Narratives: What to Do When Someone Starts Telling a Birth "Horror Story"

In this episode, Sara discusses what to do when family, friends, or others start telling birth "horror stories" at baby showers or in birthing spaces. She uses the framework of narrative analysis to offer ideas about constructive ways to respond in these situations.   TRANSCRIPT: Welcome. This is episode number 78 of Birth Words. Today we'll be talking about what to do when you're in a birth space or at a baby shower or any sort of event like that. When someone starts telling a birth horror story 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. The work of birth words is to elevate the language surrounding pregnancy, birth and the postpartum period. Nothing in this podcast should be taken as medical advice. Hello, welcome to today's episode. I have some news. I don't know if it's good, bad, exciting, interesting, or otherwise. But I will share the news as we start this episode. We are coming up on the end of the second full year of the birth words podcast. The end of June marks the end of the second full year of this podcast. And I have learned so much; I've loved connecting with guests; I've loved delving into lots of topics relating to pregnancy, birth and the postpartum period. And I've loved learning about hosting podcasts and connecting with people that way. And I'm going to keep doing it through this third year of the birth words podcast, but I'm going to be doing it less frequently. So the first year of this podcast, you can go back and listen to all of the episodes that were released. Every single week. Every Monday, a new episode came out. And then moving into the second year I went to a bi-weekly, every other week, schedule. So for the last year, I've been releasing an episode not each week, but every other week. And now moving into year three of the podcast I'm leaving this platform open as a space to talk about the importance of birth and language and pregnancy and language and the postpartum experience and language. But I'm not going to be releasing episodes on a predictable schedule. When there's a really important topic that arises naturally in my own experience, I will create an episode and share it with you. Or I have an opportunity to connect with a guest that I'm interested in sharing their story or their wisdom as it relates to the birthing year and the power of words, I will share it with you on this podcast. But the times in which these episodes will be released will just be a little bit less predictable or regular. So stay tuned. Please keep checking back in for new episodes. Please keep following me on Instagram and Facebook @birthwords or check out content at birthwords.com. But just know that it won't be coming quite as regularly. The reason for that is I am at the very beginning of an exciting journey towards becoming a certified nurse midwife, but I first need to get a bachelor's degree in nursing and then a master's or possibly a doctorate in nurse midwifery after that. So, my original bachelor's degree was an elementary ed. and then I got a master's degree in applied linguistics. As you know, I've combined information from that master's degree with my passion for birth work here in this podcast. And I've loved doing that. And I feel called to keep working on this, in this work, and to become a care provider and to give empowering, intentional, and reflective support to birthing families as a certified nurse midwife, but it's a long journey. There are a lot of classes that I need to take between here and there and I just need to shift my energy a little bit as I begin that path. So, there's my announcement, exciting and mixed with just a little bit of a slower pace here at the Birth Words podcast. Please keep checking back in. Now, I mentioned in the welcome to this episode that we're going to be talking about an important subject. What do you do if you're in a birth space… Or if you are at a baby shower… Or if you're just in a conversation with a pregnant person and somebody else and a birth story arises that is not the kind that will invite positive birth experiences. We call these birth horror stories or terror stories or you've heard people probably tell these sorts of stories that incite fear, or worry, or anxiety, lack of reverence and respect for the birthing process, whatever it is… Invite negative feelings about the birth experience. What do you do if you're in that space and you're kind of a bystander when this sort of story comes up? Unfortunately, this episode topic was inspired by a recent experience at a birth I attended with a client and I will not go into details for several reasons. But at that birth, a story was unfortunately shared that was not at all helpful to my client that she was laboring to bring her baby earthside. And the way that I responded, looking back, I don't think that I responded terribly. I also think that if I'd had weeks to ponder on it beforehand, I would have responded in a slightly different way. So, I'm taking this space to think through those sorts of experiences. With you. So that each of us, when we're in a space like that, can be ready to respond in a different way. Also, I want to backpedal just a little bit for another reason I chose this topic. Yes, it was inspired by this recent unfortunate experience. It was also inspired by the same conversation that made me want to pursue doula work four and a half years ago, after my son was born, when I was speaking with my friends on the playground and they said how, was his birth? And I said, “it was amazing. It was incredible. My body did this amazing thing and I felt so empowered… and powerful… and wow, I loved it. And I remember looking at my friends’ faces and the look of surprise that came