Birth Words: Language For a Better Birth Sara Pixton

This episode is a rebroadcast of Season 1, Episode 71. In this episode, Sara talks about linguistic relativity, her favorite season shift (from winter to spring) and how the term "due date" can be all kinds of problematic!

Advocacy is one of those topics that can get birth workers taking sides and sharing strong opinions. In this episode, I argue that advocacy is the heart and soul of all client-centered birth work, and I frame it in a way that I think you'll agree with me! Get involved as an advocate at all levels of impact--with individuals, in your local environment, and at the state and federal levels. I close the episode with a call to action to support the Perinatal Workforce Act, complete with an easy step-by-step process to follow and a file to download and share with your representative. Let's join together in support of better birth!
Link to download file: https://www.birthwords.com/podcast

In this episode, Ella Mink shares her story of giving birth to her first daughter during the COVID-19 pandemic. Ella was 17 years old at the time and had an amazing water birth at a birth center that ignited her passion for birth, setting her on a path of becoming a birth and postpartum doula and nurse midwife.

In this episode, Sara considers the power of telling your birth story--or your pregnancy or postpartum story. Stories remind us that we are each unique, whole individuals with immeasurable worth and dignity. They highlight the barriers that need to be removed on our path to a better birth experience, and they showcase what's possible if we work together for change.
If you'd like to share your story on the podcast, email birthwordspodcast@gmail.com or reach out on Instagram or Facebook (@birthwords).
 
REFERENCES
American Psychological Association. (2021, Ju ne). Carl Rogers, PhD. https://www.apa.org/about/governance/president/carl-r-rogers
Council on Social Work Education. (2023). What is Social Work? CSWE. https://www.cswe.org/students/discover-social-work/what-is-social-work/
Mcleod, S., PhD. (2023). Humanistic Approach in Psychology (humanism): Definition & Examples. Simply Psychology. https://www.simplypsychology.org/humanistic.html
Rogers, C. (1995). A Way of Being, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Sulé, V. T. (2020). Critical race theory. Encyclopedia of Social Work. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199975839.013.1329

In this episode, Sara confronts the topic of ethics in the birth space. Unfortunately, ethically objectionable things happen frequently in the birth space. Even more unfortunately, they are often not recognized as such.
Using the explanations of ethical fading, Sara explores many ethically questionable things that have been justified to be regularly done during birth.
 
REFERENCES:
Betrán, A. P., Torloni, Zhang, J., & Gülmezoglu, A. M. (2015). WHO Statement on Caesarean Section Rates. Bjog: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, 123(5), 667–670. https://doi.org/10.1111/1471-0528.13526
Betran, A. P., Ye, J., Moller, A., Souza, J. P., & Zhang, J. (2021). Trends and projections of caesarean section rates: global and regional estimates. BMJ Global Health, 6(6), e005671. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2021-005671
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2022a, February 25). Stats of the states - cesarean delivery rates. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/cesarean_births/cesareans.htm#print
March of Dimes. (n.d.). Total cesarean deliveries by maternal race: United States, 2019-2021 Average. March of Dimes | PeriStats. https://www.marchofdimes.org/peristats/data?lev=1&obj=1®=99&slev=1&stop=355&top=8
Maturana, H. R., & Varela, F. J. (1992). The Tree of Knowledge: the biological roots of human understanding (p. 247). https://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BA04994769
Tenbrunsel, A. E., & Messick, D. M. (2004). (Links to an external site.) Ethical fading: The role of self-deception in unethical behaviorLinks to an external site.. Social Justice Research, 17(2), 223-236. https://doi.org/10.1023/b:sore.0000027411.35832.53
 
 

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