My Mother

May9

I wrote a brief entry about my mother for a Mother’s Day contest on Giving Birth With Confidence answering the question, “How does your mother inspire and encourage you on your journey to (or through) motherhood?” My entry wasn’t one of the finalists, but I thought since I’d taken the time to write it, I might as well share it here! My mother is such an integral part of my life that I actually find it difficult to write about her. I have noticed the same thing in writing about my husband. Our lives are so entwined with each other that is is hard to imagine life without them, and consequently, hard to properly credit their roles in my life (a taking-for-granted thing perhaps in part, but also I think the intensity/depth/length of relationship makes it difficult to choose adequate words). Anyway, this is what I wrote and the photo I submitted with my entry:

Three generations!

My mother inspired me through her example-–she was a homebirthing, homeschooling, cloth diapering, co-sleeping, attachment-parenting, baby-wearing mama when this type of mothering path was virtually unknown. She was always respectful of my personality-–I was shy/reserved and she wasn’t, but she was very mindful of not pushing me outside of my own personal boundaries until I was ready to “blossom” on my own. Even while parenting my much younger siblings, she made daily space for me a young teenager to come sit on her bed every night and talk and talk and talk to her (about “nothing” probably!). She was always present. And, while she didn’t particularly like to play (that’s what my sister was for!), she made us SO many different little handmade toys 🙂 She also was/is a fabulous craftswoman and taught me a large number of handwork skills–-always nurturing of that creative spark!

She continues to encourage me by being available to me to babysit my boys (we live one mile apart), by being a listening ear and source of advice, and by never failing to think that I’m amazing, even when I don’t see it in myself.

——-

I also entered a previous written blog post into the Honoring Mothers contest at Science and Sensibility, where it was the first runner-up 🙂

Happy Mother’s Day!

May7

Birthday present from my mom (mother candle-lamp)

In thinking about Mother’s Day this year, I keep thinking of Dr. Bradley’s use of the word “motherlike” in his classic book, Husband-Coached Childbirth. While I’m not a huge fan of the book, I am a fan of this word. To use it in a sentence…giving birth may not be “ladylike,” but it IS motherlike.

This time last year, I was on pins and needles waiting to find out if I was pregnant again (I was!). I attended a friend’s blessingway ceremony on that Mother’s Day and while I was there another friend announced her new pregnancy. And, I’d found out that same week about another friend’s pregnancy as well. These were bittersweet announcements for me as I was happy for my friends, but also felt a pang that it wasn’t me and that I “should” have been full-term myself at that point. Another friend made a very casual, offhand joke about miscarriage shortly after these announcements and I almost lost it completely, feeling at the edge of tears throughout the rest of the event. I was pretty sure that I, too, was also pregnant, but I felt almost paralyzed with fear of being “left behind” again. I imagined all of my friends going on into January and having their babies without me. As it was, the dear friend who had announced her pregnancy that day ended up losing her own sweet baby at a gestation very similar to my own loss of Noah (side note: the 18 month anniversary of his birth is today). My heart ached deeply for her, knowing that now she would have to be the one watching me go on without her and I felt acutely aware of that each time I shared a new pregnancy picture throughout my pregnancy with Alaina—my own sense of “arrested pregnancy” was one of the many difficult post-miscarriage feelings for me (it simply felt wrong to not be pregnant—like pregnancy was my “rightful state” and had been prematurely interrupted).

Anyway, that isn’t really what I planned to write about today, it just came to mind as I began to type. I really planned to just share a couple of new photos! So, here’s one…

All the reasons I'm a mother!

At playgroup this week, I asked my friend to take a new profile picture for me and so she took this one:

I love it! She is the same friend who took all of the wonderful pregnancy photos of me 🙂

Alaina keeps getting bigger and bigger! She weighs about 15 1/2 pounds now. She rolled over for the first time a couple of nights ago, but has yet to repeat the feat. However, she has started to act kind of like she wants to sit up. So, we have been experimenting with that and she has surprisingly good sitting up skills for a 3.5 month old!

What's this?!

I think her big cloth diapers serve as a stabilizing influence and I would imagine that if we tried to sit her up without one on, she would fall right over!