across their faces because they weren't expecting a story of empowerment and awe and wonder from that birth experience. They were expecting one of these more negative stories like they'd encountered maybe at their own baby showers. Maybe by people in their birth space, maybe from their own mothers, or aunts or sisters or neighbors or friends. And I think that we really need to do some work to change the narrative of birth. Of course, there's a caveat that there are traumatic birth experiences. People do experience birth in a traumatic way sometimes, and I honor and hold space for that. I accept that as true and acknowledge that that is the unfortunate experience of some people. I also feel that there are many instances where stories are told in ways that amplify the negative rather than amplifying the positive and especially when the story is not someone's own, but is rather repeated for effect. For the “wow, can you believe that happened?” response. Those are the sorts of stories that I want to change. And of course, if people have negative or traumatic or difficult birth experiences, I am in no way saying that they aren't allowed to speak about them. But I am saying let's find the right space for people to have those conversations in a way that can be healing for all people involved. Okay, so, in many of these episodes, if you've been listening along for a while, you know, I kind of like to take a topic like this—birth stories—and specifically, disempowering or negative or traumatic or horror stories, and take a linguistic framework and meld the two and say, “what can we learn when we apply this linguistic framework to this experience?” So the framework—the ideas that I'm using today—come from a book called Narrative Analysis Catherine Kohler Riessman. And you can see the full citation for that work in the show notes. It is a Qualitative Research Methods series publication that is outlining the way to do narrative analysis. Linguists sometimes take narratives or stories and analyze them and break them apart into pieces and discover the whys and hows and wherefores of stories that people tell, of narratives. So, in narrative Analysis, the author, Catherine Riessman, begins by discussing what we do when we tell stories or narratives—what that process entails. And so, I'm going to read several quotes from her book, and after each quote, take a moment to stop and apply it to the experience of telling horror stories about birth. So, here's a quote from Catherine Riessman in Narrative Analysis. She says, “we do not have direct access to another's experience. Se deal with ambiguous representations of it: talk, text, interaction and interpretation. It is not possible to be neutral and objective: to merely represent as opposed to interpret the world.” She says that on page eight So here, Riessman is saying, we can't directly access and other people's experiences. There is necessarily… barrier is a bit strong of a word. A middle ground through which someone's experience travels before it comes to us. And that middle ground partially is language. It’s impossible, she says, to be neutral and objective, to merely represent an experience. Always, when we represent an experience, we are simultaneously interpreting it. So, applying this to the instance of, let's give an example of, you're at a baby shower and somebody starts to tell about, “Oh, when I had my baby 15 years ago, you wouldn't believe what… la da da da da. I don't need to fill in the blanks because that is not helpful. But let's say somebody launches into a story that is unhelpful, like that. This quote reminds us that both for the teller of the story and the hearers of it, there is a filter through which the story is being told, and a filter through which the story is being received. And of course, as a receiver of the story, we have no control over the filter that the teller of the story is using to portray and interpret the narrative. But we do have control over the filter with which we receive their words and we receive the experience. So, as Riessman reminds us, it is not possible to be neutral and objective as we receive or tell stories. Let's take that as an invitation as a hearer to say, “Okay, I cannot be fully, wholly, neutral and objective as I receive narratives.” So let's take the filter of being compassionate with the person telling the story, understanding where they might be coming from, but at the same time, understanding how we are, where we are—especially if I'm the pregnant person receiving this story. I need to be aware of how this story is impacting me. And if I need to step out and suddenly have an urgent need to use the restroom, or if I'm the friend of the person who we’re celebrating in this baby shower, and a story like this starts I could invite my pregnant friends to go to get something from the car with me. “Oh, I have something, I wanted you to come to the car with me. Come let's go grab it,” or to go to a bathroom break or to go get snacks to separate yourself from this experience that feels like it could be a negative one for you to receive. Okay, so Riessman goes on to say that as we are having an experience, we attend to that experience. We see what stands out as important. She says, “there is choice in what I notice: a selection from the totality of the unreflected on, the primary experience.” So the person who experienced the story to begin with, that is then related as a horrible, fearful story, has attended to that in the story. “There is choice in what I notice: a selection from the totality of the unreflected on, the primary experience.” To me, this acknowledgment that there is choice and what I attend to is important as a listener when I hear stories that come across as entirely negative. I remember that