You know I nit-pick the crap out of words and meanings.
‘Left alone’ … I’ve always struggled with this term … particularly in giving women support/help by the partner/other or within the ‘continuity of care’ delivery of service.
Here’s my flash and you know this is true.
When women birthed in hospital (even when there is midwifery staff who may or may not have done the ‘births), the OB came in very rarely and left. The staff came in more frequently but usually stayed for a very short period of time particularly if the ward is busy. Women WERE left alone. Women without skills didn’t like this at all.
Then fathers/others came in. As far as I can tell, the US was the only country that had a short period of time that couples take a childbirth preparation class that taught Lamaze or Bradley skills. Which means when I gave birth in 1970, the vast majority of fathers had some level of skills and helped even when staff/doctor only came infrequently.
If the father-to-be lacked skills but was ’there’, women were still left alone physically by the hospital midwives/OBS and also felt left alone psychologically when the partner/other didn’t have the skills to help the woman cope, manage, work through, deal with, handle, stay on top of and feel in control.
A woman without skills will feel worse psychologically having someone around who can’t help her than if she’s just alone physically in a room. It’s beyond frustrating to have people present at a birth who cannot help the woman cope. In fact, (the weird truth) is that women say they would rather have birthed alone than to have people there who were diddling around. It was an irritation and interfered with her focusing.
Then the idea of ‘continuity of care’ and ‘partnership model’ arose. Now midwives and doulas people were willing to spend heaps and heaps of time with pregnant women and decided they will ‘come when a woman wants’. Which put these midwives and doulas spending hours and hours and hours because they believed women shouldn’t be left alone but supported.
With the midwife or doula becoming the coach because fathers either lacked skills or had been shifted from being the ‘coach’ (in some countries) to the ’support’. Now the midwives/doulas were there taking on that coach role which was exhausting, decreased the role of the ‘other’ who would be in this baby’s life longterm and began to shift women to becoming dependent on continuity of care midwives and doulas. But women have always sought help to cope well.
Then the midwives (Odent/Flint) decided to ‘be there’ and ‘leave women alone to discover birth’ and ’sit in the corner and knit’. So, women now have an unskilled ‘other’ as well as a midwife who sits in the corner and leaves her alone.
Bringing this all back to the beginning. Women were left alone physically in hospital. Then fathers (in US) did coach for a short period of time via Lamaze/Bradley. Then fathers left women alone psychologically because their role shifted to being a ’support’ and ‘be there to support women’s choices’. Then doulas and midwives stepped in and took on the role of birth coach so women got the help they wanted. Then midwives decided to just ‘be there’ and leave women alone. Now women end up often feeling that psychological aloneness even with people in the room.
And this is where we can humanly understand why having our own set of birth and birth-coaching skills become so essential. We’ll birth better when we’re left on our own physically. We’ll birth better when our loved one has the skills to help us help ourselves. We’ll birth better when we work well with our birth coach (hopefully our loved one) including doula and midwife. Most important, we’ll birth better if our loved one, doula or midwife are ’there’ but not helping us.