Last year, my husband gave me a beautiful ring for Mother’s Day. I received it with some trepidation also, knowing that if my tiny, tentative new pregnancy was to also end, I would associate the ring with that forever (it also has two garnets in it—January’s birth stone). The goddess of Willendorf image has held special meaning for me for some time and I love this ring. I am grateful that rather than being a loss trigger, it instead serves as a reminder of the potency and power of the Feminine. Of being motherlike.

Mother's Day present from last year

Family Adventures in Polymer Clay

May7

Last time I made new polymer clay sculptures, my boys wanted to join in. They have always liked sculpting things and got into it, making a whole little series of figures each. My older son (7.5) made these little cuties:

Close up of the mom with her baby

My younger son (5), made a whole series of little ball creatures:

Two of them looked like they had another ball stuck on to them and so I said, “oh! Are these holding babies?” He looked a little sheepish and said, “no, it is eating that other one.” LOL! This is classic, classic Z ;-D

Later, he said he’d changed his mind and this one above, “actually IS holding a baby.”

This was my own little series I made at the same time:

Honoring Mothers

May6

Science and Sensibility is having a Mother’s Day event inviting birth professionals to submit stories of how they especially honor mothers in their practices, leading up to Mother’s Day. The invitation is part of a contest: a randomly-selected reader who submits a story will be chosen to receive a beautifully hand-made “Beads of Strength” bracelet from Amnesty International.

While I’m not sure will actually work with the vision of the contest, when I think about honoring mothers in my own work, I think about honoring their right to define their own experience and therefore, I submitted this previously written post: Musings on Story, Experience, and Choice.

Mother-honoring birthday gift from my mother this year.

The Five Ways We Grieve

May3

“…most people are unaware that our losses affect us forever, since they cause us to see the world and ourselves differently. The task of discovering ‘Who am I now?’ and finding our own path to healing represents one of the greatest challenges of the grieving process.” –Susan Berger

I recently received a request to review a new book, The Five Ways we Grieve, by Susan Berger. I was instantly intrigued by the book and felt like while it is not specifically about pregnancy loss, it might still have helpful information to contribute to mothers who are coping with pregnancy loss. And, it does not disappoint! The book describes the five “identities” survivors of loss assume and the ways in which these identities transform or paralyze. While the experience of pregnancy loss is often minimized or marginalized culturally as less significant than other types of loss, the reality is that many women experience profound and genuine grief that is just as “real” as any other sort of grief and loss. When I found out that my tiny son had died after 14 weeks of pregnancy, I experienced a depth of sadness never before experienced in my life. I felt a sorrow so profound and full of anguish that I feel certain it was the same type of grief I would experience at the death of any of my dearly loved children. While some might find this surprising (or even impossible), because the baby wasn’t born yet, I believe that the pit of despair one enters after losing a child is the same regardless of the age of the child and whether born or not—perhaps the duration of grief might be shorter for some, but the initial shock, impact, and sense of intense loss and sadness is the same. And, while my own first loss may be defined by some as, “just a miscarriage,” the reality is that I gave birth to a third tiny son in the privacy of my own home—a real, little baby with fingers and toes and whose little fluttery kicks I had just been beginning to feel.

So, regardless of the size of person who died, I very readily recognized myself in the descriptions of the five identities explored in The Five Ways We Grieve. Most people are familiar with the classic “5 Stages of Grief” model developed by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross (Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance), however, these stages most readily apply to people who are dying, not to the survivors. While survivors still speak of moving through these stages, they are not really adequate to describe the experience of grieving a loved one. The five identities explored in Susan Berger’s book are:

Nomads: Those who have not yet resolved their grief in a way that allows them to move on with their life and form a satisfying new identity.
Memorialists: Their main goal is to honor their loved one by creating physical objects or rituals that honor the deceased.
Normalizers: They work to recreate the kind of life they lost or wished they’d had.
Activists: They focus on helping other people who are dealing with the same disease or issues that caused their loved one’s death.
Seekers: They experience loss as a catalyst for philosophical exploration into the meaning of life.

