Information ≠ Knowledge

May24

Last week I attended a webinar about the ethics of childbirth. The presenter, sociologist Raymond De Vries, noted that choice is central to each of the ethical questions surrounding birth and then made the point that the problem with choice is that information does not equal knowledge. (He also mentioned the “ritual” of informed consent.) In the context of the webinar, the point was being made about ethical issues of prenatal testing, birth planning, and asking women to make decisions while in labor, but I think it has broader implications for our work as childbirth educators as well. We spend a lot of time informing and educating women about their choices surrounding birth and are often then surprised that this apparent information does not translate into experience once in the birth room. Obviously, this is partially because the birth room is a context impacted by a large number of social, cultural, psychological, and environmental factors, but I believe it is also because with all of our information we still haven’t managed to help parents develop knowledge and the two are not the same. Parents are often not able to recall or to mobilize information resources while actually embroiled in the birth experience. They need an inner knowing and inner resources to draw on for coping.

While I have known this for a long time, I still find it difficult to translate my conviction into practice. How do people develop knowledge about an experience that is ultimately unknowable until they are in it?

I do think that within the field of childbirth education, Birthing from Within is the method that most attempts to address this issue and I really value these two quotes from Pam England:

“A knowledgeable childbirth teacher can inform mothers about birth, physiology, hospital policies and technology. But that kind of information doesn’t touch what a mother actually experiences IN labor, or what she needs to know as a mother (not a patient) in this rite of passage.”

“While all of your (birth) planning may spin a cocoon of security, in actuality, the course of your labor is unknowable…your critical task is to prepare for a birth that has NO script.”

Personally, though, even with the practices and ideas offered by wonderful resources like Birthing from Within, I find I am still working on the actual execution of the how in my classes of translating information into knowledge…

—

Edited to add…I’m working on resolving this discrepancy through my new plan to offer birth workshops as part of a birth network, rather than as an independent educator.

Birth Warrior Affirmation

May6

Today I was looking at various cool things on Etsy and came across a neat “birth warrior” bracelet. She also gives the following affirmation and I LOVE it:

Birth Warrior’s Affirmation

I am a birth warrior
I embrace my strength
I embrace my power
I surrender to my body’s wisdom
and bring forth life in joy…

I’m going to a mother blessing this weekend and would like to add this to the affirmation poster we are making for the mother (I hope she doesn’t read this blog first!). I know that there are some people who not identify with the “birth warrior” mindset/coping practices, but for me personally, it is very apt and is what felt true and right for me—power and strength instead of calmness, relaxation, and control.

Birth, Motherhood, & Meaning

May5

Birth Activist is having a Mother’s Day blog carnival focused on these questions: “As Mother’s Day approaches I always stop to reflect about how I give birth influences how I mother. Would I have been a different mother had I birthed differently? Just what does giving birth do to our ability to mother?”

I instantly thought of a post I made several months ago and decided to revise and update it for this carnival. In initially re-reading the post, I was interested to note that my life as a mother has already changed since I wrote it!

The post I am revising/excerpting now was a post in response to a quote from a Midwifery Today blog post: “your birth is the most important event in shaping your life as a mother.” I did a lot of thinking about this—IS birth the most important event that shaped my life as a mother? I’m not so sure. I am also interested to note how the texture of the question changes if I ask myself, “what is the most important event that shaped my life as a woman?” instead. The answer to that question—of my then-developing sense of womanhood—I believe is giving birth. But, the answer to the question about motherhood is a different and more complicated.

I definitely believe that birth is “NOT just another day in a woman’s life” and that giving birth does have lasting impact on women’s memories and quality of life, primarily because they stand out in the memory as transformative events and it becomes an issue of the mudane vs. the miraculous (so, of course your every day life with your children is more important than that “one day,” but that the one days blend into one whole, while the birth experience stands out as, “HEY! Pay attention. Something BIG is going on here!”)

I believe you can hold the two experiences simultaneously—you can enjoy (or suffer from) the birth memory while also cherishing the daily life with the little ones. One doesn’t have to trump the other or to be “what really matters.” There’s room for lots of mattering in an every day life

Birth is (or can be) a “peak experience” for women (and families). I want all women to have a chance to experience that. I certainly do not want her to feel diminished, unworthy, inferior or lacking if birth is not a peak experience in her life, but I also want all women to certainly be given a reasonable opportunity to let birth unfold in all its power and be treated respectfully and humanely by those around her—regardless of what is going on or the eventual outcome.

I love birth and cherish my memories of my sons’ births and consider them to be some of the most transformative, empowering, and significant single days in my life—peak experiences, powerful memories—and I also feel that birth matters as a distinct (and relatively rare) occurrence in a woman life. I believe birth has inherent value and worth on its own terms. I also believe that your feelings about the birth and the baby can most definitely be separated—you can feel pleased as punch with your delightful, precious baby and also be disappointed (or super thrilled with) your birthing. One does not take from the other—you can hold the reality of both and a breadth of feelings about them. And additionally, it is not wrong to want both things—a “good birth” and a “healthy baby.” The two go hand in hand and are not mutually exclusive concepts at all.

