‘I should have listened to my gut’

So often in this work I hear women tell me about a moment where their gut instinct/intuition/inner voice told them that something was off – to say no, to decline an intervention or to not trust what their care provider was saying, and they ignored it which often led to a less then desirable outcome.

What I say to that is this: we were actively taught to ignore the signals that our bodies send us when we were kids.

Finish your plate / no you can’t go to the toilet, you should have gone during break time / close your legs – you can’t play in that / hug your creepy uncle or give your aunt a kiss on the cheek, etc etc.

And then when we were teenagers, so many of us were put on hormonal birth control pills for various reasons, which actively blocked our bodies natural signals and/or we were taught to ignore our period pain and instead given pain relief and told to get on with it.

We haven’t been taught or encouraged to practise following our inner guidance, so it is not natural to us. We live in a society that likes to rationalise everything, and sometimes our inner voice does not sound rational, making it even harder follow that guidance or to speak it to someone else if there is no proof in front of us.

Trusting our intuition is like a muscle, and if it’s never been used before of course it is going to be very quiet and it’s going to feel really hard. And then that needs to be coupled with actioning the message that you were receiving, which often means standing up or speaking up for ourselves, which again is something that is going to feel really hard and uncomfortable if you’ve never been supported to do so before, and sometimes it is literally impossible when our bodies are being flooded with signals telling us that we are in danger.

On top of that, we have been taught to trust an authority figure over ourselves – the whole “doctor knows best” mentality. So again, actioning any intuitive messages and standing up for yourself against an authority figure is even harder. It’s hard even if you have done it before, and it’s even harder if you’re in an extra vulnerable position – like during pregnancy or birth.

So if you’re looking back on your birth wishing that you had listened to your intuition and refused an intervention, changed care provider or moved to a different location – whatever it may be – consider all of the above and give yourself some grace and understanding. But then also take note that you HEARD your inner voice (your intuition, whatever you want to call it) so you know what it sounds like or how it feels (it’s different for everyone) and you know that it will never lead you astray. Then going forward from here  start playing around with it – listen to it and follow the guidance, as irrational or as silly as it may sound – it may surprise you where it will lead you!