In my own experience, I believe the Activist and Memorialist roles are intimately intwined—nearly immediately post-loss, I wanted to reach out to others and to try to help them as they experienced their own loss journeys. Creating my website/blog/journal, Footprints on My Heart, was a means of helping myself through exploration of my feelings and thoughts, but also a means of helping others. And, it is also a means of being a memorialist. I wanted to assure that Noah’s brief life would be remembered and would have value. On significant dates, I felt/feel an urge to acknowledge the date with some type of memorialization. In keeping with this, I’m posting this on his due date (which is also my birthday). Earlier in the year, following the birth of my sweet new baby girl, I felt like perhaps these date milestones would have lost their significance. In March, I considered that I had hardly given my former due date any thought at all and was really only thinking of it as my birthday and not really as anything else. However, as we got closer, old feelings were stirred and I remember how very painful this time of year was to me last year. And, no matter how distant the lived experience becomes, my birthday will actually never be the same, because I will never forget. And, I don’t want to. His death/birth and my experiences with those things are part of me in a permanent way. However, the experiences now come through the lens of memory and commemoration/memorialization, rather than as a “fresh” or current, in-process experience. I write about it to ensure that he is not forgotten, nor is what he meant to me. And, I am presently in the process of turning my Footprints blog into a book, again with a dual intention of activism and memorialization.

Finally, I also see myself in the Seeker role. While I have spent a lot of years already exploring the meaning and purpose of life, giving birth to Noah was a catalyst for spiritual exploration for me. His birth prompted me to take a deep and long-lasting inner journey and to much more fully explore and elaborate on my spiritual perspective and my experiences with the Sacred Feminine, rather than to just continue to “dabble” with various ideas.

—-

The Five Ways We Grieve: Finding Your Personal Path to Healing After the Loss of a Loved One
By Susan A. Berger, LICSW, EdD
Psychology/Grief | US $17.95 CAN $20.50 | Paperback | ISBN: 978-1-59030-899-8 | Trumpeter, an imprint of Shambhala Publications, Inc.
http://www.amazon.com/Five-Ways-We-Grieve-Personal/dp/159030697X
http://www.shambhala.com/html/catalog/items/isbn/978-1-59030-697-0.cfm

The Spot

Apr30

“Can I ask you a personal question?” asks the woman on the phone. She is calling to inquire about my birth classes and the subject of homebirth has come up.

“Sure!”

“What about the mess?”

At first I give the standard answer. That birth isn’t so terribly messy, that you can put down towels and chux pads, that the midwife often does the cleanup. I pause a moment. This prospective client and I have an instant connection and excellent rapport. I add, “Actually, I left a huge blood spot on our living room carpet.” I add that the spot came out almost completely with peroxide, but can’t stop myself from also remarking, “I actually feel kind of proud of it—it felt like a symbol to me.” I find myself laughing a little and there is an unmistakable note of triumph in my voice.

“Of what?”

“That I did it. Gave birth in my own home, in my own living room, on my own terms, under my own power, in my own way. In the way that felt best and right and safest to me. On my own. Me. I did it.”

What I did not add—what would have been pushing it just a little too far—is that when we moved the peroxide-cleaned carpet square into our new home a large, round, rusty-red stain was revealed on the concrete floor beneath. And, that I take secret delight in its presence. I am proud that I left my mark on the floor that bore witness to my labor. I delight and actually revel in the reminder of my power that the stain represents. Is this total weirdness? Or freakishness? A type of maternal masochism or even a perversion? No, I decide. It is really not so different from keeping a football trophy from high school or an award for volunteerism in human services from college. Maybe there is a medal for natural childbirth after all—arriving in different surprising guises, one kind a blotchy reddish stain on a concrete floor.

Despite our easy camaraderie, I never hear from that prospective client again.

Those who critique the zealousness of birth activists sometimes accuse us of supporting an insidious “Cult of Natural Childbirth” and assert that we undermine women and their unique and often traumatic experiences by “insisting” that birth be an empowering and triumphant event for women.

Maybe there actually is a Cult of Natural Childbirth and I am an acolyte of Birth cackling with wild glee as I caper around my bloodstained floor….