I also think we can draw on powerful memories for present strength—I remember my “birth warrior” feelings and it helps me with other tasks or with day to day life. I remember the laughing, crying, “my baby, MY BABY!” moments of triumph and bliss and ecstasy immediately postpartum and it buoys me with a fresh charge of love for my boys. I remember the sense of profound inherent worth that I felt after giving birth and bring that sense into my present-day awareness. I remember the feeling of transcendence and power and know that that power is still in me, even while performing mundane daily tasks.

All that said, however, I also do not feel that my children’s births were the most important events shaping my life as a mother.

For me, the profound shaping event was the experience postpartum with my first baby. I have never had an experience that shaped me and impacted me and SHOOK me more profoundly than adjusting to life with my newborn son. That was my journey. That was my struggle. That was my challenge. That is what dissolved me and burned me into ashes and let me rise again as someone the same but also brand new—a mother. I was not “born” when my son was born, I was forged. Made, in those intense weeks that followed his birth.

When originally writing this post, I was pregnant with my third son. That pregnancy ended very unexpectedly in November, rather than May, when my baby was born after almost 15 weeks of pregnancy. Interestingly, my experience of miscarriage has supplanted the birth of my other two sons as essentially the most powerful/significant and transformative event of my life. (My sense that his birth has “replaced” the birth of my other children as most significant makes sense to me, because though it is classed as miscarriage, it is still my most recent birth experience—all of their births stand out as special, important, and meaningful days and I will remember each with clarity for the rest of my life, but his birth is the freshest and most recent and came with the additional transformative journey of grief. And thus, when I think of giving birth or when I think back to birth memories or birth feelings, his birth is the first one that comes to mind.) Though I still “vote” for postpartum as the most significant event in my life as a mother, I now “vote” for my birth-miscarriage experience as the most significant event in my life as a woman.

Noah’s Birth Story (Warning: Miscarriage/Baby Loss)

May3

Since today is my due date (and also my own birthday), I wanted to take a minute to share Noah’s full birth story. I do have a separate blog where I keep most of my writing about miscarriage, but the birth stories of my other two boys are on this blog and I feel like his story deserves to be here also. And, since this is a blog about birth and since this is a birth story, I feel it has relevance in that sense as well. Not to mention that fact that miscarriage is part of the spectrum of childbearing experiences and that most childbirth educators should have some preparation in working with women who have had miscarriage experiences (I was very startled to discover when googling “childbirth educator” and miscarriage” that some of my own posts on the subject were on the top of the google hits—surely there are other childbirth educators out there who have had miscarriages and who write about them?!)

I wrote the story in my journal on November 10 (he was born Nov. 7) and have had it next to my computer to be typed up ever since that date. Finally, this weekend I typed it up. I have mentioned on my other blog that I feel the need to “close out” my pregnancy with him—almost like I’ve continued to be a “little bit pregnant” and it is time to close that “pregnancy” and to move on. Not to forget or to stop talking about it, but to acknowledge that NOW, finally, I “shouldn’t” be pregnant anymore. I felt almost driven this weekend to finally finish typing the story so that I could publish it on this day. Of course, I expected to have a different sort of birth story to share on this day (or somewhere around now), but this is what our story actually is (very long—I broke it into three chunks to make it a little easier to skim through if necessary):

Beginning—Finding Out

On Wednesday evening, November 4, at 14 weeks 2 days pregnant with my third baby, I had an appointment with a prospective midwife. I have not written much about this experience, because I did not want her to come across it online and feel badly. The short version is that the visit was like a “fear bath”—it was pretty intense the level of fear and “what ifs” she kept throwing out there, as well as personal insecurities. Also, she used the phrase, “you’re going to have a dead baby” at least five times during the conversation (said in reference to comments people make TO her regarding attending homebirths, however, the words made me want to curl protectively around MY baby and reassure him. And, given the way the rest of our story unfolded, in hindsight her words felt prophetic—or, like she cursed me!). When I left the fear bath, I had a headache. I woke the next morning feeling like my uterus hurt. I also became aware of contraction-like sensations coming every three minutes but only lasting about five seconds each. I lay down and rested until time for playgroup. By playgroup I was down to just uterus aching/hurting feelings, plus a low back ache. I talked to my friends Summer and Trisha about it and Summer reassured me and rubbed my belly, “your baby is strong and healthy.”

