There hasn't been too much coming forth recently--no words seem right enough. Some words come close: sublime, inspired, righteous, delicate, inhale, juicy, dewy, gritty, anxious, doubting, truth, pure. None of them are perfect; some of them are close.
How can I write about something that feels like falling off the edge of some hard and sharply defined surface, but on the other side it feels familiar and inviting and I can taste what I can only describe as divinity and it is sharp and juicy and sweet and it smells of salt and earth and rosewater and truthfulness yet somehow that sharply defined edge seemed so stable even moments ago and sometimes I just have to look back and wonder why in the hell I ever let myself be nudged off of it and then I think of the women: soft, full, ripe, trusting, deserving and I go forward with them and we all spiral out into an unnameable galaxy and help bring down a new soul to this reality...
A five day marathon in some of the oldest mountains on earth. A demanding, unyielding, heavy and lingering two day welcoming of a baby boy. Two young midwives bonding over shit and blood and cold washcloths--water, warm and deep--delicately constructed sentences--deep belly laughs--serenity--contrariness--delicious, ripe womanliness--a dedicated and soft papa--all of us groping for the right vibration; the perfect wave length for a sweet baby to ride on down to us, earthside.
Three more days spent immersed in those ancient mountains. A sacred exchange of Women's knowledge. So grateful for those holy mountains, those loving and skilled midwives, the time of solitude and release and integration and education.
It's crazy, this life I have found myself in...downright absurd...and absolutely enchanting.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
I was at a stand-still of what or how or why to write about birth. The more I fall into this world, the slower the words come, or at least any words that can make any sense of it all...I re-read Emily Dickinson's "They shut me up in Prose" and found at least some kind of voice in a poem...
There are no aqua green sterile scrubs
No Darth Vader masks
No beeping, clockwork orange machines
No straps
wires
whistles
catheters
no steel tables
No beds that rise/fall/move with a mechanical hum
There are no tubes, inserted into delicate spine
Pumping science fiction liquid
Until everyone in the room is anesthetized
paralyzed
until the heart of it all is coated
and cornered
boxed up
contingent, dependent, restricted, controlled
Instead we create the holy, the mystical
Offering darkness, stillness
Water, hot and deep
Familiarity
Scrambled eggs
Rose oil
Hawks eyes
Patience
Love pulled down together
Beyond the stars—past the planets
Tapped from the primal source of divine righteousness
There is a struggle—trying to wrap a poem around the
Exceedingly profound
There is no metaphor
No allusion
No simile
No clever rhyming language
To describe the essence of everything
Wet and slippery
A delivered prayer --Right into my hands
In the darkness of home
A collective hush
As we all breathe ourselves into this newness
Now earthside
And watch as pinkness radiates from her heart
Her chest rises and falls
And like Ms. Dickinson, I will not be shut up in Prose
Friday, October 2, 2009
Cow, Interrupted
We were on our way to the milk farm, driving through Puritan land: Salemville Rd, Church Dr, Golden Rule Dr. We could just start to smell autumn. The windows were open. We were cruising along, dusk settling in, Joni Mitchell riding shotgun with us. We were midway through a good ole rant against Western Medicine and the Patriarchal control of birthing women, and that is when we saw her.
Her name was Dream, according to the tag on her ear. She was gorgeous, of course, reclined in the pasture near the side of the road. S. spotted her right away and we geared down and slowly stopped to watch her. She was majestic. We could already see sweet little calf hooves appearing along with her membranes. We watched this mama as she rested in between her rushes. With every rush we could see more and more of the calf's hooves. That intangible, palpable birth energy was there, hanging stiff and thick in that farm air. We settled in and whispered to each other as we watched this mama.
I briefly ruined it for a moment. I wanted to get a bit closer. I crept out of the car and inched closer and closer to the mama. Suddenly the air changed and she bolted upright, stared at me, sucked her baby back inside, and walked further away from us. I was immediately sorry for my intrusion. I know better than this, I thought. I preach to women about this exact thing on a nearly daily basis--they need to create a sacred birthing space and any unwanted and unexpected intrusions will cause their bodies to shut down. This is the same phenomenon that happens in typical hospital births: the mother leaves for the hospital with contractions 3 minutes apart, and lo and behold when she gets to the hospital they space out to 5, 6, 7 minutes a part. Her body is deemed ineffective; her uterus is labeled as weak or inefficient. She is given drugs to speed up the process: IV's, narcotics injected into her spine, a cesarean. How could any woman do the most primal and private of all human acts in a space that tells her subconscious she is sick? Where multiple people force their way into her private room? She becomes a circus act--a sideshow freak. She is poked and prodded and injected and disinfected, all while an audience of strangers sits at her vagina. It is violation. But, I digress...
I felt bad for the poor mama cow. I realized what I had done and crept back to the car. We waited for a bit to see if she would settle. She did. Shortly thereafter, but a good 10 mins or so later, she began contracting again. She would walk around in between and graze. She would eat and eat and eat. Imagine that women might also need energy from real, live food while they labor. Ice chips and an IV might not actually be enough for the hardest work of their lives. Huh.
