Perinatal care for a peaceful world
Interview with Becca de Souza
I chat with fellow advocate and educator Becca De Souza from Peaceful Birth Partnership. Together we discuss the importance of accessible perinatal care for mothers from refugee backgrounds and breaking the cycles of trauma through birth and parenting. At the core of this conversation is how when we really prioritize the women who are most at risk, all women will benefit.
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About Becca
Becca lives as a visitor on Dharawal Country (Wollongong) and is a Shawnee descendant who grew up on Turtle Island (US). Becca is a doula, birth educator and a mother of 3 who experienced PTSD during her own childbearing years. Becca works for Peaceful Birth Partnership in a small team to provide trauma-informed perinatal support to mums who may have barriers to access, because of language, culture or finances.
We explore the following questions:
How did you begin working with Mums from a refugee background?
Were you trained as a birth doula when you supported the first two Syrian women through their pregnancy and birth?
What kind of work do you do around breaking the cycles of trauma, particularly in relation to birth?
How do you describe your own parenting style and how does it inform the parenting support you do?
What has your personal experience with alloparenting been?
What is the Peaceful Birth Partnership and what do you do?
How can we better support you and Peaceful Birth Partnership to continue doing this good work?
Additional resources we spoke about:
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Transcript
Julia Jones:
Hello and welcome to Newborn Mothers Podcast. And today we have Becca. Becca's coming in from Dharawal Country, Wollongong and she's a Shawnee descendant who grew up in Turtle Island in the US. She works with a small team to provide trauma informed perinatal support to mums who may have barriers to access because of language, culture or finances. And her organization is called Peaceful Birth Partnership. It's so wonderful to have you here. How are you?
Becca de Souza:
Yeah, I'm really good. I'm really excited to get to chat with you.
Julia Jones:
Yeah, I am too. And we've known each other for a little bit of time, but don't know a lot about each other, so it's been really a lovely... It's one of the greatest things of having a podcast is having an opportunity to get to dig into people's stories a little bit more.
How did you begin working with Mums from a refugee background? (01:18)
So, do you want to introduce yourself and where you come from and what you did before you came to this work?
Becca de Souza:
Yeah, yeah. I think it's really important for me. I've lived as a visitor on Dharawal country for the last 13 years. And so, I want to acknowledge the absolute power of Wodiwodi women in raising their families here in the face of colonization, and really want to pay my respects to elders past, present and emerging. It's been such a gift to live here, to give birth to my three kids here, to raise my kids here, to have my kids in school. We live near Wollongong in New South Wales and it's just a very gorgeous place with the ocean and the mountains and it's awesome, we love it. And I grew up on Turtle Island and in Western Pennsylvania, but found my way here long ago and I'm really grateful to be here.
And I think for me, one thing that really got me to start working with moms, especially moms who are, like refugee background, is one of the groups of women that our little organization kind of works with is just being in community, being a neighbor. Our area is very multicultural. Our school, the school my kids go to is a tiny school that has 42 nationalities and 24 languages. So, literally just meeting moms at school and in the neighborhood. That was the first couple of pregnant moms who were Syrian that I supported and I was at their births and I had spent time, I have spent a lot of time overseas and had spent time in the Middle East and was just... Found that there were moms in my neighborhood, in my community at my school who just didn't have the support they needed to really navigate the hospital system. And I was trained as a doula and a birth educator and just was able to come alongside people, it's been really, really good.
Were you trained as a birth doula when you supported the first two Syrian women through their pregnancy and birth? (03:36)
Julia Jones:
That was going to be my next question. So when you supported those first two Syrian women through their pregnancy and their birth, you'd already trained as a doula?
