Poem: Woman & Nature

Jun26

Woman and Nature

By Susan Griffin

The earth is my sister;

I love her daily grace,

her silent daring,

and how loved I am

how we admire this strength in each other,

all that we have lost

all that we have lived

all that we know:

we are stunned by this beauty,

and I do not forget;

what she is to me,

what I am to her.

——-

My friends and I had our quarterly women’s retreat today and I used the above poem as our closing reading (I did alter it slightly from the original in the middle). To read it, have each participant read one line and the rest of the group repeat it after her. The italicized section is then read by the group in unison.

I also used the following as our opening reading:

Opening Words/Chalice Lighting

May we be reminded here of our highest aspirations,

and inspired to bring our gifts of love and service to the altar of humanity.

May we know once again that we are not isolated beings

but connected, in mystery and miracle, to the universe,

to this community and to each other.

-Anonymous (Reading #434 in Singing The Living Tradition)

—————–

I like to share these things I’ve collected here as well in case other women are googling for readings for women’s programs, retreats, or mother blessing ceremonies 🙂

Postpartum Feelings, Part 3

Jun24

When I published my article about my postpartum feelings with my first son, I envisioned it as the first part of a series of three posts comparing/contrasting my postpartum feelings and experiences following each child. Here’s what happened—I wrote part two in which I shared some of the recurrent thoughts I had in the year following my second son’s birth and decided that I just don’t feel like publishing it. Reading it back over makes me feel like I probably could have been considered mentally ill and I don’t really feel like sharing that right now. I started to analyze why I feel like sharing any kinds of feelings via blog anyway—really, what is this about? Why “expose” myself? In part, because that is what helped, and still helps, me the most; knowing that I’m not alone in my feelings and that other women have “been there.” So, I feel I have a responsibility of sorts to share my own “been theres.” When I began this website/blog, it was primarily about gathering and sharing information with others, not about telling my own story or sharing my personal experiences. I didn’t start it intending to have any element of a, “personal journal published online” feeling. After the birth-miscarriage of my third son and then my pregnancy-after-loss journey, it took on more of the personal journal flavor. And, I’ve liked that. I’ve enjoyed sharing my feelings and experiences and learning from the comments other people leave that I’ve “spoken” to something in them, and/or helped someone to understand their own experiences (or me) better. That said, I don’t have to share everything I write just because I’ve bothered typing it and I just don’t feel like sharing my second post about weirdo, “crazy” postpartum thoughts right now. So there! Maybe someday I’ll hit “publish” on it.

Of course I know (and firmly believe!), that you’re “postpartum for the rest of your life” (Robin Lim), but I feel like this current postpartum experience is different than my others in some qualitatively different ways. I first credited it to having taken placenta pills this time around. My doula encapsulated my placenta for me and I took all 95 capsules during the first 6 weeks postpartum. It was amazing! I have become a total “convert” to the benefits of placenta encapsulation. I felt GREAT and I had tons and tons of energy, instead of being wiped out and weak and exhausted feeling. I’ve only taken about two naps in Alaina’s life (this may come back to bite me with regard to lactational amenorrhea , we’ll see…) and that ISN’T because I’m crazy and was pushing myself too hard, it is because I haven’t felt like I needed to take any naps. I highly recommend placenta encapsulation. Amazingly powerful!

Another thing that is different about this experience is that I don’t feel “restricted” after having her—I don’t feel like I’ve had to sacrifice or let anything go, I feel like she has integrated smoothly into our lives. I had a phone counseling session with an intuitive healer the afternoon before Alaina was born and one of the new “neural pathways” I set was, “the new baby seamlessly integrates into our lives.” I think it worked! 🙂 What is interesting, is that I have put quite a lot on hold lately, but it doesn’t feel like she MADE me, it feels like what I want to do (or not do, as the case may be). When my first son was born, I had to let go of most of my old life and work and it was very painful. With my second son. I felt like I had a lot of energy to give to the “world” that was being blocked/couldn’t find expression. This time, there is more balance. I’m continuing to teach college classes in-seat and online and that feels really good to me. I’m homeschooling the boys and doing well with that (we actually “do school” almost every day!). I read all of the time (55 books so far this year!). I’ve started a doctoral program. And, I make time for a variety of other smallish projects like facilitating quarterly women’s retreats, editing the FoMM newsletter, and answering breastfeeding help calls/emails. Oh, and making birth art sculptures (new pictures to follow soon!) And, here’s what I’m not doing: writing new articles, working on my books (I have three in progress), doing much birth work, staying caught up on articles/news/research, teaching prenatal yoga or prenatal fitness classes or leading birth art sessions (all of which I trained to do last year), creating (or teaching) any new craft classes for our annual craft camp, writing the dozens of blog posts that come to mind (or even pulling old material into this blog the way I’d like to do), staying caught up with book reviews, keeping up with the garden, etc., etc. More about balancing mothering and personing will follow someday. I promise!

With previous babies, I’ve felt very haunted by the “list” of all I’m not doing. While I still feel this way sometimes, I more often have a less familiar feeling—that of amazement at my own capacity for adaptation and change. I regularly feel kind of proud of myself—like, look how I can expand and enfold and how I can create a life that works and is satisfying as it continually evolves and changes.

