The emotional and physical labor of birthing a child can be as painful as the physical labor of birthing a child, as many mothers can attest to — and that does not include the postpartum stress that many experience after having a baby.
Some turn to health care professionals like doulas in support of parental health during and after birth. Others turn to substances.
Birth coach Britt Westmoreland, who is in recovery from substance use disorder and the mother of a two-year-old son, acknowledges that “Pregnancy, labor, and the first year postpartum are really difficult for people. While the medical support is great, it doesn’t really wrap around the whole human. When I was in labor, I was in excruciating pain, and I wasn’t really ‘there.’ And there were these doctors who were telling me what was happening,” she said.
She might be considered one of the lucky ones: drug overdose deaths during pregnancy and postpartum have increased sharply in recent years. This is why Westmoreland decided to become a doula that specifically helps pregnant and postpartum people who are struggling with addiction or are in recovery.
“Working with pregnant women with substance use disorder is important to me because I saw early on through my work in the field that that population has even more stigma placed on them, on top of the huge stigma that is already on people with substance use disorder,” she said.
Westmoreland said she witnessed how pregnant and postpartum people with addictions were treated. “I wanted to get my foot in the door and make a change,” she added.
She was able to make that kind of change through an initiative started by the University of Colorado College of Nursing. The college trains doulas who are in recovery to work in the peer recovery doula program.
“What we’ve noticed in the state of Colorado is that we have an issue with pregnant and postpartum people dying [of overdoses, both accidental and intentional] because of substance use disorder,” said Jessica Anderson, the director of midwifery and women’s health services at the CU College of Nursing. “We decided we wanted to provide more support to the patients that we are caring for in our practices.”
Anderson believes that trained doulas with a history of addiction are the best doulas to help pregnant people who have also struggled with substance use disorder.
“I can’t have a conversation with someone with substance use disorder because I haven’t lived it. I don’t know what it’s like. I don’t know what the challenges are. I can make assumptions, but I really don’t know,” Anderson added.
“People with that lived experience, they have additional support and training and they’re able to connect with people at a different level that is just so much more meaningful than anything I could say as a provider or something that I learned in school or [that I] learned from a journal article or a textbook,” Anderson added, explaining that emotional connection during healing is paramount.
The recovery doula program has 10 patients and two doulas. Westmoreland recently helped in her first birth. The parents are both in recovery and sometimes still struggle with substances.
“The birth really impacted me. I started crying watching the dad meet the baby,” she said. “It’s important for my recovery because first and foremost, I couldn’t do this if I was under the influence of substances— and it’s not something I’m really willing to give up.”
Lindsey Ford is a multimedia journalist at Rocky Mountain PBS. You can reach her at lindseyford@rmpbs.org.
Dana Knowles is the managing editor at Rocky Mountain PBS. You can reach her at danaknowles@rmpbs.org.