It was as much of an honor to watch this mammoth animal mama birth her baby as it is to watch my human animal sisters. She finally decided to settle down on the ground. Hooves began to appear again. She was calm and grounded. She made deep groaning sounds with each push. In between she would get up and eat some more and then settle back in for the next rush. We could see the calf wiggling to help herself out. That sharp and tangy energy that comes before full crowning was there. We were energized just watching her. And then it all changed...
The farmer came riding up on his tractor, three little girls following him. He greeted us. She startled. We exchanged niceties.
S.: My friend is a midwife and we were curious about the cow's birth.
He seemed disinterested
Farmer: she could go on like that for another hour or two if nature had her way.
Me: that is amazing, at this late stage it can still be that much longer?
Farmer: If Nature had her way it could. I'm gonna get this over with though. Gonna take her to the barn and help her out.
And with that he led her away. There you have it-- a perfect metaphor for American Birth: A woman's Dream led away by the Patriarchy. A man's attempt to liberate her from her own body. The Patriarchy's lack of patience for the feminine. Control. There she was, nearly about to birth her baby in the serenity and calmness and solitude of an autumnal pasture. Instead, she was led to the barn for assembly line birthing where her calf was going to be pulled out of her with chains and a tractor.
I tried to catch her eye as we pulled away. I said a silent prayer for her. I wanted to rage at that farmer. I wanted to pull his little girls aside and tell them that wasn't how birth needed to be. I wanted to grab them up, take them with me to a birth, show them the truth of strong, primal, serene, powerful birthing warrior women. They should know the ancient secrets too. They should have that knowledge. Too few of us still have it. I have been blessed to have met many a wise woman who has let me in on these secrets. I wanted those little girls to know the secrets too.
Instead, we pulled away, dumbfounded, defeated. We pulled up to the milk farm and I couldn't look those lady cows in the eye. I always thank them for my milk, but I felt as if I was robbing them of something that day. I always feel a twinge of guilt when I see how the calves are separated from their mamas, but this was something more. This farm is fairly progressive, but I still couldn't help but to wonder how many of them had the McBirthing experience--calves ripped from their wombs by impatient farmers.
We drove back past the pasture when we were done filing our containers. The grass was bent with the memory of her in the spot she claimed to birth. There was some fluid and membranes on that spot. A cloud of prayerful energy resonated from it. We drove quietly past, leaving the wheat, the sycamore, and the field to silently meditate on that holy and pitiable Dream of a cow, interrupted.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
I found this the other day on an old thumb drive. It was an essay I wrote for a Grad School when I was considering an MFA in Creative Writing. I never did send it. Something stopped me, and I can't explain what. I was definitely trying to run from the midwifery calling back then--running into what I thought was a more secure and predictable career path. It amazed me though, when I re-read this, how much of my love of midwifery comes through...thought it deserved a nice, new home on the interwebz...
I imagine it’s how musicians feel. I know it is how actors feel: This glistening of the spirit, a haze of adrenaline, a waking of something nearly palpable. There is purging of the soul to be done. If it weren’t for writing, there would be madness. I am sure of it.
I remember Reagan, the Cold War, cocaine, stirrup pants, volumes of angst-ridden poetry—Lisa Lisa and the Cult Jam—The Berlin Wall, The Challenger, AIDS, Tiananmen Square—The Overweight lover Heavy D-- Urban Sprawl, White Flight, Rodney King, Welfare Reform. The time was perfect for finding Rimbaud, Wilde, Faulkner, Ginsberg, Bukowski—the proverbial Kerouac—Joyce, Whitman, Jello Biafra, The Grateful Dead, Poor, poor, sad Morrissey and Robert Smith. I was always so amazed that after Reganomics and Clinton’s welfare reform, more people didn’t need these folks as much as I did. It was heartbreaking, breathtaking, morose—this revelation. This truth of the universe. This coming of age realization that the entire world does not need the creative purging. Need it. Neeeeeeeed it.
The story of my late teens is this, the stuff that Lifetime movies are made from: A young girl living in Appalachia, secretly dreaming to get out. I met a man, a boy really, at a party. He had fire engine red liberty spikes. He talked of revolution and radicals. We struggled through school while I was a young mom. A radical. A welfare mom. A terribly young wife. I was needy and clingy and wanton. I was young enough to dream that I could move my tiny family into a straw bale yurt in the dessert and live in a self-sufficient community of other radicals. I was gonna sell back my power, man, live off the grid, stick it to the patriarchal western paradigm. My husband had other plans. We split. I tried to reconcile this longing for words and performance with a steady job, sensible shoes, and feeding the sweetest baby in the Universe. I found another someone, had a few more kids, and started living happily ever after.
It isn’t really the stuff of extreme duress. I wasn’t picking coffee beans for two dollars a day with my 12 kids. I wasn’t escaping from a war torn village with my baby hidden under my dress. Suffering is relative. Still, a life with parents who favored Hee Haw over Hemingway, Football over Feminism, Nascar to Nietzsche, we were the stuff of simple hard living Appalachia. I learned very early on that it is hard to appreciate the beauty of a well placed comma when you are sitting in the dark because you couldn’t pay the electric bill. Commas are overrated in those conditions. So is the semi colon when you are bathing in a bowl of water heated on a hot plate. Life in Appalachia living under the poverty line can be downright undignified, but it can be so full of inspiration and motivation and loveliness too: beauty that comes out in giant run on sentences in your stolen dollar store notebook.