Becca de Souza:
Yeah, I had and as a birth educator and I actually had also taken my family to Lebanon. I took my two, four and six-year-olds and my husband, fortunately, to Lebanon for about seven weeks. I did a little course there learning about trauma. I was coming to terms with my own experience of having post-traumatic stress disorder and wanted to learn more about how to better serve neighbours and friends in my community and how trauma affects us and how we can heal. When I was in Lebanon, there's actually so many Syrians living there as refugees. I think Lebanon increased their population by about a third during the Syrian crisis. And there's a lot of pregnant moms and just coming alongside them, doing some birth education was really amazing. And then realizing oh, and then these moms get humanitarian visas and they come to Wollongong and they don't necessarily have any extra support. There is refugee health services, which are really good, but in terms of more one-on-one, really come alongside your doula support, I could see that was lacking.
Julia Jones:
So, you did it.
Becca de Souza:
Yeah, and it was really awesome. One of them was quite a good friend of mine and it was baby number six. And one of the cool things with that was, that was her first birth for her husband to be there. And so even part of me and my friend Destiny, who I work with, part of our job was supporting him to be there, because culturally that wouldn't happen.
Julia Jones:
So she'd had her other babies in Syria?
Becca de Souza:
She had four others in Syria and then had one here. She had had a fifth baby here, but her husband hadn't been there, because he hadn't been at the other ones. And so supporting him to be there. And it was interesting because afterwards, I said, oh, how was it for him? And she said, her response to that was, when he went back to work, he was ringing me six times a day to see if I was okay. So it really impacted their relationship for him to actually be a part of supporting her in the birth, which was pretty awesome.
Julia Jones:
Wow. And that was the sixth baby and the first time he'd really realized what that meant. Yeah, amazing. What an amazing gift to be able to guide people through that. That's a really difficult cultural space to navigate. So I bet there's a lot of people who really appreciate your effort.
What kind of work do you do around breaking the cycles of trauma, particularly in relation to birth? (06:20)
I want to rewind a little bit because you mentioned post-traumatic stress disorder, and I know that you really care about breaking the cycles of trauma. What kind of work do you do in that space? And why birth? Why is that the area that you've chosen to do that in?
Becca de Souza:
Yeah. Well I think when moms have trauma in their backgrounds, birth is, I feel like it's an opportunity to either be, well supported or to feel extremely disempowered. And when women are disempowered, experience that sense of powerlessness, during birth, that is a traumagenic experience, that's an experience that can become trauma. And I think in Australia it's like, is it one in three women?
Julia Jones:
Yeah, one in three.
Becca de Souza:
…are post-traumatic. And so, I feel like especially when you have moms who are refugee background, if they've made it to Australia on humanitarian visas, they very likely have traumatic experiences in their backgrounds. And the other women we work with as well often have trauma in their backgrounds. And I think birth is just, if you're well supported, it can really set you up to then have baby with you right after birth, to be bonded to baby, which then... The more bonded a mom is to baby, the more responsive she will be able to be in early parenting.
And ultimately the less violent we are with our children. The more responsive we are and supported we feel, the less violent we're going to be. And the that's less trauma for the next generation of kids really. So I do think birth and early parenting is a very important time for moms to be supported. I think it's a really important time for moms to examine how they were parented. And I think a lot of us, we feel like we had a good enough childhood and then we have babies that demand everything from us. We are suddenly so triggered.
I think if you were a baby that was left to cry, even if you don't remember but your body remembers. Or if you're a toddler who was screamed at, or a six-year-old who was put down verbally or physically abused, that then having a baby or a child scream at you can actually trigger that sense of powerlessness, but now we're the big one, and so then we yell back or we smack or we lash out in some way that we actually don't want to. So, having support, to be honest about that, to examine that, I've seen mums make really big changes to their families and break cycles of neglect, violence, and trauma in their families.
How do you describe your own parenting style and how does it inform the parenting support you do? (09:16)
Julia Jones:
Yeah, I love that. And you mentioned briefly too, that then that carries forward into parenting. So, I know you do some parenting support as well, but I loved how you described your own parenting style. Can you tell us a bit about that?