Thursday evening (November 5), I started to feel concerned. The contraction-like feeling was back. At 3:00 a.m. (my nightly wake-up time throughout the pregnancy to date) I got up to sit on the couch. I tried to be positive and think about a “bubble of peace” surrounding us and I also repeated to myself, “you are strong and healthy, your baby is strong and healthy.” I felt like I felt the baby move a little then and felt a little reassured. I had decided earlier that perhaps I had a UTI and that was what was causing the crampy feelings to come and go (urinary frequency also). I ended up throwing up later in the morning and was reassured by presence of morning sickness still. Between 3-5:00 a.m., I started to spot a little, but only when wiping. After seeing this, I began to feel extremely worried and scared. Spotting continued lightly in morning and I called a semi-local midwife to see if I could come and try to listen for a heartbeat. She was on her way to Montana however, so I made an appointment with t he nurse-practitioner at my doctor’s office for 2:45 that afternoon. I called my mom and my friend and rested in bed, waiting and worrying and repeating my healthy baby mantras.

I went ahead and packed for my class, then took the kids to Summer’s house and went to the doctor’s office, crossing my fingers that the diagnosis would be a UTI—I strongly felt it was going to be either-or, but it turned out to be both 😦 The NP said my urine looked infected and I felt my hope restored a bit. I truly thought the baby was going to be okay. She sent us downstairs for an ultrasound at 3:30. Though I tried to be hopeful, it was clear from the ultrasound tech’s non-communication that it was bad news. She didn’t show us the screen and I wish now that I would have asked to see it. I stared at the light in the ceiling and held onto my goddess of Willendorf necklace and to Mark’s hand. She clicked around with kind of a frown on her face and then finished and stood up. I said, “not good news?” and she said, “no, not good news,” put a box of tissues down said, “take as long as you need” and left. I told Mark that I couldn’t “do this” here and so we went back up to the NP and she confirmed (obliquely) that baby was dead. She said the tech said it was probably a fairly recent loss and that it was low in my uterus and my cervix was starting to dilate, so I would probably “pass it” this weekend. I felt like she expected me to be crying and I told her that I needed to “process” at home, not here. I called the college to cancel my class and that is when I started crying—I had to say the words, “I just found out I’m having a miscarriage.”

We went to Wal-Mart to pick up antibiotics for the UTI and I cried in the car while Mark went in. Then, to the post office to mail an ebay package. Again, I stayed in the car crying and wailing almost in my anguish, “MY BABY!” We got the kids from Summer’s and I cried in her arms briefly.

Mom brought over dinner in sympathy/empathy. I was still feeling some crampiness/uterus ache and that eased after dinner. I sat and read my miscarriage books—I had four on my shelf already, one from my time at RMHC and the others from my childbirth educator training. I talked with Mark for a while. I kept saying that I didn’t feel ready to let go and also that I didn’t know HOW to do this—should I walk around and try to get “labor” going or what? Decided to go to bed…

Birth

I woke at 1:00 a.m. (November 7) with contractions. I got up to use the bathroom and then walked around in the kitchen briefly, rubbing my belly, talking to the baby and telling him it was time for us to let go of each other—“I need to let go of you and you need to let go of me.” I looked at the clock and said to go ahead and come out at 3:00—“let’s get this done by 3:00.” I had woken every night at 3:00 a.m. throughout my pregnancy for no discernible reason and had said several times previously, “I’ll bet this means the baby is going to be born at 3:00!” (but in MAY, not November). I knelt on the futon by the bathroom door in child’s pose. I said again that I didn’t know HOW I was going to do this, but my body does. I realized that I needed to treat this like any other labor. I changed into soft, stretchy gray pants, leaving behind my pajama pants that felt too tight across the middle while crouching forward. These pants were Summer’s water-breaking pants—when she lent me her maternity clothes she said the only thing she was attached to getting back were these gray pants because her water had broken in them. I felt like they would be good energy birth pants. I was more comfortable right away upon changing into them. My contractions picked up to about 3 minutes apart and were just like with a full-term baby—starting in the back and spreading to a peak in the front. Mark rubbed my back and I talked to myself as I leaned forward in child’s pose with my head on my arms. I was going to “laborland”—that altered state of consciousness place of a birthing woman. I realized the only was to do it was to go through it. I asked Mark for my goddess pendant to wear (the one he gave me as a “happy new baby!” present in August when we found out I was pregnant). I held her and stared at my Trust Birth bracelet (and felt the irony). I had already put on my birth bracelet from Zander’s blessingway to help me feel strong.

When I was still having the “HOW?” questions, other women that I knew who had experienced miscarriage started to come to mind and I knew I could do it too. I told myself that I had to do what I had to do. I said out loud, “let go, let go, let go.” I said I was okay and “my body knows what to do.” The afternoon I found out the baby died, I’d received a package that included a little lavender sachet as a free gift with my order. When my labor began, for some reason I wanted the sachet and held and smelled it throughout the experience. As I chanted to myself, “let go, let go, let go,” I smelled my sachet (later, I read in one of my miscarriage books that in aromatherapy lavender is for letting go). I also told myself, “I can do it, I can do it” and “I’m okay, I’m okay.” I felt like I should get more upright and though it was very difficult to move out of the safety of child’s pose, I got up onto my knees and felt a small pop/gush. I checked and it was my water breaking. The water was clear and a small amount. I was touched that now these gray pants were my water-breaking pants too, but I was also worried about messing them up. I asked Mark to get me my leftover disposable undies from Zander’s birth and put them on (SO glad I still had them!) I went back into child’s pose and reminded myself to open and let go.

