Beyond "Healthy Mom, Healthy Baby"

There is a sort of game doulas sometimes play with clients as they work to discover the client's plan for their birth. The doula prepares index cards listing various birthing preferences and outcomes and the clients select several from the stack that are most important to them. Always amongst their selections is a card that says, "Healthy mom, healthy baby". And if the clients are asked to give up their cards one by one, with discussion along the way of choices, circumstances, and alternatives, when there is only one card left, it will be that card.

This is a position I see frequently among doctors, doulas, and mothers alike - a healthy outcome is the only thing that matters, and anything that must be sacrificed along the way has been given up for a worthy cause, the only cause. But what about those who do it all "right", perhaps give up their birth dreams for the sake of the cause, only to have a sick baby or worse, or a sick mother or worse, what is left? Surely something must remain. There must be a goal beyond the external that can be achieved no matter the outcome. True partnership with our partners, reliance on faith, life without fear, or living each moment to its fullest are all choices that are available to us and will always remain.