Taking it to the body, part 3: Moontime

Dec9

“…imagine what our lives would be like, what the world would be like if every womoon could bleed and birth inside a sacred circle…”

(Art by Mariela Dela Paz)

Blessing to our menstrual blood!

Blessing for our birthing blood!

Blessing to our female body

Blessing to our spirit

Blessing for our connection with other women

Blessing for our self-love and love of each other

Blessing to the world that holds us sacred.

–Antiga in The Goddess Celebrates, p. 168

Continuing my taking it to the body theme, I have some more observations to make about Moontime in a woman’s life. Ever since moontime’s return for me earlier this year, I’ve tried to remind mindful of the ebb and flow of my cycle and associated emotions, feelings, and inclinations. Just as I wouldn’t expect myself to “do it all” during postpartum, I find it logical that I shouldn’t expect myself to “do it all” during menstruation either. But, that is easier said than done! Kids still need to do to playgroup and taekwondo and, and, and…

It is also very, very easy for me to forget that many of the common mental patterns I experience with needing to retreat and wanting to quit and wanting to rest are very cyclical in nature as well. But, I also hate that, because I never want, “must be hormones!” to be an excuse. I honestly think it isn’t an excuse, but is instead is often a wake-up call. So, taking it to the body…it surprises me how, even though I track my cycle using a handy phone app, I still overlook that the “I’m so fat and ugly!” thoughts and the “how come I suddenly have zits on my chin?” and “I want to QUIT THE WORLD” and, “people are so annoying and SO LOUD and never STOP TALKING!!!!!” and, “WHY do people WANT things from me ALL THE TIME!!!!” feelings, also recur on a cyclical basis. And, then moontime comes, and suddenly life takes a turn for the better and things look up. I start feeling energetic and productive and excited about things. Instead of wanting to quit, I have tons of new ideas and feel enthusiastic and optimistic about completing them. I feel creative and inspired. You’d think I’d remember and say, “oh yeah, this. This sensation of wanting to hide…I remember this.” BUT…and this is the ticket…I need to then DO IT. Go ahead and hide for a minute. Things will go on without me. It is when I override my own inclinations and body messages and needs that “Dragon Lady” wishes to come out and roar for her rights.

“Each time we deny our female functions, each time we deviate from our bodies’ natural path, we move father away from out feminine roots. Our female bodies need us now more than ever, and we too need the wisdom, the wildness, the passion, the joy, the vitality and the authenticity that we can gain through this most intimate of reconciliations.” –Sarah J Buckley, M.D.

I recently enjoyed listening to a recording from Indigo Bacal called Womb Magic ~ 3 Things EVERY Cycling Woman Needs to Know.

The three things are:

1. track your cycle

2. create a moon tent and spend time in it alone.

3. moontime is a powerful opportunity for renewal

One of the things she also said is that if your family and the people around you can allow you the space to retreat into your “moon tent,” you will return with powerful medicine for them every month, because of this powerful time for renewal. It is the blocked call for quiet time to rest and renew that causes a variety of premenstrual tension, strain, and stress…

I also enjoyed reading an interesting article about being a Highly Sensitive Person (I have already read the book by the same name):

I learned that life is easier than I think it is. Thinking about life is hard. But, life already is. It’s already happening. That’s easy.

I discovered that highly sensitive people seem to develop backwards compared to traditional theories. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs states that in order to develop as people, we must meet certain needs in a certain order, starting with physiological needs.

Well, I find that HSPs actually start at the top with transcendence needs and work down to the physiological needs last.

…

You really can trust yourself; your body knows more than you think. Your nervous system is getting a lot. Trust it. Trust is a practice. It’s a work out. Start where you are and take a step in the direction of trusting your body and what it is telling you.

That is how you strengthen the connection with your body. The present is here for you to unwrap in each surprising moment…

New sculptures! This time from pottery clay and my mom glazed and fired them. They’re cool! 🙂

Book Review: Moon Time

The Amethyst Network December Blog Circle: Holidays After Loss

Dec8

I’m a founding member of the miscarriage support organization, The Amethyst Network. We’ve been hard at work over the past month restructuring our website, clarifying our vision, and expanding our offerings:

As part of our efforts at sharing stories and creating healing circles, we are launching blog circles here at TAN. Each month we will post a brief message introducing the theme for the month, and inviting you to participate in the circle. All you need to do is put your name and link into the Mr Linky widget at the end of this post, and your blog post can be included in the circle. Posts are welcomed throughout the month (and beyond if you write something later and want to share). We hope you will participate!

The theme of the December Blog Circle is Holidays After Loss.

To participate in the blog circle, I immediately looked up an old blog post from the Christmas season in 2009. I experienced my first miscarriage in early November and so when I hit the holidays that year, my loss was very fresh and raw and I remember countless moments of sitting with family members having “happy” celebrations and feeling at the desperate edge of tears the entire time, but trying to be good spirited for my other kids and also not “ruin” the holidays for everyone else.