I suppose when any person sits down and lists the major events of her life, it all looks unbearable. Everyone must think how did I get through that? I guess the difference in people is this: Some of them look at that list and shut it off. They crash down. They buy Abercrombie and Fitch, 200 dollar jeans. They get manicures. They get new tits. They leaf through home and garden magazine—and NOT in an ironic way. They think Real Simple magazine is full of Real Simple ideas. Some of them watch Nascar; some of them buy memberships at exclusive clubs filled with other rich white people. They know that God created the Universe in 6 days and he rested on the 7th. They KNOW this. They don’t need to examine the equation. They don’t need the madness, the majesty, the elation of creating and exploring. People like me need the exploration. Sometimes we tend not to have too much sympathy for one another…we two kinds of folks.
When I found all of those great writers and musicians I knew I was the kind of person who had to manipulate the universe as they did. I found writing and performing and activism. I was led to Ani Difranco, Sinead O’Connor, Tom Robbins. When I became a mother it was Ariel Gore, Barbara Erinreich, Ina May Gaskin. I devoured Beckett and Brecht. I even sat a while with those radical realists Ibsen and Chekov. I quickly distinguished myself from the other mama’s in the playgroup set. Once you have one homebirth, you automatically put yourself on the fringe. I found Chuck Palahinuk, Holly Hughes, and Karen Finnley while nursing my second baby, re-visited Bukowski and Burroughs with the third, the bhagadvaghita with the fourth.
I have spent the last 12 years entrenched in the Universe of babies and birth activism, lactivism, renter’s rights, teen mama’s rights, gentrification, renovation, revitalization, student loans, home ownership. Slave wage Adjunct hell. A mini van. It is easy to let the writing hibernate. I want to wake it up. I need to have it come awake and take me like some wanton drugstore harlot.
I have had three homebirths, helped deliver many other babies. I have studied the politics of childbirth and breastfeeding. I have rallied with a million women in Washington for the rights to our bodies and I have rallied for peace with only a handful of compassionate folks in my own town. I have spent my time as a gypsy, a teen mama, a radical, a subversive, a soccer mom, a PTA queen, and I have taken inspiration from it all. In this world of folly and psychosis and discord, there is also great tenderness, majesty, sweetness, and synchronicity. The clichéd yin/yang.
I remember my first time with Whitman. Man, was he goooooood. He took me right in my bedroom. He took me in the backyard, the hallway at school, the backseat of my parent’s car on the way to Norfolk VA. He knew how to play me. He wrangled me like a poet never had.
Of course, after Whitman it is a slippery slope. It wasn’t long until I was baring it with Burroughs and Kerouac, Ginsberg, Wilde, Baudelaire, Beckett, Brecht…The others came too, dressed up in late 20th century metaphor. Those damn writers of the West Village of the 70’s and 80’s. All those crazy punk activist performers scrawling their verbiage with stolen presses. Distributing their zines in hushed banquet halls and romping queer bars. Spreading their grammar to street kids and homeless folks and young aspiring writers like me.
There are others too, with much less fame and far fewer dollars in the bank. Those folks who will sit and listen to me rant and add their own ramblings to mine on the backs of napkins after the boxed wine is gone and the kids are sleeping. These folks are no less important. In fact, they may be even more important. They are a tangible human experience.
From the moment I found great writings I knew I was a writer. I wanted it. I could taste it. When I had my first baby, I knew I had to do it. Samuel Beckett once said, “To find a form that accommodates the mess, that is the task of the artist now.” I need a form. I need to explore outside of the boundaries. I need to shape the mess and give it up to the universe.
Great writings aside, the single most inspirational thing I have ever done was to have a baby at home. My friend, who we invited to our birth, said of her experience “I was watching you handle the pain. You were all glowing and bright and you were not in this world. I watched you go through a door without any of us. You left the room and I could see you go. I wanted to go through the door to help you, but I couldn’t.” And that is exactly what I did. I went on a journey of a magnitude I could not even have imagined, and I DID it. I did it. I felt Ginsberg’s mystical visions and cosmic vibrations. No amount of peyote buttons in the desert could touch that. I came out of it exhilarated. If I could do that, I could do anything. That is why I have to write. I have to. If nothing else, I am a terrible waitress and I couldn’t sell a working eyeball to a blind man. I can’t cook. I can’t clean. I can’t build things or do math. I can spill words onto paper and I can climb up on stage and offer them up to the universe. I can nudge women through their own doors. I can catch babies. That is what I have.
I imagine it’s how musicians feel. I know it is how actors feel: This glistening of the spirit, a haze of adrenaline, a waking of something nearly palpable. There is purging of the soul to be done. If it weren’t for writing, there would be madness. I am sure of it.
