A person can only be a person through others.
Ubuntu. It’s a rule of life, based on compassion and respect for others. It’s essential to work as a team and help each other, collaborate, cooperate, to become aware not only of our rights but also of our duties. We cannot disregard the whole.
Sequoia Red was born to speak to women, future mothers, their partners, to propose a vision of the journey of pregnancy that starts from the whole. Our why is to create something new, to improve the current state of affairs in the panorama dedicated to pregnant women. And for this, we need to involve as many people as possible to embrace our vision, so that all together we can contribute to achieving that change.
We truly believe that this world will only become better when the quality of its people also becomes better, so let’s be better together!
The goal can no longer be simply to cross the finish line, but to discover how many people we can convince to run with us.
Created by women for women, is not enough for us
We want to contribute to breaking the glass ceiling in one of the most significant moments for the transformation of the woman, her body, and her mind towards being a mother.
It’s not a necessity of a group of women towards other women, it’s a necessity of a group of human beings, women and men, who recognize the need to overcome the current treatment of a complex system. The system of the woman during the period of pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum must change, to propose a cross-sectional perspective in the valorization of women’s superpowers.
What ways do we have? We want to make noise and make visible the problems and paradigms that represent our starting point and our motivation. Awareness is a gradual process of being able to look at the world and understand it by questioning the points of view and daily practices that until that moment we have considered “normal”.
Women very often communicate that they do not feel respected, understood, protected, cared for precisely when they feel most fragile and in difficulty.
A sign of this dynamic is gynecological and obstetric violence which, for example in Spain, thousands of women report suffering during childbirth. (1) This seems to represent one of the most serious forms of violence suffered by women, precisely in their moment of greatest need, through physical or verbal abuses, humiliations, or non-consensual medical procedures. Unfortunately, there can be many shades of violence or mistreatment that are not limited to the moment of childbirth alone, but are widespread both in its previous and subsequent period. And it’s not enough to abstain from performing any negative conduct to achieve a satisfactory result.
An active and attentive form is necessary for the valorization of the needs of the woman, the mother, and the child in any period of pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum.
This means giving more and more authority and autonomy to women for everything concerning their sexuality, their body, their mental health, their habits, rhythms, times, and methods, to promote the greatest well-being of the woman and the child for a happier and healthier experience.
For a first-order impact, present in our daily life, directly or indirectly.
For a positive, serene, respectful, and healthy maternity, in which trust in women’s superpowers and their ability to care for and welcome the newborn is strengthened.
Often the health system disappoints women, marginalizes their pain, ignores their symptoms, disregards their intelligence, and also denies them the ability to act. We want women to feel seen and heard. It’s fundamental to give importance and attention to their opinions and their needs. It’s not enough to decrease traumatic events, it’s not enough to want to avoid physical damage. It’s crucial to worry about the whole emotional sphere.
It’s still too common the feeling shared by many women that their opinion or communication of a symptom that scares them is belittled or not taken seriously, with a rough and superficial attitude. “It’s because of your too low pain threshold, don’t be exaggerated”, “it doesn’t seem like you know how to give birth”, or “You complain a lot, as if all the others didn’t give birth” are some of the recurring phrases that many women have heard in their life (see, for example, what the interviewees reported to the association El Parto es Nuestro (2)), and that deeply hurt the woman precisely in a moment when she would need more to be protected with her physiological fears, to fully enjoy her condition in pregnancy. Each of these events can cause a scar or trauma.
The association was born in 2003 and is the result of the initiative of a group of women who shared the goal of meeting and supporting each other after a traumatic birth. An initial focus was on the excessive number of cesarean sections practiced in Spain compared to the WHO recommendation. Subsequently, their commitment has extended to the dissemination of scientifically proven information and the pursuit of actions aimed at requesting greater protection of the rights of mothers and children.
Enough is enough
Then there’s the feeling of feeling abandoned and lost, without the comfort of the other person you’re relying on, who looks you in the face, smiles at you, and says “I understand you”.
This can happen during pregnancy, at the time of childbirth, and after childbirth. When you overcome “the problem” of childbirth you can present “the problem” of breastfeeding. Maybe you don’t know if you want to breastfeed, you don’t know how to do it, the newborn cries, you might feel exhausted, weak, with a fever and moreover with the pressure that depends on you to do something to solve the situation. In fact, actions that are considered natural, like breastfeeding after childbirth, are not necessarily simple, so we cannot continue to treat the two terms as synonyms, because from the woman’s point of view there is a significant difference, and it is necessary to provide specialized figures to support to help them at every stage of the journey.