This is what I wrote…

Missed

Posted on December 21, 2009

…I no longer have the feeling that I “should” be pregnant. It feels “normal” to not be pregnant now, whereas a couple of weeks ago I felt the loss of the physical experience keenly—that embodied connection—and I still “felt pregnant” for about three weeks or so following my miscarriage. I would have to keep reminding myself, “I’m NOT pregnant.” Now, I feel “normally” not-pregnant and I actually feel really good in my body and pretty good in my life. There has been a shift from “I SHOULD be x number of weeks pregnant” to “I WOULD have been x number of weeks pregnant.”

Today, I would have been 21 weeks pregnant and it has been a hard day for me. Our family has a tradition of having a winter solstice party each year. We host at our house (my mom then hosts Christmas) and it is a nice time. We use the occasion to reflect on the past year and the things we’ve accomplished and then set goals for the year to come—things we’d like to “bring into the light” as it were. We also give our immediate family gifts to each other on this day.

Anyway, I just really missed the baby today and also missed the pregnant-self. I felt really strongly how I would have been really looking pregnant by now and the baby would have been making himself well-known to others around me with kicks and rolls and so forth. I can’t describe it in words, I just really FELT it today. The non. The closed door. The two boys instead of three. It started when I opened up my set of Growing Uterus charts and The Birth Atlas from Childbirth Connection. I’ve always wanted them and I ordered them a couple of months ago when they had a wonderful deal. When they arrived, I had Mark put them away for Christmas. I didn’t think it would bother me to open them. I am still interested in birth, birthwork, and childbirth education. I’ve been reading other birth books and not having any “issues” with them, but opening the charts and seeing the point at which my own pregnancy and baby and hopes and dreams and plans arrested, was really difficult. The “cut off”/stopped/ended road point was right there in black and white and I had a strong and unexpected reaction to that. Later in the afternoon we went outside to go for a walk and also to place Noah’s memorial plaque. Standing there looking at it, I just MISSED him. And, I missed the experience of “would’ve” been 21 weeks pregnant–with my hand on my full belly, feeling my baby from within and outside, and having that communion and connection with him. I felt at the edge of tears for most of the rest of the day and just “down” and distressed feeling. I thought it would help me to write about it, but I’m not finding the words easily. I can’t explain or describe what it was I felt today.

As I mentioned, we use today as a time to reflect on our plans for the coming year. In past years, we’ve also each shared a wish for the coming year while lighting candles (the whole “even in the darkness, new light comes again” type of metaphor). In the past, I feel like people have tired of having to take turns saying too many things (we do the goal sharing and reflecting on whether we accomplished last year’s goal and some other things), so this year I just shared a little prayer—feeling like it summed up nicely what we each would wish for in the coming year:

Make me strong in spirit,
Courageous in action,
Gentle of heart,

Let me act in wisdom,
Conquer my fear and doubt,
Discover my own hidden gifts,

Meet others with compassion,
Be a source of healing energies,
And face each day with hope and joy.

(Abby Willowroot)

—

That year, I bought a special ornament for our tree with Noah’s name and birthdate and also the words, Born at Home. As I’ve shared several times, it is very important to me to have miscarriages acknowledged as birth events and it really, really mattered to me to have a homebirth specific ornament to recognize my baby. This year, it hangs on the tree next to our new family ornament for 2012.

In 2010, when I got maternity photos taken, I made sure to include Noah’s angel bear in several of the photos to acknowledge his presence and place as a member of the family. And again, in 2011, I also included the bear in a photo session with me and the kiddos.

This year when we got our family pictures taken, I made sure to wear my baby-in-my-heart pendant, so that Noah, still, was there with us in the pictures as part of our family.

In September, my friend’s baby Tossie died at 36 weeks. To honor Tossie’s memory, she’s started a blog to help other loss mamas: Tossie’s Tree & Painted Rocks. One of the first rocks she painted was for my own little Noah. She took a picture of it at sunrise by her own baby’s special tree and it is lovely!

The other posts in this month’s blog circle so far are:

Hope and the Holidays ~ Bainne Mama

Thankgiving After A Loss ~ Bainne Mamai

Special Ornaments ~ Mindful Serenity

Michele–Holidays After Loss (this post was especially good, very poignant, and from it I went to a variety of other interesting posts on her blog. Michele also runs Mending Hearts Bellies which focuses on childbirth education and doula support for post-loss families).
Holidays After Loss: Spirit Babies Ceremony

Taking it to the body… Part 2: Embodied mindfulness, introversion, and two hours!

Dec5

“Trust yourself. Take it to the body. She always knows.”

For my meditation practice for my compassion class, I’ve been working with several things, starting with the above quote. As I explained in part 1, how often do we deny the urgings of our bodies? It seems as if mindfulness begins there.

So, I’ve decided to practice an embodied mindfulness and meditation…taking it to the body and checking in with what she knows. Consciously noticing and being aware of my body’s signals to sleep, eat, and eliminate. It is much harder than you would think for something so basic and essential for well-being and I “fail” many, many times a day, but, and this is the point: I notice as I am failing, as I am not listening. That is better than remaining unconscious, right?!

The second part of my practice is that I’m trying to make sure I feed my spirit first—going to the woods, praying, setting intentions for the day, lighting a candle and setting up some of my goddess art sculptures near me as I work, rather than letting those things languish for “when I have enough time” and “later.”

