Birth Words: Language For a Better Birth

Birth worker Sara Pixton draws on her backgrounds in applied linguistics and social work to explore the power of words during the childbearing season and how we can all come together to better care for and honor those who give birth.

Rebroadcast of Spring: Reconceptualizing Due Dates 02/29/2024

Advocacy: Reframing a Hot Button Birth Issue as Educating, Empowering, and Amplifying 01/31/2024

Amazing: A Pandemic Birth Story with Ella Mink 11/30/2023

Stories: Powerful Tools for Social Change 10/31/2023

Unethical: How Ethics Fade from View in the Birth Space 09/25/2023

Rebirth: Birth Words is Back for Season 2... With a Twist! 08/15/2023

Rebirth: Birth Words is Back for Season 2... With a Twist! After a two-year hibernation, Birth Words is being reborn! Season 2 of Birth Words will offer monthly episodes, plus a new twist... listen to this episode to find out more! TRANSCRIPT: Intro: Welcome to birth words. Words are powerful. What are you doing with yours? In this podcast, birth doula and Applied Linguistics scholar Sara Pixton invites you to be intentional, reflective, and empowering with your language as we come together to honor those who give birth. Hello, this is Sara with Birth Words, and I am thrilled to be back in this podcast space with you. The last episode that I published of Birth Words was episode number 78 in June of 2021, so over two years ago. And since then, Birth Words has been in hibernation. I've still worked on a few things here and there, but for the most part, I've shifted over the last couple of years, my attention to other places. I did a lot of work as a birth doula, spent a lot of time on call, attending a lot of births, and just needed one less thing on my plate as I did that. Now I'm kind of shifting my rhythm again, and I am ready to come back with Episode One of Season Two of Birth Words. I am going to be working on Season Two at a little different rate than I did with Season One. Rather than weekly or bi-weekly episodes, I'm planning to release monthly episodes. So this is the August 2023 episode of Birth Words, Season Two. Coming into Season Two, I will be adding a new angle into the work of Birth Words here in the podcast and in other work on social media and elsewhere. I am starting another master's degree. And when I get a new master's degree, I just have to add it into my podcast work. Many of you who are with me from Season One may know that I, during Season One, was pursuing and then graduated from a master's program in applied linguistics. And that was a lot of where much of the content came from for Birth Words Season One. As I would learn about different topics in my applied linguistics classes, I would reflect on their application in the birth space, and then come up with episodes to discuss and think about the impact of language on the way that we give birth and the way that we experience pregnancy and postpartum. With my new master's degree, I will be building off of that work, always incorporating that background of linguistics. But now, I'm also going to bring to the podcast, the new perspective and understanding and knowledge that I gain during my work in my Masters of Social Work program. And we will incorporate the perspective of social work and healing talk throughout the coming podcast episodes. So briefly, I just want to share a bit about my journey and why I decided to get another master's degree. I likely mentioned at some point during the 78 episodes of Season One of Birth Words that my long-term plan was to work as a doula for a while and then go back to school, first for a bachelor's in nursing and then for a master's degree in nurse midwifery, so that I could be a Certified Nurse Midwife and be the care provider in that space, and catch new babies and watch and empower and support and love my clients as they brought new life into the world. And that is a beautiful dream. And I have watched many of my doula colleagues go on to choose a path in midwifery. And it is beautiful, and I am so thrilled that they act as care providers in that space. And the longer I worked towards it, and the more I was on call, and the more I attended births at all hours of the night, I realized that it was taking a big toll on my mental health and my family life to be on call, always needing to have my phone with me and ready to go to a birth at any time, and that the irregular sleep schedule is really not something that was going to work long-term for me to be in a mentally healthy place. And so, I decided instead to focus on mental health—my own by making a choice that will work much more naturally with my strengths and my own needs and family life—and one that will focus on the mental health of my clients in the future. So I'm pursuing a master's degree in social work to become a licensed clinical social worker. And for those who don't know, a licensed clinical social worker is one of the many different qualifications you can have to be a therapist or a counselor, meeting with clients. So I'm thrilled and look forward to that work, to be able to sit with my clients, especially those going through this childbearing journey, whether they're trying to conceive, and having difficulty with that, or whether they're facing challenges during their pregnancies, or in the postpartum time, especially as mental health becomes a concern for many people during that time. I am going to sit with my clients and listen compassionately to them and offer them the care that a therapist can offer. So like I said, Birth Words is going to evolve a little bit to incorporate some of that perspective that social work brings to the table and the work of healing talk. So stay tuned for that. I'll come back at the end of this episode and talk a little more about what that might look like. But my invitation for you now is to go back and listen