Today we’d like to introduce you to Carmen Thomas-Paris.
Carmen, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
My trajectory of becoming a doula started when I went through the journey of becoming a mother to my two children. Living in Los Angeles and being an actress when I did a guest star episode on ER giving birth I realized that I would rather be with Real Mama’s giving birth then doing it on TV!! lol!
I already transitioned from the creative field of performing arts into the Healing arts by working in the field of massage therapy and combining Aromatherapy with the bodywork, I then kept adding layers of training by becoming a yoga teacher for prenatal, postpartum and children. It was a wonderful way to flow the Creative into the process of helping others with Creating the life and having that Flow into Women birthing themselves as Mothers and families emerging in a Harmonious way but having a Village of support. I feel blessed to be a part of so many couples “village” and helping them put it together to give these babies the best start in life.
Here is my story I just told for Maternal Mental Health NOW fundraiser about how I became a doula and how that support made such a difference in MY village when I was starting out as a new Mom. Seventeen years ago, in a new long distance relationship with my French lover Paulin, I found out that I was pregnant. Since it was the middle of the night in France so deiced to wait till a reasonable hour before I called him. I went to the French Market Café in Venice and after ordering a Croque Monsieur, I asked the waiter “how do you say I’m pregnant in French”?
As soon as I got home, I called Paulin… groggy from sleep, he answered Allo? I proceeded to say the now four words I knew in French, “Bonjour, Je Sui’s Enceinte”…. “Je Sui’s Enceinte” … I’m pregnant!” The English helped it sink in… His Joy over this news was palpable, however, he reminded me that he would Never move to America, Nor was there an invitation for me to move to France. I did not envision that the feeling, “Oh my God! We’re going to have a baby!” would feel so lonely.
I was living with a roommate, in a bungalow in Venice beach. Her response was “You better find another place to live because I’m not moving, and I don’t want anything to do with a screaming baby”! To make matters worse, my health insurance with the Screen Actors Guild had been canceled, because I didn’t make the high quota that was required… So with no secure partner, no sure place to live, no savings, an only child with no family in LA, and not even knowing how much a birth would cost or would entail, My life felt like it had been turned upside down!!
I sought advice from a counselor friend, and she reminded me that I had a choice to make. Nothing was happening to me. I had a choice. I could have this baby. Or I could have an abortion. I have always been pro-choice, but I never wanted to have to be in the position to make that choice. After a lot of soulsearching , I knew in my Heart that this baby was conceived in Love and so I consciously chose to go forward, whether Paulin was with me or not, the soul was going to attract everything I would need to be a Mother. I wasn’t the only one making a choice; this baby was choosing me.
I heard about this place called The Venice Family Clinic that served the community to provide health care to people “in need” like me. In the long wait that I had to be there for all my prenatal appointments, I was the only white girl sitting there alone surrounded by Latino and black families, and they were together and had each other, I felt like a lone wolf without a pack, but at least I had prenatal care yet I still wondered who would be “the family -village” for my baby?”
At least this felt like a start. I even met with the pediatrician there, Dr. Wendy Slusser, who was Amazing. She took so much time with me, even before the baby came to help me prepare and acclimate to how my life would change AND she was married to a French man and had two franco –American children!
I found a great prenatal yoga class with a teacher who really fostered a strong community, which gave me amazing resources so I could be informed and empowered about the pregnancy, birth and beyond. On Paulin’s next visit we even went together to a couples prenatal class. We had fun coming up with baby names, we decided we didn’t want to know the gender so we came up with Gaston for a boy and Sabine if a girl…. for the rest of the pregnancy we merged the two and called my belly “Gasbine”.
My mother always wanted to be a “grandma” but thought she would be a “mother-in-law” first decided to move from Atlanta temporarily to help me with the baby. My mom, being a single mom herself, knew how much her help would be needed. Around the time she arrived, my child-birth education teacher asked me to find out as many details as I could about my own Birth-Story. She explained that 25 yrs of thourough research shows a direct correlation between the circumstances of our birth and the subconscious behavorial and emotional patterns in our adult lives.
