If yesterday I spoke with Mauricio Kruchik about his work as a reflexologist, something of which I am not at all convinced, today I will do it about his other professional facet, in which I declare myself completely dazzled with his sensitivity and knowledge of the emotions of men and women. Today, Babies' interview and more to Mauricio Kruchik will address his facet of doula man.
How does a man decide to be Doula?
My story as a doula has always been a source of curiosity for many people. Well, actually, I have not met almost people who have understood and accepted it naturally.
Yes, I was also surprised to meet a doula man. I would love you to tell us about the process that led you to this profession.
Is that a normal man hardly knows anything about motherhood. I confess, that was my case. Not with that name, but with the title of Pregnancy and Childbirth Therapist. Of course, then I learned that he was known in the new jargon with the name of doula. Never before had I heard that term. It was the year 1999.
Until November 11, the day my daughter was born. When I arrived home at noon to pick up things to take my wife to the hospital, I sat down for coffee and in the meantime I quickly leafed through a newsletter that had reached me from the place where I had studied as a reflexologist. There was a Doulas class there.
And you were attracted to the possibility of knowing more?
Again, full of curiosity, I kept investigating, I was admitted to the course, which at the time seemed very interesting and especially because I gave preference to contact therapists. I was looking for something special and went towards it with the illusion that it was really special. When I got to my first class I perceived stupor. He was the only man in a classroom composed of 24 other women. I noticed the sighs of admiration and also the looks of distrust. I am sure of one thing: nobody was indifferent that I was there. Far from intimidating me, I wondered how it is done to survive in an environment that was supposed to have been composed exclusively of women. I must admit that it was not bad for me. I had a lot of fun. Every Thursday morning, I slowly began to learn many things from women I didn't know. To listen to birth experiences of other women. Know what a birth is. Despite having two children, I was not in any of them. At that time they did not let the women in a caesarean section in hospitals in Israel. And there were two. I had fun moving my pelvis, imagining my uterus and my vagina doing the job. Pushing, breathing, moving the pelvis in a swagger as sensual as extravagant to fit the baby, perform voices, scream. We trained all (yes, I said all) for the big day, the day that each of us would go for the first time to attend a woman in the parish as a volunteer and practitioner at the Meir Hospital in Kfar Saba, Israel.
How was your first birth?
On January 16, 2000, I attended my first birth. And the second one too. At the same moment I was about to write this sentence I felt a shiver, the same as I feel every time I remember that morning. I arrived at 7:00 at the hospital to complete a shift with our instructor until 12:00. We were directed by a midwife to a room where there was a young girl, Israeli, Jewish, blonde and freckled, already 8 centimeters dilated. It was about time. At 11:00 the girl was born. It was like touching the sky with your hands.See a girl be born. To be there. Witness the tenderness and volcanic power of the moment. See the woman die and rise, explode and be reborn, explode with pain and euphoria at the precise moment of birth. While watching that scene, I felt the tears come out of my eyes without being able to control it.
That changed a lot of things in you, I imagine.
The first obstacle had been overcome, since the condition for our presence in the delivery room was to be accepted by the parturient. I was afraid of that. To rejection, for being a man. Neither she nor any of the women who came later rejected me. Actually, a short time later I realized that my attitude towards them had also changed. I mean the attitude towards women in general. That same morning, and when we had tea in the kitchen with my other colleague and with our instructor, the midwife came to ask for help for another room. There we went. She was a Muslim Arab woman, she was alone in the living room. There was no partner or language. We could not understand each other with words. None of us knew anything about Arabic nor did she Hebrew. But that was not an obstacle. I remember that his eyes asked for love, a hug, compassion. I hugged her tightly when the contractions came and felt her hands cling to my clothes as if it were the last refuge. He invoked Allah and cried in pain. A short time later a beautiful male gave birth. I felt that again I touched the sky with my hands. And that symbolically I had had the privilege of seeing a boy and a girl born, like my children whom I didn't see being born. An Israeli Jewish girl. A Palestinian Muslim male. Something that made me think for a long time that human beings are twinned by a single nature, the same feeling.
I'm crying excited, Mauricio. You are so right, we have the same nature. Keep telling me about your career.
Then there were 46 more deliveries, most of them as autonomous doula working on my own. In which I never stopped moving, to vibrate. I finished the doulas course with Honors and they offered me a position as a doulas instructor in the hospital. But that happened a month before my trip to Denmark, where I lived 3 years. I was never the man from before. No way.
What changed you to be doula?
Being a doula allowed me to connect with a female part of which I was not aware. On a tender, patient, sweet side. Not because it wasn't before. But it was different. I notice it on a daily basis. It changed my language, it changed my vision of women. They changed my codes of respect and assessment. When I am with a partner, I can feel the contractions coming fifteen seconds before they happen. Go to her, hug her, give her strength, encourage her to give me back her own strength feeling respected and protected. You will wonder where the husband is to all this.Although I am a very well defined man in his sex, I have allowed myself to recognize in public and admit the power that this feminine part has taken in me.