The third part of my practice is to notice my thoughts and how I think about things, bringing mindfulness to the repetitive, wheel-spinning , brain-groove making patterns of thought that I habitually engage in. I frequently feel like, “something has got to change!” or, “I need to change what I’m doing and THEN, XYZ.” In mindfulness practice, I notice that more often it isn’t what is actually happening in my life that is upsetting or stimulating the “change” urge, it is expressly how I think about things that needs to change. I have become aware of the following unhelpful brain-groove thoughts that continue to dictate my behavior, choices, feelings, and responses:

I might die

I need to be perfect

I can’t rest

I’m out of time/running out of time/there isn’t enough time

(I haven’t fixed these yet, but awareness of them is a big part of the puzzle.)

As appears to be my custom at this time of year, I had a big meltdown this weekend feeling resentful, overbooked, stressed, ragged, frustrated, blocked, irritable, etc., etc. Then, I piled on a hearty dose of self-admonishment for all those feelings and stirred in some big helpings of guilt. I blamed various things, I blamed myself, I ranted and raved about how something needs to change and I need to do something different because this just isn’t working. (most of this was actually in my own head because Mark was sleeping in the living room as he recovered from the stomach flu that swept our house this week, more on this later.) I was crabby at loved ones. I felt guilty for wanting to be alone and for feeling done with snuggling my nursling and smelling her sweet head, knowing, knowing, knowing that the time is passing and that I will miss it and yet, dang it, stop climbing all over me and ramming your hands down my shirt! I felt like I “should” be doing all kinds of things differently. Like I should be a better, nicer person and like maybe I’m choosing wrongly in my life. I wanted to just stop, to get off, to quit everything. I decided I don’t want to help anyone else anymore and I just want to take care of myself. I cried because I need my parents and Mark to help me so that I can help other people and if I just stopped trying to help anyone else, I could take care of myself/family and not need anyone to help me either. I made plans to make a big life map and ruthlessly chop things off it. I decided to embark on a massive self-care, self-improvement project for the new year. I dragged out piles of books to look through. I remembered that busy is boring , I craved time for a retreat. I exclaimed that I just want to grind my corn! I lamented my ongoing crisis of abundance. I looked up my old post about balanced living and saying ‘no’ and thought about how I’m going to say a big fat NO to everything all the time! Must be clear on priorities. Must choose well and wisely. Then, I got annoyed with myself for already having figured this stuff out before, for writing about it already, for boringly lamenting it all before, for never learning (or integrating) my life lessons, and for knowing better and yet doing it anyway.

And, then…everyone went to bed. I sat up by myself and worked on a drawing for a “make a plate.” The kids all did this at my mom’s house over the weekend as a Christmas project—you draw a design on a special piece of paper, send it in to the company, and they send it back to you as a plate. I wanted to make one too! So, I did:

I really like it. After drawing, I felt tons better. I sat alone in the living room with my computer and got my online class all caught up for the week. And, suddenly it hit me. This ugly ragged self of mine I was seeing and experiencing and hating. She was popping out because I hadn’t had my two hours all damn week! And, after I realized that, I understood that things weren’t really that bad after all. Last week was insane. I knew it in advance, but it doesn’t mean it was easier to cope with it. And, if I tuned in to myself and my body, which is really, really hard to do when you’re an introvert without your requisite two hours, I just heard the familiar cry for what I need, to just be by myself at home for some time each week. Not to quit everything, all the time, but just to have some regular, consistent still points of solitude.

This is what last week looked like for us:

Monday: Twenty papers submitted by my online students, they all need to be graded in addition to my usual weekly grades for the week. While I did my usual grades and online class prep work, no papers got graded with the time I had available. Manage to quickly write an assignment for my own class, part of which is excerpted at the beginning of this post. Scramble to town to take the kids to meet Mark. Teach class on Monday night from 5-10. Come home freaking out about the rest of the week and HOW CAN I POSSIBLY GRADE THIS MANY PAPERS WHEN I HAVE NO TIME! Maybe I’m not meant to do this, maybe three classes is too many, maybe there is just something wrong with me.

Tuesday: After doing school with the boys, laboriously make pumpkin pasties to take to the Harry Potter potluck for the last day of homeschool co-op Wednesday. Insist on all three children helping with the “fun” and get super stressed out at not being a more zen mother of awesomeness. Call my dad desperately in the afternoon requesting “tribal reinforcement” (my tribe is a good one!).

Pumpkin pasties. Awesome, or unnecessary torture?

After he takes the kids over to play at his house, manage to grade four of the papers among many other tasks. Then, take the kids and head to town for their taekwondo class and my own reiki class (why take a reiki class now when I already have so much going on? Who knows?! Crazy, remember?) Reiki class is great—totally works and I feel like such a healer! Go home and practice fab skills on Mark and boys and they are impressed. Feel buzzing with energy and hands are tingling. Stay up until 2:00 a.m, on purpose and finish grading ALL papers. Feel awesome and smug and have killer, killer headache.