This time with my baby has been the sweetest and most delicious time in my life. Yes, I’m still busy and overextended and hard on myself about a lot of things, but there is a different clarity to the experience. I feel like every moment with her is so vivid, clear, and memorable and like each one is being etched into me. It is just so real this life we have together now and it is weird for me to realize how quickly things change and how pretty soon, this life that I’m living in this moment, will just be our past. I do feel like I savored my boys’ infancies as well, but I don’t remember this sharpness of feeling and observation. I feel like I will never forget what it is like to be this mother of my baby girl. However, I also know that the reality is that the growing baby and then toddler, and then child replaces the one who came before (even though it is the same person—those other versions of them are replaced by the vivid reality of the now). So, while I retain distinct mental snapshots of my life with the boys as babies, their current, vibrant, and ever-growing selves are much more intense and real (obviously), and I know it will be the same with her. And, it makes my eyes well up to know that this sharp sweetness will float away on the rivers of time and that before I know it, I will be the mother of two men and a woman. It is hard to explain what I mean in writing—what I want to say is, “but this is SO REAL now.” Well, duh. It IS real now. And, later will be real as well. That is just the flow of life, Molly dear ;-P However, one of the main reasons I wanted to get her pictures taken yesterday is to try to capture what it is like to be her mother NOW:

Then, last night while I was nursing her to sleep in my arms as I have done every night for five months, I took this picture myself to capture how well we fit together. I wanted to get how her little feet are nestled into my legs so perfectly and how her hands rests on me and how her head cradles in my arm:

I know this one isn’t a pro picture, but this is what it is like to be her mama 🙂

Poem: Sons

Jun22

Every so often I wake up in the morning with a fully-formed poem in my mind. In 2006, five days after composing the poem below, I gave birth to my second son, Zander (just as seven dreams told me prenatally). Fantastic two-hour homebirth of a 9lbs 2oz baby!

Sons

I sense a future for myself as a mother of sons.

Curious, vibrant, full of life energy.

Will I be able to nurture them into

Good men?

Warm hearts, strong hands.

Compassionate, responsive, confident.

Happy and balanced in their lives.

For now, one son.

Not yet three.

Bright eyes, big smile

Wonderful way with words.

Generous with hugs and kisses and

“I so love you mommy!”

Loves slides at parks

And painting

And dictating sculptures.

Bursting with life and

Shining with possibility.

Full of ideas, words, and vigor.

The prospect of another waits

Close beneath my skin.

Thirty-nine weeks of mystery.