Contractions continued fairly intensely and I continue to talk myself through them while Mark rubbed my back. I coached myself to rise again and after I sat back on my heels, I felt a warm blob leave my body. I put my hand down and said, “something came out. I need to look, but I’m scared.” Then, “I can do it, I can do it,” I coached myself and went into the bathroom to check (it was extremely important to me not to have the baby on the toilet). I saw that it was a very large blood clot. I was a little confused and wondered if we were going to have to “dissect” the clot looking for the baby. Then I had another contraction and, standing with my knees slightly bent, our baby slipped out. It was 3:00. He landed face up on the clot with his arms raised over his head. I said, “Oh! It’s our baby!” and kind of shut my pants. Then, I opened them again and looked at him. He was clean and pink, about four inches in size, and well-formed with eyelids, nostrils, closed mouth, fingers, and toes. I felt something else and saw his little cord—I showed Mark—it was spiraled like a big one, but thinner than a piece of yarn. It broke then and a whole bunch of clots came out and nearly covered the baby. His head and one arm were showing only.

No longer worried about having the baby on the toilet, I sat down on it then and took off my birth pants, feeling worried about getting blood on them (I didn’t get a drop on them though!). I tried to clean the baby off and wanted to check his gender and take some time to look at him, but he felt so soft and rubbery that I was extremely worried I was going to damage him. His mouth came open when I touched his face and I was stunned beyond words at the complexity of having a working jaw—this was a very developed little person and the magnitude of that complexity of development was unbelievable.

Then we had to set him aside to continue to deal with me. More clots came out then and I started to feel faint when I stood. I said I had to lie down and laid on the futon and smelled my lavender until I revived. I asked Mark for fizzy drink (Emergenc-C), which in hindsight I think I should have taken because I’ve read that too much Vitamin C can prolong bleeding—however, in my incredibly large collection of pregnancy and birth books, I could find NOTHING that would help me physically cope with a miscarriage in progress—no self-care suggestions, ideas of things to drink or eat. Nothing. I had Mark bring me various midwifery books and laid there bleeding and looking through them desperate to find some kind of ideas. I told him, “I’m going to write a book about this someday!” (and I am). I also had him bring me some Arnica and Rescue Remedy and later some Nux Vomica (which was in one of my books).

As I was lying there thinking about how to assess blood loss, I was also thinking about how in so many ways this had strangely been the birth I planned for, just not at the right time. And, that it was very much a birth, not “just a miscarriage.” The birth was unassisted—just my husband and me—the baby was born at a little after 3:00 in the morning, just as I had thought he would be, I had my futon “nest” on the floor as I had planned, and instead of trying to take a shower and clean up, I’d laid down when I felt I needed to. I was also thinking about how I felt good that I’d done it myself and that we’d given our baby a respectful and gentle and strong birth at home. I reflected on the similar endorphin-rush, “I did it! What an amazing person am I!” feelings I also had following my previous full-term births. In the midst of these thought processes, I was amused to notice the thought, “I obviously need to get into extreme sports!” There are probably lots easier ways to feel an endorphin rush and sense of physical prowess than in giving birth!

My contractions continued fiercely and I lost my “cool” then—after having the baby, I felt like it was “over” (the birth part anyway) and so my coping skills/altered state of consciousness diminished also—and just started saying, “ow, ow, OW!” over and over. I also said, “this is good! I’m doing good! My body is doing good work” (i.e. with my uterus clamping down and finishing up the process). This went on for some time and I kept feeling little gushes of blood with each contraction. I had Mark call my mom and dad to see if my dad could come check my blood pressure and pulse. They came and both stats were normal. Continued to have pain and to say OW and my mom suggested that perhaps getting up and using the bathroom would help. When I sat on the toilet, a giant grapefruit-sized clot came out. I immediately felt better and went to sit in a chair in the living room after that. I had felt faint and woozy again with clot-viewing, but in the chair I felt like I was “coming back” and out of the woods after that clot was gone. Ate some cheese and crackers and drank some tea and more fizzy drink and later a pudding cup. Continued to feel contractions and little gushes of blood with each of them. Started to feel a little concerned about it and knew I had most definitely lost more than two cups of blood. Much more. More than both other kids combined.