Wednesday: killer headache continues. Take kids to homeschool co-op and potluck. Pumpkin pasties meet with approval. Pick up two of boys’ friends for an overnight. Fingers crossed for Alaina to nap when we get home, since I’m desperate to be alone and need to get “caught up.” She doesn’t.

Make homemade mac and cheese for dinner and it rocks. Boys and friends stay up until past midnight. I stay up and finish prepping for Friday’s class.

She actually wore bowling shoes this time! Insisted on carrying ball every time for a whole game!

Thursday: Killer headache remains (not enough sleep, I think at the time). Make quesadillas for all kids in house and barely stagger out door with them all to go to playgroup at bowling alley. Bowl a terrible 85, but have lots of fun (Alaina is adorable bowler and gets a 17 [non-bumper lane]). Belabor different post-playgroup scenarios to manage rest of day.

Mine, mine?

Brothers are not into bowling and complain nonstop and sit staring like this. I finish their games.

She’s a natural!

Send boys with friend to get pizza and go to park, while Alaina and I go to Wal-Mart to buy dinner supplies for a postpartum mama. Take dinner to new mama and listen to fab birth story and do breastfeeding help for next two hours. Kids come back from park and are sent with other friend in my van to gymnastics class. Help jump friend’s car and then go to pick up all gymnastics kids (my own boys + two). Am slightly late and they’re getting worried. Zoom to taekwondo to drop all off. Go to Panera to eat dinner and meet couple for wedding ceremony planning. Alaina finally falls asleep and nurse-sleeps throughout Panera visit. Back to get boys at 8:00 and meet other friend to deliver books she’s borrowing, plus pick up evaluation from her from recent birth workshop. Head home, dropping off boys’ friend at her house on the way. Remember LLL monthly stats are due and do them (27 helping contacts for November!), plus send overdue emails and answer help message. Catch up in online class. Collapse in recliner, hoping Alaina’s Panera snooze wasn’t an uber-late nap. She nurses more and falls asleep. Score! Mark and I start a Teen Wolf ep while she keeps nursing. Suddenly, A wakes and projectile vomits all over my body. Yikes! What’s up?! As I wash the chunks off in the shower I start to feel bad too (headache continues, FYI). At 1:30, I throw up too. Alaina throws up seven more times during night with various degrees of mess. Grateful for Mark and his clean-up skills.

Friday: Mark stays home to help, but still needs to get own work done from home. I throw up one more time and debate going to class tonight—do I go or stay?! Zander starts throwing up. My head is actually going to explode with pain. Have fever and chills. Decide not to go to class, even though it means incredible hassle with double make-up classes now (because of no class on Thanksgiving). Nap and wake at 3:00 deciding it is class or bust after all. Both options feel like dumb options. Decide to be Typhoid Molly. Take Advil, get dressed, and head for the Fort where I teach. Class is fine. I have a guest speaker and show a video about child abuse. Hope to leave early, but feel better as class goes on and get busy with student questions/discussions. Dismiss early enough to get out the back gate and take short route home.

Selecting candies.

Saturday: Work party at my mom’s house. She has good projects planned. While the men cut firewood, the women make seasoning blends using herbs and spices I ordered last week from the bulk food buying club. Alaina is fretful and clingy and nurses nonstop, even though she has to stand on a chair to do it while I mix my seasoning blends. Kids draw pictures for their plates and also make fun cracker houses. Alaina finally naps and I grade two late papers, respond to a help message, and try to catch up with my online class again. Feel bad and guilty about not helping with dinner prep and also misunderstood by others about legitimately needing to get my work done. Feel annoyed that I have to make excuses or justifications for it, feel others are annoyed with me. Eat communal turkey dinner and yummy cake. Home feeling generally distressed, unhappy, and overbooked. Am reminded that I’ve forgotten/misunderstood something again. This keeps happening. My brain is leaking. I can’t hold everything and I keep dropping balls, communicating poorly/not enough, missing things or misunderstanding things, and forgetting stuff. Wish I hadn’t had to go anywhere on the weekend. Need regroup time. Suddenly remember with a shock that today is the FoMM newsletter deadline (for contributions, not for me). Send requisite emails and consider fact that I have exactly zero contributions thus far. Lann wakes before we make it to bed and barfs turkey dinner ALL OVER bedroom floor. As Mark cleans it up, he starts to feel sick too. Is up and down during night with stomach pain and finally also vomits.

Finished houses with architects.

Lann’s house.

Sunday: I feel pretty good at start of day, but start to freak out as day progresses. Mark is down sick in recliner all day. Alaina is whiny and clingy and doesn’t stay asleep at naptime. By 2:30, I’m still in PJ’s and feeling emotionally fragile. Begin the internal monologue of self-doubt, criticism, and desire for change described above. Kids go visit my parents and I work frantically on various bits and pieces, like preparing for my class on Monday night. Feel I’m choosing wrongly and still not taking care of myself. What’s wrong with priorities?! Argh. Gnash. Suffer.

