Giving Birth Abroad - Is it the New Norm?

Travelling elsewhere away from home to give birth is new for humanity.

Hold on, you'd say. Women have been travelling outside their homes to hospitals for over a century now, sometimes even to another town or city, because there is no medical help available in their village. They have their baby and afterwards they go back home.

True, I will respond. And that has been the norm for only around 100 years. In a human's life cycle that may seem like a lot, but for biology that's nothing.

For a mammal female, going to an unknown place to give birth is counter-natural.

Hold on, you'd say. Tiger, elephant and even whale females travel to find the best place.

Exactly, I'd say. Other female mammals in the wilderness are never assigned a place to give birth. They smell, look around, feel where is right. And they don't freeze while waiting for the birth. They continue to live their lives while making certain preparation shifts — walking less than usual, surrounding themselves with their pack for protection. They look for safety.

Human females operate the same way. We also look for the best place to have our baby. But along with that we are loaded with a huge neocortex — the evolutionarily new part of the brain that brings in a whole new game.

Think about it this way.

Safety for our reptile brain speaks a universal language: familiar smells, temperature, faces, sounds, textures, rhythm, food, territory.

For this reason a pregnant woman in an isolated Mexican village feels safe walking on foot to the house of the local midwife who has been delivering all babies in that area for decades. For this very reason a pregnant woman who lives in an apartment in a concrete city, doesn't know the names of her neighbours, and drives to a hospital where faces are new and smells are anything but home — doesn't feel safe. Even though her neocortex convinces her otherwise.

But birthing at a facility with medical equipment is safer than in a rural house with herbs, you'd strongly disagree.

Absolutely, sometimes it is, I'd say. That's not the point. The point is to be very clear about our billion-year-old biology and wisely consider it when we make these important choices.

Our brains are not wired to calmly go into labor and bring our babies into the world outside of our homes — or what we today call home, where our smell is, or where our ancestors have lived and raised their kids. And most of us don't even have that anymore. We live in rentals that we frequently change. We move blocks, neighbourhoods, cities — all while expecting the arrival of our child, which is a life-changing turning point of its own.

Women who migrate or travel for birth go further. And I am one of these women, so I've been there.

We put ourselves in a completely foreign environment and expect our bodies to just catch up, for the birth hormones to work when it's time. We adjust — we learn to navigate that language, that dialect, that culture, that climate, that new style of communication. Sometimes in several weeks, sometimes after a couple of years of living there. It is always a nearly impossible thing. But we do it, because we are women and mothers — that's what we are wired to do well. Adapt.

So when you are organising childbirth in a foreign country, the question worth asking yourself is not which clinic has the best rating or who is the "best doctor in town." It's: where do I feel safe? Where do I feel supported? Where is my village ?

Because that's what you're essentially looking for.

A doula can be an incredible source of support for mothers abroad. Sometimes as a doula in Georgia (Tbilisi) or in Russia I was that whole village in one person. If you are looking for that safe place and want some help organizing it, I am here for a private consultation.