A Facebook post by Childbirth International:

Birth trauma is becoming more widely discussed and parents are opening up about their experiences in pregnancy, labour, birth, and beyond. Doulas can be incredibly valuable as an addition to a family’s birth team to guide the family in making informed decisions and sharing valuable skills to help each individual advocate for their goals and needs.

With Childbirth International you can train as a birth doula and trauma-informed professional concurrently with our completely flexible, online courses.

Notice anything…peculiar?

Of course you do. The words “woman” and “mother” are carefully, awkwardly, painfully absent. We get parents opening up about their experiences in pregnancy and labour, as if both parents had such experiences. We get a family’s birth team, as if the family gave birth. We get individual, as if the word “woman” were plutonium.

A woman asks

Do these courses cover Developmental Trauma caused to the infant?

Childbirth International replies

At this time the Trauma-Informed Professional course is focused more on the trauma experienced by the birthing parent and their partner, as well as the vicarious trauma experienced by birth and allied professionals working in environments that are not trauma-informed or trauma-sensitive.

There are a lot of enthusiastic comments about the “inclusive language” and a lot of confusing replies to comments that are clearly no longer there – comments from those pesky women who keep trying to point out that erasing women (from pregnancy and childbirth ffs!) is not actually “inclusive” at all.

The stupid is falling on everything like ash from the Mount Saint Helens eruption.