My sense of the future unfolding.

~~~~~

Molly Remer

5/24/06

My sons: St. Pat's 2011

The Rhythm of Our Lives

Jun18

This article was originally published in New Beginnings magazine (publication of La Leche League International) in 2007. As I’ve noted, I’m making an effort to “centralize” my written pieces into one location—bringing things here that I’ve written for other blogs or for other publications.

The Rhythm of Our Lives

Nursing & Reading, 2007

by Molly Remer

2007

When I became a mother, many things in my life changed. I was startled and dismayed by the magnitude in which my free time diminished and one by one many of my leisure pursuits and hobbies were discarded. The time for one of my favorite hobbies increased exponentially, however, and this was a very pleasant surprise. That hobby is reading. As a child I was a voracious reader—my mother had to set a limit for me of “only two books a day.” In college and graduate school, reading for fun fell away and I spent six years reading primarily textbooks and journal articles. In the years following, I began to read for pleasure again and when my first baby was born in 2003, I once again became a truly avid reader. Why? Because of breastfeeding. As I nursed my little son, I read and read and read. I devoured mostly nonfiction with occasional fiction as “dessert.”

At first I scoured The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding and the Sears’ The Baby Book to try to make sense of my new life and then began to gobble up books about motherhood and women’s experiences of mothering. Reading did actually help me adjust to motherhood. Subtitled “Breastfeeding as a Spiritual Practice,” an article published in the fall 2003 issue of Mothering magazine was immensely meaningful to me. My baby was about two weeks old when the magazine arrived—the first issue I had received after his birth. This article was in it and it was exactly what I needed to read. Breastfeeding can be a meditative and spiritual act–it is actually a “practice” a “discipline” of sorts. The author, Leslie Davis, explains it better:

I realized I’d never before devoted myself to something so entirely. Of course I’ve devoted myself to my husband, to my family, to friends, to my writing, to mothering, and even to God and other spiritual endeavors at various points in my life…I’d completely given myself to this act of nursing in a way that I never had before. Nothing was more important than nursing my son. Nothing was put before it. There was no procrastination as with exercise, no excuses as with trying to stop eating sugar, no laziness as with housecleaning and other chores. Nursing had to be done, and I did it, over and over again, multiple times a day, for more than 800 days in a row. It was the closest thing to a spiritual practice that I’d ever experienced.

Viewing the act of breastfeeding through a spiritual lens like this was a lifeline to me as a vulnerable, sensitive, and bruised postpartum woman trying desperately to adjust my pace as an overachieving “successful” independent person to one spending hours in my nursing chair attached to a tiny mouth. I marvel at the uncountable number of times I spent nursing Lann and that I now spend nursing my second son, Zander. I calculate that I’ve probably nursed Zander about 3,000 times just lying down to go to sleep (nap or bedtime, plus waking up times too). That is just the lying down times, not the sitting in the chair or standing in the Ergo baby carrier times. This is the key to my reading success–I’ve had over 3,000 opportunities during the last year to pick up a book or other reading materials!

In 2007, I read approximately 150 books. I lie in my “nest” with my baby nursing and my older son resting near my back. The baby is nourished by me and in this pause in the busyness of life I am in turn nourished by the access he allows me to the printed word. As he grows bigger with my milk, I also “grow” intellectually and in the opportunity for spiritual and emotional renewal. As the baby drifts off I read to myself and when he is asleep I read stories to my four year old. This is the rhythm of our lives—suck, swallow, read, and consider.

——-

With my current baby, my reading “landscape” has changed again, since I now have a Kindle! 🙂

Birthing the Mother-Writer (or: Playing My Music, or: Postpartum Feelings, Part 1)

Jun10

A friend and colleague of mine recently wrote some very touching and honest posts about her recent postpartum experiences. It is amazing how powerful the written word can be at clarifying and explaining one’s feelings.

I wrote the following article about my own postpartum feelings several years ago and have submitted to various publications, but it has always been rejected. So, I decided to finally “publish” it here. I plan to then do a follow-up post about my postpartum experiences with my other children.

Birthing the Mother-Writer* (or: Playing My Music)

By Molly Remer

After my first son was born in 2003 I felt silenced. Stifled. Shut down. Squelched. Denied. Invisible. Dissolved. Muted. I felt suffocated, chewed up and my bones spit out, erased, deconstructed, worthless, and useless. (In hindsight, I see the PPD-ish glint behind these feelings, though some of these feelings also featured in my pre-motherhood neuroses.) Postpartum was the most vivid and painful transition point of my life.

I felt slapped in the face by postpartum. I was triumphant and empowered in birth, but diminished, insecure, and wounded postpartum. I had a difficult physical recovery due to unusual labial tearing that was not repaired. I hypothesize that perhaps this contributed to my difficult adjustment to early motherhood. I’ve long tried to analyze the difficulty, concluding that it is not uncommon in the least, but wondering why/how others survive without mentioning this pain. How is anyone doing this? I would wonder, concluding that I must not be “cut out for this” and that I was the only one feeling alone, stifled, shut down, and unheard. As a consistently overachieving type, it was humbling as well as psychologically painful to not “get an A” on this new “assignment,” my baby. Each time he cried, I felt it was evidence of failure, failure, failure. I would see women and couples without children and think, “it isn’t too late for you” and, “if only you knew.” When I would see women who were pregnant I would feel a sense of grief for them, “Just wait. You have NO idea what is coming.”

I felt a duality in motherhood for which I was completely unprepared. How is it possible to feel simultaneously so captivated and yet also so captive, I would wonder. Bonded and also bound.