Yes, explain to me how the husband integrates into the process by having a doula man accompanying the childbirth.
I try never to take the place of the husband in childbirth. Quite the opposite. I make all my efforts to integrate him and almost always educate him that the treatment of his wife should be smooth and tolerant, that his touch should be smooth and precise. Men have not been educated for motherhood. Not for fatherhood. We do not carry it inside. We do not know what it is. Not even what is lived in those moments. Today, with my eyes on the traffic, I see how many parents I have educated that have known how to be there in the way they should be. I have a great pride in having served as a link between man and woman, making man the main partner of his partner. Let the husband himself be his doula. Not me. If there is something that gives me satisfaction and a feeling of fullness, it is when I sit in a corner and see them work together, sharing that magical and intimate moment. The husband can not only be, but MUST be with his partner. If together they have created this baby with love, together they must also be with the same love to receive it.
How?
Well, that can be learned. I thank that almost everyone (I clarify, not all) parents have been able to cooperate with enthusiasm, love and motivation. Knowing accompanied is very important for women. Not only respected, but accompanied. Dear. Loved. Venerated The man can and must learn to show his wife that he is an integral part of the family that will be created in a few minutes on the face of the earth.
There is much work to be done in this regard.
Yes, over time I grew up as a therapist, seeing the lack of education and preparation for the birth of many women. I understood as a reflexologist that as doula I had a lot to do in that period. I started preparing couples for childbirth. And then, for the quarter before delivery. And then, for pregnancy everything. And then, for the puerperium. And then, for breastfeeding. And then, preparing them before conception. And everything I have learned, I have dumped in my courses. I completed my education several years later as a Perinatal Educator. I attended courses abroad on Active Delivery, specializations for doulas in different institutes. I was even invited to conduct a workshop for parents at the European Doulas Conference in Paris in May 2009. And then to speak as a speaker at the annual congress of APEO (Portuguese Association of Obstetric Nurses), at the Natural Medicine Congress dedicated to pregnancy, childbirth and motherhood in Zaragoza, at the congress of the Associació de Comares de Balears, and many others.
You are a defender of women's right to a respected birth, I know. But can you tell us what your position is?
I became a staunch defender of women's rights to a respected and conscious childbirth. I am neither a friend nor an enemy of the epidural nor of the caesarean section, of the synthetic oxytocin or of the episiotomy. I believe that every woman has the irreplaceable and sovereign right over her own body to decide what is convenient for her at any given moment and as a doula I must protect her right to choose freely. But at the same time, I train the woman and her partner for an active, non-instrumented delivery, making and achieving that the woman arrives at her birth with a feeling of fullness, optimism and confidence, driving away fear and giving herself self-esteem, knowing that it can, that the fear of pain generates even more pain and that the alternative you will surely choose will be instinctive. We rehearse many positions: squatting, sitting in a cat position, standing. In all of them the couple carries a large part of the training.
What do you contribute as a doula man?
Knowing about my feminine side makes me able to talk better with women. Being a man makes me able to talk with your partner in a language that he can understand and that he welcomes. That may be one of the great advantages of being a doula man: I know how to make man an integral part of childbirth, that the triad is inseparable. But in an effective way. Since if the man bothers unintentionally, I also cordially invite him not to do so by letting him know that some word or behavior is improper and asking him not to repeat it. I have many anecdotes of childbirth. And far from feeling like an intruder in the work of the Midwife, I would say that only the opposite has happened to me in these 13 years that I have been as Doula. In many births I have been completely alone with the couple, the Midwife having come only to examine dilation, place the monitor to check that everything was going well and receive the baby. Apart from that, they have always made me feel one more of the team. And I, like a fish in water. In the last delivery I accompanied, two midwives entered the room and when they saw me they said… .ah, you are here, we go quietly. That satisfies me.
How do you live being a doula man?
Many women are still alarmed when they hear about a doula man. It doesn't bother me. Many men see me as if I were a weirdo. It doesn't bother me either. My wife and children are proud of my profession and the passion I put into it. And I also.
And I, Mauricio, feel proud to have known you more, with all this sensitivity and strength that you transmit. I feel that you are a part of a great revolution that is leading men to put themselves, also in the center of life, of birth, with love and respect. I thank you very much for the time you have dedicated to us.
We finish, and I must confess that I do it with tears in my eyes, this interview with Mauricio Kruchik, doula and reflexologist, which we will soon be able to meet in person in the courses that it will offer in Spain. I hope our readers enjoyed reading this interview that has shown us a wonderful man and professional.
