The one phrase I never say to a pregnant or postpartum person.

When birth doesn't go the way we planned, and for so many of us it doesn't, there can be a lot to process once the dust settles.

And what often happens is the birthing person starts to open up about their experience only to be met with the all too common phase of, “healthy mom, healthy baby!” which promptly ends the conversation.

Yes. A healthy parent and baby are vitally important. Of course.

But how we feel is also important.

There’s space for gratitude and disappointment.

Relief and anger.

Joy and sadness.

It can all be there. There’s room for it all.

When we instead try to wrap everything up with a neat little bow, we’re doing a couple of harmful things.

One, we’re not actually letting the birthing person process their birth. 

We are, in a much less intense way, saying “just be grateful you and your baby are alive and get over it already!”

Of course we're grateful, but we're also allowed to feel other things about the birth, too.

Two, what if mom and baby aren’t totally healthy? 

What if the mom or baby face challenges? What does that mean to them then, if “healthy mom, healthy baby” is the gold standard of birth experiences? They just automatically failed?

I will be the first to admit that I didn’t have a clue about any of this until after my first birth. And now I cringe thinking about the ways I stopped conversations or put words and expectations in people’s mouths.

Now, I know to listen first and speak second when conversing with a pregnant or postpartum person.

I let them tell me how they’re doing, and not the other way around.