Whatever went on in while in our Mothers Wombs gets imprinted in our Limbic system and until we bring it to our awareness we keep repeating those patterns. I didn’t have to ask my mother about my “birth story” because she told it every year on my birthday …… “Carmen, I slept through your birth, I don’t even know if your mine. I woke up and had to ask the nurse if I even had a baby! Now that I was pregnant, feeling the connection to my own baby growing in my womb, I was so sad that my mother felt no connection to her own baby, to me.
As my belly was expanding and the numbers were going up on the scale, my mother kept reminding me how she gained only 12 pounds in her pregnancy because her doctor said she absolutely could not gain more than 15 pounds. She said proudly, “People used to tell me looked like a pregnant POW.”
So many women who had babies said how lucky I was that my mother was moving here to help me. I didn’t see quite see it yet. All her “motherly” advice started to filter through my Womb and it didn’t feel right. I didn’t want to numb up any of my experience with my baby, and I wanted to do it differently than my mom. That meant I would have to be brave enough to face all the uncomfortable feelings that were coming up in me and deal not only with my Mother but with the collective projections of everyone else’s opinions.
Why is it that a pregnant belly is an open invitation for people to tell you their scary birth stories and confront you with the most personal questions? “ are you having a vaginal birth?- it’s SO painful, get the drugs, or, just sign right up for the c-section, then you can plan it and you don’t even have to go into labor”, “Please make sure your husband is “north of the equator” because you poop when you push, I pooped all over my doctor”, I had to stay in the hospital an extra week, almost bled to death, and my baby was in the NICU for 3 weeks.
I was so shocked that so many people seemed to have PTSD and vent their most traumatic Birth stories at a time when I was most vulnerable. Literally, when a woman is pregnant, the bones float apart and the body has to open for birth, but when you hear these scary stories, you want to close up and keep the baby in forever. Wow. That is the childbirth education that most of us have.
I didn’t want to perpetuate these fearful stories to myself or my baby or any other women. There was one story, however, that I heard years ago that I never forgot from my friend MaryAnn. She gave birth to her son, in the comfort of her own home, with a midwife and her husband, feeling everything: the exhilaration, pain, beauty, awe, fear, and yet It sounded simple, and inspiring. I remember saying out loud, “That is how I want to give birth someday!” Then, when I shared the news of my pregnancy with Maryann, she graciously offered her guest-house to Paulin and me for the home-birth.
At the same time, I had a friend Laura who just became a doula and asked if she could attend our birth, as part of her certification. We didn’t even know what a doula was or why We would need one, Paulin didn’t really want a random person at the birth, so I just told Laura that we could “play it by ear” and see at the time of labor. Laura kept showing up for me with such invaluable support along the way, Laura helped me choose the midwife that was a good fit for us and she wisely suggested that we protect our “homebirth” by not telling too many people.
She thought of things to do that I didn’t even know needed to be done and informed me of options I didn’t even know I had. She supported the whole process in a completely personal and non-judgemental way. Doula is a Greek word meaning “A woman who serves”, Laura told me being a doula is the act of “Mothering the mother”. Being with her I actually felt I was ready to do this.
At 38 weeks pregnant, I picked up Paulin at the airport, and even though we had a lot of preparations to do for the birth, I thought since we hadn’t seen each other in a few months that it would be nice to have a weekend in a hotel together, a sort of “babymoon”. Seven hours later, tossing and turning in bed at 1 am, my water broke. My first thought was, “No. This can’t be happening now. I paid for 2 nights!” “I’m not ready “ I woke Paulin up…” I think my water broke” he said “we’re going to have a baby”, looking in his eyes, I knew he was right, it was time to surrender, there was no going back.
I called my midwife, who said, “go back to sleep and have an oatmeal in the morning when you wake up”. Back to sleep!? How could I sleep? And anyway the bed was soaked and I couldn’t call housekeeping! I felt more contractions, and I was scared, so my next call was to Laura… She told us to check out and head over to Maryann’s guest house. I was so happy when we arrived see Laura there waiting for us. Laura then helped get me into some different positions and massaged me to help me cope through the contractions and reminded me to follow and trust my body that it knew what to do.
