Interview with Kate Stroud
Kate Tells Women: Let Birth Bring Out Your Best
by Cynthia Gabriel
“Oh no! I can’t be pregnant!”
That was the unlikely beginning of Kate Stroud’s journey to becoming a doula, childbirth educator, and bellycast artist.
Today, Kate supports herself professionally by helping women learn to trust their bodies. “I help them de-program from the culture that says birth is harder work than you can do,” she says. She has recently started teaching a childbirth education series at the Center for the Childbearing Year (CCY). The curriculum explains the full spectrum of women’s choices in labor and birth, and prepares women and their partners for the stages of labor and how to manage labor pain. Kate believes that her best gift is in helping women connect with their own inner wisdom. “I can’t teach a woman how to give birth,” says Kate. “She already knows how to do that. I’m just here to help women find out what their bodies already know.” She trusts that if a woman is supported, pregnancy and birth can bring out the strongest and best parts of a woman.
Kate’s journey to this confidence was no yellow-brick road. When Kate found out she had become pregnant on her honeymoon (on her wedding night to be exact), she cried because she knew her life plans were about to change dramatically. She had been on the cusp of moving into a solo artist studio. Together with her musician husband, Donn, she had planned to see the world before settling down. Worse, as an employee of a specialty food store hoping to become a self-employed artist, she had no health insurance to cover the cost of prenatal care and giving birth. Kate felt lonely and without help. Her pregnancy was a whirlwind of chaos and anxiety. She knew she wanted a natural birth and did exhaustive research on-line about the topic, but didn’t know where to turn for support. Until she met Heather, her doula.
Kate got matched with Heather through Doulas Care, a program that provides doulas for low-income families. Heather provided a comforting presence that calmed many of Kate’s fears. Heather was “the best thing that ever happened to me during that pregnancy,” Kate remembers. At the time, Kate had no idea what a doula was. They met when Kate was 38 weeks pregnant and Kate felt immediately reassured. Heather’s presence was “very comforting and supportive” she says. For the first time, Kate felt supported in her ability to achieve the kind of birth she wanted.
Kate was always open to the idea of a natural birth. She was the first among her friends to become pregnant and feels this was a blessing. She didn’t know anyone personally who had experienced a difficult or medicated labor. Her husband had one friend who had a two-hour natural birth.
For most women, Kate included, the most influential story is the story of her own birth. Kate’s mother had two natural births. Her mother’s doctor was from South America and he turned Kate’s brother in utero with a move called an “external version.” External versions are becoming increasingly common in the United States, but for many decades American doctors were not trained in this procedure. In labor with Kate, her second baby, Kate’s mother played gin rummy. She was most comfortable laboring in the hospital bathroom. The nurse was afraid that she would give birth on the toilet, but Kate’s mother waved off her concerns. Kate inherited an attitude that natural birth is normal and straightforward, even if it is also painful and intense.
However, we live in a culture in which natural birth, especially in hospitals, is statistically uncommon. So Kate learned everything she could to address her fears head-on. She laughs that she exhausted her printer doing so much research about pregnancy and birth on-line.
What Kate was most terrified of the first time around was becoming a parent. She teaches classes to pregnant, teenage women in Detroit and found that they shared this attitude. “I’m not afraid of birth,” one woman told her. “I’m afraid of after it comes out!” Kate believes that women with this fear especially benefit from experiencing natural birth because it sets them up to trust themselves, something new mothers “really need to do.”
Kate’s first labor was long and lasted a couple of days. Heather slept on her couch the first night and then went home to her own two kids. Kate labored at home all day in the bathtub. That evening she and Donn checked into the hospital and Heather met them there. Kate was already at seven centimeters. (A woman’s cervix needs to dilate ten centimeters during labor.)
They walked around the hallways of the University of Michigan Hospital. Transition was hard. Transition, the time it takes for a woman’s cervix to dilate the last two centimeters and begin pushing, is often the hardest part of labor. Kate rocked in a rocking chair, feeling overwhelmed after two sleepless nights. “Transition felt spiritual, transcendent. I felt like I was going to the edge and then came back,” she recalls. She remembers Donn on her right, Heather on her left, supporting her. Donn, like most men, was feeling his own strong emotions. He was experiencing his own journey to fatherhood through Kate’s labor. Her memory of Heather is that “she was just always there. She was the one saying, ‘You’re all right.’”
Having Heather was “life-changing,” says Kate. She was inspired to become a doula herself and offer the same compassion and support to other women. When her baby, Sam, was six months old, Kate took a doula training class at the Center for the Childbearing Year. With an infant at home, she started her doula practice slowly, supplementing her income with an evening job and a newspaper route.
Then, three years after Sam was born, Kate became pregnant with her daughter, Ella. This time, she had far more resources, support, and knowledge. She decided to have a homebirth with the midwives of New Moon Midwifery.http://newmoonmidwifery.com/
Ella’s birth felt very different from Sam’s. This time around, she says it was hard and long, but “I came out of it feeling like we make a bigger deal out of birth than we need to.” She found herself naturally drawn to laboring alone this time. When she compares her two birth experiences, she says she’s glad she has had two because “I know every birth is really different.”
Kate is an eclectic blend of a tough, do-it-yourself pioneer woman, a sensitive and spiritually-seeking mother, and an artist. With an ease clearly won from hard work, she balances dreams with practicality. For instance, Kate is willing to wait on her dream to become a midwife until her own children are older. She explains, “I’m in birth for the long haul. I don’t want to get burned out now, when I have two small children to run after.”
Women who seek classes and information at CCY come with a wide variety of experiences, objectives and dreams for their own childbearing year. Kate says that she hopes she can do for other women what Heather did for her, which is “support women in the process of birth” to find their deepest wells of strength.
Being around Kate is inspiring, even if you are not a pregnant woman. Her creative flair permeates her conversations. Her best gift is her own story. From an inauspicious and unconscious beginning of pregnancy, she has transformed herself. She has let birth bring out her best. By being her strong, passionate self, she lends others the courage to be themselves.
Cynthia Gabriel is a doula, writer, and medical anthropologist. She is currently seeking a publisher for her first book, The Best of Both Worlds: Natural Birth in a Hospital. She offers parenting and birth-related classes in Ann Arbor.