Love-Knowledge Baby

Dear Whoever-You-Are (Mom, Husband, Friend, etc.),

To begin, I’d like to say that I understand your perspective.  You love your family or friend.  You love your pregnant wife, the mother of your grandchildren, or whoever she is to you.  Whatever the situation, it starts with love and concern.

You’re standing back, wondering why she wants to do this “natural childbirth thing” when everyone else knows that birth is dangerous and that’s why we let doctors handle it.  Right?  That’s the norm.  We go to the hospital, and a lot of times bad things happen, so it’s good that the doctors and equipment are there.

Are you nodding your head?  Are you thinking that enduring labor without drugs is unnecessary?  Why should your loved one suffer through an experience that is, by nature, painful?  Why would she WANT to?  And as for homebirth, it’s just crazy . . . right?  What does a midwife know that an OB doesn’t?  Isn’t it riskier?

At some point, you have to take your love and concern and use it to fuel actual research.  I’m saying this as nicely as I can:  Get off your butt, and take a look at maternal and fetal mortality rates in the United States as opposed to other countries.  We are NOT doing so hot.  We rank far below Sweden, Japan, and other countries (which utilize homebirth, midwifery, and woman-centered care).

The latest articles coming out say that the maternal mortality rate in the world is going down, everywhere except the US, where it is rising.  Another two studies put mothers and babies at 3 times the risk for death if subjected to a Cesarean Section.  The average C-section rate of a normal patient cared for by a midwife in our country is 5% or less.  The average C-section rate of a normal patient under the care of an OB is going to be 30% or higher, depending on region and individual practice.

Some states have an average rate of almost 40%.  That means, if you lined up 10 healthy pregnant ladies, 3 – 4 of them would probably have C-sections.  The World Health Organization suggests that Cesareans should be 15% or less.  Any higher, and more harm is being done than good.  In our country, Cesareans are an epidemic.

Can it be that bad?  If it were that terrible, why would it keep happening?  I can trust OUR doctor, right?  That’s where the “Get off your butt” part comes in.  You hit Google, and you tell me.  Look for actual peer reviewed studies.  Look for documentaries about birth.  Look for articles.

But really, you don’t need to do that, if you don’t want.  The only resource you REALLY need to take advantage of is right next to you.  She’s been there all along, and she needs your support and love.  If she says she wants a “natural childbirth,” it’s not about a hippy idea of having a good experience (though that’s a GREAT side effect of laboring and birthing as your body was designed to).  It’s about safety, avoiding unnecessary interventions, keeping mom and baby healthy, giving them the best start, and trying to preserve a woman’s basic human right to choose how to birth.

The only research you need is a heartfelt conversation with the woman whose motives and desires you’ve been questioning.  Do you really think she CAN’T think for herself?  Do you really think she’d choose something that could affect her health and her baby’s health without care and consideration?  Do you trust her?

If she says she doesn’t want pain medication, trust that maybe she knows that she wants to feel the labor and birth process and let nothing interfere with the impact of the first few moments of bonding between her and the baby.  Trust that she might know that drugs and epidurals can lead to a multitude of complications that no natural labor could.  Trust that she is willing to trust her own body, and that she needs YOUR unquestioning, unflagging support—because you’re supposed to be there to back her up when her own determination wavers.

Trust her when she says she wants to see a midwife instead of an OB.  Trust that she has thought about what kind of care she wants, what fits HER life, and what will hopefully work out best for her.  So what if other people keep choosing to go to the hospital. Evidence points toward increased complications due to unnecessary interventions and iatrogenic (doctor-caused) injuries, and the last few years C-section rates have been steadily climbing . . . as has the rate of homebirth in response.

Yes, you can trust an OB—as a trained surgeon.  They want the best for you.  Most doctors are doing their job and trying to help, but when you consider that their training and background starts with the idea that birth is inherently dangerous, that they are trained to look for problems, that most of them have never seen a normal birth (with a woman fully mobile, not drugged, supported physically and emotionally, birthing upright or in whatever position suits her, and without maternal-infant separation), and that their jobs rely on having problems to deal with . . . you start to understand the fuller picture of birth in our country.

Yes, trust the doctors when something has gone wrong.  But first trust the woman and her baby.  Her body is amazing, and fully capable.  Trust in the process enough to give that woman and that baby a fair chance at having the best birth, the best start to life, the most natural and ideal labor and birth, and the most fulfilling experience.

Remember where we began this journey?  It all starts with your love and concern for that mother and that baby.  Convey that love and concern to her, but don’t question her motives.  Your support matters SO much, and she’s doing all the hard work of carrying and bearing the child.  Don’t pull the rug out from underneath her because you’re scared.

Birth IS scary, but that why we women need unquestioning, unwavering support from our loved ones.  Because a woman can birth her baby, without gadgets, without people shouting at her to count to ten—We are stronger than you think.  And if THAT is what you’re afraid of, and you’d rather tear her down, just stay away.

She doesn’t need your negativity.

My hips percuss the air, my ankles flexing, my knees bent and pumping like pistons.  My arms are up, fingers and forearms curved and flowing.  I am standing straighter than I do in life — shoulders square, my chin up, my eyes bright, and the corners of my lips curling up of their own accord.

I’ve been taking a lot of time to process this, and I wanted to share something with you. I wanted to let you know that I have never complained about and will never complain about the pain of childbirth.