Sunday night: stay up after others are in bed. Make my drawing for my plate. Have epiphany that this is all about the two hours. I usually get two hours to myself multiple times a week. Review week and see NO two hours. No wonder I feel like crap. I need it. I really do. It’s this introversion thing. I have to be able to count on sometimes being alone. Hmm. Maybe that is all it is. Maybe I don’t really need to quit everything after all, but maybe I need to plan carefully and assertively and strongly avoid weeks like this last one. Maybe I just need to firmly, guilt-free-edly, hold some space for myself, no matter what. Mentally review week and see, DUH. That was a busy, hard week. I got barfed on. I threw up. I taught class with the flu. No wonder I feel overwhelmed, stressed, and upset. It would be weird if I didn’t feel that way. Isn’t it normal to be a little crazy when life is crazy? Remember that one crazy week doesn’t mean entire life is unraveling after all. Wonder if maybe, just maybe, I should actually feel impressed at my own capacities. Stay up “too late” and enter all my grades so that on Monday, I can do some other things that I want to do—like write blog posts—rather than work on my classes and then go teach as well.

Remember I wasn’t going to write long, boring, navel-gazing blog posts like this one anymore and consider not posting it after all…

Think of lots more things to add and remember lots of other to-dos I got done…

Notice current students have become “fans” on Facebook and really, really consider not posting after all…

Spend way too long trying to format pictures for this post and finally give up and set it to post later in the week with crappy-alignment pictures.

Copy this picture from Facebook and try really, really hard to remember it…

Deep breath. Hug self. Hug kids. Try again.

Taking it to the body… (part 1)

Dec4

The following is excerpted from one of my lessons in my recently finished Ecofeminism course.

In Mara Keller’s essay in the ecofeminist anthology Reweaving the World, she explains that in our cells remember an ancient era of mother-centered life. As I observe in my own children’s relationship to me as their mother, this seems extremely logical to me. Keller writes: “The renewal I long for is a return of a reverence for Mother Earth and her abundant forces of creations; an affirmation of the sacredness of sexuality and enduring human love; and the belief in the inevitability of death and the immortality of the soul” (p. 51). Mother Earth is abundant and fertile and awe-inspiring, she can also be wild and unpredictable and dangerous and is deserving of reverence and respect.

Chellis Glendinning in The Politics of Women’s Spirituality sums up the consequences of patriarchy perfectly:

“When women are faced each day with enforced cesarean deliveries, birth control that maims and kills them, and doctors who think them dirty, when we encounter rape, violence in the streets, job discrimination, sexual slavery around the world, pollution and nuclear madness, we realize that reclaiming the integrative ways of our ancestors must involve our healing powers on all fronts—from the medical to the social to the environmental to the political to the psychological to the spiritual. Healing the divisions that were imposed during the patriarchal era is the survival issue of our time and our planet. A world that systematically sickens its women cannot survive.” [emphasis mine]

Returning to Reweaving the World, in a similar line of thought, Paula Allen states that “a society based on body hate destroys itself and causes harm to all of Grandmother’s grandchildren” (p. 53). I honestly think that many, many children enter the world in an atmosphere of body hate (this can be true regardless of birthing environment). I read an article recently by the famous French obstetrician Michel Odent who explains that the human species may actually be losing the capacity to give birth on its own. Odent sums up the sobering conclusion of current research with this chilling observation: “after just 3 or 4 generations of highly technological childbirth, it seems very possible that our human oxytocin system is weakening. In other words, our capacity to give birth is weakening…” What will it mean for society if our human women can no longer successfully carry and bear new members of the species without significant technological assistance?!

So, planetary healing may actually rest in body respect and love. Allen explains that rejoicing in our bodies is how we show our respect to the planet. We can heal our bodies…”our own dear body, our own dear flesh. For the body is not the dwelling place of the spirit, it is the spirit. It is not a tomb, it is life itself” (p. 56). Allen asks the reader to consider how often we deny the urgings of our bodies. I ask this of women also—how often do you respond to the first cue from your body to use the bathroom? Usually, we resist several times—sometimes even hours—before finally going. If this basic, daily function we each experience multiple times a day is a time in which to deny and ignore our bodies’ messages, how do we expect women to then speak up for themselves in birth? To ask for what they need and to follow the instinctive dance of their birthing bodies? These same questions can be expanded to other areas of our lives as well of course…

Allen also has a refreshing perspective that now is not the time for tranquility. So often in New Age writings and Western-adapted Buddhist and Zen types of thought we see admonishments towards calmness, serenity, peace, and so forth and in the non-attachment and “I create my own reality” and “there is no reality but the present moment.” I appreciate this call for action and for passion, rather than a stilling of the emotions.

