I recently made a post to my other blog about books about miscarriage. I wanted to link to the post here as well, because my blogs have different readers and I think it is useful to other childbirth educators to have read some books about miscarriage/childbearing loss and also to have some books available in their own lending libraries.
For the list of miscarriage books I’ve read since November, click here: Books About Miscarriage
At the very end of August, I went to see Birth, the play in St. Louis. I was about 5 weeks pregnant at the time. Following the play and “talkback” event, there was a BOLD Red Tent (birth stories sharing circle). Right before the birth stories portion of the Red Tent, we did a birth art project. The Birthing from Within Mentor who was facilitating the Red Tent asked each of us to draw a symbol on a card that communicated what we would want to share with other women about birth—not in words, but a visual representation of the message we’d like to share. We then painted our symbols onto prayer flags to be strung together as a whole “language of birth” in symbols. We left the flags with her to be taken to births to share the symbols with other birthing mamas. I drew a spiral and explained that the message I was sharing was, “You can do it. You’re okay. Let it happen.” I also added a little birth goddess with wild hair that to me represents the intuitive birth wisdom women carry with them (when I was pregnant with my first baby I was worried about being too “in my head” to give birth powerfully–I created a series of needled felted sculptures of birth goddesses with wild hair and worried that the hair showed that I was too in my head. After he was born, I realized that my sculptures were telling me about the wild, natural, birth wisdom I had in my head, not the “book learning” that was also there and was what I had worried about interfering with the flow of birth).
A few days following my miscarriage in November, I received a Facebook message from the BfW mentor (and friend) who had facilitated the Red Tent session. She attached a photo of the flag I had painted during the Birth Art session and asked me to “allow the gift to come and sit with you” (as well as gifting me with “no response necessary”).
It was amazing to have my own birth symbol come back to “speak” to me in this way during such a painful (and also transformative) time.
“You can do it. You’re okay. Let it happen.”
To my ongoing collection (previously posted to my Facebook fan page, but sharing here as well. There are some grief/miscarriage quotes mixed in as well):
“Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.” Pooh’s Little Instruction Book (added by a Facebook fan in response to the above)
(Butterfly & the Cesarean story link shared by a Facebook fan)
Prompted by the above:
When my two children were babies, I struggled through many a bath with them in a shallow little white plastic baby tub. It was hard to keep the baby warm in the water and it was also hard on my back to lean over the big bathtub to bathe them. We actually preferred sink baths (which are quite m
essy). Bathing together in a big tub was not an option because we didn’t have one available.
So, I was delighted to recently discover a new type of tub for infants and to receive one for review purposes—The Tummy Tub has an appearance similar to large bucket with a flared out top. It can hold a nice level of water to keep the baby comfortable, but still safe. The idea is that it duplicates some of the elements of being in the womb for babies, thus making the bathing experience more pleasant for everyone. You can also purchase a separate little stool/stand for the Tummy Tub so that you can sit comfortably with it instead of leaning over and straining your back.
I’m pleased to have this new resource available to show to my clients. During our last week of classes when we cover postpartum, newborn care, and breastfeeding, I bring along a variety of products to demonstrate and let parents see and touch and experiment with hands-on. I bring a variety of baby carriers, plenty of cloth diapers, and now a Tummy Tub as well.
…you come in from getting the mail and this is what you see:
I most often write blog posts directed at pregnant women, not birth professionals (though I hope the pros find my posts useful as well!). Via the excellent Passion for Birth blog this morning, I read this article that is very relevant to childbirth educators.
The article addresses how educators/presenters can attempt to cram three hours worth of information into 1 and half minutes and how that is NOT effective or helpful. They do so out of fear that this is their “only chance” to reach those learners (but the cramming style actually does not reach learners either).
Ugh. I found myself cringing a bit when reading because I think I have this tendency for sure. It was also relevant to me in my non-birthwork life. I am faculty at Columbia College and am teaching my first college class this session (final exam tonight!). All of the principles in the article are things I strive to keep in mind when teaching college students as well (and sometimes I succeed and sometimes I fail. The actual class is 5 hours a night—though now six, because I missed one week and made it up sequentially over the following 5 weeks of class—which makes it tricky to keep people engaged, though also gives me plenty of time not to be cramming information into people’s heads).
Anyway, so the summary of points from the article (OMG. I’m taking a metaphorical three hours to get to my point…;-) were as follows:
Learners want relevance
Learners don’t care about history
Learners want minimal detail
Learners want connections
Learners want focus
Learners want applications
Learners want practice
I remember reading somewhere else at some point (I think during my ICEA certification process), that most learners do NOT want the amount of information and level of detail that you can provide. The first three on my list above are things I find myself falling into in birth education—I tend to give lots of details and some end up being irrelvant (I don’t want anyone to miss anything!) and I do have a tendency to give lots of history, background, and overexplanation.
So, good things to keep in mind! I want to be effective, not inefficient or irrelevant. I have been thinking a lot lately about my classes and how I’d like to improve them and change them and “deepen” them. Reading this article made me think even further about my approach and what I hope to accomplish. I have this sense lately that something just isn’t “working” and I want to go beyond—stretch my boundaries and dig in further.