There are plenty of reasons, of course. When I was laboring at home, in and out of the pool, I didn’t experience anything more painful than period cramps. The natural sensation of laboring is much more intense than period cramps, but I didn’t experience any pain worse than those I’d experienced before on a monthly basis.

Some women labor very painfully, and I acknowledge that. I’m not diminishing your experience if you had an extremely painful childbirth. I’m just saying that my birth experience has never been about pain.

That is a good reason not to complain about the pain of labor, but that is not the reason I choose conscientiously to abstain from that verbal jockeying.

Labor and “contractions” can actually be wonderful sensations. If a woman is supported physically, mentally, and emotionally, labor can feel like rushes and expansions. Labor can be pleasurable, interesting, empowering, satisfying, and, for some women, orgasmic. Knowing that I could have tried to re-frame my experience to be “a most interesting sensation to which I owe my full attention” as Ina May Gaskin suggests, is a good enough reason to avoid complaining about the “pain” of childbirth. Again, that is not my reason.

The fear and terror that our culture has instilled in us regarding the pain of childbirth NEEDS to be addressed. Grantly Dick-Read found the social expectation of pain during labor to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Uneducated women associated with the poor classes during his time showed him that childbirth can be matter-of-fact, calm, and safer without an overwhelming fear which, according to Dick-Read, has negative physiological effects which cause and reinforce pain in the uterus.  The upper class women “knew” that childbirth hurt and that they were ill suited to the activity on the merit of their delicacy.  Unsurprisingly, Dick-Read’s observations showed upper class women in hysterics and great amounts of resulting pain, often needing chloroform.

Reassuring young women (and actually ANYONE) that labor does not have to be mindlessly painful and frightening is a worthy cause, but it is not the reason I will never complain about the pain of childbirth.

Complaint itself is a negative form of communication, but it’s a time-honored tradition.  How else would we let off some steam, tell our best friends about our frustrations, or get to hear how ridiculous our own complaints are once they are voiced?  Sometimes complaining is the beginning of necessary change.  Unfortunately, complaint is addictive and oftentimes just reinforces the negative thought patterns, excacerbates the situation, and lets us goad ourselves into acting in unwise ways.

Is it a distinction of classification that I am making when I say that I will never complain about the pain of childbirth?  Unfortunately, I wish that were true, but it is not.  I want the right to complain about childbirth if I so choose.  I’m not saying that I just don’t like to complain.

I will never complain about the pain of childbirth — Are you ready? — because it was STOLEN from me.

That’s right.  Someone took that option from me.  Everything was fine and dandy when we transferred.  Then things started happening, spiraling out of control.  It’s true that I made the call to start the Pitocin on the advice of my midwife.  It was my choice, and thus I have never regretted it or had nightmares about it.

We went in to the hospital, having labored for days, and my midwife was met with such hostility and suspicion that she broke our signed contract and left the hospital instead of supporting me as a doula in that setting.  She advised me not to allow the observation period and to ask for the Pitocin as soon as possible.

The nurse who was assigned to us was heavily pregnant herself.  She was kind and chatty, and absolutely amazed at how well I handled contractions as far along as I was.  She couldn’t believe how my husband and I held hands, looked into each other’s eyes, and breathed through each contraction.  She asked if we had taken classes or something.  In almost the same breath she’d used to praise my ability to cope, she began to sing the praises of epidurals.  She said, “I would never go through this without an epidural.  Lots of women come to the hospital wanting a natural birth, but they’re so glad to have the epidural when it gets bad.  Sometimes it’s too late to get it, or we have to hunt the doctor down to write up the script and that takes too long.  Why don’t I just have him write it up now, so you can have it immediately when you need it?”

I just nodded at her and let her do what she wanted.  It was easier than arguing with her.  In fact, before my midwife left, the last advice she gave me was to ask for an epidural.  I just nodded at her too.  I think she was more frightened at that point than I was, and NO WAY IN HELL was I getting a needle shoved into my back.  I was in labor, and thus unable to verbalize my extreme aversion to pain “relief.”  It didn’t seem to matter then, because I knew that I wasn’t going to ask for an epidural.

I appreciate the sensations which occur in my body.  I have never just sought to escape from the useful feedback of my sensory network.  I do not take pain pills for headaches, cramps, or anything.  I work through it.  I love my body, care for the temple which houses my soul, and (like a mother who understands that her baby’s crying has significance) attend my body’s needs, using the information that pain provides.  I believe that I have a healthy relationship to my body and the idea of pain.

It is my right to say no to an epidural.  It is my right to say no to sex.  It is my right to say no to anything that anyone wants to do to me.  I am my own person.  As I respect myself and others, so should they respect themselves and me.  I have as much right to say no to pain relief as you have right to ask for yours.  To believe that my “no” means less than your “yes” is a gross injustice.

While I labored at home, I felt nothing worse than period cramps.  When I got to the hospital, the nurse was AMAZED at how well I coped.  My answer to that is that I didn’t have much to cope with.  I was laboring naturally, except for the long delay in progress.  I asked for the Pitocin drip, and I still felt at least a little in control of the situation.

As the drip was started in my IV, I turned to the nurse and said, “I’ve read that Pitocin contractions are much more painful than normal labor contractions?  Is that true?”  She couldn’t answer me, and in hindsight, I realize that she probably did not know the answer to that question.  She had likely never seen a woman labor without Pit streaming through her veins.  It took a little while, but my body answered my question.  Pitocin contractions have nothing to do with labor.