I remember Reagan, the Cold War, cocaine, stirrup pants, volumes of angst-ridden poetry—Lisa Lisa and the Cult Jam—The Berlin Wall, The Challenger, AIDS, Tiananmen Square—The Overweight lover Heavy D-- Urban Sprawl, White Flight, Rodney King, Welfare Reform. The time was perfect for finding Rimbaud, Wilde, Faulkner, Ginsberg, Bukowski—the proverbial Kerouac—Joyce, Whitman, Jello Biafra, The Grateful Dead, Poor, poor, sad Morrissey and Robert Smith. I was always so amazed that after Reganomics and Clinton’s welfare reform, more people didn’t need these folks as much as I did. It was heartbreaking, breathtaking, morose—this revelation. This truth of the universe. This coming of age realization that the entire world does not need the creative purging. Need it. Neeeeeeeed it.
The story of my late teens is this, the stuff that Lifetime movies are made from: A young girl living in Appalachia, secretly dreaming to get out. I met a man, a boy really, at a party. He had fire engine red liberty spikes. He talked of revolution and radicals. We struggled through school while I was a young mom. A radical. A welfare mom. A terribly young wife. I was needy and clingy and wanton. I was young enough to dream that I could move my tiny family into a straw bale yurt in the dessert and live in a self-sufficient community of other radicals. I was gonna sell back my power, man, live off the grid, stick it to the patriarchal western paradigm. My husband had other plans. We split. I tried to reconcile this longing for words and performance with a steady job, sensible shoes, and feeding the sweetest baby in the Universe. I found another someone, had a few more kids, and started living happily ever after.
It isn’t really the stuff of extreme duress. I wasn’t picking coffee beans for two dollars a day with my 12 kids. I wasn’t escaping from a war torn village with my baby hidden under my dress. Suffering is relative. Still, a life with parents who favored Hee Haw over Hemingway, Football over Feminism, Nascar to Nietzsche, we were the stuff of simple hard living Appalachia. I learned very early on that it is hard to appreciate the beauty of a well placed comma when you are sitting in the dark because you couldn’t pay the electric bill. Commas are overrated in those conditions. So is the semi colon when you are bathing in a bowl of water heated on a hot plate. Life in Appalachia living under the poverty line can be downright undignified, but it can be so full of inspiration and motivation and loveliness too: beauty that comes out in giant run on sentences in your stolen dollar store notebook.
I suppose when any person sits down and lists the major events of her life, it all looks unbearable. Everyone must think how did I get through that? I guess the difference in people is this: Some of them look at that list and shut it off. They crash down. They buy Abercrombie and Fitch, 200 dollar jeans. They get manicures. They get new tits. They leaf through home and garden magazine—and NOT in an ironic way. They think Real Simple magazine is full of Real Simple ideas. Some of them watch Nascar; some of them buy memberships at exclusive clubs filled with other rich white people. They know that God created the Universe in 6 days and he rested on the 7th. They KNOW this. They don’t need to examine the equation. They don’t need the madness, the majesty, the elation of creating and exploring. People like me need the exploration. Sometimes we tend not to have too much sympathy for one another…we two kinds of folks.
When I found all of those great writers and musicians I knew I was the kind of person who had to manipulate the universe as they did. I found writing and performing and activism. I was led to Ani Difranco, Sinead O’Connor, Tom Robbins. When I became a mother it was Ariel Gore, Barbara Erinreich, Ina May Gaskin. I devoured Beckett and Brecht. I even sat a while with those radical realists Ibsen and Chekov. I quickly distinguished myself from the other mama’s in the playgroup set. Once you have one homebirth, you automatically put yourself on the fringe. I found Chuck Palahinuk, Holly Hughes, and Karen Finnley while nursing my second baby, re-visited Bukowski and Burroughs with the third, the bhagadvaghita with the fourth.
I have spent the last 12 years entrenched in the Universe of babies and birth activism, lactivism, renter’s rights, teen mama’s rights, gentrification, renovation, revitalization, student loans, home ownership. Slave wage Adjunct hell. A mini van. It is easy to let the writing hibernate. I want to wake it up. I need to have it come awake and take me like some wanton drugstore harlot.
I have had three homebirths, helped deliver many other babies. I have studied the politics of childbirth and breastfeeding. I have rallied with a million women in Washington for the rights to our bodies and I have rallied for peace with only a handful of compassionate folks in my own town. I have spent my time as a gypsy, a teen mama, a radical, a subversive, a soccer mom, a PTA queen, and I have taken inspiration from it all. In this world of folly and psychosis and discord, there is also great tenderness, majesty, sweetness, and synchronicity. The clichéd yin/yang.
I remember my first time with Whitman. Man, was he goooooood. He took me right in my bedroom. He took me in the backyard, the hallway at school, the backseat of my parent’s car on the way to Norfolk VA. He knew how to play me. He wrangled me like a poet never had.
Of course, after Whitman it is a slippery slope. It wasn’t long until I was baring it with Burroughs and Kerouac, Ginsberg, Wilde, Baudelaire, Beckett, Brecht…The others came too, dressed up in late 20th century metaphor. Those damn writers of the West Village of the 70’s and 80’s. All those crazy punk activist performers scrawling their verbiage with stolen presses. Distributing their zines in hushed banquet halls and romping queer bars. Spreading their grammar to street kids and homeless folks and young aspiring writers like me.
There are others too, with much less fame and far fewer dollars in the bank. Those folks who will sit and listen to me rant and add their own ramblings to mine on the backs of napkins after the boxed wine is gone and the kids are sleeping. These folks are no less important. In fact, they may be even more important. They are a tangible human experience.