I asked my parents if they wanted to see the baby and they went and looked at him and cried and cried. I got up to use the bathroom again and another grapefruit and some oranges came out. When I stood to pull up my pants, I held toilet paper to me to keep blood from dripping onto my clothes and when I did, blood came welling up and over the tissue and onto my fingers. My vision started to darken and I heard loud ringing in my ears and my family helped me back to sit in the chair. I felt thisclose to “going under” and sniffed my lavender desperately and put my head to my knees. Recovered a little bit, but still felt as if I was fading as well as losing more blood. I was completely white. No color. I could not differentiate any longer if I was “just fainting” or dying, so we decided I needed to go in. I said I was sad to go because I felt like I was proud of how I’d handled everything myself and that I had been strong, but that it is also strong to know when to ask for help and that I needed to go. It was around 8:00 a.m. at this point. The kids had woken up and we left them with my dad and my mom drove us to the emergency room. I laid in the back seat and hummed the song Woman Am I over and over again so that they would know I was still alive. I briefly thought about how I had so much more to do before I died and hoped it wasn’t time yet. I also thought how ironic it was that it was going to be birth that killed me. I expected at least a blood transfusion, but the hospital was fairly nonchalant about the whole thing and acted like everything was normal. I smelled my lavender and felt better almost as soon as we were there.

Aftermath—ER/Placenta

The ER staff was very casual and asked all the usual intake questions and a doctor came in to check me. She said, “this is very common. It is just natural selection,” which ranks as perhaps the very LEAST helpful thing to say to someone experiencing such an intense physical and emotional event (and, I beg to differ about “common,” since only about 1% of pregnancies end after 12 weeks). She tried to do a bimanual exam but couldn’t feel my cervix because of all the blood clots in the way and so had to do a more painful and traumatic exam using a speculum that I do not feel like writing more about because I do not want to give any space to her non-caring treatment and lack of compassion. She said the placenta was about 75% through the cervix and that was why the continued bleeding. She said I was not hemorrhaging (in sort of a, “you’re so silly and overreacting” tone) and that she expected the placenta would come out soon on its own. I was given a bag of fluids via IV, which again caused me to nearly “go under” and become completely white—vision darkening, ears ringing—the nurse seemed more understanding then of why we had come in, asking Mom and Mark, “is this how she looked when you decided to bring her in?” After the hour or so with the IV, I got up to use the bathroom. I asked first to use a commode in the room so we could see the placenta and was told to just use the regular bathroom, where the “placenta” came out, only to be whisked away by the automatic flushing action before I could see it (it was NOT the placenta however. The placenta came out six days later). Bleeding did immediately lessen then. The doctor checked me again and said my cervix was closed and there were no more clots. She gave me a prescription for an anti-inflammatory and for pain medication. We went to Wal-Mart for the scripts and then home. Getting home was HARD. Everything reminded me of what had just happened and Mark and I both cried and cried. Then slept.

My dad took the baby home to clean him up for us as well as provided a walnut Shaker box to bury him in. My mom crocheted a liner for the box and a matching blanket for the baby. I woke up at around 3:00 in the afternoon and started to collect things to add to the box. Mark and I talked about names for the baby. We thought perhaps the gender-neutral, Noa, based on a stillbirth dream I had had many years before in which we named the baby Noah. While Mark dug a hole by one of our cedar trees, I got a 2009 penny to put in the box, a purple goddess of Willendorf bead from Zander’s blessingway, one of my scrabble tile catch-your-own-baby birth power pendants, a rock and a shell from Pismo Beach, a picture of the boys, one of my womb labyrinth postcards, a hat I had crocheted, and my last “women healing the earth” postcard. Mark cut a sprig of our lavender to add. My parents came back at sunset with the boys. My dad asked if we wanted to know the baby’s gender and of course we did. He told us it was male. My mom added and elephant bead to the box and my dad had made a bead out of a log from their house. He split the bead in half so the two halves fit together—half to stay with me and half to go in the baby’s box.

I had chosen three readings from Singing the Living Tradition. I read the naming reading and since we now knew he was a boy, we announced the baby’s name was Noah after my previous dream. I read the other readings and the kids wanted to see the baby, so we all looked at him—he was much smaller than when he was first born (my dad measured him at 3.5 inches). Then, we put his box into the hole and each added a handful of dirt and said, “bye bye, baby” and cried and cried some more. (I have written more about the ceremony in these posts.)

I did not feel as if I had “lost” my baby, I felt like he died and I let him go.

“There is no footprint so small that it does not leave an imprint on the world,” or on his mother’s heart.