this person experiencing that had choice in what they noticed, and there were other things going on in that experience. And just because they're not represented in the retelling of the experience, doesn't mean that they didn't exist. So as a listener, who is hearing a story that is negative, as I remember that there were other things going on in this story, I can evaluate in that moment, the appropriate way to draw attention to those other things that had happened in that experience. Sometimes it might be appropriate to ask the person telling the story, details about other things that were left out. If all of the details that are being focused on are negative, you could ask for details about more positive things. For instance, if they're telling a birth story that has a lot of negative and fearful details, you could ask questions about, “oh, and what color was your baby's hair when he was born? And did you remember what he smelled like and who got to hold him first? And how much did he weigh?” Reminding the teller of the story that there were other things going on in that story and other details to attend to and then shifting the focus of the experience for the receiver. And you could do that if you were pregnant and listening to a story like this, or birthing and listening to a story like this, or if you're supporting somebody in that space, you can shift the attention to draw attention to the other things that were maybe not noticed or made important in the retelling of the experience, but certainly did exist in the experience, to draw the importance away from negative things that are being conveyed. And then, one last quote I wanted to reflect on from Catherine Riessman’s book about narrative analysis. She notes that in the telling of a story, “meaning also shifts in other ways because it is constructed at this second level of representation in a process of interaction. The story is being told that particular people. It might have taken a different form if someone else were the listener. In telling about an experience I am also creating the self, how I want to be known by them. My narrative is, inevitably, a self-representation.” So Catherine Riessman reminds us in this quote, that narratives are shaped by audience, right? That a story might be told in a certain way because of the people that are in that space. Sometimes a teller is aware of the audience and the impact that their story might be having on the audience. And other times they might be more careless about the impact that the story might be having on the audience. And there are ways that as listeners, or as less-direct listeners, like helper listeners—for instance, a doula who's in a birth space and hears a story being told that might be negative to the birthgiver—can maybe be attentive to how the story is represented and how that might impact the people in the space and whether there might be opportunities to invite the storyteller to be more considerate of who is in the space and how it might be impacting them. For instance, at the recent birth I attended, it was an anesthesiologist who was sharing a story that was really not helpful for my client. And I attempted to draw his attention to this by bringing my client’s experience to the forefront of the conversation. Where he had been telling a story about previous experiences that were negative and inducing fear, I brought my clients experience and what was going on there and now to the forefront of the conversation, which shifted the focus and reminded the anesthesiologist—hopefully, I'm not exactly sure how effective it was as far as whether it will shape the future conversation for him—but hopefully reminded him of who his audience was and how the story might be being received by that audience member, and why it's important to be mindful of the fact that when we tell stories, it's not just a one-way process. So those are some principles that I pulled from Catherine Riessman’s Narrative Analysis to consider this question of what we do when we're in a space, and a birth horror story is being told? It's important to recognize that we don't have direct access other people's experiences. Any story that is being told is being passed through a filter. And when we remember that you can help us to draw attention to other details, or other perspectives that may have existed in that story, or that may exist in a space where the story is being told, and shift them towards creating a new experience in a new time in place that is separate from the experience that's being told. I spoke with a few doula friends in advance of making this episode. And that was a repeated theme that came up, that sometimes stories are told about a different time and place. But something that we can do as support people, or even as birthgivers ourselves, is to draw the attention back to the experience that we are currently creating. And recognizing that it is separate from stories that are being told to us. It is unique, and whole and different. And it has its own life and is in the process of being created. And as we experience and then go on to tell narratives we can choose what we make meaningful in those spaces. And we are agents in those stories. We can fill in this gap between what's going on and how we tell it by focusing our own autonomy and being the tellers and the heroes of our own stories. Outro: If you're interested in sharing your ideas or experiences on the podcast, go to birthwords.com. If you're liking what you hear, please leave a review on your podcast app. For more resources about language for a better birth, subscribe to the monthly newsletter at birthwords.com and follow birthwords on Instagram and Facebook.   REFERENCE: Riessman, Catherine Kohler. Narrative analysis. Vol. 30. Sage, 1993.