From the moment I found great writings I knew I was a writer. I wanted it. I could taste it. When I had my first baby, I knew I had to do it. Samuel Beckett once said, “To find a form that accommodates the mess, that is the task of the artist now.” I need a form. I need to explore outside of the boundaries. I need to shape the mess and give it up to the universe.
Great writings aside, the single most inspirational thing I have ever done was to have a baby at home. My friend, who we invited to our birth, said of her experience “I was watching you handle the pain. You were all glowing and bright and you were not in this world. I watched you go through a door without any of us. You left the room and I could see you go. I wanted to go through the door to help you, but I couldn’t.” And that is exactly what I did. I went on a journey of a magnitude I could not even have imagined, and I DID it. I did it. I felt Ginsberg’s mystical visions and cosmic vibrations. No amount of peyote buttons in the desert could touch that. I came out of it exhilarated. If I could do that, I could do anything. That is why I have to write. I have to. If nothing else, I am a terrible waitress and I couldn’t sell a working eyeball to a blind man. I can’t cook. I can’t clean. I can’t build things or do math. I can spill words onto paper and I can climb up on stage and offer them up to the universe. I can nudge women through their own doors. I can catch babies. That is what I have.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
My second catch
When I saw her there—In her trailer-- Mouth opened, eyes closed, holding on to the sink as if the edge was threatening to fall—and it was threatening to fall--and she knew it. I was momentarily rendered speechless and motionless--A strange non- movement . In that briefness of second, that tiny place offered me her grace.
There I was, in a trailer park, with a mama who knew nothing of Ina May or Marsden Wagner. She hadn’t taken a hypnobirthing class or a birthing from within workshop. She hadn’t taken any class, to be exact. She didn’t know about legislation. She would not have classified herself as fringe or radical. She didn’t eat organic foods or buy non-toxic locally made toys. She drank instant coffee. She ate American cheese. She had never heard of waiting to clamp the cord. She was wide-eyed when we told her about lotus birth. I am sure we were the craziest bunch of women she had ever met. Her husband jokingly called us her “witchy women”.
She chose homebirth because something inside of her told her that she and her baby deserved it. She didn’t understand why they needed all those tests and machines and fears. This was her third baby. The other two came just fine, why wouldn’t this one? She knew she deserved more than 5 minutes with the person who she was allowing to witness her birth. She knew that she was being given substandard care, partly because she was on Medicaid, but mostly because this was standard American birthing.
So, there she was, in her bathroom, in transition, and all alone. Her older kids were with grandma, her husband on his way home from work. I watched her for that briefest of minutes and saw a mama who was tapped into an ancient source. I could feel it walking down her hall. I knew when I opened that door that she was going to be well into herself. I was honored to be invited there with her. I didn’t want to disturb her. When she looked up and noticed me, she gave a crooked smile and asked if she was OK. I nodded. She moved to the tub.
When her husband came in a few minutes later, I knew she was ready to release the baby. I knew the midwife was not going to make it. He gathered up some supplies for me and we both sat, awestruck by this primal mama. Earlier he had told me that he really didn’t like to be at the births. He complained about the sights, the sounds, the smells…He admitted he wouldn’t be much use. But, there he was—sitting with me on their bathroom floor, worshiping his wife and her super-powers.
Suddenly she jolted out of the tub and dashed to her bedroom. She lay flat on her back on her bed, not a position I would have suggested. But this mama knew what her baby and her body needed. She hadn’t needed any coaching so far; she trusted herself and I trusted her. I turned the lights down low. Her husband handed me warmed towels. When her baby slipped into my hands a few minutes later he laid a warmed blanket over his daughter and helped me put her on his wife’s chest. Their daughter gave a minor protest. With each breath we watched as the pinkness radiated out from her heart until every part of her was rosy and full and content with her new home. She watched her mama and her papa and drifted right off to sleep. We waited to cut the cord until well after she had delivered the placenta. She spent a good couple of hours, snuggled in the dim light of dawn---mama, baby, papa.
While I was doing the newborn exam a few hours later, I heard her husband on the phone relaying their good news. He was bragging about the dim lights, the delayed cord clamping. He even bragged that his wife didn’t need a single vaginal exam. He told the person on the other end how they “don’t let you do this stuff in hospitals”.
And there you have it: two people spreading the word about normal birth. Two folks who will go on to help others in their community reclaim their rights to birth how they choose and where they choose. Two people who would never identify as radical or as fringe or as activists, but who knew birth had so much more to offer them than what Western Medicine was letting on. They knew something was missing, they found it, and hopefully they will never shut up about it. Shout it from the rooftops, dear new friends.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Feminism and McBirthing
It always surprises me when I come across a woman who identifies as a feminist but does not support birth as a feminist issue. I come across these women all the time. Women who have bought the idea that modern medicine=painless birth=liberation. We were sold this bill of goods more than a half century ago and it seems we bought it hook, line, and external fetal monitor.
The reality is that we were sold the idea of liberation but it was really about control. Control over a magical, mysterious, powerful experience that is inherently and uniquely feminine. A birthing woman who is in complete control of the process, who is able to feel safe enough to surrender, is a warrior. She is a fierce, primal beast. She is the Big Bang Theory, Creationism, the mythic Ohm. She is love.