Becca de Souza:
Yeah. I'm so grateful for my husband who is been my... Someone introduced me to attachment parenting when I was pregnant with my first baby. And I had never... I didn't know people intentionally slept with their babies in their bed, I thought that was accidental, you didn't want that. And then I even remember hearing somebody talk about breastfeeding their 18-month-olds, and I was just like, what? Oh, I'll never... You're thinking, oh, I would never do that, and then just learning more about the benefits. I know there's a book called Parenting for a Peaceful World by Robin Grille. Have you heard of that book?
Julia Jones:
I've heard of her.
Becca de Souza:
I think, he.
Julia Jones:
Oh him, is it?
Becca de Souza:
But he's an Australian actually, and he goes through... I mean it's just highly recommend, it really shaped me. He goes through the history of Western parenting and how we've moved from more violent to less violent, more responsive than he looks at indigenous parenting practices as well, which are very responsive parenting practices.
So anyway, so we do this and we have these high expectations, Chris and I have, and then we end up with this super high needs baby that's just very intense, and then we're surprised, he's eight month old and still a very hands on baby, and we get pregnant again. So then we have two under 17 months, and then we had another surprise, so we had three under four and I tandem fed, so I fed everybody until they're at least three, about even up to four and a half, and did all the things.
And then I think we have a one-year-old, a three-year-old, and a five-year-old and we're just, this is craziness. I remember us crying, I was, "Chris, this isn't working. Everything they told us about attachment parenting, this isn't working. Our kids don't listen, our kids don't sleep. What's going on?" And he was, Becca, we are choosing... We are doing this. This is the right thing for us. This is integris for us to choose this. And he's like, "We are not going to be the world's best parents. There's not a chance. We are going to be mediocre parents, but we are going to be the best damn mediocre parents we could be."
And so we have just held to that, and I think that moment was actually very pivotal for me. I do not have to be perfect. I want to be the perfect parent, I want to never yell, I want to not have my kids have screen time, I want to have tidy house. That's not going to happen, I mentioned my house generally looks like we got robbed. If you went upstairs, you'd be like, oh goodness, we get there. We always wrap it up at some point. But, so I think for me is letting go of that need to be perfect and really being honest about the culture in which I was parented, which was like eighties Christian American. I don't know if you're familiar with that at all.
Julia Jones:
Yeah, a little. I think American parenting and American culture permeates the whole world. So I think in Australia we have similar influences as well, but I do think that a lot of our cultural ideals come from idealizing America. So there's a lot of that here too, I think.
Becca de Souza:
And I always believe that parents are doing actually their best. They're doing their best, but it's also okay to say that wasn't actually good enough and they did their best, but now I'm actually going to stand on their shoulders and I'm going to...
Julia Jones:
Do a little bit better.
Becca de Souza:
10% better, 10% better. For me, we don't smack our kids, we never have smacked them. But I yell at my kids, I've screamed in their faces and I've had plenty of ruptures. I can't really call it peaceful parenting, I can't even call it gentle parenting, but I'm more gentle, I'm more responsive when there's rupture, I'm repairing it and I'm taking responsibility as the parent to make things right with my child.
And that was the thing where I felt very responsible to make things okay when I was a kid. And I don't think my parents intended for that necessarily, but that's what happened and that's how I've internalized it. And so, for me, it's like I'm taking the responsibility to my child. Look, I lost my temper, I needed to walk away, just letting the... You're not the problem, it's me, I'm the problem and I'm working on it, and my kids know that I go to therapy. I'm always in and out of therapy.
Because I need a place to process. And I had mentioned that, I feel like now that my kids are 12, 10, and eight, I do feel it's paying off. I feel I can see all the trust of those sleepless nights that I built by having my kids in my bed and having my kids close to me. And all of those apologies over the years, I'm seeing that finally. But it's taken a long time.
Julia Jones:
And I love just how real you are about this because I think when a lot of people talk about attachment parenting and it's on Instagram with linen clothing and everything's beige and minimalist and clean and it looks like these moms are having such a great time, but it's so hard, it's really hard. And that doesn't mean that you're doing it wrong.