Pitocin is not a natural product in your body.  Your brain cannot regulate the levels of Pitocin in your body, as it can oxytocin.  Yes, it hurts more.  It hurts worse.  There’s a huge difference between a good kind of pain, like the burn and tingle associated with exercise, and bad pain, like when someone is enraged and hitting you with a baseball bat.  Normal labor is like an orchestrated crescendo, each wave cresting and receding, all leading up to a peak when you crown and birth.  I had experienced labor that made sense, and pitocin was like being elbowed in the face in a mosh pit.

Let’s make this clear.  I owned this pain.  I am not complaining about it.  I am explaining, as clearly as I can, the difference between laboring naturally and laboring augmented with Pitocin as I experienced it.  Pitocin contractions were one on top of the next, sometimes there would be a small rest, then three contractions all on top of one another.  There was no time to get a breath.  There was no resting and getting ready for the next wave.  There was no use in breathing, holding hands, or eye contact.  There was nothing but force upon force.

I had asked for Pitocin, but I didn’t know at the time that I could have asked them to start it, then lower the levels to see if my labor could pick up on it’s own.  I wasn’t prepared to deal with the beauracracy and hardships associated with being “allowed” to walk around, or get into other positions to labor, so the pain was intensified by lithotomy position.  I lay on my back, tied down with fetal monitors, rolling back and forth and writhing like an over-turned turtle.

I had back labor.  The nurse and my mother took turns applying pressure on my back, and I thanked them.  I don’t remember if I was making noises, or how I was dealing with those contractions, but I did NOT want an epidural.  My mother and the nurse started trying to talk me into an one.  The doctor’s order was already written up.  All I had to do was say the word, and someone would come shove a needle into my spine to thread a plastic tube of numbing solution into my dural tube.

Who would this have helped, I wonder?  Me, who was just focused on the moment, living second by second, vocalizing naturally as an aid (the only one at my disposal) to labor . . . or the two women who were getting more and more stressed out by their lack of control over the situation?  One, a mother who doesn’t know the first thing about being a birth assistant, and the other a nurse used to an almost 100 percent epidural rate in the women she is paid to attend?

They started rationalizing.  They asked me why I didn’t want an epidural.  The nurse said it was safe, normal.  It would help.  My mom was saying, “You can’t do this any more!  You’re too tired!  You won’t be able to push when the time comes!”  The nurse interjected that there were other alternatives like IV pain medications.  She started spouting technical information about how safe and wonderful, etc.  My mom began yelling at me again.

My poor shell-shocked husband had been sent to the couch to sleep, and after a period of several consecutive days up, he slept like the dead.  I sweated and moaned through Pitocin-augmented back labor, twisting the sheets with my legs as I tried to find a comfortable position, and their voices continued.  My mother became increasingly desperate, and the nurse stuck close with quietly voiced suggestions.

I kept shaking trying to ignore them.  Then I started to shake my head, no.  Then I started to SAY, “No.”  And I had to keep saying it.  Even as the senseless onslaught of synthetic hormone caused my uterus to contract painfully over and over without rest, battering my poor unborn child, I had to keep saying, “No!”

Fentanyl. It’s harmless.  A step down from an epidural.  Do it.  You can’t any more.  You can do this anymore.  You’re too tired.  You’re in too much pain.  You will be too tired to push.  To be fair, the nurse had brought up the suggestion of the Fentanyl, but my mother was the cheerleader determined to bring the suggestion home.  The nurse watched as my mother continued to harangue me into submission.

I remember her screaming in my face, and I interruped her by saying, “I DON’T WANT IT –” and she interrupted me again.  “– BUT!  But, I’ll DO IT.  Just stop screaming!  I’ll take it!”

I gave in.

I had so carefully prepared the way for my child.  I thoroughly researched birth and birth interventions.  I had chosen Pitocin with a clear conscience, having researched it.  I knew what Pitocin was, what it could do, and how it worked.  As a college grad with a passion for biology and health issues, I had absorbed a good deal of information about birth.

Fentanyl was not on the list.  Neither was violation of informed consent or how to counter coercion techniques used on a laboring woman.  It’s something so very simple, isn’t it?  You know the meaning of the word.  Am I talking about the word “pain?”  Guess again.

I’m talking about the word, “No.”

I will never complain about the pain of childbirth because it was stolen from me.  I don’t remember much after that moment of capitulation.  The world becomes hazy.  I lose time.  Someone took my glasses.  Upped levels on Pit.  Topped off my Fentanyl.  I have nightmares in which I ask my mommy to tell them that “It’s wearing off . . .” and I can feel the pain coming back, and I get sick and disgusted with myself.

Every time I read a certain book with my son, and we hit the page “I’m as weak as a kitten.”  . . . that’s what I think about.  Me, tied to a hospital bed, weak as a kitten, mewling for more IV pain relief so that my mommy can save me again.  I’m sure she loved being the savior.  Did I imagine these scenarios?  I don’t know.  I NEVER want to ask, because I’m afraid that they’re true.  The world faded away, and I lost myself.

All of a sudden, it was time to push.  (In fact, many hours had passed before he crowned.)  Welcome to the world, dear son.  Your mother was drugged against her will, but she probably liked it and needed it.  The nurse thought so, and so did your grandma.  You were born with your mother’s blood pouring over your crown from her episiotomy (another procedure to which she did not consent).

I could have had a good birth.  I DID have a good birth, at least the first part.  It wasn’t spectacular, but up until the point that certain individuals failed to respect my right to say no, it wasn’t anything I would have had nightmares about.  I have no intrusive memories of laboring at home, or being admitted to the hospital, or saying good bye to my midwife.

