An Interview with Bliss Baby Yoga Director and Lead Teacher, Nadine O’Mara – Part One  

 

Nadine O’Mara has been teaching prenatal and postnatal Yoga since 2007. Nadine found she loved working with pregnancy and birth so much that she went on to train as a childbirth educator in 2015, and then as a doula.  

Bliss Baby Yoga founder Ana Davis had a conversation with Nadine about her experiences as a professional doula over this time.  

This is part one of a two-part series in which Nadine and Ana take a deep-dive into the world of doula birth support and how it dovetails so well with our roles as prenatal yoga teachers.  

Ana: What made you want to become a doula?  

Nadine: I was first inspired to work in the world of birth after my two daughters (now 15 and 17) were born, with whom I’d had positive birth experiences. I was teaching yoga at the time and doing a lot of prenatal yoga during my pregnancies. I could see how beneficial the yoga was and the active birth techniques that are related to yoga in helping me prepare for the birth of my children. I began my journey by becoming a prenatal yoga teacher so I could share this experience and support women in the yoga room. And then I started to find that I wanted to be more involved in supporting couples preparing for birth.  

 I looked into being a doula at that point, but my kids were still very small and I wasn’t quite ready emotionally to leave them to attend births. So, I trained as a childbirth educator. But I still wasn’t in the birth room, supporting women and their partners and applying those tools at the coalface. That’s when I finally took the leap and trained as a doula.  

 By then my children were getting old enough that I felt that I could disappear in the middle of the night to attend births and they would be okay with that.  

 Ana: You’ve now been working in the world of pregnancy and birth for 17 years, what have you noticed has changed during this time?  

Nadine: I feel like social media is changing the way that we approach birth. The videos and imagery of people’s births are now so prolific—so many people record and then share their births. And I think that’s a beautiful thing—we see beautiful video and photos of natural births. We also have a lot of different groups out there in social media—all talking about birth— whether it’s natural birthing or VBACs or home birthing or birth and pregnancy in general. So, I feel like the conversation is now much bigger. And I think women can more readily reach out to other people who are pregnant to ask questions and discover the specific group that might be supportive of the sort of birth they’re looking for.  

At the same time, I also feel that it’s often over whelming for those pregnant now in terms of the amount of mis-information and judgement that exists on social media. 

It also seems to me that the conversations around birth are becoming more complex, especially in an environment where interventions and c-sections just keep increasing. There are different arguments around birth: Is an instrumental birth better or worse than having a c-section? Or, is it better to have labored and then end up with a third degree tear and significant other issues—for example, pelvic issues—to have a vaginal birth—versus having a c-section? 

 Ana: So, you are saying the conversation has become more nuanced?  

Nadine: Yes, I guess you could say that. But it’s also more complex. There are many separate groups: we’re not coming together in the birthing world as much. But I do think that education is a lot better for someone who is pregnant—and there’s greater general awareness the idea of going to a birth education course when you’re pregnant.   

Ana: As both a Prenatal Yoga teacher and a doula what do you think are the synergies and benefits of combining these professional skills?   

Nadine: I think being able to share what’s happening in the birth room—those tools and the stories of birth within the Prenatal Yoga class is invaluable. The prenatal students love to hear those stories. They love to know what they’re doing is directly related to helping them have a better birth. Using birth anecdotes drawn from your experience as a birth-worker during Prenatal Yoga class can be so beneficial.  

Ana: And it helps them build trust—that you, as the prenatal teacher, have really got an enhanced solidity of experience and knowledge in the real-world of birth.  

Nadine: Yes, exactly—that you’re there in the birth room (as well as the yoga room) using these tools and seeing the direct effect of birthing women benefit from them. The students really appreciate that sense of wisdom and understanding. 

Ana: Tell me about some of your experiences when you first started to work as doula? What was your first birth like?  

Nadine: I remember feeling very nervous as a trainee doula at my first birth. It was in a private hospital, where intervention rates are higher. The obstetrician came in and he wanted to break the birthing woman’s waters. And I remember feeling like I was too much of a pushover. I was intimidated by the obstetrician and what he thought. The birth did go well—it was a successful, natural vaginal birth, which they don’t often see in that hospital. As Senior Doula Trainer Anna Watts (who is head teacher of our new Celebration of Birth & Bliss Baby Yoga Online Holistic Doula Training Course calls it— a ‘unicorn birth’ .