And, finally, returning to the body theme, during a recent women’s retreat one of the guests brought us each a card that reads: “Trust yourself. Take it to the body. She always knows.” I loved this and will explain more in part 2…

As dear as breathing…

Dec3

“If women lose the right to say where and how they birth their children, then they will have lost something that is as dear to life as breathing.” –Ami McKay

“Mothers need to know that their care and their choices won’t be compromised by birth politics.” – Jennifer Rosenberg

Birth politics have been on my mind this week as I’ve come across various debates from within the birth profession about the regulation of midwives and the question of licensure, and then also the seemingly ever-present critiques of homebirth from outside the homebirth community. I don’t feel as if I have time lately to fully follow all the issues, but Citizens for Midwifery’s recent response to ACOG’s newest homebirth and maternal rights smackdown contains some important thoughts:

AJOG editorial rejects the ethic that autonomy is a fundamental human right

This article represents a serious attack on home birth and on patient centered care in the United States. The attack is based on poor research and runs roughshod over established rights to bodily integrity…

…not only does the article attack home birth, it also represents an attempt to “export” to the rest of the world a position that the obstetric profession, not mothers, should have the final decision on birth, at a time when that isn’t even legally defensible here in the United States…

…One contradiction stands out as the authors call for “safe, respectful, and compassionate” hospital delivery. No hospital birth can be truly respectful if the birth is happening in the hospital because the physician disrespects the woman’s right to an alternative and has rigged the system to eliminate access to all legal alternatives…

via Citizens for Midwifery

Related thoughts:

Maternal-Fetal Conflict?

The Illusion of Choice

“Woman-to-woman help through the rites of passage that are important in every birth has significance not only for the individuals directly involved, but for the whole community. The task in which the women are engaged is political. It forms the warp and weft of society.” –Sheila Kitzinger

Continuing Birth Education (Free Webinar Round Up)

Nov26

I have a good friend who has become very interested in training as a doula. I love sharing information and resources with excited women new to the birth work field! It is rejuvenating and reminds me my own enthusiasm for women and birth. When I shared this same sentiment on Facebook a fan commented with this lovely observation: “Birth is an ever-evolving subject, and there are as many different ways to do it as there are fingerprints!! How could anyone get bored in the birth work field?? I love it!! It keeps me in the Presence of Now and reminds me of the Sacredness of Life…” 🙂

Anyway, I’ve been collecting books like crazy to lend to my friend (just a word: never ask me for a book about anything unless you are ready to be overwhelmed with options!) and doing so reminded me of some free webinars that have crossed my desk(top) recently as well as some other, older continuing education resources for birth professionals or aspiring birth professionals. I always go to books first and to written information. Love it. Can’t get enough words! But…many people learn better through other mediums. Here are some non-book, free possibilities for self-education in birth work:

Lamaze has an offering called, Push for Your Baby Nurse and Educator Webinar: Arming Women with the Tools to Push for the Safest, Healthiest Birth Possible
Injoy is offering a free webinar: Secrets of a Postpartum Doula: Newborn Care and Soothing Techniques…
And, Maternity Prep is offering a webinar based on The Greatest Pregnancy Ever: The Keys to the Mother-Baby Bond

Edited to add another free webinar from ICEA (with paid contact hour option) that I just learned about:

Prenatal Fitness Webinar

Join us online

Thursday, December 13, from 9-10 pm EST for this new educational offering

worth 1.0 ICEA Continuing Education Credit!!

Click Here to Register

This offering is free for all participants to audit.

The continuing education credit may be purchased after viewing the webinar for $35.00 by clicking here!

Once the credit hour is purchased, print out your receipt for confirmation of your hour earned!

A reader also commented to share that she is enrolled in a free Coursera course on contraception (she also took one that looks great about community change in public health!). There are a variety of interesting looking courses available from well-known institutions in the Coursera offerings under Health & Society and Medical Ethics.

And, for those who do well with auditory learning, I have some podcast recommendations that are available on an ongoing basis:

La Leche League International offers a series of free podcasts, my favorites being:

And, the Motherlove blog has some awesome resources too, including:

Podcast: Preparing for a VBAC, with the president of the International Cesarean Awareness Network
Podcast: Birth on TV and in the movies
Podcast: How can you avoid getting “pushed” into a birth you don’t want?
Podcast: Biological Nurturing and Laid Back Breastfeeding, with Suzanne Colson

(I recommend “laidback breastfeeding” to mothers ALL the time! It can be very helpful in getting breastfeeding off to a good start after birth.)

And, finally there are some great free classes and certificate programs available from Global Health eLearning Center. Many are designed for global audiences and are not specifically geared toward doulas (or even midwives, but more of health workers in general). I particularly enjoyed this class: Healthy Timing and Spacing of Pregnancy

Enjoy! And, if you have favorite recommendations to add, please let me know! (free, please)

Due to reader request, a book recommendation post will soon follow! Past book recommendations can be seen in this post, as well as a postpartum list, and also in my book reviews section.