to past episodes of Birth Words, Season One. I highly recommend starting with the first five episodes; they lay a pretty good groundwork for the work that we do throughout the rest of Season One of the podcast. They kind of help you to get an idea of what we're doing in this Birth Words space. And they're each only about 15 minutes long. So it's not going to take five hours of your time just a little more than an hour. And then, after you've listened to those groundwork episodes, it's makes a lot of sense to just skip around and find topics that are interesting to you whether that's infertility; or the word “deliver;” or what to do when somebody starts telling a birth horror story, and you're pregnant or giving birth, or supporting somebody who is; and many, many other topics. It makes a lot of sense to just jump around and find the ones that stick out to you after that. Here's a brief summary of Season One of Birth Words: Our words matter. Language is a meaning-making system. We make meaning out of these words, through our lived experience and the associations that come with the language that we've had during those experiences. Because birth, the act of giving life has historically been co-opted by the field of medicine, which is for treating the sick or the injured, the language surrounding birth has been affected. There's a lot of medical, paternalistic, and disease-related language that comes into this life-giving space. The power has been taken out of the hands of the birth giver too often and into the hands of the care provider. Too often, birthing women are treated like machines or broken in the way that we talk about them. There's a lot of industrial or machine metaphors or language that are used to refer to the process of labor and birth. This affects our experiences as birthgivers. And it affects our experiences throughout pregnancy and postpartum. The way that we hear and the way that we talk influences our beliefs and our feelings, and those impact the experiences that we have. So, Birth Words is, as the tagline says, “language for a better birth.” And I definitely want to include in there, pregnancy and postpartum as well. Birth Words is an invitation for those who are giving birth and for birthworkers to be reflective, intentional and empowering with their words. The invitation is to be reflective. To consider which words are ways of talking that I hear or use, don't center the birthgiver. Which words or phrases pathologize birth and treat it more like a disease than a life-giving act. The invitation is to be intentional. To choose words that center the birthgiver, and acknowledge that birth is a natural, physiological process; that pregnancy is awe-inspiring; and that postpartum is identity-shifting, and it's a magical time where support is needed and recovery should be the first priority. The invitation is to be empowering. Stop and think just a minute about how incredible pregnancy and birth and postpartum are. Growing a human. Bringing that human into the world through an orifice that stretches to accommodate life. Hours of the largest, most powerful muscle in the body contracting and releasing and changing its anatomy to have a large opening in the bottom of it for a baby to pass through. Growing and disposing of a whole organ as part of this process. Holy freaking cow. That. Is. Power. Let's make sure that the way that we talk acknowledges that power. As I mentioned, we're moving into a new space with Season Two, and there will be a new twist as I pursue my Masters of Social Work. I want to share with you here a definition of Social Work from socialworklicensemap.com, and the reference is in the show notes. The definition says, “social work is a practice-based profession that promotes social change, development, cohesion, and the empowerment of people and communities. Social work practice involves the understanding of human development, behavior, and the social, economic and cultural institutions and interactions.” That is just rife with opportunities to explore in Season Two: the social change that we're working towards in the space of pregnancy, birth and postpartum; the development that occurs among people and communities in that space; the cohesion—the coming together—of different professionals, different perspectives to support birthgivers; and the empowerment of individual people and communities. Birth is an opportunity for that, if we will work to make it so. This definition says, “social work practice involves the understanding of human development.” That is not just physical, but also emotional, mental health focus, and how our developing as people happens and affects our experiences during childbearing. Also, “behavior and the social, economic and cultural institutions and interactions.” There are so many social institutions, economic institutions and cultural institutions at play in the birth space. And we're going to be diving in and looking at all of those different topics in the coming season. But if you are a word nerd, and you're here for the language stuff, don't worry. We will still make sure there is a healthy dose of that. We're just adding in this social work perspective to expand and consider the perspective that social work and mental health focus offer to the work we're doing here at Birth Words. I'm really looking forward to this season. I hope that you are too, and I hope that you will join me again next month for the September 2023 episode of Birth Words. Outro: Did words play an important role in your birth experience? If you're interested in sharing your story on the podcast, go to www.birth words.com. If you're liking what you hear on the podcast, please leave a review on your podcast app. For more resources about harnessing the power of words to benefit the birth experience, visit birthwords.com REFERENCE: /episode/index/show/birthwords/id/27755082