Ana: Did you receive mentoring after your first few births as a doula to help you unpack the experiences and learnings as a trainee doula?  

Nadine: No, not really! It wasn’t part of the training that I did. When I look back, as a trainee doula, I judged myself quite harshly. Some one-on-one debriefing with a senior doula would have been so beneficial for me. I did have some peer support—a fellow new doula—and we discussed with each other our experiences, trying to make sense of them. It did help but it’s not the same at all. Some of those births I attended as a new doula, I’d come out and wonder to myself: what on earth was that?! It would take me a while to unravel what had happened and how the birth had unfolded and what my role had been in supporting the mother.  

Ana: Yes, I know what you mean! I did my doula training as a face-to-face course with Anna Watts (about 7 years ago) and she offered mentoring as a critical part of the follow up for trainee doulas—in the same way that we prioritise this in our new Bliss Baby Yoga & Celebration of Birth Online Mentoring and Certification Module . My first birth as a trainee doula involved an emergency, unscheduled Caesarean (‘belly birth’) so I wasn’t even with the mother immediately before or after the birth. Instead, I helped by visiting several times while the mother was in hospital with her premature baby in neonatal care. I supported her emotionally while she was going through a very stressful time. I even ended up taking home the woman’s placenta for safe keeping in my freezer. But I still felt inadequate, I doubted myself and my role, like I hadn’t really been a doula for this birth.  

 But when I spoke to Anna Watts as part of my post-birth-debrief mentoring session over the phone, she was so supportive and positive; she helped me understand how much I had managed to do for my client, rather than focus on what I wasn’t able to do. It was so affirming and helpful to tap into her wisdom and feedback.  

 And it makes me think of the history of doula-ing and midwifery. It’s an ancient tradition in which certain women within a community would offer each other in-depth knowledge around birth—birthing positions—herbal applications and so forth. And it would be a tradition that would be handed down from mother to daughter, older woman to younger woman and so forth. Here you see this idea of the importance of mentoring, of an apprenticeship. And I think that’s embedded in the methodology of our Doula Training in which students can have access to senior doula trainers like Anna Watts, and experienced doulas like yourself, for the Zoom-mentoring component at the end of the course. It’s so important.  

 Nadine: Absolutely! I also think it’s also so much about developing our intuitive knowledge as a doula. Trusting in that. And that I think it’s about coming from a basis of supporting the whole self in preparation for birth and recognizing what you offer of yourself from the whole person as opposed to just learning a whole lot of techniques that you can support with.  

Ana: So it’s about trusting your intuition—trusting that you have that ingrained knowledge and wisdom to share and support other women. This of course, totally ties in with how we teach our Bliss Baby Yoga prenatal yoga teacher trainings. It’s what we call the balancing of the inner and out knowledge: the ‘guru’ and the ‘sat-guru’.

As a competent and effective doula, you still need that external information of understanding the different interventions that can happen and knowing the right questions to ask the medical professionals, like when they’re suggesting to rupture the membranes or all of the different interventions that can happen. But what you’re saying is you need that firm basis of really being solid in yourself, which is trusting yourself so that you’re also trustable for your client. You are the rock when they are at the most stressful point in their lives… 

Nadine: Most definitely—as a doula you need to emanate that. And I think we often undervalue that as doulas. It’s that feeling that we have to be doing something in the birthing room. But actually, it’s good to remind yourself that your presence is what’s needed. I’ve often had clients say: When Nadine arrived, I knew everything was going to be okay. They feel so reassured just having me there—knowing that I know them and that I’m there.  

I had to go to a birth with a fractured ankle recently. And thought: How am I going to do this? But I also had to remind myself that I knew my client would just want me to be present. Even if that meant me sitting on a chair next to her—which I didn’t: I did manage to get down on the floor! But being present with her was what was most important. I didn’t have to be there to do the hip squeezes, or all the different techniques, which are of course beneficial too. I’ve spent plenty of births squeezing a woman’s hips every surge she had. But it’s also worth recognising how important it is: being that rock and being, that presence is in the birth room. 

Bliss Baby Yoga offers a comprehensive Online Holistic Doula Training with Anna Watts from Celebration of Birth as lead teacher and Bliss Baby Yoga’s Director and experienced Doula and Childbirth Educator Nadine O’Mara, and Doula & Bliss Baby Yoga Senior Teacher Rosie Matheson as co-teachers.