Becca de Souza:
Yeah.
Julia Jones:
And the other thing I want to mention is, you were saying your parenting... Your parents were parenting in this social situation, but so are we, and attachment parenting was the norm biologically for humans for hundreds of thousands of years. But also, so was alloparenting. You wouldn't have been the only one sleeping with your baby, and the only one breastfeeding your baby, and the only one carrying your baby, and the only one cooking dinner. So the expectation that we can meet the needs of our babies alone, it's actually unrealistic. We just have to muddle through doing the best we can, knowing that it's never going to be perfect because we don't have eight to 14 adults every day helping us to complete all of those tasks.
What has your personal experience with alloparenting been? (15:54)
Becca de Souza:
Do you feel like you have had alloparents in your life as you…
Julia Jones:
Look, a little bit and I've made a huge effort and it's still really hard so, I do deliberately live around the corner from my parents. So, there's my husband and I, that's two, my mom and dad, that's four. I also have a couple of neighbors that are almost aunties and uncles to my children, I would consider them to be very close. But my sister lives overseas, my husband's family all live interstate. So it's still not easy or a lot, even with all of the effort that we put in. So, I think there's a lot of grief for people that that's lost. And I imagine for indigenous people that's also true, and it may be even in closer memory.
Becca de Souza:
Yeah, it's interesting you bring up alloparenting because I've been thinking about that lately because I have a woman who was a client that I supported whose refugee background alone here, baby's dad is not even in the country, just her and the baby now. Came here pregnant and here the baby just turned two and she was a moving house, and so I had him multiple times this week and I'm wearing him in the Tula to get him to sleep, and I was, oh, this is alloparenting.
Julia Jones:
This is it.
Becca de Souza:
But it's because my kids have grown. I think it's an important question for us to ask those of us whose kids... My youngest is eight, eight and a half, and it takes a while to come up for air, it really does. You actually need some time by yourself once the kids head to school or if you're not homeschooling. But I think it's an important challenge for us to, am I alloparenting, as my kids get older? Do I have somebody that I'm being that auntie to, you who maybe is also isolated? I think it's an important question for us to be asking.
Julia Jones:
It's a super important question. And so just for background, for people listening, Becca and I connected because we want to do some advocacy work around making sure that this kind of support is available to all families in Australia. That there aren't barriers for people financially, culturally, linguistically, and is that the word? And part of that work was actually, we did a series of interviews, it was called Mum's Matter. One of the interviews was with an aunt. It was a woman who didn't have children talking about what she feels her role is and the value of childless adults in society.
Anyway, so I completely love what you're saying and same, my youngest is six, so I'm also just in that process of coming up for air, and we've just got some new neighbors moved into the house in front of ours with a tiny baby and a two-year-old, and they've just moved from overseas. They had their babies during the pandemic. And I just can see the exhaustion in her face and I know that feeling and they're very new, so I'm not going to go and bombard them. But I am also very intentionally thinking, oh, next time I have some leftover food or next time it's a really hot day or... Just in the back of my mind thinking, how can I reach out? I was really happy the other day because they popped over to borrow some spices and that was, they're doing some Christmas baking, and that was a good little invitation to go, okay, they're obviously that kind of people, they're going to knock on the door for sugar and we can build that reciprocity. So I completely agree, this is the responsibility of all people.
Becca de Souza:
Yeah, absolutely.
What is the Peaceful Birth Partnership and what do you do? (19:45)
Julia Jones:
So let's bring it back to you, because I do want to hear a little bit more about your story. Tell us about specifically what the Peaceful Birth Partnership now does.
Becca de Souza:
Yeah, so we do a few random things I feel like. One thing was, at the beginning of the year, when things were starting to open up with COVID, but there really weren't birth classes running in person, and actually somebody who does advocacy in the area, she tapped me on the shoulder and was, could you guys run some birth classes? And I was, because we had been working with people one-on-one, and so we just decided, okay, let's just do it. So we ran free birth classes for anyone to attend, and then people have the opportunity to give donations. We run them over four nights, over four weeks, if that makes sense, so about eight hours. And we ended up having really good feedback from our birth classes, which is fun. We love to act things out and be funny and we think we're funny.