Maybe these feelings mean I’m egocentric, selfish, or immature (I certainly lectured and berated myself about that!), but they were my reality at the time. The experience was so scarring to me that for about 18 months after my first baby was born I considered not having any more children; not because I couldn’t handle pregnancy, birth, or even the mothering of a baby and toddler, but because I could not stand the idea of experiencing postpartum again. I came to realize that my only regret about these days of early motherhood was not in how I related to my baby, or in how I took care of him, or loved him, or appreciated him, or marveled at him. My regret is that I was so very mean to myself the whole time I did those things—in reality, I was actually fairly skillfully learning how to mother. I was responsive, nurturing, kind, and loving and I took delight in my baby, but I was cruel to myself almost the entire time and failed to appreciate or notice any worth I had as a person or to accept and have patience for my birth as a mother.

When my first son was almost one, I wrote in my journal:

I feel like I have no one to talk to. I feel like no one understands me. I feel like I cannot express what I really feel inside. I feel like no one believes me. I do not feel accepted. I feel like my needs are not being met. I feel burned out. I feel drained. I feel angry. I feel sad. I feel desperately unhappy. I feel guilty. I feel wrong. I feel alone. I feel unworthy. I feel like I am not good. I feel invisible. I feel ignored. I feel small. I feel bad. I feel like I cannot say what I mean and actually be heard. I feel like I can’t explain my “bad” feelings. I feel trapped. I feel suffocated. I feel stressed. I feel overloaded. I feel like snapping. I feel mean. I feel unfair. I feel selfish. I feel disconnected.

I miss Mark. I miss our relationship. I miss feeling right in our marriage. I miss being alone together.

I feel like I am not enjoying motherhood the way I am “supposed” to. I feel confused. I feel conflicted. I feel torn. I feel low. I feel resentful. I feel worried about the future. I feel anxious about being good enough. I feel stretched. I feel taut. I feel like changing.

What helped me a great deal during this time were the voices of other women. Not women face-to-face, though I had begun building a network of wonderful female friends, it seemed too painful or dark to broach the question with them—-“Do you hate this sometimes too?” And I couldn’t really bear to voice my feelings to my own mother, also a tremendous source of support for me, because to risk hearing her say, “Yes, sometimes I did feel tortured by YOU” was not really what I needed. She also has a well-meaning, but frustrating tendency to meet genuine expressions of despair with comments that imply I should put on a happy face. Instead, it was the voices of women reaching off the printed page that met my hunger for contact. For truth. For rawness and a look at the “ugly.” I gobbled up books about motherhood and women’s experiences of mothering and have a permanent place in my heart for the “momoir.”

A quote from Wayne Dyer that serves a recurrent guidepost (or almost obsession) in my life is, “Don’t die with your music still in you.” During my abovementioned painful transition to motherhood I couldn’t shake the feeling that I wasn’t letting my “music” out. Then, following the birth of my second son in 2006, sort of accidentally, I began writing again and in earnest this time (articles, essays, blog posts, journals) and later realized that I no longer have any fear about dying with my music still in me. And, I also don’t feel depressed, invisible, worthless, or muted anymore. During my original fretting over this phrase, I felt like it was another type of “music” that I needed to let out (mainly that of the social service work that I had been groomed for in graduate school), not words necessarily. However, I’ve finally realized that maybe it was literally my words dying in me that gave me that feeling and that fretfulness. They needed to get out. I’ve spent a lifetime writing various essays in my head, nearly every day, but those words always “died” in me before they ever got out onto paper. After spending a full three years letting other women’s voices reach me through books and essays, and then six more years birthing the mother-writer within, I continue to feel an almost physical sense of relief and release whenever I sit down to write and to let my own voice be heard.

—–

Molly Remer, MSW, CCCE is a certified birth educator, activist, and writer who lives in a straw bale house in central Missouri with her husband, two young sons, and infant daughter. She blogs about birth at https://talkbirth.wordpress.com.

*title inspired by Literary Mama.

Alaina’s Complete Birth Story

Jun1

It has taken me a long time to finish typing up Alaina’s birth story. I wrote it in my journal at 3 days postpartum and the following is almost verbatim. I’ve gone back and forth about what to include and decided to just include everything, as originally written. I feel critical of the story somehow, like it is “choppy.” I used interestingly short, jumpy sentences and while part of me want to smooth it out, another part of me feels like it is more authentic in this format. I also feel like I “should” be posting it on a more significant date—i.e. her six month birthday, or something. But, it is finished now, so I feel like sharing now! Additionally, I thought about taking the self-analysis section about the use of a hypnosis for birth program out of the story, but, indeed, this was the FIRST thing I wrote in my journal, so it seems like it “deserves” to be included as well. It obviously was one of the most important details for me to write about. However, for the purposes of clarity, I moved it to the end of the story in this version. Likewise, I thought about making the section about my newborn- love into a separate post, but because those feelings are so intimately entwined with her birth and because, in my journal, that is exactly the chronology I used—first hypnosis criticism, second birth chronology, third baby love–it feels like it all belongs together in one story. It is funny how that first story has such value to me and that it feels almost wrong to edit, change, or add anything to it. It feels most honest this way.

The Birth of Alaina Diana Remer
January 19, 2011
11:15 a.m.
7lbs, 8oz; 20 inches.
Short version of her story is here and labor pictures are here.

