In which a medal comes in the mail!

Sheridan of Enjoy Birth was thinking about the oft-repeated phrase tossed at women planning an unmedicated birth “You don’t get a medal for natural childbirth.”

As she writes in her blog:

I started thinking, “Why Not?”

When you run a marathon, you prepare for months ahead of time and then the day of the race you run and run and run and work SO hard! I am sure when you cross the finish line you are just so happy and proud because you DID it, you accomplished your goal! You didn’t run the marathon FOR the medal. But you do DESERVE a medal!

She designed a medal for moms who worked hard and long and deserved a medal at the end of their labor marathons. But:

Then while I was in the process of doing all of this, I had a mom who needed a surprise cesarean for a breech baby. I realized that she deserved a medal just as much as the other mom. I thought about all the sacrifices different moms make and realize ALL moms deserve medals.

Suddenly my idea was so much bigger than what it started as.
But that is how all great things start, with a small idea. So hence Moms Deserve Medals was born. Because ALL Moms Deserve a Medal!

I was surprised and touched to receive an e-mail from Sheridan a few weeks ago saying she appreciated my blog and the info it offers women, and offering to send ME a medal! And pretty soon, it arrived:



I love this medal and am honored to get one, and I am already thinking about how I want to hold onto this for a little while and then pass it along to a doula client who deserves one. And I know one will come along, because thinking back on recent doula clients, I realized that as Sheridan points out ALL moms really do deserve medals! Every one of the moms I have worked with this past year has their own reason for deserving a medal! Women who trusted and listened to their bodies, women who researched their options and made their own decisions, women who bravely endured frightening medical complications, who underwent long and difficult inductions, who did everything they could to protect their babies' health. As Sheridan points out, they don't do it FOR a medal, but they DESERVE one!

Sheridan, thank you for this great idea and for the medal!