The patriarchy most often does not attempt to hide its agenda. It wants women submissive and virtually silent, with a dab of rouge and a smattering of pearls. It wants us to buy the latest brands, barf the latest designer foods, and binge on the latest pharmaceuticals all designed to make us well aware of the fact that we are sad, weak, and fat. If they can keep us trapped in that cycle, they can get things like Cytotec and 33% C-Section rates and Pitocin for every birth past us--Just like they got Twilight Sleep and X-Rays and Thalidomide past us before.
Until women stop buying into the myth that painless birth equals liberation and that modern obstetrics wants women to have a choice, we are going to lose more and more babies and mamas. This co-opting of the feminist language is clever: When we cry out over the Cytotec, over the Caesarean birth rates, when we question the necessity of induction, we hear in response, over and over again : Women should have the right to choose a cesarean birth or an epidural or an induction. It is her body. But this same choice shouldn’t be afforded to a woman when it comes to where and with whom she gives birth? I do agree that we women absolutely own the rights to our own bodies, we can do with them as we please, whether that be scheduling an induction, choosing a cesarean, having many children, having zero children, or squatting in our own bathtubs to have our babies.
The real heart of this matter lies in the fact that birth is Wild. An undisturbed birthing woman is a fierce, primal force. Her power is evident and her strength nearly unshakable. Institutionalizing birth removes the wildness. It tidies it up. It keeps women silent and contained—quite literally. If they can keep you plugged in, the machines and the drips and the needles and the belts all ensure you will be immobile and silent and trapped. All other lady mammals move and moan and gyrate to get the baby out. They seek darkness and stillness and safety. When a woman is confined it makes her labor much, much harder, which brings down more and more fear, which can cause her labor to slow and her experience to be excruciating. Wild, gyrating, women are a reminder of the love making it took to get that baby in there, and very few people are accepting of a woman in full bloom—a woman strong in her sexual self—We can accept and even expect a laboring woman to scream in pain, but we turn away in disgust or amusement or disbelief that a woman could also experience bliss and ecstasy, and indeed, orgasm during her birth. Why are we accepting this? Why is it acceptable for a woman to experience pain but not ecstasy?
We began this trip many, many years ago when the Divine Feminine was stripped from us, when thousands and thousands of midwives were burned and drowned, murdered for practicing witchcraft. Western Medicine was in its infancy and in order for men to steal birth away from us, a move that fueled the Patriarchy immensely, they had to convince women that their pelvises were too small, that their babies grew too big, that midwives were ignorant and filthy, that birth was best left in the hands of the professional man in a sterile and controlled environment and we could just stop worrying our little heads about it and get our butt back on that bed, lay flat, and let the doctor deliver us to freedom—and then we could cough up a whole lotta cash to pay the good man for all his troubles. Meanwhile, we now have nearly lost our super power. Birth is uniquely feminine. Women were put solely in charge of bringing life forth onto this planet for a reason, and this threatens the very heart of the patriarchy. When birth is left undisturbed an amazing transformation occurs—A woman is born, full in her strength and in the wisdom of her ancestors. She mothers her baby easier, she can stretch her limits further, she can, more easily, open her heart and connect with the source of all nature.
The thing is, women know on a primal level what they are missing. We live in a society that has us hooked on foods that are made in a lab, on news that is made up on the TV, on excess and on the idea that we no longer know what is best for our own selves. We need a doctor/politician/newscaster/Ronald McDonald to tell us how to eat, feel, breathe, and live. It is no wonder that assembly line birthing has dominated. Our whole culture thrives on convenience and lack of real choice. Pretty soon we won't be able to inhale without consulting 3 physicians as to when the appropriate time to exhale will be. We will all fit neatly into little controllable boxes with our Big Macs and Plasma Screen TVs and nary a word about personal freedoms or choices.
But, I digress; back to the women---they know what they are missing. I talk to women nearly every day who tell me how traumatized they were by their own births. Some may not even have realized how traumatic their births were until 20 years later. I have met little old ladies who can tell me every single detail about their births and how they were made to feel. Women don't forget. We remember our births for a lifetime. We remember them for a reason--because they are important and because our bodies need to remember them. We need to remember scaling that mountain, feeling like we couldn't go on. We need to remember the triumph of surrendering to the power of the voyage and the transcendence that was given to us. Our bodies cling to the memory of the smells of amniotic fluid, the sounds of birthing, the feeling of a slippery, wet, warm brand new monkey baby on our bellies and chests and in our arms. The cells of our breasts never forget how they felt the first time they nursed a baby and watched as his fat little cheeks bulged with our milk.
Most women in our culture, however, only remember that their pelvises were too small or that their cervices could not dilate at the proper speed. They remember the smells of stale linens and ammonia. They remember the glare of the fluorescent lights and the sounds of the beeping, always beeping machines. They remember starkness and hard surfaces and coldness as a metaphor for the entire process. Their births were processes. A means to an end. They don't remember the transcendence because most of them were not allowed to feel it. And you know what? A lot of women buy it. They buy that what they experienced was as good as birth gets. They may even buy it for 50 years, but at some point, sometime, most of them come to feel robbed or violated or lost. These are the women who find me and I am grateful to help them. Sometimes it just seems futile in the midst of the birth machine. Every time I am at a hospital, which is rarely lately, I am confronted with how big the machine is and how deeply entrenched it is in each of us. My guts feel it, my head knows it, and my heart breaks because of it.