Anthropology & Miscarriage

Nov26

I recently finished reading a book called Mothers of Thyme: Customs and Rituals of Infertility and Miscarriage and my attention was caught by the explanation of how miscarried babies were viewed by some non-Western cultures:

Anthropologists’ writings reveal that non-Western cultures cultivated a more tender attitude toward miscarriage than Western culture has known. Native American cultures considered unborn children to be human beings…these cultures treated the remains of miscarried babies in the same manner as for adults, by burning or burying them…

Manus women of the Admiralities of New Guinea had similar feelings toward children lost during pregnancy. These women named each baby lost to miscarriage and treated its memory as if it had been a full individual. Years afterward, when reminiscing about their children, these mothers would not distinguish between a miscarriage at three months, a stillborn infant, and a child who died several days after birth. The Ndranirol people of New Guinea also treated miscarried babies as though they had been born full term, naming each child and holding a ceremony to recognize its existence… (p. 72-73)

Noah’s angel bear and necklace

I identified with this section because of how I always want to mention Noah when people ask how many children I have. I usually leave him out and I never fail to feel a pang of regret for ignoring or erasing him in that way. Prior to Alaina’s birth, I used to include him, but now…somehow…it feels easier or simpler to just refer to the children I actually have with me. His birth counted to me. His life counted. And, while he may not have been a fully grown baby, he counted to me. He was/is one of my babies. His heart beat in my body. I felt his tiny kicks. He had fingers and toes and a little jaw that opened. He had closed eyelids with blue eyes beneath them and I saw his little ribcage through his translucently delicate skin. It is this experience that makes me struggle to reconcile my deep belief in women’s reproductive rights, with my deep knowing that this was my baby and he was real. He counted.

Earlier in the book, the author explains that in other cultures women were blamed or viewed with suspicion for having miscarried or for being infertile:

…blamed the problem on poor social graces. Women with this problem were assured that if they tried harder to get along with their female relatives, their chances of conceiving would improve. But sometimes the problem was more serious, such as when the medium determined that an infertile woman was a witch… (p. 31).

This doesn’t seem altogether dissimilar from being told she needs to “just relax” and then she’ll get pregnant, or from legislative attempts to make women prove they had a miscarriage (or, likewise, to withhold abortion from women who are in grave medical condition).

In general this book wasn’t what I expected or hoped for at all. It was basically a compendium of obscure historical and cultural “rituals” of the eat-three-raw-eggs-mixed-with-bat-dung-while-standing-under-the-banana-tree-on-the-new-moon, variety. It contained some things that were really interesting to read about from a historical perspective, particularly with regard to the way out there and funky misinformed beliefs of the health-care-professionals of the day (will we see continuous electronic fetal monitoring in the anthropology books of the future?!), but there was nothing of relevance to creating ceremony/acknowledgement for mothers today. It is definitely a history/anthropology book more than a miscarriage resource.

Strong, Strong…

Nov21

I woke up this morning with this quote running through my head and thinking of a pregnant friend of mine. Since her story is not mine to tell, suffice to say, she had a long and winding road to reach this point and this evening she gave birth at home after having had a cesarean with her first baby! Yay! I’m so excited for her and for their whole family. One part of me just knew she could do it and the other part of me still worried that I was being falsely optimistic. It has happened to me before—that I supported and encouraged and hoped with the mother and despite all those hopes and dreams and wonderful, careful, thoughtful plans, the birth still didn’t go as planned. I also believe that all births are acts of courage and that mothers, whether they push out their babies or not, have the capacity to dig deep and discover strength beyond anything they previously knew. However, just, yay. I’m so happy and excited and relieved for this friend of mine 🙂 The sculpture in the picture is the birth art piece I made after I actually gave birth to my last baby. She captures the pose in which I caught my daughter. My previous photo with this quote was of the pre-birth sculpture I’d made to address my pushing-the-baby-out fears:

Still figuring out the pictures with words app that I got. I love my nature spots in the woods as backgrounds, but they’re too busy and make choosing a text color that actually works almost impossible!

“Childbirth is power in its purest and most natural form–it is wild and uncontrollable and takes us on a journey of surrender. Birth is about so much more than babies being born. It is about a mother finding her inner strength at her most vulnerable and powerful moment, which begins her unique and lifelong journey of mothering that child.”

–Brianna Kauer (in Midwifery Today, issue 103)

And, speaking of thankful birthy goodness, Thanksgiving is tomorrow and that reminded me of an earlier post about the rest and be thankful stage!

I also would like to mention that I have a Talk Birth topic on ScoopIt now. I primarily started it so that it could handily feed into my Talk Birth Facebook, while still leaving a more useable record for me to go back to/repost (things just kind of disappear off the page on Facebook and it can be hard to remember what the heck I’ve shared there if I then want to do a blog post about it). I was introduced to ScoopIt via LinkedIn when I started following a really well-curated topic about E-Learning and Online Teaching. There are very, very few birth-related topics on ScoopIt, so start curating one! It is fun and easy and, as I said, really handy for feeding content into your Facebook page or other media (I experimented yesterday with sending a post directly to WordPress and that worked too!)