Beginning after a honeymoon period of a few months, I had flashbacks, couldn’t relax, startled way too easily, insomnia, and volleyed back and forth between extreme obsession and extreme aversion to all things birth related.  Added to the struggle of being a new mother was the struggle of being a survivor.  A week living like a ghost at the mercy of the NICU, waiting and waiting to finally meet my son could only solidify the Stockholm Syndrome.

I became a traitor to everything I knew.  Only hours after the birth, I cried and shook hands with the neonatologist my mother said saved my baby.  He scolded me for attempting a home birth, and asked “What were you thinking?” in a South African accent, his dark face hovering in my hazy memories, the remembrance of a stranger staring at me as I pushed my son into the world amidst raised voices.  I cried on his hands as I shook them.

I deferred to the doctors, the nurses, and the system to such an extreme degree that I didn’t even THINK to ask to hold my son.  I just visited him endlessly at his little plastic incubator and dared only to touch him the way the nurses instructed us.  On the third day of his life, while I sat there looking at him, a NICU nurse asked, “Oh, have you held him yet?” as if it were an after-thought! I just shook my head no, and she scooped him up carefully, wires and all, and placed him into my arms, a moment that I will never forget.

So, I have not complained about the pain of childbirth.  Unless I earn the right to complain or abstain from complaint by trial of labor, I can not complain about the pain of childbirth because someone took my choice away.  I experienced pain during my labor.  Then I experienced an artificial pain on top of that.

My RIGHT TO CHOOSE was taken from me . . . and because of that, I cannot ever complain about the pain of labor.  I can’t claim to know what it truly feels like to birth my son, the moment of crowning (the so called “ring of fire”) or the intense expulsion reflex which comes in a trembling rush of adrenaline . . . I can’t claim to know these things.  I wouldn’t have chosen to birth this way just like I wouldn’t have chosen to lose my virginity drugged or stoned out of my mind.

We are supposed to be rewarded by the physical activities which help keep us alive and propagate our species:  eating, having sex, eliminating, labor and birth, breastfeeding.  All of these things are miraculously designed with positive biological feedback systems.  Unless there is something WRONG, these things are supposed to feel good.  A fully engaged, active birth which is pleasurable for the mother is ultimately the healthiest scenario for mother an baby.

This is not an issue of some women thinking they deserve a certain “experience” of childbirth.  This is about sexual and reproductive rights, evidence based medicine, and most of all, it is about basic human respect.

It’s an unfortunate situation when pregnant women have to discuss informed consent (which translates practically to informed refusal) with their OB’s, brief their husbands on their wishes, and hire labor guards in the form of doulas.  It’s an even worse situation when none of these precautions can guarantee that everyone you come in contact with will make the right choice at the critical moment.

From something as simple as trying to massage a woman in labor without her permission, to internal exams or surgical procedures, the best thing to do is to ask gently and listen patiently at every step.  The KEY to avoiding childbirth-triggered PTSD is to make sure that the laboring mother feels in control.  Make sure she gets a choice in the matter, and she won’t have nightmares which prevent her from being the best mother she can be.

Even if there’s a time crunch, give as much information as possible and wait for the OK.  Tell her, “This is what I think would be the best thing to do right now.  What do you think?”

You know the meaning of the word “no.”  Why should it mean less when a laboring mother says it?  No means NO.  Silence is NOT consent.  Always ask permission at every step, listen to, and respect the answer to your receive.  If you’re not prepared to do that, you have no place in the birth room, and I surely hope that you are not a health care professional.

And for God’s Sake, never just assume that anyone is a good choice to lend labor support!  Choose your labor assistants very carefully and make sure you’re all on the same wave length!

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Time to use your critical thinking skills.  What’s wrong with THIS article?  Discuss.

The Experiment: Rubber Band as Perineum With and Without Episiotomy
Take one of those really thick rubber bands, like the kind they wrap around the stalk of broccoli at the grocery store. Put your fingers inside it and stretch it out. That is a perineum (aka, cervix and vagina, a baby’s entrance from the womb to the outside world).

Stretch it quite a lot, and see how it resists, thins, and opens. Then gently let go of the tension of your arms and hands, and watch the “O” of the rubber band shrink back into it’s original shape. You could fit something quite a lot larger than it’s contracted diameter through the opening WITHOUT hurting the rubber band, don’t you think?

If you want to, go ahead and ask someone else to push a large round object through the rubber band opening as you stretch it wide. If your rubber band is not rotted, old, or previously injured (nicks or cuts), you should have no problem pushing something through that opening which is twice or thrice the diameter of the opening of the band before stretching.

Now, let’s see what an “episiotomy” does to “help” a large round object pass through the opening. Get a pair of scissors, and ask for your partner to help you. Start passing the round object through the opening of the rubber band, stretching it as you go. Now, before the main mass of the object passes through the rubber band, have your partner take the scissors and snip 1/3rd the width of the band (1/3rd of the width is to simulate the average degree of episiotomy).

The theory behind episiotomies is that they help make the opening wider to facilitate a faster birth (because we’re assuming a faster birth is automatically safer . . . which it isn’t), and that a controlled surgical cut heals better than a natural tear (which it doesn’t).

You’d better be wearing safety goggles and thick gloves for this part of the experiment, because the rubber band will very likely tear in the spot that the “episiotomy” was performed, possibly snap back on your hands or in your face . . . The cut meant to widen the opening to assist has created a structural weakness in the elastic sphincter, and the chances of a woman’s perineum tearing increases FOUR TIMES when an episiotomy is performed!