The reality is that we were sold the idea of liberation but it was really about control. Control over a magical, mysterious, powerful experience that is inherently and uniquely feminine. A birthing woman who is in complete control of the process, who is able to feel safe enough to surrender, is a warrior. She is a fierce, primal beast. She is the Big Bang Theory, Creationism, the mythic Ohm. She is love.
The patriarchy most often does not attempt to hide its agenda. It wants women submissive and virtually silent, with a dab of rouge and a smattering of pearls. It wants us to buy the latest brands, barf the latest designer foods, and binge on the latest pharmaceuticals all designed to make us well aware of the fact that we are sad, weak, and fat. If they can keep us trapped in that cycle, they can get things like Cytotec and 33% C-Section rates and Pitocin for every birth past us--Just like they got Twilight Sleep and X-Rays and Thalidomide past us before.
Until women stop buying into the myth that painless birth equals liberation and that modern obstetrics wants women to have a choice, we are going to lose more and more babies and mamas. This co-opting of the feminist language is clever: When we cry out over the Cytotec, over the Caesarean birth rates, when we question the necessity of induction, we hear in response, over and over again : Women should have the right to choose a cesarean birth or an epidural or an induction. It is her body. But this same choice shouldn’t be afforded to a woman when it comes to where and with whom she gives birth? I do agree that we women absolutely own the rights to our own bodies, we can do with them as we please, whether that be scheduling an induction, choosing a cesarean, having many children, having zero children, or squatting in our own bathtubs to have our babies.
The real heart of this matter lies in the fact that birth is Wild. An undisturbed birthing woman is a fierce, primal force. Her power is evident and her strength nearly unshakable. Institutionalizing birth removes the wildness. It tidies it up. It keeps women silent and contained—quite literally. If they can keep you plugged in, the machines and the drips and the needles and the belts all ensure you will be immobile and silent and trapped. All other lady mammals move and moan and gyrate to get the baby out. They seek darkness and stillness and safety. When a woman is confined it makes her labor much, much harder, which brings down more and more fear, which can cause her labor to slow and her experience to be excruciating. Wild, gyrating, women are a reminder of the love making it took to get that baby in there, and very few people are accepting of a woman in full bloom—a woman strong in her sexual self—We can accept and even expect a laboring woman to scream in pain, but we turn away in disgust or amusement or disbelief that a woman could also experience bliss and ecstasy, and indeed, orgasm during her birth. Why are we accepting this? Why is it acceptable for a woman to experience pain but not ecstasy?
We began this trip many, many years ago when the Divine Feminine was stripped from us, when thousands and thousands of midwives were burned and drowned, murdered for practicing witchcraft. Western Medicine was in its infancy and in order for men to steal birth away from us, a move that fueled the Patriarchy immensely, they had to convince women that their pelvises were too small, that their babies grew too big, that midwives were ignorant and filthy, that birth was best left in the hands of the professional man in a sterile and controlled environment and we could just stop worrying our little heads about it and get our butt back on that bed, lay flat, and let the doctor deliver us to freedom—and then we could cough up a whole lotta cash to pay the good man for all his troubles. Meanwhile, we now have nearly lost our super power. Birth is uniquely feminine. Women were put solely in charge of bringing life forth onto this planet for a reason, and this threatens the very heart of the patriarchy. When birth is left undisturbed an amazing transformation occurs—A woman is born, full in her strength and in the wisdom of her ancestors. She mothers her baby easier, she can stretch her limits further, she can, more easily, open her heart and connect with the source of all nature.
The thing is, women know on a primal level what they are missing. We live in a society that has us hooked on foods that are made in a lab, on news that is made up on the TV, on excess and on the idea that we no longer know what is best for our own selves. We need a doctor/politician/newscaster/Ronald McDonald to tell us how to eat, feel, breathe, and live. It is no wonder that assembly line birthing has dominated. Our whole culture thrives on convenience and lack of real choice. Pretty soon we won't be able to inhale without consulting 3 physicians as to when the appropriate time to exhale will be. We will all fit neatly into little controllable boxes with our Big Macs and Plasma Screen TVs and nary a word about personal freedoms or choices.
But, I digress; back to the women---they know what they are missing. I talk to women nearly every day who tell me how traumatized they were by their own births. Some may not even have realized how traumatic their births were until 20 years later. I have met little old ladies who can tell me every single detail about their births and how they were made to feel. Women don't forget. We remember our births for a lifetime. We remember them for a reason--because they are important and because our bodies need to remember them. We need to remember scaling that mountain, feeling like we couldn't go on. We need to remember the triumph of surrendering to the power of the voyage and the transcendence that was given to us. Our bodies cling to the memory of the smells of amniotic fluid, the sounds of birthing, the feeling of a slippery, wet, warm brand new monkey baby on our bellies and chests and in our arms. The cells of our breasts never forget how they felt the first time they nursed a baby and watched as his fat little cheeks bulged with our milk.