I’m also thankful for several days at home to spend with my family and without a long to-do list. I have one final paper to grade tonight and then my calendar is pretty deliciously blank for the next four days! We can really use this. I need a stillpoint, a rest, and some time to spend on the fun things I want to do like wallow in piles of books and make fabulous new sculptures and go sit out in the woods and…and…and…

Thankful for all these people too! And, also thankful for fab new pictures from recent photo session with my friend 🙂

Holistic Women’s Health Emissary Training

Nov20

See on Scoop.it – Talk Birth

Calling all Inspired Women, Life Coaches, Nutritionists, Bodyworkers, Massage Therapists, Dance Teachers, Yoga Instructors, Health Educators, Birthworkers, Holistic Health Professionals, Women’s…

“The Holistic Women’s Health Emissary Training Curriculum Includes:
Part 1: Ecstatic Women’s Cycles

Conscious Anatomy and Geometry for Women’s Health
The Power of a Women’s Womb for Manifestation & Abundance
The Spirit of Our Womb Health for Sensuality & HealthWomb Breathing and Meditation for Healing and AbundanceFertility Awareness & Natural Menstrual Health
The Womb’s Important Role in the Wisdom Years
Our Blood Mysteries as Rites of Passage for the Ecstatic Feminine…”

See on www.karamariaananda.com

—

I’m really intrigued by this training program and I’m toying with the idea of signing up for it! I have a tendency to be somewhat of a training addict though. My first training/certification was as a breastfeeding educator. I followed that with postpartum doula training, LLL Leadership, childbirth educator certification (first with ALACE and then later I also certified with ICEA and CAPPA), and birth doula training. I’m certified as a prenatal fitness educator and trained as a prenatal yoga teacher. I’ve also trained as a birth art facilitator with Birthing from Within. How many of these things am I actually doing?! Ah yes, good point…

BUT! I don’t think education is ever “wasted” and I am informed in my life and writing by all of my past trainings (and, as I re-read my list above I see that in some form or another, I actually AM still doing almost all of these things currently). Also, as I’ve mentioned before, I’m kind of transitioning away from exclusively doing birth work and into “whole women’s life cycle” work and have been for a while now. I still haven’t written a blog post about it, but I became ordained as a priestess in July and I’m focusing a lot of energy on that work now—on women’s rites of passage and on ritual and ceremony planning/facilitation. I feel like this holistic women’s health program may be a bridge between the two…

That said, this is actually just a total experiment in making a blog post via ScoopIt. Did it work?!

Guest Post: A Secular Sabbath

Nov18

This guest post is part of my blog break festival. The festival continues through December, so please check it out and consider submitting a post! Also, don’t forget to enter my birth jewelry giveaway.

I was happy to review Sarah’s book earlier this year and I absolutely love this guest post from her explaining how digital sabbaticals work in her own life. At our own house we have been observing “computer off day” every Sunday for a number of years. It is most excellent—amazing how much “more time” appears in my life when the digital noise is silenced for a spell. I do need to make sure I commit to having Sundays be “app off days” too, because I didn’t have those devices when I started the practice and it is very easy to trick myself into thinking it is okay to check, “just one thing” on Sunday as long as it isn’t on a computer! (Of course, these days I use my i-devices more often than my laptop anyway)

A Secular Sabbath

by Sarah Whedon

“It is one thing to race or be driven by the vicissitudes that menace life, and another thing to stand still and to embrace the presence of an eternal moment.” -Abraham Joshua Heschel in The Sabbath

I love that I had the mental space to generate the idea for this guest post while I was taking a short break from everything to do with blogging.

You see, my dreams at night had begun taking the distressing form of social media streams: Facebook, Twitter, Hootsuite, Google+, GoogleReader, email, Moodle, Skype, WordPress. (Side note: these are all web-based tools with free versions that I use regularly. There, now if you go look one up, reading about taking a break was also productive.)

I spend most of my time at home with young kids, but I also manage to volunteer for a couple of reproductive health and justice organizations, Chair an online seminary department, and manage a blog, because I can do most of it online from home using those apps.

My dreams were a warning sign, though, about how I was managing my time and mental resources. I listened, and I decided that once a week I would observe a social media Sabbath. I originally got the idea of limiting technology use once a week from Michael Pollan, whose version is about greening your lifestyle, which is also appealing.

He, of course, got the Sabbath idea from Jewish tradition, in which the day is a time to rest from work, and focus on family and holy things. Michael Pollan’s version doesn’t borrow much from the rich traditions of Jewish observance, my version isn’t exactly like Michael Pollan’s version, and if you decide to observe a secular sabbath, yours won’t be exactly like mine.

Here’s what I do: from 6:30am to 6:30pm on Fridays I’m officially off social media (in practice it’s usually a few hours longer). I don’t use any of the apps I’ve listed above, nor do I do “just one quick Google search” to look something up that I get curious about. I do use my smart phone to take pictures of my kids, navigate around town, and (gasp) talk to loved ones, because those aren’t the uses that were causing me trouble.

When I observe my version of a secular Sabbath I find that I’m more present all day Friday, and actually all the other days, too. Nobody minds that I’m offline for a day, especially because I set Friday posts to run in advance, and let people know I won’t be available. I don’t dream about social media anymore. And when I step away from the constant input of internet data, I can have my own ideas, like the idea that while Molly is trying to take a bit of a break, I can share how I take my break.

So that’s how I’ve been claiming some rest time each week for the past month or so. Do you take technology fasts or Sabbaths? How do you do it?

Sarah Whedon is Chair of the Department of Theology and Religious History at Cherry Hill Seminary and is the founding editor of Pagan Families: Resources for Pagan Pregnancy and Birth. Sarah’s teaching, research, and advocacy work center around topics of spirituality, feminism, and reproduction. She makes her home in San Francisco with her partner and their children.