I don't know if other people do, they look a bit shell-shocked the first week, but justkind of have fun and had women really having really good results. In New South Wales, we have very high induction rates, very high cesarean rates, and we had really good results coming from our birth classes, which was awesome. But our real focus, and I do really believe this is what I've been taught by Aboriginal and other Indigenous women, is that when we really prioritize the women who are most at risk, all women will benefit. So with our free ‘birth classes’, we still have mostly partnered women coming with their partners, mostly white women coming, which is great. I'm, I think birth education is trauma prevention, a hundred percent, quality birth education, and I think the less traumatized women we have in the world, the better.
I think it's great and we're happy to do that, but we are still no, but we really want to find women who can't read our advertising because it's not in their language. We want to find moms who can't go to your average birth class because they're learning English. Maybe they need translation, maybe they need everything to just be more simple English really. So we created a curriculum that's basic, similar to our normal birth class curriculum, but it's very simple English. We say it's like an ESL based curriculum. We had an opportunity actually in August, which was pretty awesome to work with a group of, I think we had eight pregnant women, newly arrived from Afghanistan, and we got to run a four hour, I think four or five hour birth class with them, which was pretty awesome, it was all translated.
And then got to do, we also have women's... A basic women's reproductive health class where we talk about menstrual cycle and family planning options and menopause symptoms and consent, pap smears or I think they're called cervical exams now. So we find opportunities to do that in Wollongong with different organizations or... A lot of our local schools will have community hubs that are focused on moms who are new to Australia. So, we'll go in and run classes there, and then we often from there will connect with individuals. So we recently met two pregnant women who are Pakistani, husbands are doing PhDs here. One of the moms really has no English, and she's having a baby at Wollongong hospital very soon. And so we've been meeting with them in their home, just the past three weeks, and her husband translates everything. He's awesome, he's amazing.
He's going to be such an awesome support for her. And I think Justin will also go to the birth of them. That's what they wanted. Our dream honestly, is to run doula training for women who are in their own community speaking their own language. I don't think it's ideal to have to have a stranger come to your birth, especially one that's from a different language and culture group. So, that's our goal, is to actually run something where older women maybe who are done having babies or younger women or anybody could actually be trained so they can go be with their sister or their niece or their daughter or their friend and support them.
Julia Jones:
Yeah, I love it. And that is true culturally safe care. It's not someone... That's the best practice, isn't it? I mean, the next best thing is for people like us to make a real effort, but even better is for them to be able to have the opportunity to both learn those skills, but also have the privilege as in the time or the finances to be able to actually provide that care. So, I love that vision, it gives me chills. I'm so excited that you are working on those kind of things. I want to know...
Becca de Souza:
It's the funniest thing you can ever do, it's the best. We get paid in the best food ever. I always joke, we just mostly get paid in rice, but it's amazing.You have to, it's funny, even with this couple, we come and they're... I forgot what we were talking about, how she's feeling, and then her husband's like, but she'll feel much more relaxed if we have tea first and eat first. And so you need to do that before we run our little class with her.
Julia Jones:
Yeah, I love it. My mom used to work in refugee support when I was growing up and she always brought the most amazing food. Food that you can't buy restaurants. There's no way you can have this food other than home cooked with someone's love. So yeah, what a gift to be able to share those kinds of things.
Becca de Souza:
Yeah, it's really fun, so much fun.
How can we better support you and Peaceful Birth Partnership to continue doing this good work? (25:33)
Julia Jones:
So is there anything else? I think I've asked all my questions. I'm really curious to see what the next few years hold for you. And I'd love to stay in touch and maybe check in again. But is there anything you want to share with our audience? I guess my question really is how can we better support you to continue doing this good work?
