Sharing stories: Marina Tjetland’s comic book about birth
Barselopprøret was invited to speak at the book launch of Marina Tjetland’s comic book Mias Mamma: That Time - when my entire world turned upside down / Den Gangen - Da min verden ble snudd på hodet at Litteraturhuset in Oslo. We share the words of Aïda Leistad Thomassen below.
The comic book tells the story of Marina’s birth and explore the different emotions that emerge during birth and in the early days of motherhood. Marina hopes to inspire other women to tell their stories.
If you want to check out more of Marina’s work, go to her Instagram @marinatjet
If you want to buy a copy of her book, which comes in both English and Norwegian, go to her webshop.
The speech
I’m honoured to be here and to have the opportunity to talk to you at Marina's book launch. My name is Aïda Leistad Thomassen, and I represent the organisation Barselopprøret. I want to take this opportunity to talk about the importance of sharing our stories about pregnancy, birth, postpartum and becoming mothers, and I’ll start by telling you how Barselopprøret came to be.
Barselopprøret was started back in February 2021 by Cecilia Ingulstad and myself.
We both became mothers for the first time in April 2020 about a month after the first lockdown due to the pandemic here in Norway. At this point in time, we didn’t know each other, in fact, we didn’t even have one single Facebook friend in common.
When the pandemic hit this country, one of the first things to happen was that the postpartum care was reduced to a minimum both at hospitals and at the public health centres (“helsestasjon”). The normal period to stay at the hospital for first time moms was reduced from three to two days. No visitors were allowed, not even partners, so the mothers were left to themselves to take care of their newborns. Home visits from midwives were stopped. People were encouraged to refrain from meeting each other, and this meant that many new families did not get the opportunity to get help from family and friends. It takes a village, one often hears. We need help and support when we have babies, but the possibility for this was drastically reduced during the pandemic.
This was the world we lived in when we transitioned into motherhood, and our experiences were far from good. In fact, they were so bad that we felt we couldn’t stay quiet about them. We had to speak up so that other women who came after us did not have to experience the same as we did. By coincidence we both wrote to the papers about our experiences about becoming mothers during the pandemic, and our texts were published only a few days apart in two different newspapers.
It was after reading my text that Cecilia contacted me, and now we have this organisation called Barselopprøret with 12.5 thousand followers on Instagram and meetings at Stortinget.
It all started with us telling our stories and finding each other.
Barselopprøret is a non-profit organisation working for better maternity care in Norway, and we focus especially on postpartum care. We work voluntarily. Besides Cecilia and myself, we have a board with four other women.
Since we started Barselopprøret, we have heard hundreds of stories. These stories give us important information about the current situation in our maternity services in Norway. The official story is that we have the world’s best care, but many of the women we talk to tell a different story. We see it as our mission to share these stories and let them be heard.
We want better maternity care, and to be able to achieve this goal, we need to get people's attention and get them to understand that we have serious problems in “the world’s best country to give birth in”. In particular, we need to reach those who don’t have their own experience of the maternity services. A lot of the politicians in this county are men. The same goes for a lot of the leaders at the hospitals. We have to let them know that there is a need for improvement. They need to understand this. This is essential to make a change.
And the stories play a vital part here. By listening to the stories, we get an idea of what the problems are, what works and how we can make positive changes. So we need women to raise their voices and tell their stories so that more people understand the need for change. By telling the stories, we spread information and share knowledge. By telling the stories, we also touch people’s hearts. This is why the stories are so important.
But stories about pregnancy, birth, postpartum and motherhood are somewhat secret. They’re kind of hidden until you become pregnant yourself. This is a problem, because we need more stories out there if we are going to achieve what we are working towards.
But asking women to tell their stories is also asking them to do something out of the ordinary. We are asking women to claim space for themselves and trust that their experiences are important enough to be shared and listened to.
Our society does not tell women that their stories about motherhood are important. In this sense, storytelling is a courageous and rebellious act. Call it micro feminism if you like, or maybe major.
Telling our stories can be important to ourselves. Telling your own story, or even writing it down for no one else to read but yourself, can be an important part of processing what you’ve been through. It can give you the recognition you need to be able to trust your own feelings no matter how you feel about your birth or postpartum period.
With that in mind, I want to share this quote by the excellent doula Ragnhild Torjesen. She calls herself Imaginedoula on Instagram. She says:
You don’t have to share your story with the world until you’re ready. But at least listen to yourself and believe what you hear.
In my experience, a lot of women tell themselves that other people have had worse experiences, and therefore they don’t have the right to feel bad or speak up. Their story isn’t important or interesting, and nothing bad happened to the baby, so they should just be grateful.
We encourage women to trust their feelings. If something feels wrong, if something bothers you, if there are things you keep coming back to, there is a reason for that. And also, your experience is as important and valuable as everyone else’s.
The same goes for the overwhelmingly positive experiences. Sing it to the world, we need to hear it.
We hope that more women will tell their stories, so that the diversity in experiences are portrayed. We welcome the good, the bad, the beautiful and the ugly. We want to make room for all kinds of stories, because they’re all valuable.
Telling our stories can be important to others as well. We share a lot of stories through Barselopprøret, and we receive messages from women saying how important those stories are. Here I have a quote from a mother to illustrate this point:
For each story I read, I feel less alone.
Many of us have similar experiences, but if no one tells their story, we won’t know. Telling your story may help others process their experience. It may help others by showing that they are not the only ones to feel like they do or have lived through what they have lived through. It can be a way of creating a community and helping other women tell their stories.
Telling our stories is also important to show that the individual woman is not to blame when the system fails. If you weren’t able to breastfeed after not receiving any help or guidance, it’s not your fault. Breastfeeding is more often than not something you need to learn, and you are supposed to get help. It’s not your fault if you didn’t get help. You are not to blame, you were failed.
I want to share this quote by another mother to illustrate this point:
The more I read what people share, the clearer it becomes that these things we experience aren't one-time incidents, but problems with the system itself.
A large part of the work we in Barselopprøret do is to point to the fact that the system fails a lot of women today, and that these women shouldn’t blame themselves and that the wider society shouldn't blame them either. These women deserve better, and that’s why we are working towards change.
The point I want to make here today is this: The stories are of vital importance when it comes to changing maternity services for the better. The stories are important on the individual and systemic level. They can contribute to positive changes within ourselves and our society. But for that to happen, we need to tell them and create a bigger space for more stories to be told.
And this is why Marina’s book is so important. She is telling her story, unapologetically, and by doing so, she is making it easier for others to follow. She is, to put it simple, contributing to changing the world for the better.
So thank you, Marina, for making this book. And thank you to all of you who are here to listen to her story. I hope you will share your stories in the future.
Marina’s introduction
If you missed it, you can see the recording of Marina’s introduction.