I had a restless, up and down night, getting up at 3:00 a.m. and even checked in with my online class. Mark got up with me and we talked and speculated. Waves were four minutes apart and then kind of dissipated unenthusiastically away. He went back to bed at 4:00 and I listened to Hypnobabies. At 6:00, I was feeling trapped lying down and got up. Mark got up then too and worked in the kitchen on the dishes and things like that, while I walked around and leaned on the half wall during contractions (a lot. It was the perfect height). Sitting down in a chair caused horribleness, leaning forward on the ½ wall was good. Called Mom and told her to be on standby and to notify my blessingway crew. Also, called Summer (doula/friend) to be on alert. Felt serious, but not totally. Also was having back involvement which each wave. I felt like I would have a real contraction and then a closely following, but milder, back-only contraction (no tightness in uterus really during these, but definitely a wave-like progression and then ease of sensation).

I was very quiet during most waves until the end. I think because I was doing the Hypnobabies and was concentrating on that. Then, I would talk and analyze and be very normal in between. This pattern seemed to lead to a decreased perception of seriousness from others of my need for attention—Mark washed dishes, went outside to take care of chickens, work on fire, feed cats and so forth. The boys woke up at 7:00 a.m. and as soon as they came out and started talking to me (Mark was outside), I knew they needed to go elsewhere. We called my mom at 7:30ish and she came to get them. I did not want to feel watched or observed at all, so asked her to wait to come back.

I kept waiting for the “action” to increase and feeling distressed that it was taking such a “long” time. I suggested to the baby that she come out by 10:00. I continued to stand in the kitchen and lean on the ½ wall, sometimes the table or the bathroom counter. Dismayed to see no blood/mucous, nothing indicating any “progress.” Significant feelings of pressure and pain in lower back continued and at the time felt normal to me, but looking back seems like an extra dose of back involvement. In another intensity-increasing experience, the baby moved during contractions for the entire labor until the contraction before I pushed her out. She moved, wiggled and pushed out with her bottom and body during each contraction, which really added a new layer of intensity that was difficult. I was, however, glad she was moving because then I knew she was okay, without doing any heart checks.

I went into the living room, very tired from bad sleep during the night. We set up the birth ball in the living room so I could sit on it and drape over pillows piled onto the couch. I spent a long time like this. Mark sat close and would lightly and perfectly stroke my back. Continued to use Hypnobabies—finger-drop, peace and release, with most waves.

Mark fixed me chlorophyll to drink and I barfed it up immediately and horribly. Called Mom to come back and 9:00 or so, at which point I finally had a little blood in my underwear. Kept up my ball by the couch routine and moved into humming with each wave. Also did some contractions on the floor leaning over the ball. Also good.

On the ball, I began to feel some rectal pressure with each wave. However, I felt like the waves were erratic still, with some very long and intense and then smaller ones. Hums began to become oooohs and aaaaahs and I began to feel like there was a bit of an umph at the end of the oooooh. Went back to the bathroom and there was quite a bit more blood (plus mucous string) and I started to fret about placental abruptions and so forth. Left the bathroom analyzing how much blood is too much blood and began to critique myself for being too “in my head” and analytical and not letting my “monkey do it.” Said I still didn’t feel like I was in “birth brain” and wondered if that meant I still had a long time to go. Started to feel concerned that I was still early on. This is a common feature of all of my births and is how the self-doubt signpost manifests for me. Rather than thinking I can’t do it, I start thinking I’m two centimeters dilated.

I almost immediately returned to the bathroom feeling like I needed to poop. Serious contractions on toilet produced more pressure with associated umphs at the end. At some point in the bathroom, I said, “I think this is pushing.” I was feeling desperate for my water to break. It felt like it was in the way and holding things up. I reached my hand down and thought I felt squooshy sac-ish feeling, but Mom and Mark looked and could not see anything. And, it still didn’t break. Mom mentioned that I should probably go to my birth nest in order to avoid having the baby on the toilet. My birth nest was a futon stack near the bathroom door. I got down on hands and knees after feeling like I might not make it all the way to the futons. Felt like I wanted to kneel on hard floor before reaching the nest.

Suddenly became obsessed with checking her heartbeat. I knew you’re supposed to do so during pushing and I had stopped feeling her moving painfully with each contraction. I couldn’t find her heartbeat and started to feel a little panicky about that as well as really uncomfortable and then threw the Doppler to the side saying, “forget it!” because big pushing was coming. I was down on hands and knees and then moved partially up on one hand in order to put my other hand down to feel what was happening. Could feel squishiness and water finally broke (not much, just a small trickle before her head). I could feel her head with my fingers and began to feel familiar sensation of front-burning. I said, “stretchy, stretchy, stretchy, stretchy,” the phone rang, her head pushed and pushed itself down as I continued to support myself with my hand and I moved up onto my knees, with them spread apart so I was almost sitting on my heels and her whole body and a whole bunch of fluid blooshed out into my hands. She was pink and warm and slippery and crying instantly—quite a lot of crying, actually. I said, “you’re alive, you’re alive! I did it! There’s nothing wrong with me!” and I kissed her and cried and laughed and was amazed. I felt an intense feeling of relief. Of survival. I didn’t realize until some moments later than both Mark and Mom missed the actual moment of her birth. Mark because he was coming around from behind me to the front of me when I moved up to kneeling. My mom because she went to stop the phone from ringing. I had felt like the pushing went on for a “long” time, but Mark said that from hands and knees to kneeling with baby in my hands was about 12 seconds. I don’t know. Inner experience is different than outer observation. What I do know is that the moment of catching my own daughter in my hands and bringing her warm, fresh body up into my arms was the most powerful and potent moment of my life.

I was covered in blood again. Caked in my fingernails and toenails and on the bottoms of my feet again. And, I did tear again, same places.