Distraction, Concentration, Surrender

Apr26

In my childbirth classes when I cover “labor and birth 101,” I talk about the traditional stages of labor—early labor, active labor, transition, pushing, and third stage (placenta). I also talk about the “emotional signposts” of labor—excitement, seriousness, and self-doubt, as well as about the fear-tension-pain cycle and the excitement-power-progress cycle. Recently, I finished reading the book Painless Childbirth by Giuditta Tornetta and she elegantly described the three phases of first-stage labor in a three-word format that I found extremely accurate and helpful, as well as fresh and interesting. The first phase is distraction—during early labor, it is most helpful to continue to go about your normal life as if nothing is happening. Do not give your contractions any attention until they strongly request your attention! I tell my clients to just do what they would normally be doing—-if they would be sleeping, sleep. If they would be walking the dog, walk the dog. Watering the plants, eating dinner, etc., etc. Just keep up the normal routine until you need to give the birthing energy more attention. Without distraction as a tool, labor can become very long and exhausting—if you think of yourself as in labor from the second you feel anything, you are much more likely to experience a 24 hour labor than if you do not think of yourself as in labor until you are completely absorbed by its sensations.

The second phase is concentration—contactions have now become what Ina May Gaskin would term “an interesting sensation requiring my complete attention.” This phase corresponds to the Bradley Method’s emotional signpost of “seriousness.” I tell my clients that this is when she stops laughing at your jokes and stops even seeming aware that you’re talking. (She IS still aware however, and we will address this in a later post about undisturbed birth, prompted by another new book I am reading called Optimal Birth.)

The third phase is surrender and this corresponds with the transition portion of active labor and the “self-doubt” signpost. I think the concept of surrender during labor is one of the most profound and transformative elements of giving birth. If you can embrace the notion of “surrendering” to birth rather than staying in “control” of it, I think this can revolutionize your perception of what is happening in your body and your life. While hard to express in words, the experience of surrendering to my own body’s power was a transformative experience in my life (particularly since I am a “controlling” sort of person in “real life”—maybe this is why this term and experience holds such meaning to me). With surrender comes “flow”—there is such value and beauty and strength to be found in letting go and just letting it happen; letting “the might of creation come through you.” This was the most profound truth I discovered in each of my birth experiences.

Thoughts About Birth Thoughts

Apr15

When I check my blog stats, I’m interested to see which search terms bring people to this blog. Recently, a search term used was “birth thoughts.” I use “birth thoughts” as my default category for posts that don’t fit in a specific other category and I have a lot of posts in that category. So, I searched for the term myself and was very surprised to see that of 52 million google hits for “birth thoughts,” Talk Birth was the FIRST site to come up on a search using that term. Isn’t that cool? Since, I’ve been somewhat obsessed with searching for “birth thoughts” to see where I continue to stand and I guess it depends on page updates (?), because sometimes it drops off the top 10 (though then it is usually of 32 million or 27 million sites, not 52 million—not sure what is up with that either). Either way, I think it is interesting 🙂

I do think a lot of birth thoughts. Sometimes I wonder why birth remains such a consuming subject of interest to me. I have been considering this a lot lately, actually, and still working to put my finger on WHY. I think it is because birth, for me, is one of the fullest experiences of standing in my “personal power” that I’ve ever had. A “peak experience,” a “flow experience,” almost a “religious experience.” Last year I led a series of classes on women’s spirituality and one of the questions we addressed was, “how do you feel when you are standing in your personal power? When do you feel like you are standing in your personal power.” While it is great that I experienced such powerful births, I was saddened slightly to discover when answering this question myself, that essentially the only personal power moments I could come up with were in giving birth. What about the rest of my life?! (On my m/c blog I have written that apparently I need to get into extreme sports!) So, one of the birth thoughts on my mind lately is how do you pull that “birth power” feeling into the rest of your life? Make no mistake, my life is full and vibrant and full of good things, but that birth power feeling comes only in giving birth—maybe there is no other way to experience it?!

Cesarean Awareness Month

Apr10

April is Cesarean Awareness Month! My favorite resources about cesareans are the International Cesarean Awareness Network (ICAN) and The Unnecesarean.

In honor of the month (and in recognition that the national cesarean rate has risen again–to 32.3%), I went back through some of my posts and pulled out some of the things I’ve written about cesareans:

One of my “pet” subjects centers around the question of, “why would someone be upset over a cesarean, at least she has a healthy baby?” and this post partially addresses that: Birth and Apples.

I believe that a cesarean is often an act of personal courage and wrote about this here.

I also wrote about the same in this post on when birth doesn’t go as planned.

And, finally, here is a post I wrote about cesarean trivia.

Two Birth Poems

Apr6

I shared these on my Facebook page recently too and as long as I was updating my birth quotes, I thought I’d post the poems as well. They could be good for a mother blessing or blessingway ceremony or just to print up for a mother preparing to give birth, to to one who has just given birth, or to a birthworker (another favorite birthing poem is posted here):

Being Born

by Carl Sandburg

Being born is important
You who have stood at the bedposts
and seen a mother on her high harvest day,
the day of the most golden of harvest moons for her.

You who have seen the new wet child
dried behind the ears,
swaddled in soft fresh garments,
pursing its lips and sending a groping mouth
toward nipples where white milk is ready.

You who have seen this love’s payday
of wild toiling and sweet agonizing.