Becca de Souza:
Oh, that's a great question. I mean, the Peaceful Birth Partnership is, we're tiny, there's three of us. We're all just part time. It would be great to figure out ways to be funded. We want to be able to offer individual women free services, but then if another organization is having us come, it would be nice to get paid.
Julia Jones:
It's always nice to get paid.
Becca de Souza:
So just trying to figure out how to be more sustainable.
Julia Jones:
Are you currently a not for profit, are you? No, you're not a DGR1 one.
Becca de Souza:
We're not, we are almost three individuals.
Julia Jones:
Yeah. So you're just as sole try to...
Becca de Souza:
It's complicated. Exactly, exactly. We all have our own ABNs. Not that we get the money that way, but yeah. So, it's complicated when you start to try to make a co-op or whatever, financially. And none of us have really... I don't have a brain for that really, and none of us do. So anyway, we're just plotting along.
Julia Jones:
So if there's any listeners who are like,’ I have a brain for that, I know how to do it.’
Becca de Souza:
Yes, oh my gosh, that would be so good. Yeah, and I don't know, and I think for listeners, I think, I'm sure you have lots of moms who are just in the trenches listening, and I just think... I was going to say that breaking cycles in your parenting, doing that 10%, 20% more attentive, more gentle parenting, it's the most important work we can do. It is, that's why I like the book title Parenting for a Peaceful World. If I actually can believe that I'm doing my best to create less violence in the world, and create kids that would... We've always wanted our kids to argue with us. I grew up... At the culture where I grew up, I didn't grow up like this in a house like this, but the culture where I grew up was like, you don't back talk. Your parents tell you what to do and you do that. And that's actually really dangerous. We don't want kids that actually submit to anyone because they're in authority over them, that's actually very dangerous.
And I think our generation realizes that, but then parenting a kid that you've taught to engage with you is the most frustrating thing in the whole world. Having an 11-year-old who tells you every single day why they should have a phone, and you're, no, no, but you're not wanting to shut them down. It's just such hard work, it's just such hard work, and I know that when I had three under four, it was actually such a difficult time, and I just really want to encourage all the moms out there with little kids that actually, it really is, you fall off the path and you just get back on, you mess up and you apologize, and you get back on and you stay the course. And it really is, it really will pay off, absolutely.
Julia Jones:
Yeah, I agree. I think that was probably the hardest time in my life to date was those years with children under three, four, five, it's just impossible.
Becca de Souza:
My goodness.
And Robin Grille talks about parents are between caught between a rock and a hard place. The rock is, how they're parented and how their culture says they should parent, and then the hard place is, your child demands everything from you, they want perfection. They come from the womb where everything's taken care of, and then they want that. And finding your way and all of that, it's so hard, it's so relentless, it's so tiring. But it really is, if we can do our bit to heal trauma in our own lives, to create less trauma in our children's lives, we're going to make the world a better place. It's really exciting actually, and supporting other moms. If we're honest, when I'm honest and I say, look, I was on medication for a while, I go to therapy. Here's where I mess up. If I'm honest about that, then it actually empowers other moms to feel like they can do it too.
It's when we act like we have it all together. That other moms, I can't do that, so I'm just going to… whatever the other options are. I think that honesty is really important and I think we normalize a lot of suffering for moms and just really in the same, we talk about in birth, like Penny Simkin says, we don't want people to suffer. Pain is different than suffering, and motherhood, suffering is not normal. And if you find yourself suffering, that's the time to reach out. That's the time to go to the GP and find a therapist and get a support group.
Julia Jones:
Yeah, I totally agree. We do really normalize this expectation that it's just going to be awful and there's nothing you can do about it, but it's really not true. It will be intense, but a lot of these intense things don't have to be traumatic, if you have the right support, if you've got people around you and community, that makes all the difference whether you get through this intact or not.
Becca de Souza:
Absolutely.
Julia Jones:
Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing, Becca. I'd love all of our listeners to go and have a look at peacefulbirthpartnership.org and yeah, stay in touch.