Only about a week following my miscarriage, I received a review copy of a new book by Heather Cushman-Dowdee (also known as Hathor the Cowgoddess). I have a pile of birth-related books waiting for me to review. However, I found that this soon post-miscarriage when I go to read them, my heart just isn’t in it, and I set them down again. However, Heather’s book was a different experience. Titled Simply Give Birth, the book is a beautiful collection of powerful birth stories (mostly unassisted births). When I got the book, I thought, “well, I’ll just flip through this a bit, even though my heart isn’t in it.” Well, I was instantly entranced in spite of myself. I didn’t finish reading it that week, but I picked it back up the following week and read it all the way through. What a treasure. It was very, very good and I really recommend it.
As I have briefly referenced here, I was struck by how the experience of “unassisted natural home miscarriage” parallels that of unassisted birth. Immediately after my body released my little baby, I felt strong and brave and powerful and like, “wow! I did it!” even though the outcome was not what I ever planned for or wanted. I rarely see feelings like that expressed in the many hospital/D & C miscarriage stories I’ve been reading lately and I feel happy that I was able to give myself and my baby the gift of “letting go” in our own dear home.
Reading Heather’s introduction about telling a new story about birth made me think there are new stories to be told about miscarriage as well. She says about the stories she selected for her book: “…all birth stories…prove what can be done. We can birth our babies and relish it too. We’re not stoic or fanatical, we’re mothers doing what mothers have always done, giving birth; with grace and spirit, and chutzpah, and moxie…they shared their grief, their passions, their exhaultation, and their fears. It takes massive courage to write about this most personal of moments with such candor and intensity and then be willing to share…”
Simply Give Birth is simply amazing. If hope you are lucky and find it in your Christmas stocking this year. If you don’t, or if you just can’t wait to read it, pop on over to the website and buy it ASAP!
I am a writer by nature and I have many things I’d still like to share, say, and explore about my third pregnancy which ended in miscarriage at 14 weeks. I keep hesitating to let the words come though, because this doesn’t feel like the right place to do it. Writing is healing for me–it helps me process, to learn, and to work through my emotions and thoughts. I HAVE to do it. I’m compelled. But, I’m not going to do it here. I started a new blog here instead. I will continue to write about birth and childbirth education via this blog and I’m not keeping the two—experiences or blogs—“secret” from each other. There will be overlap and shared links, I’m sure. I’ve just realized that if I’m going to be able to share openly in the way that I wish to, I must separate those posts from business website/blog. And, I need for only those who are interested to read it—rather than being “forced” to here or feeling like I’m “dwelling” too much.
I need to separate it too so that I don’t feel as if I’m continuing to ask my friends, my Facebook fans, blog readers, and clients to show sympathy for me or try to bolster my self-esteem by telling me how “great” I am (;-D) or being sort of forced to continue to reassure me. I have really appreciated the supportive comments on Facebook, but I almost feel like my pass on telling this story is expiring to the average person and I’d rather that they only read what I continue to need to say about this of their own free will, rather than having it piped into their Facebook feed. Why not just write in my journal then? (Indeed, I did write 19 pages in my journal about this birth/miscarriage.) Because, most of the time when I write, I write to share—“gathering and sharing information” is part of my life purpose and writing and sharing about this miscarriage experience is no different than my desire to share other birth information and experiences. So, follow me as you will…
My life has taken a sad and unexpected turn. I was 14 weeks and 4 days pregnant with my third baby and we found out on Friday afternoon that the baby had died. Very early Saturday morning, he was born at home. Though it was different in some ways than a full-term birth, my experience of miscarriage was very much a birth–my water broke, I had normal contractions for about two hours, the baby was born (about 4 inches, well formed with eyelids, fingers, toes, mouth that opened, etc.), we saw the tiny umbilical cord, and so forth. I was surprised to discover that some of the same feelings of empowerment were also present after a “natural home miscarriage” as with a natural home birth–I felt strong and brave and like “I did it myself!” as well as amazed at how well my body worked and knew what to do. We learned the baby was our third boy and named him Noah.
I have a number of feelings and observations that I would like to share about this birth experience, but I’m not sure if this blog is the “appropriate” place to do so, because this is also my business website and I don’t want to “scare” any prospective clients away by being sad. There are a lot of losses that accompany the loss of a baby and one of the ones that is hard for me is that my life is devoted to helping women give birth with confidence, strength, and joy and to embrace pregnancy and birth as wonderful events. It is sad to me to now be a source of fear/elevated perception of risk—“if it could happen to her, it could happen to me!” Kind of like I’ve become a “bad omen” instead of a source of encouragement. 😦
One thing I do want to share about the birth of my third baby is that earlier that afternoon I’d received a package from Taylor’s Scarlet Thread. I had ordered a bonnet and apron from them for a Kirsten costume (Kirsten is an American Girl doll) for myself. They sent along a little lavender sachet as a free gift with my order. When my labor began, for some reason I wanted the sachet and held and smelled it throughout my labor. I also used it to kind of revive myself when I felt like I was fainting several times afterwards. I talked to the baby and to myself before I started having regular contractions telling myself and the baby that we need to “let go” of each other and that it was time to let go. During the labor, I chanted to myself, “let go, let go, let go” and smelled my sachet. Several days later, I was reading a book about miscarriage and it had some aromatherapy suggestions in it. It listed lavender for “letting go”…
Continuing my semi-regular addition of birth quotes I’ve used on the Talk Birth Facebook page recently.
Talk Birth 