You know being born is important.
You know that nothing else was ever so important to you.
You understand that the payday of love is so old,
So involved, so traced with circles of the moon,
So cunning with the secrets of the salts of the blood.
It must be older than the moon, older than salt.

—-

Ordinary Miracle

by Barbara Kingsolver

I have mourned lost days
When I accomplished nothing of importance.
But not lately.
Lately under the lunar tide
Of a woman’s ocean, I work
My own sea-change:
Turning grains of sand to human eyes.
I daydream after breakfast
While the spirit of egg and toast
Knits together a length of bone
As fine as a wheatstalk.
Later, as I postpone weeding the garden
I will make two hands
That may tend a hundred gardens.

I need ten full moons exactly
For keeping the animal promise.
I offer myself up: unsaintly, but
Transmuted anyway
By the most ordinary miracle.
I am nothing in this world beyond the things one woman does.
But here are eyes that once were pearls.
And here is a second chance where there was none.

—-

(hat tip to Birth True for posting the Kingsolver poem—Barbara Kingsolver is one of my favorite authors, but I had never read the poem before seeing it on the Birth True blog.)

Birth Quotes and More Birth Quotes

Apr5

Time for my semi-regular birth quotes update post!

“Birth is the doorway for integration of body and mind.” –Gayle Peterson

“Good timber does not grow with ease; the stronger the wind, the stronger the trees.” – J. Willard Marriott

“Most mothers are instinctive philosophers.” – Harriet Beecher Stowe

“Sometime in your life you will go on a journey. It will be the longest journey you have ever taken. It is the journey to find yourself.” – Katherine Sharp

“Sometimes when you think you are done, it is just the edge of beginning. Probably that’s why we decide we’re done. It’s getting too scary. We are touching down onto something real. It is beyond the point when you think you are done that often something strong comes out.” ~ Natalie Goldberg

(This is something I try to convey in my birth classes–that when it seems “too much” and you manage to “dig deeper,” you find so much strength that you didn’t know you had and that knowledge of strength can continue to inform the rest of your LIFE!)

“When a woman has a child, it is equivalent to taking life vows.” –Stephanie Demetrakopoulos

“You do not know how a pregnant woman comes to have a body and living spirit in her womb.” –Ecclesiastes 11:5

(I guess tecnnically we “know,” but I think this is talking about the mystery of how we get from no where to now here…)

“Childbirth is a rite of passage so intense physically, psychologically, emotionally, spiritually, that most other events in a woman’s life pale next to it. In our modern lives, there are few remaining rituals of initiation, few events that challenge a person’s mettle down to the very core. Childbirth remains a primary… initiatory event for a woman.” –Maren Hansen

“Birth is an active, completely engaging process and requires that a woman be actively engaged, not only physically and emotionally but also in the decision-making process (before and during the birth).” –Awaken Your Birth Power e-newsletter

“Although women have been giving birth since time began, the lack of cumulative female knowledge and sharing in our society has led us to seek information about birth in books and classes rather than from the native wisdom of community experience.” –Elizabeth Noble

“…many women see the experience of birth as mystical, something they turn over and refocus on all their lives.” –Stephanie Demetrakopoulos

“Confront the dark parts of yourself, and work to banish them with illumination and forgiveness. Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing. Use the pain as fuel, as a reminder of your strength.” ~August Wilson

“You know being born is important to you. You know nothing else was ever so important to you.” –Carl Sandburg

“Spring has returned. The earth like a child that knows poems.” –Rainer Maria Rilke

“Hope is like a bird that senses the dawn and carefully starts to sing while it is still dark.” ~Anonymous

“Giving birth and being born brings us into the essence of creation, where the human spirit is courageous and bold and the body, a miracle of wisdom.” –Harriette Hartigan

“Giving birth is a transformation and it doesn’t matter whether you’ve had eight babies before. It’s still a transformation the next time you have another baby, because you are no longer the same woman you were before you had that baby.” –Penny Handford

“When a woman births without drugs…she learns that she is strong and powerful…She learns to trust herself, even in the face of powerful authority figures. Once she realizes her own strength and power, she will have a different attitude for the rest of her life, about pain, illness, disease, fatigue, and difficult situations.” –Polly Perez

“It is certainly true that for an increasing number of women, the birth experience is ecstatic. But it’s very important to keep in mind that, from a global perspective, the birth experience is still not a positive one for millions of women.” –Judy Chicago

“Woman is the first environment. In pregnancy our bodies sustain life. At the breast of women, the generations are nourished. From the bodies of women flows the relationsiop of those generations both to society and the natural world. In this way the earth is our mother, the old people said in this way we as women are earth.” –Katsi Cook Mohawk midwife

“When we let our light shine, we unconsciously give others permission to do the same.” –Marianne Williamson

“Awe enables us to perceive in the world intimations of the divine, to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple; to feel in the rush of passing the stillness of the eternal.” –Abraham Joshua Heschel