Experiment Variation: Paper as Perineum
If you don’t have a thick rubber band, you certainly have a piece of paper. Take a sheet of paper and pinch opposite edges between your thumbs and forefingers. Tug in opposite directions gently but firmly. The edge of the paper becomes taut and straight. Now take your scissors and snip a small cut along the top edge which you’ve been putting tension on. Put your fingers back in the same position and apply the same pressure you did before, pulling away from the center. You will most likely find that the paper tears easily at the weakest point: where you applied your scissors.

How to Avoid Tearing and Work With Your Perineum
If you don’t want to tear when you have a baby, practice squatting. If you can get into a nice deep squat to have your baby, this position naturally preserves your perineum. Even a supported, half-squat will do, if you aren’t that flexible.

You can also do perineal massage before labor to help elasticity (please use a natural oil or a good lubricant). Another thing to do is to make sure you don’t push before you’re ready. Even resisting the initial urges to push and waiting until you body does the pushing without your conscious consent is a good way for some women to slow the crowing and preserve the perineum. Pressure with a cloth soaked in hot water and olive oil as the baby crowns also helps some ladies preserve their perineum (and also feels REALLY GOOD for some people during that stage).

One of the best things I’ve learned (after the fact) about preserving the perineum is to laugh, smile, or make out with someone. Relaxing your mouth sphincter helps to relax and open up the corresponding perineal sphincter. One of the greatest ways a labor attendant can predict a woman tearing is to watch her face and mouth. If it’s tight, hard, white from tension, grimaced, or frowning . . . you’d better get her to loosen up, or get out your sutures.

Extrapolations and Further Thoughts
How does it make you feel that you could walk into any hospital, and they’re likely to perform this arbitrary genital mutilation instead of simply letting a woman walk around, labor as she wishes, comforting her, making her smile and keeping her hopes up and her body relaxed throughout labor . . . ? Also, a pregnant woman can go into any hospital and request major abdominal surgery and be faced with no argument. Why is it legal to request a C-section when it does harm?

C-sections are there because we need to save some babies and some mothers . . . but the World Health Organization (and independent studies) says that C-section rates should be 15% or less. Any higher than that, and we’re causing more mother and infant DEATHS than otherwise! How do some midwifery practices achieve C-section rates so much lower than the typical OB practice? Different, lower risk women? That’s demographically unsupported, especially since women who want natural births but are termed “high risk” (women over 35, women who are “obese,” and many others) often seek out the latent management of midwives BECAUSE they don’t want to be automatic C-sections!

Can a healthy man (not ill what so ever) ask a doctor to cut him open and be taken seriously? Nope. They won’t risk it, and they might think about their Hippocratic Oath. They might refer him to the psyche ward, but they wouldn’t perform abdominal surgery on him. Why should it be any different with a healthy pregnant woman? I don’t think women should have C-sections for anything other than TRUE emergencies, just like I don’t think a woman on welfare should get loans to be artificially impregnated with octuplets while unable to care for her existing offspring.

To be completely fair, most of the women who walk into the hospital requesting a C-section are actually there because they were bullied and frightened into having a C-section with their previous birth, and now they’re told they have no choice but to have another C-section because VBACs (Vaginal Birth After Cesarean) aren’t supported by OB’s because of the risk of uterine rupture (actually because the insurance companies charge out the BUM for any doctor willing to touch VBACs, making it nearly impossible for OB’s to support a trial of labor). The risk of Uterine Rupture? 1 in 200, and that’s cited as TOO HIGH a risk to take with the life of the woman and baby.

Compare this to the risk of now-routine test called the amniocentesis (to check for Down’s Syndrome and other genetic abnormalities) which CAN cause rupture of membranes and termination of the fetus? This test is highly supported and suggested for all pregnancies with a very low risk of only 1 in 200 cases. Seriously.

What do you think?
No, really. What do you think about all this?

We spend our lives hiding from the divinity within us, separating our faith from our practical lives. We eat badly, filling our temple with toxins. We drug ourselves senseless instead of preventing harm. We birth in fear, and we fear death.

For some people, there is a moment where the illusion of life shatters, revealing the true nature of existence.  Pregnancy and birth has, for me, lifted the veils of illusion, allowing me to see the open doors which allow faith, spirituality, and the divine to embody every practical moment, renewing with every day my son grows and learns, and every second I spend as his mother.

Faith is not an evidence based practice. It’s all a matter of interpretation. Scientists do not know what causes a few molecules strung together to form the tiniest living organisms, mere strings of amino acids with just fragments of RNA. We don’t know what separates us from the rest of the Universe, but we swear by the labels which define our world.

In essence, every day is an act of faith.

Birth was the crucible for my pragmatic faith, and I came out the other side a woman instead of a girl, a mother instead of a child, and an individual of immense surety instead of doubt.

What comes with an ultimate faith in the Universe, my own body, and the divine plan of love, is a great unending joy which I can choose to reach out and fill myself with. Many times I forget I have access to this, and I get caught up in the stress and worry of my life, but I can never fully lose that measure of peace. The door in my soul is open, and it cannot be locked shut again.

Before I was a mother, what faith I had was not solidified. It had no practical application in my life. As a pregnant woman, I learned the wonders and mysteries of true magic, and found that spirituality can have a very pragmatic face. My faith grew roots and took hold in the simple wonder of pregnancy, the possibilities represented in birth, and the discoveries of motherhood.