I feel the moment of her birth was an authentic “fetal ejection reflex” including the forward movement of my hips. The immediate postpartum went exactly as I had planned. Summer arrived approximately 20 minutes after Alaina was born. She brought me snacks, wiped blood off of me, and served me a tiny bit of placenta (which I swallowed with no problem!). My midwife arrived approximately 40 minutes post-birth and assessed blood loss and helped with placenta. She said I lost about 3 cups of blood, but I think all of the fluid that came out with the baby, plus the blood from the tears, may have bumped the estimate up too high. I did not feel weak or tired like I’d lost too much blood, I felt energetic and really good, actually. I didn’t get faint in the bathroom either and my color stayed good throughout. “Don’t look down” (while using the bathroom) is an excellent plan for me!

My post-birth feelings were different this time. I feel more baby-centered in my feelings about it rather than self-empowerment centered. I also feel more critical in my own self assessment this time—like I didn’t “perform” well or handle myself well. I hypothesize that this may be related to using a hypnosis for birth program, because I didn’t feel “calm and comfortable” on the inside. On the outside I think I looked it, but my internal experience involved more “should” than I like. The hypnosis philosophy wasn’t really a match with my own lived experience of birth. Birth isn’t calm, quiet, and comfortable and I don’t actually think it should be or that I want it to be. However, I was trying to make it so and thus not using some of my own internal resources. I felt more mind/body disconnect than I have before also, perhaps because I was trying to use a mind (“control”) based method on such an embodied process. Anyway, it was good for relaxing during pregnancy, personally not so good for behaving instinctually in labor. I did use it though and technically I guess it “worked” because Mom and Mark couldn’t read where I was in birthing and though I was very calm. It didn’t feel calm inside though, it felt HARD. I also was very stuck—almost in a competitive-feeling way—on thinking it was going to be fast and feeling stressed/concerned that it wasn’t.

I also want to include this segment from my journal, written when she was three days old:

She is so wonderful and amazing and beautiful and perfect and I just want to etch these days into my mind forever and never forget a single, precious, beautiful, irreplaceable moment. I want to write everything down to try to preserve each second of these first few days with baby Alaina—my treasure, my BABY! The one I hoped for and feared for and worked SO HARD to bring to this world (in pregnancy more so than in birth). I can’t really though—I am here, now. Living this, feeling this, knowing this. The newborn haze is my reality in these moments, but it will pass away and the best thing to do is to fully live it. To feel it and to be here—without struggling to preserve it all. It is here in my heart and soul and preserved in the eddies and ripples of time. The unfolding, continuous ribbon of life and experiences. I have a weird, petrified feeling of forgetting—i.e. when I’m 89 will I still remember how this FELT?!

What do I want to remember?

Alaina newborn photo (c) Sincerely Yours Photography

The scrunchy feel of a newborn’s body.
The little mewing squeaks and sighs
How she is comforted by my voice and turns to me with a smacky, nursie face…
The soft, soft skin
The soft, soft hair
The fuzzy ears and arms
The little legs that pull up into reflexive, fetal position.
The utter, utter, MARVEL that I grew her and that she’s here. That she came from me. That sense of magic and wonder and disbelief when I look over and see her lying next to me—how did YOU get here?!
The miraculous transition from belly to baby. From pregnant woman to motherbaby unit? How does it happen? It is indescribably awesome.

The sleeping profile
The scrunchy face
The “wheeling” half coordinated movements of arms and legs—sort of “swimming” in air.
The peace of snuggling her against my chest and neck.
The tiny, skinny feet.
Putting my hand on her back and feeling her breathe, just like in utero

I was still scared she was going to die until the moment I held her.

Molly & Alaina newborn photo (c) Sincerely Yours Photography

Birth Altar Wisdom

May25

I am preparing to paint a birth altar cabinet for a friend’s upcoming blessingway ceremony. I have felt the urge for some time to share a post about the words that I included on the birth altar that I created for myself before my last birth. Some elements included were from pages of a cheapy page-a-day calendar from the $1 Shop and some were parts of a t-shirt tag from the tag on a shirt I purchased from WYSH at an LLL conference in 2009 (why keep a t-shirt tag from 2009, you might ask? Because it had lots of cool things written on it! And, behold, it became a source of birth altar wisdom for me. Wisdom lurks in unexpected places!)

I am struck by how these words from unconventional locations apply so perfectly to giving birth. Here’s what the little cards and snippets I included say:

From the calendar:

Inhale * Exhale * Relax * Repeat

LOVE the process.

Embrace peace within.

Keep it simple.

Right here

ENJOY

Right now

From the t-shirt tag:

Befriend fear, embrace struggle, trust nature, the process, and a baby’s wisdom (I swear, this shirt had NOTHING to do with giving birth!)

We don’t tell our flowers how to grow, to stay low or bloom before they’re ready.

Undivide your attention. All clear.

Lead with your spirit, rise above the noise, show the world your true self.

Also from the tag were individual words that I included: freedom. trust. inspiration. respect. authenticity. empowerment.

And, then I cut the following from a tag on a pendant from my husband:

May the Love we’re

sharing spread its Wings

and fly across the Earth

and bring new Joy to

every Soul on the Planet.

Review: A Book for Midwives

May18

Review: A Book for Midwives
Hesperian Foundation
CD-Rom, 2011
544 page pdf book in English and Spanish
by Susan Klein, Suellen Miller, and Fiona Thomson
ISBN13: 978-0942364-24-8, $16.00
www.hesperian.org

Reviewed by Molly Remer, MSW, ICCE
https://talkbirth.wordpress.com

As a child, I was fascinated by my father’s copy of the book, Where There is No Doctor. Fast forward twenty or so years and imagine my glee when as a birth activist adult, I then discovered A Book for Midwives, also published by the Hesperian Foundation. Hesperian’s goal “is to promote health and self-determination in poor communities throughout the world by making health information accessible. [They] work toward that goal by producing books and other educational resources for community-based health.” In keeping with this goal, A Book for Midwives is available for FREE download on the Hesperian site. (Personally, I appreciate the professionally printed version of the book I purchased, because I think it would cost more same in ink to print it myself, but without the nice cover!).