“Loss makes artists of us all as we weave new patterns in the fabric of our lives.” –Greta W. Crosby

“Pregnant woman, at once universal and individual, lives the compelling force of creation within her whole being.” –Harriette Hartigan

“Childbirth is a rite of passage so intense physically, psychologically, emotionally, spiritually, that most other events in a woman’s life pale next to it. In our modern lives, there are few remaining rituals of initiation, few events that challenge a person’s mettle down to the very core. Childbirth remains a primary initiatory event for a woman.” –Maren Hansen

“Male science disregards female experiences because it can never share them.” –Grantly Dick-Read

“I usually claim that pregnant women should not read books about pregnancy and birth. Their time is too precious. They should, rather, watch the moon and sing to their baby in the womb.” –Michel Odent

(Personally, I LOVE books–of all sorts–and reading is THE top way for me to learn about anything. I think the best prep I did before having my first baby was to read and I always give a recommended reading list to my clients. However, I also “hear” what he is saying here and wanted to share the quote. My personal opinion is that in our current birth culture it is nearly impossible to go into birth just planning to “go with the flow” and let labor unfold without expectation [if you are birthing in the hospital that is—because the hospital is FULL of expectations and those will often run right over your flow]).

“No matter what your size, shape, percentage of body fat, or BMI, you and I…can start right this minute to express gratitude to our bodies for being home to our souls and allowing us to express our uniqueness on the earth at this time.” – Dr. Christiane Northrup, The Wisdom of Menopause

“In pregnancy’s sculptured beauty, one body grows within another. Energy becomes human in the alchemy of the womb.” –Harriette Hartigan

“The experience of birth is vast. It is a diverse tapestry woven by cultural customs, shaped in personal choices, affected by biological factors, marked by political circumstances. Yet the nature of birth itself prevails in elegant design of simple complexity.” –Harriette Hartigan

“Stress hormones are contagious–if someone in your birthing space is stressed, you will feel it and become stressed.” (Awaken Your Birth Power)

Following Your Body’s Urges to Push…

Apr2

Sense and Sensibility is having a blog carnival around Healthy Birth Practice #5: Avoid giving birth on your back and follow your body’s urges to push.

For this blog carnival, I feel like sharing my own personal experiences with following my body’s urges to push. I gave birth to my first son over six years ago in what was the only freestanding birth center in the state (related side note: when I told my landlord that my new baby was born in a freestanding birth center, she said, “oh, so does everyone there have them standing up?”;-D). When I arrived at the birth center, I was surprised to be ten centimeters dilated already. Fortunately, the midwife on duty said, “go ahead and push when you feel the urge,” and went about her business, rather than encouraging me to push simply because I was at ten or exhorting me to push with loud counting and the near-aggression as is so frequently depicted in the media. After some time, I decided to experiment with the “pressure” feeling I’d been feeling for several hours—as soon as I gave a couple of small, experimental pushes like that, my water broke. I stayed on my knees on the floor for some time—head and arms on the bed—and eventually the doctor suggested that I get up on the bed, where I ended up giving birth to my son in a semi-sitting position.

During this birth, I was very sensitive to suggestion and to “being good,” and so when the bed was mentioned, I felt I had no choices even in such a gentle birth setting. I feel if left to my own urges, I would have stayed kneeling on the floor.

With my second son, who was born at home, I was alone with my husband for nearly the entire labor. As I got closer to giving birth, I felt “driven” to my hands and knees where I began to push spontaneously (and again my water broke with the onset of pushiness). It was a very wild and rapid birth and I barely had conscious thought of whether or not I felt like pushing—it just happened! After several pushes on hands and knees, my son eased out where he was received by my midwife after her arrival five minutes prior.

My third son (second trimester m/c), was born at home with just my husband present. My labor was again extremely rapid and I found myself kneeling on the floor in child’s pose. This position felt safe and protective to me, but I finally coached myself into awareness that the baby wasn’t going to come out with me crouched on the floor in that manner. I told myself that just like with any other birth, gravity would help. So, I pushed myself up into a kneeling position and my water broke right away. I crouched forward again—feeling fearful—and then told myself to move upright again. As soon as I was back on my knees, some blood clots emerged. I stood then, with knees slightly bent, and my baby was born.

For me, being nearly alone is the best way to follow my body’s own promptings. I feel it can be difficult to heed our bodies’ own wisdom when other people in the room are encouraging directed pushing or are “cheerleading” loudly. Freedom to move as desired and to push spontaneously according to the body’s own urges is a mother and baby friendly approach to birth.

Some of my other posts about second stage labor include: pushing the issue of pushing; waiting before pushing; and thoughts about pushing.

For more information about spontaneous pushing check out this video from Mother’s Advocate.

And, don’t forget my handout: helpful ways to use a hospital bed without lying down.