I had never felt God before I was pregnant.
I had thought God before, but I had never felt God.

My normal worries, thoughts, compulsions, and fears gave way in the face of the experience of living a miracle. Still I was unable to listen to my true intuitive voice and trust in Birth, so I wasn’t totally free of the illusions of life: webs of fear, desire for praise, fear of punishment and failure . . .

My midwife asked me what I envisioned birth to be and what I wanted it to be. I couldn’t answer her. I just told her something non-committal like, “I don’t know” or “I can’t imagine it” . . . Hindsight tells me I was being a coward. I really needed to tell her that I didn’t need her. I needed to tell my midwife that I wanted to seclude myself, and that my fantasies of the perfect birth included only my husband. I was blocked from those realizations, kept those fears and declarations to myself, and tried to avoid being disrespectful of my midwife.

I was deferring to her authority, and she wasn’t even demanding it. I’m sure she would have appreciated being a labor companion, a helper, and a trusted friend. I didn’t allow myself to let anyone fulfill that position.

A lot of training goes into making a good Chinese girl. A lot of negative energy, shame, guilt, and shocking silence formed my self-identity. I dreamed of birthing alone, in my own power, but I didn’t believe in that . . . I just went along with the assumption that people HAVE to have birth attendants.

I didn’t work through fears, didn’t voice them, pushed them away, and convinced myself that negative thoughts and energy would sabotage my birth. Unfortunately, but failing to address any fears, or allow myself to think of them, I kept all the fears in me . . . fears I didn’t know I had.

Everyone has these fears. From the moment you yourself are conceived, you take in the emotions and attitudes of your parents. You live your own birth, and perpetuate what you learn in the first moments of life outside the womb. Your experience is changed and built with every encounter you have with life — every woman you saw on television screaming in fear and pain as she labored, every “emergency” C-section, every friend or relative you visited in the hospital, and every time someone says “You’re gonna beg for an epidural!” — your heart and soul are impacted.

If I had to do it all again, I would live and breathe affirmations of joy and acceptance. I would meditate and clear myself of my own birth trauma, my mother’s birth trauma, and the trauma of every woman, fictional or real, who has imprinted on my mind, so that I could experience childbirth with pleasure and joy.

I’m reading so many different stories in which women who labored naturally and without fear (in their own homes, alone or attended) had PEAK EXPERIENCES. Child birth is supposed to be a woman’s rite of passage, the hard trail on an inner path to meet one’s true self . . . a recurring theme I run into over and over is “Oh, so soon?” and “I wish I had longer” and “if only transition hadn’t come so fast” and “next time I want longer before the baby comes out, so I can really enjoy it” . . .

Can you imagine that? If you trust and support your own body enough and in the right ways FOR YOU, you might enjoy birthing a baby so much that you want the experience to LAST LONGER? In these cases, women are so healthy and the babies from such births are so healthy. How can anyone even doubt that the ultimate and ideal child birth is a pleasurable experience for both mother and child?

Birth is so dependent on your inner self. To have an ideal birth, you have to know your fears, face them, and set them free. You have to know how to support yourself, follow your intuition, and trust your body. You are important to the process of birth. If you go to the hospital, you will not be treated as important to the process of birth. I wish that would change, but our Obstetric system lives in self-perpetuated ignorance fueled by fear and profit.

Birth is sexual. Birth is spiritual. Birth is personal. To deny any of these faces of birth is to do it a grave disservice, and to inhibit it.

Forget that child birth is “supposed” to hurt. It’s actually SUPPOSED to be fun, and joyful, and pleasurable in all sorts of ways. Work through the circumstances of your own birth and try to see that you live your life influenced by the way you came into the world. I was birthed with midwives, and I felt compelled to fulfill that type of birth when I became pregnant–even BEFORE my mother told me that I’d been born with midwives at the hospital.

Maybe the circumstances of my own birth AT THE HOSPITAL, and the social conditioning that babies are born AT THE HOSPITAL, and my mother’s doubts and opinions that I should be AT THE HOSPITAL . . . maybe all these things got in the way of my being able to finish laboring and birthing at home.

What ever it may be, I release it.
I acknowledge it, and I release it.

If you’re interested in legalizing midwifery and promoting natural childbirth in the U.S. please write to our new President Barack Obama.  He’s taking suggestions on how to improve our country HERE.

Here’s what I wrote under the “Economy” & “Healthcare” sections:

The most common reason for hospitalization is childbirth.  Birth is a billion dollar business, but one important thing is overlooked: Birth is natural.

We rank 29th in infant and maternal mortality in comparison to other countries.  The money we spend on Obstetrics, C-sections, infant monitoring devices, needless tests, invasive procedures, medical supplies, doctors, nurses, what we ask our insurance to pay out, or our medicaid to pay out . . . all of this could be simply and effectively reduced while AT THE SAME TIME reducing infant and maternal mortality, increasing maternal satisfaction, reducing instances of iatrogenic complications such as high C-section rates, episiotomies, and greatly reducing Post Traumatic Stress conditions arising from high intervention and lack of compassionate treatment in the hospital setting.

Midwives, doulas, and labor assistants trained in TRUE physiological birth (during which the laboring woman is allowed free movement, allowed to progress normally, is supported in an upright position to facilitate birth, and is allowed to push normally and when the need arises) are much less expensive than the upkeep of a single Obstetrician.

