The Empowered Birth Instagram Was Showing Her VS What She Really Wanted

Once we started talking about it and she realized “actually… that isn’t me or what I want at all.”

Ashley’s name has been changed to protect her privacy. Her story is shared here to illustrate her experience with birth preparation and support. **

When Ashley first found me, she was only about nine weeks pregnant. Which, honestly, was kind of a dream from a doula perspective. We had SO much time to prepare together.

Time to talk. Time to learn. Time for her ideas about birth to evolve without the pressure of a due date breathing down her neck.

And Ashley already had a pretty clear picture of what she thought she wanted:

Unmedicated. Undisturbed. As natural as possible.

All of the things you probably see influencers talking about these days… going into labor spontaneously, avoiding interventions, trusting her body and letting birth unfold “naturally,” etc.

There was absolutely nothing wrong with any of that.

Those can be beautiful, completely valid preferences. But as we kept working together, something became clear:

Ashley had spent a lot of time learning what an empowered birth was supposed to look like. She hadn't spent nearly as much time figuring out what an empowered birth actually looked like for her.

There's a MEGA difference… and you’ll never believe how her birth actually ended up going.

When your birth preferences aren't actually yours

Pregnancy content has a funny way of making preferences feel like facts.

You watch enough birth videos, follow enough accounts, listen to enough podcasts, and suddenly there seems to be a “right” way to do this.

Don't get induced.

Don't get the epidural.

Don't labor on your back.

Don't let them break your water.

Don't do this. Definitely do that.

And eventually, it can become really hard to distinguish between:

“I don't want this.” and “I've been taught that I shouldn't want this.”

That's where Ashley and I started digging. Because it’s never my job as a doula wasn't to replace Instagram's opinions with mine.

It was to help Ashley hear herself again.

So throughout her pregnancy, our conversations became less about building the “perfect” birth plan and much more about understanding what was underneath it. The whys, the meanings, the experience she wanted to protect, the fears… we unpacked it all - and it changed everything.

More information wasn't necessarily the answer

There are four areas I pay close attention to when I'm helping a family prepare for a hospital birth:

Knowledge. Clarity. Advocacy. Support.

And yes, ultimately, Ashley and I worked on all four. Because of course she needed to understand options, tools to communicate effectively, and how to build a solid support team for when labor gets intense.

But for Ashley, the place we needed to start was clarity.

Because more information isn't necessarily helpful when you don't yet know which information truly matters to you.

Once Ashley got clearer about her priorities, everything else started falling into place. Knowledge had context. Advocacy had a purpose. And her support people knew what they were actually supporting.

And her birth wishes stopped being a list of things she hoped would (or wouldn't) happen.

They transformed into a reflection of what mattered to her and a framework she could come back to when she needed to make a decision.

And then labor threw her approximately 13 curveballs

Ashley had originally hoped for spontaneous, undisturbed labor.

And that is how it started off… but her body went through days of prodromal labor. She was exhausted, unable to get the rest she needed. She went to the hospital more than once trying to figure out whether this was finally it, only to be told that labor still hadn't progressed the way she'd hoped.

And that created a pressure I think we don't talk about enough.

When you've spent months imagining that you'll stay home until the “right” moment, suddenly deciding when to go to the hospital becomes another decision you feel responsible for getting right.

Ashley was making those decisions for herself. We talked through them. I was available to her. She weighed what she was experiencing and decided when she wanted to be evaluated.

But after days of this, exhaustion matters.

Your emotional bandwidth matters.

The birth you envisioned during your first trimester exists in a very different world than the one where you haven't had meaningful sleep in days and the unknowns of labor hanging over you.

Eventually, Ashley reached a point where continuing to chase the original version of the plan wasn't necessarily serving her anymore.

And this is where I think her story gets really good.

She didn't “give up.” She made a new decision.

Over the course of her labor, Ashley faced decision after decision that wasn't necessarily part of that original unmedicated, undisturbed picture.

So when the details changed, her options shifted, and what her body needed in that moment changed… so did her mind.

That's the part of birth preparation I'm far more interested in than whether someone successfully checks every box on the birth plan they made months earlier.

Because changing your mind after receiving new information isn't failure.

Choosing an intervention because your circumstances changed isn't failure.

Deciding that the benefit of an epidural now outweighs the reasons you originally hoped to avoid one isn't failure.

Autonomy includes the right to say no. But it also includes the right to knowingly, confidently say yes.

Ashley didn't need me standing beside her reminding her that nine-week-pregnant Ashley wanted an unmedicated birth.

She needed the preparation we'd done over the previous months so that the Ashley who was actually in labor could decide what she wanted in real time. And damnit, she did it again and again proudly!

An epidural didn’t make or break her empowered birth

This is where I get a little (OK, maybe a lot) frustrated with the way we sometimes talk about “empowered birth.”

Somewhere along the way, empowerment became an aesthetic.

Dim lights.

Birth pool.

No epidural.

Minimal intervention.

Baby straight to chest.

And listen - I love a good ole low-intervention birth. But here’s the hill I will die on: an intervention isn't what takes your power away.

An epidural Ashley intentionally chose after understanding what she was choosing did not suddenly erase months of preparation or disqualify her from having an empowered birth.

And simply enduring labor without one wouldn't automatically have made her more empowered.

The goal isn't an intervention-free birth at all costs.

The goal is for you to remain an active participant in your birth, even when things pivot in real time.

Your power is NOT proven by how much you can endure. It's reflected in whether your voice still belongs to you when the plan changes.

The birth wasn't what she'd pictured. And she's proud as hell to tell it.

This is probably my favorite part of Ashley's story.

Her birth didn't earn the label “positive” because everything went according to plan. It didn't (clearly).

What Ashley had was something much more useful than a script for exactly how labor was supposed to unfold.

She knew what mattered to her. She understood more about the decisions she was facing. She had solid support. She knew she could ask questions. She knew she could say no.

And just as importantly, she knew she was allowed to say yes.

So when those curveballs came, she shifted within her labor without feeling like she had lost herself somewhere along the way.

She navigated those decisions with so much peace, grace, and power in her own voice. And today, she feels good about her birth.

She considers it a beautiful, empowered experience. It's a story she's proud of and excited to tell ANYONE who will listen.

Because it was hers.

Your biggest birth-prep gap might be completely different

Ashley needed clarity first. That doesn't necessarily mean you do, too.

Maybe you're already crystal clear on what you want; but when your provider starts talking about induction, cervical checks, continuous monitoring, Pitocin, or breaking your water, you realize you don't actually understand all of your options well enough to have the conversation.

That's a knowledge gap.

Maybe you've researched the absolute shit out of birth and know exactly what you want, but the thought of questioning a nurse or doctor makes your stomach drop.

That might be advocacy.

Or maybe you're informed, clear and comfortable speaking up, but your partner's entire birth-prep strategy is basically, “I'll do whatever she tells me to do.”

We should probably talk about support.

And maybe you're where Ashley started: you've consumed so much birth content that you have a mile-long list of things you do and don't want... but you're not entirely sure which preferences actually belong to you.

That's why I never start by handing every pregnant woman a generic checklist and telling her to prepare harder.

I want to know where your gap is first. Because once we know that, we know where to start.