Nursing my brand new baby boy! (2006)

———

In the original article, I included a post-birth picture from my second son’s birth that showed one completely exposed breast. I must have still been hopped up on the post-birth euphoria when I sent it, because after it was actually published I felt slightly horrified to have my boob in print and didn’t feel like I could show the article to my dad (or, really, to many other people!) If you look closely at the picture I substituted in this blog post, you can see there is blood streaked all over my chest, arms, and hands. It was a very bloody birth!

—————————————————————————————————————–

This is a preprint of The Spot, an essay by Molly Remer, MSW, ICCE, published in Midwifery Today, Issue 86, Summer 2008. Copyright © 2008 Midwifery Today. Midwifery Today’s website is located at: http://www.midwiferytoday.com/

The “Almost Died…” Remark

Apr29

Anyone who has planned a homebirth has probably heard the, “If I’d had my baby at home, I would have died” remark more times than they can count. It seems to be almost a default response to mentions of homebirth. I used to have a pet peeve about this, because I was almost certain that most of time the people saying it had been nowhere close to death! It seemed like an overly dramatic, overreaction to a normal life process, etc., etc. And, also that we’ve been so brainwashed by the media into thinking birth is this life or death emergency that that filter then artificially colors our perceptions of events and dramatically affects our social lexicon of birth. (However, I also have the companion thought that in many countries, birth does remain a life or death experience for women and babies. Maternal and infant mortality are significant issues and are not subjects to be taken lightly. And, mothers and babies in the U.S. do, in fact, die sometimes. It isn’t just a third-world country thing!) Another statement that used to confuse me was when birth writers say things about giving birth bringing you to the, “edge between life and death.” This didn’t match my own to-that-date birth experiences, which had not ever involved feeling like dying.

So, these things said, it has been very, very difficult for me to write about my own feelings of being close to death following the miscarriage-birth of my third son in November 2009. I really, truly felt like I might be going to die after he was born. I have never felt that close before, but I reached that “edge” after him, and I had the visceral experience of the veil between life and death being very, very thin. And, the feeling did not occur in a scary way, but in a resigned, “oh, so this is how it is going to end, too bad I still had so much I want to do with my life!” kind of way. I felt okay with it actually. A type of acceptance that my time was over. Since everything turned out okay in the end, I haven’t had much reason to process that feeling, but it was very, very intense. And, actually it was also life-changing in several areas of my life, including in terms of my spirituality (I semi-joke that my miscarriage-birth was a “religious experience” for me, but truly, in a way it was). However, I can hardly manage to write about it. And, looking back, I remain amazed that it was humanly possible to bleed as much as I did, especially because at that point early in a second trimester pregnancy I didn’t have the whole 50% increase in blood volume that you have by full-term!

I think I don’t talk much about my own “almost died” experience because obviously, in hindsight, I wasn’t almost dying (since I didn’t), I just felt like I was going to. But, this is the key…the fact that I wasn’t truly dying doesn’t mean that I didn’t truly feel as if I was—and, genuinely so, not in just an irrational fear-planted-by-the-media way. This has given me new insight into the “almost died” remark that seems dished out so casually. I used to think it was primarily a risk-based/skewed/brainwashed attitude, rather than an emotional thing, but I have an understanding now that it more often probably represents how she felt (or perceived the situation) and that her feeling really matters. It was real. And, I now hear and honor that feeling (rather than secretly thinking “yeah, right!”), because the feeling was real. And, that means, to her, she really did “almost die.”

I’ve also come to realize that despite the many amazing and wonderful, profound and magical things about birth, the experience of giving birth is very likely to take some kind of toll on a woman—whether her body, mind, or emotions. There is usually some type of “price” to be paid for each and every birth and sometimes the price is very high. This is, I guess, what qualifies, birth as such an intense, initiatory rite for women. It is most definitely a transformative event and transformation does not usually come without some degree of challenge. Sometimes to be triumphed over or overcome, but something that also leaves permanent marks. Sometimes those marks are literal and sometimes they are emotional and sometimes they are truly beautiful, but we all earn some of them, somewhere along the line. And, I also think that by glossing over the marks, the figurative or literal scars birth can leave on us, and talking about only the “sunny side” we can deny or hide the full impact of our journeys.