A trained and certified midwife is able to tell the difference between a normal, safe pregnancy and one that might have risks.  Midwives would ideally provide care for the majority of pregnancies.  Use of midwives would increase maternal satisfaction due to time spent and quality of care at prenatal visits, increase the number of women able to cope well with labor, decrease use of analgesics which would prevent the cascade of interventions that might not have been otherwise needed.

Studies prove that midwife care at home is as safe as hospital births in regards to fatality, and even safer in regards to needless interventions (C-sections, episiotomies, antibacterial courses due to infections originating at the hospital) . . . just look at the statistics at The Farm under the supervision of Ina May Gaskin.

One way that we can immediately improve our country, improve the quality of life of every emerging citizen (our babies), and save enormous amounts of money . . . is to train midwives in large numbers and to train doctors to work WITH midwives.  Use Sweden’s great practices and wonderfully low infant and maternal fatality rates as inspiration.  Invite Ina May Gaskin to take part in this task force to revamp the American birth system.

Legalize midwifery in all states.  Use our tax dollars in the scientifically and historically supported practice of midwifery.  Thank you for taking the time to read this, and please don’t hesitate to look further into the studies I’ve alluded to.

Leslie Hing Hing Kung,
an American woman of childbearing years, birth advocate, and mother.

I was laying in bed next to my husband and my baby, and I was asking myself to remember a moment of great joy because today is Christmas.  Christmas is about joy, but it’s also about birth.  People don’t often think about Mary’s sacred act of labor.  She toiled in a manger and birthed a messiah.  It must have been a beautiful birth.

I believe that she was blessed to birth naturally, with calm in her heart, with joy.  I can believe that she did not scream.  She didn’t worry about how “unclean” her surroundings were (after all, she wasn’t surrounded by sick people . . . it was merely a manger).

It might have been like the painless births described by Grantly Dick-Read during which one woman turned down his offer of pain relief and, after the birth, when asked why replied, “It didn’t hurt.  It wasn’t supposed to, was it?”

How far the myth of Eve’s “Curse” has spread since the witch hunts of the middle ages.  All things having to do with women’s power and women’s knowledge, like midwifery, healing, herbal knowledge were burned along with the bodies of women called “hags,” “witches,” and “dirty nags.”  The old and the young were turned over to this crucible.  In some villages, no female members were left alive.

Instead of supported by knowledgeable midwives, mothers, grandmothers, women who served the laboring lady, women were locked away by themselves, terrified, and convinced that pain was inevitable.  Even when doctors began practicing, attending births was considered beneath the male doctor–until they began to realize how much business could be had if all midwives were out of the picture.

It continues today.  I know it, and I have seen this witch hunt at work.  Many other industrialized countries are appalled at the American Obstetric community’s continued prejudices against midwifery, a safer, cheaper, more apt assistant to a laboring woman . . . proven over and over in countries which continue to far exceed our poor results in regards to fetal and maternal fatality.

I have seen the ink on my own hospital records:  “Failed attempted home birth ^ UNCLEAN”.

I want to march into that OB’s office and tell him that my midwife used sterile gloves and discarded them immediately after any contact.  We went through almost an entire box and too many sterile absorbent pads to mention.  I want to tell him that he has no idea what a homebirth is like, and that he’s never seen a physiologically normal birth.  I want to gag him and handcuff him to a chair and make him watch a REAL birth.  I want his retinas to burn with the power of an unhindered flowering, the becoming of a woman as mother, the entrance of a precious light onto our physical plane, and I want him to weep with the realizations of his unwitting crimes against women and babies.

Since that’s not going to happen . . . and since I don’t have it in me to impede a woman’s labor with the stress of a handcuffed and reluctant witness, I just want to remember that my son is the greatest gift I have ever received.  To remember that feeling–the first time I held him in my arms, and the third day of his life outside the womb.

I’d been visiting him, looking down at him silently, his little unformed features, the wrinkles on his feet, the way his chest and belly moved as he breathed.  How simple life is when it is reduced to one room, to one little heated plastic bed, one tiny body . . . How simple life is when you brush so close to losing everything.  He looked so fragile, and the tubes and monitors snaked out from him, making him look even smaller.

“Have you held him yet?” a NICU nurse asked, in a sort of off-hand manner, as if she were remembering something of little importance.  I just shook my head, no.  “Do you want to?”  I think I stopped breathing as I nodded, yes.  I can’t remember what she did.  She must have gathered his wires, cleared them from around his limbs, lifted him.

I can’t remember that part.  I just remember when the weight of him pressed into my arms.  He felt so substantial, so much heavier than he looked on his sterile platform.  And yet, he was so tiny, so fragile, and so light.  Beauty and Grace and Love had no true meaning before I held Bailey.  No happiness, no simple joy, no object, no moment could match what I felt then.

Joy poured into me, filled me, and spilled out from me.

I overflowed.

Thank YOU, whatever Power, Entity, Spirit . . . That Which No Greater Can Be Conceived.  Thank you Universe.  Thank YOU.  I take this moment to praise All That Is, and give up the bitterness of the moment.  I promise to be truly thankful for that moment of sheer joy, because maybe I needed those three days to well and truly understand.

Maybe I needed those days without the feeling of my baby in my arms so that I can really be a witness, so I can value the births and first moments, so I can ALWAYS do anything in my power to preserve that sacred moment when a mother receives her child in the world just as Mary received Jesus . . . with her own hands, with her own God-given power as woman.

Three days could not mute the rushing tide of love that blasted through me at the first warm weight of his body in my arms.  I won’t let it.  Not three hours, not three days, not three years.