A Book for Midwives is excellent; a true community resource. It is also a very sobering look at the reality of women’s health and health care in other countries. It contains reminders such as “do not hit or slap a woman in labor,” and other things that can make you cringe. A Book for Midwives is basically a textbook for midwives, health care workers, or educators working in developing countries and/or with very limited resources. I appreciate how it makes information available that is sometimes “hidden” in other books–i.e. explicitly technical content and “how to’s” that are normally reserved only for “professional” people. It is simply written and extremely blunt. There is no fluff and nothing romanticized about pregnancy, labor, and birth. In a way, it was hard to read a book that makes it so very clear how very, very difficult things are for midwives and women in impoverished areas (living in the US, I am used to the “normal, healthy pregnant women” approach to midwifery care). The book covers a wide range of information from preventing infection, treating obstetrical emergencies, doing pelvic exams, and breastfeeding to HIV/AIDS, testing for STDs and cervical cancer, and IUD insertion. There is also a section in the back of the book about medications, medication administration, giving injections, and other topics. It is an extremely comprehensive resource. (Just a side note, in the section on contraceptives, the book is heavily in favor of hormonal methods such as pills as well as very positive about IUDs and sterilization.)

Recently, Hesperian made A Book for Midwives available for purchase on CD. The CD includes the 544 page book as a pdf file in both English and Spanish. Both high resolution and low resolution versions of the book (in both languages) are included on the disk. This format makes it easy for the book to travel with you via laptop for trainings or presentations. I was particularly excited to convert it for my Kindle, making it readily available for travel and reference.

—
Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of the CD for review purposes.

Updating My Birth Quotes!

May13

Baby Alaina, 3.5 months, taken at the park by my friend Karen 🙂

“Blessed be all the mothers of mothers.
Blessed be all the daughters of daughters.
Blessed be all the daughters of mothers.
Blessed be all the mothers of daughters.
Now and forever, wherever we are.” –Diann L. Neu

“I have almost given up on the government and the country but I have not given up on birth. I believe rabidly. It is not enough to hold the space for one woman at a time. Peace on earth begins with birth.” –Arielle Greenberg/Rachel Zucker (in Home/Birth: A Poemic)

“In giving birth my attention was pulled inside forcibly by something naturally wild, hot, raw and primitive—something so powerful that my only choice was to surrender.” –Kristin Luce

“Now I see the secret of making the best person: it is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.” ~ Walt Whitman

“A new baby is like the beginning of all things–wonder, hope, a dream of possibilities.” ~ Eda J. Le Shan

“Birth isn’t something we suffer, but something we actively do and exult in.” –Sheila Kitzinger (from promo for new One World Birth film)

“Many women have described their experiences of childbirth as being associated with a spiritual uplifting, the power of which they have never previously been aware … To such a woman childbirth is a monument of joy within her memory. She turns to it in thought to seek again an ecstasy which passed too soon.” ~ Grantly Dick-Read (Childbirth Without Fear)

“Childbirth isn’t something that is done to you, or for you; it is something you do yourself. Women give birth. Doctors, hospitals and nurses don’t.” ~ Lester Dessez Hazell

“Whether she chooses to birth at home, a hospital or a birth center, it is the right–in fact, the responsibility–of every woman to plan her own baby’s birth with the information, honor and freedom to which she is entitled.” –Cynthia Overgard (in Pathways to Family Wellness Magazine)

Life, love, and laughter – what priceless gifts to give our children. — Phylis Campbell Dryden

“A mother’s joy begins when new life is stirring inside… when a tiny heartbeat is heard for the very first time, and a playful kick reminds her that she is never alone.” ~Author Unknown

“Growing, bearing, mothering, or fathering, supporting, and at last letting go…are powerful and mundane creative acts that rapturously suck up whole chunks of life.” –Louise Erdrich

“Perhaps we owe some of our most moving literature to men who didn’t understand that they wanted to be women nursing babies.” –Louise Erdrich

“Labor is about finding your threshold and learning you can go beyond it.” –Rose St. John

“…the labor with which we give birth is simply a rehearsal for something we mothers must do over and over: turn ourselves inside out, and then let go.” –Susan Piver (Joyful Birth)

“The minute my child was born, I was reborn as a feminist. It’s so incredible what women can do…Birthing naturally, as most women do around the globe, is a superhuman act. You leave behind the comforts of being human and plunge back into being an animal…” –Ani DiFranco

“The health of mothers, infants, and children is of critical importance, both as a reflection of the current health status of a large segment of the U.S. population and as a predictor of the health of the next generation.” –Healthy People, 2010

“The miraculous nature inherent in the unfolding of a flower is the very same that moves through a woman as she gives life to the world. We can neither control nor improve upon it, only trust it.” -Robin Sale

“Loving, knowing, and respecting our bodies is a powerful and invincible act of rebellion in this society.” –Inga Muscio

“A new baby’s fresh milk smell causes the mother’s heart to spill over.” -Melanie Lofland Gendron

“…childbirth is much like a marathon…marathon runners know how to breathe, to run, and to complete their race according to their own body signals. Similarly, women know how to breathe, to birth, and to complete the [birth] according to their own body signals. Marathon runners who are true champions are free to stop the fast pace, and even quit the race without loss of integrity.” –Claudia Panuthos

“Birth, like love, is an energy and a process, happening within a relationship. Both unfold with their own timing, with a uniqueness that can never be anticipated, with a power that can never be controlled, but with an exquisite mystery to be appreciated.” –Elizabeth Noble

