the benefits and risks of choosing to accept or decline that treatment. Not just being told “no you’ll be fine, doctors and midwives are just evil and bored and want to hurt you and your baby for no reason lol”. Controversial as it may be, every doctor and midwife I’ve worked with actually wants the best for the women we look after. It’s just that sometimes the medical idea of best is different from the woman’s idea of best, and that’s why we need to forge good relationships. Doulas who perpetuate the idea that they are good and we are bad are doing women a huge disservice and actually putting them at greater risk, since they’re less likely to trust us when things go wrong or interventions become necessary.
Whoops that was a bit of a lengthy tangent, can you tell this is something that really bothers me?!
TL;DR, the naked doula is a knob.

 

[Amyx1518]

People need to pull up their big kid pants and accept that sometimes, medical professionals will tell you something you don’t want to hear because it can/will affect your safety during pregnancy! It’s not fat shaming, body shaming, any of that crap. It’s medical advice! I absolutely cannot abide seeing posts shared by this account, makes me sooo angry.

Also this BMI stuff. You can’t monitor a baby safely if a mother is fat - sorry - you can’t. that’s why water births are discouraged. Encouraging mothers with BMI’s that are very high is endangering lives.

Agree 100%!! I was overweight when pregnant, still am now, and I was very lucky to not have any real problems with my pregnancy but I’m not stupid enough to think that I was anything but lucky.

 

[Lulamay]

Im not sure how she claims her contractions “mirrored what she knew as more advanced labour” when she’s never experienced labour? She says they were sporadic and she wasn’t dilating so she was clearly just in early labour? Which is maybe why she was loving every second of it, because early labour is pretty manageable???

 

[Lotus101]

My sister wanted to do hypnobirthing, was reading all the books and then as she got closer decided that it was far too crunchy hippy for her, thank god, and went for using some of the breathing techniques but being open to pain relief. I read one of the books she had and it was all about imagining water flowing out of your vagina rather than a baby and moving along with the river

yeahhhh I’m the same.
Looked into and some of the shit they say I’m like it’s all just a bit pathetic tbh. “Don’t call contractions contractions - that word has too many negative connotations”
No it doesn’t? Your uterus is contracting it’s just explains exactly what is happening .
Saying we should give birth alone in the dark.. like we used to.. yeah because I’m sure the numbers of mothers / babies dying during birth haven’t been lowered at all since the 1200s .

I get the staying relaxed. Breathing techniques. Being empowered to make your own choices part.Thinking positively etc.

What I don’t get is being so anti medicinal advice & midwives. Stop demonising them ffs they’re not there to hurt you.
& the whole narrative that birth should be orgasmic and euphoric and the reason it isn’t is because we give birth in hospitals .
yeah I’m sure it’s only women who have given birth in hospitals who say it’s painful.. anyone who has given birth at home has simply laughed, smiled and just breathed their baby right out in half an hour and there were no complications or pain what so ever.. it’s all the hospitals fault.
There’s a hypno birth woman I follow on TikTok & I like her because she’ll say “yes birth is painful but it’s pain you can handle”
Or “yes it’s painful but it’s temporary pain and you will be able to handle it!”
Far more positive then pretending pain shouldn’t exist.

 

[Lotus101]

All you sheep who believe allopathic medicine will save you. Laughable.

I know it’s terrible.
People living longer, beating diseases, getting early diagnosis’s, protecting themselves from viruses.
And the worst of it?! It’s not even common for women to die during child birth anymore! & the rate of still births has massively declined.

I’m sure someone in a third world / war torn country without access to decent medicinal care would completely agree with you too xxxx
How stupid we are for listening to doctors & not stupid tw*ts with an Instagram account and no qualifications.

 

[TreeTrunksApplePie]

Rant incoming, sorry guys. But wondering if anyone else sees this.

Something i don’t see mentioned enough but which I think needs to be talked about more, is how unhelpful her and the hypnobirthing movement are for women’s mental health. Particularly the way they speak about and label trauma. I get that if you feel traumatised, then that’s trauma, but they really do push that it’s “ok” to feel traumatised even if you had a “good” birth. It is but also maybe not having everything you wanted exactly how you want all the time isn’t traumatic (eg. people who would say the sole trauma in their birth is that they were given painkillers or couldn’t give birth in water) they also push that anything other than a home/natural/water birth is traumatic for mother and baby.

I just feel that it’s become so normalised, and it’s partly due to people like this, that women should feel shit about their births if it doesn’t reach a ridiculous almost unachievable standard, even if objectively it was good (they’re ok, baby’s ok, no severe issues, haemorrhages etc. They got to hold their baby and have skin to skin after birth, they could have visitors etc). And they really do feel shit about it sometimes, because these people tell them they should.