Then my mother arrived and Laura and I preplanned a “code-word” if I needed space from my mother I’d say “Wahe Guru”, and Laura would give her an important job to do. It was taking so long for my mom and Paulin to put together the birthing-pool and I couldn’t stand hearing them read the instructions outloud … so during a contraction, I wailed WAHE GURU, Laura took me to the bathroom and put me in the bathtub, where I then wanted to spend the rest of my life! Who knew that water during labor is called the “natural” epidural?
At that point, the midwife and her assistant arrived with all of the gear and started setting up for the birth. The midwife checked my cervix in the bathtub and said I could start pushing, Aleluja! I tried pushing for a while but it wasn’t working so I got out and pushed on all fours on the floor and that wasn’t working either, Laura suggested I get into the bed and lay on my side to continue pushing. Just when I felt I wanted to give up, the midwife told me to reach down and feel my baby’s head which gave me the energy to keep pushing and after 5 or 6 more pushes the head was out! and then the shoulders! and she said “reach down and pull your baby up” which I did, and as It was the most ecstatic joyful moment of my life meeting this Blessed Being.
On November 20th, 2000, in the Hollywood hills overlooking the City of Angels Gasbine, in my belly, emerged as our daughter Sabine with her father, her mother her grandmother, her Doula, midwife and her Godmother Maryann bearing witness.
Amazingly, Maryann gave birth on November 20th, the exact same day, 20 yrs earlier.
That is how powerful birth stories can be if I hadn’t heard that one birth-story from Maryann’s I might not have even had the courage to choose or even know that homebirth was an option. I share this story with you now, because I became a doula. I married Paulin, had another baby, my mother now living with us, I still take my children to the Venice Family Clinic and am now a board member there. Paulin has donated some of his Art work for the ever popular Venice Art Walk. For the last 12 yrs, my work as a doula makes me realize the labor doesn’t end after the baby is born and the placenta is birthed, the Labor of Love continues for a lifetime. The birth is a “moment in time” in this labyrinth …..
My job as a doula is giving every family support to the process of welcoming their baby into the world with love, in whatever way they choose OR whatever way their baby chooses! It very rarely goes “as planned”, which is why my passion for “doula-ing” now lies in giving the Ayurvedic care in the fourth trimester which includes healing and processing the birth-story. Our stories are entwined like the roots of a tree. Our branches touch each other, whether it’s our own family tree or The Tree Of Life… New life is always coming…!
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Haha! Well, I think working in this field of Birth and Postpartum can never be “smooth”!
By nature, it is a time of life where everything is turned upside down and big changes are happening for the family… It is a huge transition for the couple and the baby + extended family and brings up a lot of projections/ expectations of everyone involved… There are also so many myths that need to be dispelled. So this is where my job comes in and get sticky walking into the different family dynamics.
Very rarely do things go as “expected”, so it is up to me to help with this transformation. Growth is messy and I think I have learned that it is not up to me how anyone experiences their “experiences”, in terms of whether they choose to grow from it or now but since these babies are like sponges, I just try to help the environment be one of which that everyone feels there is LOVE present and if not then I am there to BE that presence so that the baby can feel they are entering a Sacred space where there is Love and Light surrounding them no matter what kind of chaos can be happening in the room.
Please tell us about Integrate FLOW.
As a Birth and Postpartum doula in the community doing this work for 13 yrs, I have learned a lot and can see how one of the benefits of that experience is the resources I can provide for these emerging families. I am looking at the Big Picture of not just the “Birth” or not just “postpartum” but beyond to how their village is set up and that every year on this baby’s Birthday that they have a “touchstone” to imprint the experience as one of Feeling the roots Ground them from the beginning with Love and a sense of community.
I also have the skills of being a massage therapist, yoga teacher, childbirth educator and a Mother myself to bring together for the benefit of a Whole-istic experience. I am constantly in practice and doing continuing education my self in order to be able to present and serve the families I work with to give them the optimal support.
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
Waking up on Christmas morning when I was a kid to come downstairs to see a new puppy I named “Buttons” and a barbie townhouse with an elevator!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.integrativebirthcollective.com
- Phone: 310-569-6428
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: VeniceDelPlay
Image Credit:
Ina May Gaskin
Getting in touch: VoyageLA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