Most women in our culture, however, only remember that their pelvises were too small or that their cervices could not dilate at the proper speed. They remember the smells of stale linens and ammonia. They remember the glare of the fluorescent lights and the sounds of the beeping, always beeping machines. They remember starkness and hard surfaces and coldness as a metaphor for the entire process. Their births were processes. A means to an end. They don't remember the transcendence because most of them were not allowed to feel it. And you know what? A lot of women buy it. They buy that what they experienced was as good as birth gets. They may even buy it for 50 years, but at some point, sometime, most of them come to feel robbed or violated or lost. These are the women who find me and I am grateful to help them. Sometimes it just seems futile in the midst of the birth machine. Every time I am at a hospital, which is rarely lately, I am confronted with how big the machine is and how deeply entrenched it is in each of us. My guts feel it, my head knows it, and my heart breaks because of it.
Friday, February 20, 2009
With all the time I have in the car lately, I have really been giving space in my brain to the exploration of my love of midwifery and theatre and how to connect the two. I miss the stage profoundly. I never did anything spectacular. I did a lot of community theatre as a teenager. I studied theatre in college and got some relatively decent roles. I surrounded myself with artists and actors and I couldn’t imagine life without acting (pretentious and dramatic enunciation on the word acting).
But, something was missing. I knew I was called to do birth work, but it wasn’t just that. There was something missing from the process—from the experiences I was given on stage and by instructors. It was hollow. What really drew me to the stage was this primal wanting—this desire for self exploration—a need to go on a voyage, a vision quest—creation--and I wasn’t given that. I didn’t even know how to ask for it. I couldn’t have articulated that need back then anyway; it just lived somewhere deep in my subconscious. I wanted to let go of my ego, my sense of rightness, any moral trappings, the fear of risk…I wanted to be guided on how to surrender all of that bullshit and ride a wave to somewhere else…to someone else…I wanted all of us, on the stage, to be transported to another fucking planet.
There were glimpses of it here and there. Moments of wicked inspiration, when I would come off the stage knowing that I was truly someone else out there and that everything I had felt and every action I made was sincere and authentic. But, for the most part, my stage experiences left me with a profound longing for something I couldn’t even verbalize or fully know then.
That is where the midwifery comes in. Each and every mama and family I work with—in every bedroom or kitchen or living room or field—every single birth is a transformative quest. It is the ultimate in the creative. In order to hold that space for that mama’s work I have to let go of all pretention and ego and all the trappings of righteousness. I have to ride with that mama to another world. I have to trust. I have to get fucking down and dirty with another human—not be afraid to go to a place where I think I am on the edge but I know I have to push further and so I do and I realize that there really is no edge only a boundless creative well and it is from this place that I can help a mama come there too and we are both artists at that moment—in that space—she the ultimate creator—and me, humbled and transformed.
This is where I am really learning about the art and craft of midwifery. I knew it intellectually, but now I am experiencing it. I feel like more of an artist at every single birth than I ever, ever did on the stage.
I am anxious to get back to acting soon. I am hopeful that the right opportunity will come to me. I am giddy at the prospect of applying what I have learned through midwifery to the stage. For the first time in my life though, I feel like I am answering a true calling. I know I will never entirely give up acting or writing, but right now the call of the birth work is strong and I am honored to submit to it.
But, something was missing. I knew I was called to do birth work, but it wasn’t just that. There was something missing from the process—from the experiences I was given on stage and by instructors. It was hollow. What really drew me to the stage was this primal wanting—this desire for self exploration—a need to go on a voyage, a vision quest—creation--and I wasn’t given that. I didn’t even know how to ask for it. I couldn’t have articulated that need back then anyway; it just lived somewhere deep in my subconscious. I wanted to let go of my ego, my sense of rightness, any moral trappings, the fear of risk…I wanted to be guided on how to surrender all of that bullshit and ride a wave to somewhere else…to someone else…I wanted all of us, on the stage, to be transported to another fucking planet.
There were glimpses of it here and there. Moments of wicked inspiration, when I would come off the stage knowing that I was truly someone else out there and that everything I had felt and every action I made was sincere and authentic. But, for the most part, my stage experiences left me with a profound longing for something I couldn’t even verbalize or fully know then.
That is where the midwifery comes in. Each and every mama and family I work with—in every bedroom or kitchen or living room or field—every single birth is a transformative quest. It is the ultimate in the creative. In order to hold that space for that mama’s work I have to let go of all pretention and ego and all the trappings of righteousness. I have to ride with that mama to another world. I have to trust. I have to get fucking down and dirty with another human—not be afraid to go to a place where I think I am on the edge but I know I have to push further and so I do and I realize that there really is no edge only a boundless creative well and it is from this place that I can help a mama come there too and we are both artists at that moment—in that space—she the ultimate creator—and me, humbled and transformed.
This is where I am really learning about the art and craft of midwifery. I knew it intellectually, but now I am experiencing it. I feel like more of an artist at every single birth than I ever, ever did on the stage.
I am anxious to get back to acting soon. I am hopeful that the right opportunity will come to me. I am giddy at the prospect of applying what I have learned through midwifery to the stage. For the first time in my life though, I feel like I am answering a true calling. I know I will never entirely give up acting or writing, but right now the call of the birth work is strong and I am honored to submit to it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)