“…all those tasks and interactions of motherhood, a day full of which might make you feel you’ve ‘gotten nothing done’ because you’ve been in the cycle of care, are the heart and soul of the best brain building possible.” –Lauren Lindsey Porter (Attachment Theory in Everyday Life, in Mothering magazine, 2009)

“The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are. Do not despise your own place and hour. Every place is under the stars, every place is the center of the world.” –John Burroughs

“Motherhood has a very humanizing effect. Everything gets reduced to essentials.” ~ Meryl Streep (via Midwifery Today)

“It is not ‘ladylike’ to give birth. The strength and power of labor is not demure.” –Rhonda (midwife quoted in Gayle Peterson’s An Easier Childbirth Book)

“What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.” —Helen Keller

“The greatest teachers we have are the women we serve.” –Jan Tritten

“…undisturbed (not neglected or abandoned) birth is a powerful initiation into motherhood, not only in a physical and physiological sense, but also in an emotional and spiritual sense.” –Christina Hurst-Prager (in (ICEA) International Childbirth Education Association‘s journal)

“Never hire a midwife who is afraid your birth will go wrong.” –Arielle Greenberg/Rachel Zucker, Home/Birth: A Poemic

“It is dangerous to be right on a subject on which the established authorities are wrong.” –Bumper sticker quoted in the book Home/Birth: A Poemic

“Women today not only possess genetic memory of birth from a thousand generations of women, but they are also assailed from every direction by information and misinformation about birth.” ~ Valerie El Halta

“I see generations of women bearing a flame. It has been hidden, buried deep within, yet they hand it down from generation to generation still burning. It is a gift of fire, transported from a remote and distant world, yet never extinguished.” –Kim Chernin

“Birth is as vast and voluminous, as unfathomable and inevitable as the rising and setting of the sun. And true to the inexorable power and rhythm of their life-giving bodies, women will continue to birth with dignity, grace and courage.” –Mandala Mom

“I pity the folks at ACOG who think they can make protocols, rules and guidelines that will cover all births in all situations. A better goal would be to have clinicians who can think for themselves, distinguish complications from normal birth, relax when things are taking a while, and marvel over the consistently fascinating process of human birth” -Gloria Lemay in Pathways to Family Wellness Magazine

“A pair of substantial mammary glands have the advantage over the two hemispheres of the most learned professor’s brain in the art of compounding a nutritive fluid for infants.” ~Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894)

“The energy that can rise in real connection is the stuff of revolution.” –Carol Lee Flinders

“A woman meets herself in childbirth” –Cynthia Caillagh

“I believe that these circles of women around us weave invisible nets of love that carry us when we’re weak and sing with us when we’re strong.” –SARK, Succulent Wild Woman

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” –Howard Thurman

“If ever the world sees a time when women shall come together purely and simply for the benefit of humanity it will be a power such as the world has never known.” –Matthew Arnold

“Authority without wisdom is like a heavy ax without an edge: fitter to bruise than polish.” ~ Anne Bradstreet (Feeling frustrated with anti-midwifery legislators in Missouri and then this quote came along from Midwifery Today’s e-news and I thought it was quite fitting)

“The midwife teacher’s first concern is to preserve the students fragile unborn thoughts, to see that they are born with their truths intact, that these truths do not turn into acceptable lies” — from the book Women’s Ways of Knowing (shared by a participant in the Birth Workers and Beyond group)

“…we do not have humanized birth in many places today…Why? Because fish can’t see the water they swim in. Birth attendants, be they doctors, midwives or nurses, who have experienced only hospital based…medicalised birth cannot see the profound effect their interventions are having on the birth. [They] have no idea what a birth looks like without all the interventions, a birth which is not dehumanized.” –Marsden Wagner

“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 rite for a woman.” –from the book MotherMysteries

“The holistic model holds that birth is a normal, woman-centered process in which mind and body are one and that, in the vast majority of cases, nature is sufficient to create a healthy pregnancy and birth. The midwife is seen as a nurturer.” –Penfield Chester (midwife)

“If there is ever a part of human anatomy that resembles the image of God it is the uterus.” –Reverend Darren Cushman-Wood

(I hesitated to share this quote because I thought it could be viewed as disrespectful [or even sacrilegious!] by some. But, it caught my eye in an article called Pharaohs and Kentuckians in a 1997 issue of Mothering magazine. Written by a pastor of a Methodist church about homebirth and spirituality 🙂

“Modern culture often teaches us to be ‘tight’…trim, taut, & terrific…We understand the need to stay ‘fit’…but we would also like to encourage you to soften yourself, in preparation for mothering & nurturing your baby. Soften your viewpoint, soften your body, surrender to this awe-inspiring event…in this way, you will be preparing yourself not only for labour, but for the days & years afterward…” -The Pink Kit Method For Birthing Better®

“Love is such a powerful force. It’s there for everyone to embrace—that kind of unconditional love for all of humankind. That is the kind of love that impels people to go into the community and try to change conditions for others, to take risks for what they believe in.” —Coretta Scott King

“Nurturing is not a genetically feminine attribute. Tears and laughter are not the province of women only. The last time I looked, men had tear ducts. They had arms for holding babies. They cared about their children. And they cried at births…let the shared experience of childbirth reclaim the human soul.” –Ariska Razak (midwife and healer)

“When my kids become wild and unruly, I use a nice, safe playpen. When they’re finished, I climb out.” ~Erma Bombeck (via Moby® Wrap)

Mother’s Day

May13

My other grandmother is town visiting this month (also from CA), so on Mother’s Day, we were able to get another four generations pictures—this time with my dad and his mother.

And, then my mom took a new family picture for us:

Mother’s Day present from Mark:

I keep only finding time to post short, picture-type blog posts lately! I’m getting ready to be on break from teaching though and have grand plans for all of the posts I’m going to write with all of my “free” time ;-D