During Pam England’s presentation about birth stories at the ICAN conference, she said that the place “where you were the most wounded—the place where the meat was chewed off your bones, becomes the seat of your most powerful medicine and the place where you can reach someone where no one else can.“

Four Generations!

Apr27

Yesterday, my grandma went back to her home in CA after being here to meet Alaina and visit the family. While she was here, we made sure to get a four generations picture:

I have to laugh at our nearly identical smiles. I wonder if A will also have the same smile? Can’t tell now with all the gums rather than big square teeth like my mom, grandma, and I all seem to have. (Related side note: quite some time ago on the last day of my internship at a battered women’s shelter, one of the women, who had fairly severe psychological issues, told me, “goodbye, Molly! We’ll sure miss Molly with her big, big smile and her square, white teeth!”) Something else that is neat about this picture is that we are all “first daughters”—so, this is a picture of the first daughter of a first daughter of a first daughter of a first daughter. Though, in my family A is the youngest child and the rest of us first daughters are also the oldest child.

I was happy to see my grandma and have her meet my baby girl. Alaina is at a perfect age for company. She is sociable and sweet and will laugh and smile at people even if she is unfamiliar with them. She played with my grandma and slept on her chest (transferred there after having fallen asleep at my breast—I was going to put her down, but my grandma said kind of casually, “or…I could hold her while she sleeps.”) I have noticed that she is getting a tiny bit stranger-anxious if she can’t see me at the same time though. I’ve had two experiences over the last week in which I let friends hold her while I went to the bathroom and both times when I came back, she was upset.

I’m getting ready for a big event, so this is the only post I can come up with for today! Oh, do I have about 50,000 other ideas for things I’d like to post though!

Mother’s Day Giveaway: Moody Mamas Gift Certificate!

Apr23

This giveaway is now closed. Rebecca was the winner!

Last year, I hosted a giveaway for a beautiful dress from Moody Mamas. This year, in honor of Mother’s Day, we have a $35 gift certificate good towards anything on www.moodymamas.com! Items from the new spring collection make perfect Mother’s Day gifts or would make any pregnant woman feel special at any time.

The giveaway will run for 2 weeks, closing on Saturday, May 7th. To enter just leave a comment on this post about which piece from the Moody Mamas spring collection you like the most, Earn bonus entries by doing any of the following (and posting a comment to let me know which you did):

1) Fan Moody Mamas on Facebook here

2) Follow their blog, here

3) Follow Moody Mamas on Twitter here

4) Fan Talk Birth on Facebook

5) Subscribe to Talk Birth (email subscription link is to the right –>)

If you have been lucky enough to win a Moody Mamas giveaway within the last six months, please do not enter and give another mama a chance to be a winner!

Book Review: Home/Birth: a poemic

Apr22

Book Review: Home/Birth: a poemic
By Arielle Greenberg and Rachel Zucker
1913 Press, 2011
ISBN 978-0-9779351-7-8
208 pages, softcover, $11

http://www.1913press.org

http://www.facebook.com/pages/HomeBirth-A-Poemic/

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

Co-authored by a pair of long-time friends, the “poemic” book Home/Birth reads as if you are eavesdropping on a lengthy, juicy, engaging, thought-provoking conversation about homebirth, birth in America, maternity care, and feminism. The book has a lyric, narrative, stream of consciousness format linked together with segments of poetry.

The text does not differentiate between the two speakers/writers, though through the “call and response,” back-and-forth exchange between the two authors, you quickly begin to recognize two distinct voices (as well as other fragments from birth books, bumper stickers, midwives, etc.).

The book was written during Arielle’s second pregnancy, which ends in the stillbirth of her baby boy. Arielle had one prior homebirth and one subsequent homebirth. Rachel had two hospital births and a homebirth prior to the writing of the book.

While the style in which it is written takes some time to get used to, once you tune in to its rhythm, Home/Birth is a unique and fascinating journey. Because it is so distinctive, I find it difficult to describe in writing—you need to make sure to read it for yourself!

—

Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book for review purposes.