How highly sensitive pregnant women are being neglected

I’ve just finished editing part two of Sarah’s HBAC story. 

As a highly sensitive person, Sarah deeply feels things.  And she shared in her story that she felt a bit unsupported by the first midwife she hired to support her through pregnancy.

The midwife was upfrontish about the sort of support she could provide… sometimes she would be available to support Sarah, and other times she would go MIA  (clearly too busy, overwhelmed, or not interested) to get back in an appropriate time.

Unfortunately I hear this story a fair bit, especially with from highly sensitive people who need a solid and safe relationship with their support person – someone who isn’t flaky and will show up no matter what.

Unless they have been abducted by an alien there really isn’t a reason not to get back to clients in a timely manner.

The thing is that I experienced when trying to tee up support for myself in pregnancy, and I even found this with people I was supporting is that I felt like I was often chasing my own tail.

Having to follow up with the “busy” doula who clearly didn’t have the capacity to support in the deep way that a highly sensitive person like me needs to be supported. (even after I explained this before hiring her).

One-liner response text messages back caused me anxiety and made me feel like a burden.  I felt like I didn’t matter and that I was just a paycheck – once I paid the money, that was it. (like I wasn’t worthy, important, and I didn’t matter).

It made me feel like something was wrong with me and that I was being too needy.

I had one midwife who was going to offer monthly mindset support not turn up to one of our sessions because “she was called to a birth” and didn’t bother to text me to cancel… and the next time she cancelled for another birth.

Non-highly sensitive people may just take that with a grain of salt and carry on, but to me this build a lack of trust and made me feel unsafe.

I had been abused in the system, neglected and mistreated, and I felt misunderstood and very alone at times through this brand new journey where I was freebirthing!! (there were times I was very scared).

I wanted that pregnancy to be fully supported.  I was willing to PAY money and invest in myself and finding someone who would support me in the way I needed felt like I was asking for big things.

I cried, and cried on the phone to some of my friends about how I felt.  I reached out in my doula community to ask if this was normal (turns out it was fairly normal practice) and I was even told maybe I needed “professional help”.

Talk about a lack of understanding of highly sensitive people.  I couldn’t believe it.

I thought that Doula meant emotional support and it’s exactly how I practiced with my clients.  But I soon realised that not all support people are alike, and not everyone understands how different people can be.

It’s like understanding that people learn in different ways – people require many different things and we need to adapt to support women in a way that aligns and feels right for them.

I think a lot of this has to do with having a special skill set of being able to be in tune with people, and set clear and healthy boundaries up front (not skirt around it with the usual BS of 24/7 support that can’t be delivered on).