And it’s not a question of how prepared you can be or how much work experience you can have in one or more specific aspects of pregnancy. So, even if you are perfectly aware of how all the theory or practice works, then when you find yourself living an experience that is in one way or another traumatic or dramatic, you are never ready or equipped to contain all the potential negative effects. You think you have the tools not to feel blocked or isolated, but in the end, you are not even able to assert your voice, because you feel completely offended and helpless.
Isn’t it that we continue to demand too much from women, even when they are the ones who need it most?
It takes little to show humanization in every place of assistance or therapeutic program: listening, compassion, and empathy are the basis and the fundamental pillars of the consideration of any person in its physical, social, and psychological entirety. Moreover, they are essential elements to guarantee the quality of care.”
And to think that it is only the fault of the patriarchy is overly reductive because we cannot reduce this apex argument to a mere gender struggle. It’s not just men’s fault, the health and professional staff is no longer just male, and if on the one hand, men have the mitigating factor of not being able to understand the whole complex mechanism that governs the harmony of the woman in pregnancy, on the other hand, women have the aggravating factor of not being able to show natural empathy, even if they have already shared the same experience.
Many women report not feeling comfortable precisely during medical appointments because they not only do not feel understood and cared for, but it is as if they have the anxiety of having to pass an exam because they feel reprimanded and controlled with detachment and coldness. It’s time for pregnant women to stop blaming themselves and look at their condition from a higher level, with a more systemic approach. This way they will be able to find all the information they need to make free decisions.
The entire period of pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum can be very rewarding and it is not right for the woman to deprive herself of this possibility.
According to the results of the study “Obstetric Violence in Spain (Part I): Women’s Perception and Interterritorial Differences” (3) almost 40% of women declare to have been victims of obstetric violence, while 83% were not asked for informed consent at any time during pregnancy, childbirth or puerperium. The study focuses on private health care which seems to be aimed at an even lesser humanization of childbirth and greater attention to physical aspects compared to emotional and psychological ones.
It is a medicalizing procedure, without care and attention to the physiological situation of the mother throughout the entire phase of pregnancy. And it has a systemic and institutional nature, so for this reason, professionals are not even aware of the gravity of their actions.
In any case, it remains a question considered uncomfortable, because to meet the greater well-being of the patient and the woman, a process of deconstruction of what has been learned and how it has been socialized so far would be necessary. Moreover, social, emotional, and psychological factors should be fundamental elements to understand how to provide adequate perinatal assistance.
One of the weakest points is found in communication, because misinformation generates more and more discomfort and makes women feel alone in the delicate moment of greatest difficulty.
It’s clear that we also have to take into account the working conditions of professionals who very often, due to the structures in which they work or the grueling shifts, end up being exhausted, with negative consequences that affect the relationship with the patient.
Women still do not know enough about all the implications of their body, and this during pregnancy becomes even more complicated, increasing their vulnerability.
It is necessary to intervene from an educational and pedagogical point of view on the representation of pregnancy, childbirth, sexual education and on the representation of the family.
From an even more general and political point of view, we could reflect on the issue that if women do not actively participate in the development of health programs, and decisions that concern their care, they risk being reduced to mere objects rather than being the subjects of such care. Women must become more aware of their rights to actively exercise them, they must be able to resort to accurate and updated information on all topics concerning pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum, they must be consulted and they must decide in the first person. Only in this way will the assistance received and provided be more satisfactory for all the people involved in the process.
Those just described and many other considerations have made us grow inside the desire to do something, a step towards a change that we feel the need for and that every woman must be able to be an agent and beneficiary of. For this, our mission, with Sequoia Red, is to put women at the center of everything we do. We want to speak to women, future mothers, their partners, and propose a vision of the journey of pregnancy that starts from mutual collaboration.
Ubuntu. We wrote it, it’s a rule of life based on compassion and respect for others. And it’s our base value: to work as a team and help each other, collaborate, cooperate, to become aware not only of our rights but also of our duties. Together. By bringing pregnancy into the hands of every single woman, we want to establish a new standard of opportunity and education for women’s health to fuel a new movement of women who proudly support their bodies and their life choices.
We want to speak to women, to as many women as possible and the goal is to support you in your journey and to provide you with all the necessary tools to understand your body, your health, and to act on them, through a careful selection of information, professionals of every useful type and specialized structures, provided they share our vision. We don’t just want to provide you with a tool to find the right care for your needs, but also and above all a place where you feel understood as women, protected as you deserve, for a happy pregnancy and for the health of your baby. Together.