Merry Christmas, and may you all be as blessed as I was.

May you all be as blessed to realize your blessings.

I’m going to lay back down beside my blessings and finally let myself sleep.

Here are my requests as a pregnant woman: Above all, support me. Respect me. Allow me my dignity, my choices, and give me the benefit of your full attention.  I pledge to return these courtesies.

Support my pregnancy. Don’t voice your fears, but do encourage me to voice mine. Don’t tell me I’m too young, old, fat, skinny, rich, poor or anything else. You may tell me that I will be a great mother. You can tell me that I’m doing a great job. If you have criticisms, let them first be formed as questions and suggestions. Allow me to be in charge of my own body, my own decisions, and support my choices once I’ve made them.

Don’t tell me horror stories. Tell me joyful ones. Don’t tell me I’ll be begging for an epidural. Tell me you enjoyed yours, but that’s it. I want to hear about your experiences, and your choices, but I want to ultimately make my own. Just because you or someone you know had X, Y, or Z happen, doesn’t mean it’ll happen to me. Offer to rub my back, my shoulders, and feet. Offer to cook for me, or to take my garbage out, or to do my dishes.

Take me out to the farmer’s market for fresh produce. Cook for me, or cook with me. Take care of my older kids, if I have any. Don’t tell me I can’t eat X or Y because those alarmist fads change every year. Encourage my intuitive knowledge (especially in regards to my diet), and believe that I have my baby’s and my own best interests in mind (because assuming otherwise is insulting).

Encourage me to listen to the needs of my body and the baby within. Have faith in this natural process, and help me keep my faith in it.

Ask if I want hugs or contact. Don’t touch my body or invade my space just because you want to rub my belly. Ask first. Treat me like a physically able, healthy person . . . because I am not an invalid. Pregnant women are not weak or delicate by nature. In fact, with proper care, it is one of the strongest, physically wonderful times in our lives.

Keep inviting me out for fun things. Perhaps we won’t go bar-hopping, but I still need my friends and my social life. Ask me to go on walks, go swimming, run to the library with you, or just hang out and play games. I still want to play tabletop RPG’s. I still want to play card games or board games. I still want to watch movies and laugh until it’s hard to breathe. Keep being my friends.

Do me a favor and ask questions. I want to know what you’re curious about. I want to discuss the changes happening with me and the baby. I want to hear what you think and talk about your dreams or fears.

Love me and feel joy for me.

If I ask you to, be with me when I am in labor. If you are there for me, pay attention to my signals. Know that I might find it hard to vocalize. If you notice something is making me uncomfortable, ask me (wait until a contraction has eased) if you can help me by removing that stimulation. Be prepared to leave if I ask. Offer me comforts, but offer them one at a time, (between contractions) so that I may accept or decline with simple body language.

If you offer and I accept your touch, keep your hands firm and steady, with deeper pressure, slow and steady strokes. Quick, light touching comes across as frantic and distracting. Tell me I’m doing a good job. Avoid giving me orders, especially at the peak of a contraction when my full concentration is needed. Voice suggestions instead, and wait for me to accept. If I seem to be focusing on the pain (whimpering or making high pitched noises), tell me to think of each wave as the most interesting sensation that requires my full attention.

If a midwife or doctor wants to perform a procedure, make sure that they explain it to you along with reasons, so that you can put it into simpler language and ask me if I understand and consent. Simply translate for me, and act as my gatekeeper.

Make eye contact with me. Deep, steady eye contact is sometimes all a woman needs to get over one cresting rush of a contraction. If I want it, hold my hands and look into my eyes. Encourage me to change positions. Again, offer one suggestion at a time, and don’t rush me. Suggest that I stand, or kneel, or squat. Suggest I sway my hips while hanging onto your shoulders. Put on belly dance music and shimmy your hips for me. Tell me I can work that baby down and out. Ask if I want to dance.

If I say, “I give up! I can’t do this! NOO!” say “YES! That’s what we want to hear! When women say that, it means the baby is coming soon. You’re in transition! That’s wonderful! It won’t be much longer.”

Respect my wishes at the moment. If I didn’t want an epidural, then I decide the pain is too much . . . help me into a warm pool of water, help me move, let me try different positions, ask me to endure 5 more contractions, trying different things all the while, then when the 5 are over, ask me again. Tell me I’ve done such a beautiful job, that I’m so strong, that I handled those 5 SO WELL, and ask me if I’d like to try another 5 contractions before asking for pain relief.

Don’t remind me what I said before I went into labor. That doesn’t matter any more. That person doesn’t exist. The creature I am during labor doesn’t give a rat’s behind what the left brain thought it wanted. Do your utmost to support me, and if I ask for pain medications after all of those efforts, and all your encouragement, make sure you’re looking into my eyes as I tell you what I want. If I have to get intervention that I didn’t necessarily want in the first place, praise my efforts and my choice.

“You were in a lot of pain, and it was distracting you from your real work. Now you can rest, and you’re going to open up really wide and have this baby. You did all the hard work, and you’re making the right decision for YOU.”

Likewise, if I choose to have NO pain medications, let me labor! If I have to say no to a procedure more than once, and you ask until I give in, you’re abusing me while I’m powerless. Respect my wishes, and support the natural process of my labor. I would do the same for you. I would respect your choice FOR or AGAINST pain medications or other interventions.

So, for your own sake, and for the sake of others you will come in contact with, BE INFORMED. Do the research. Don’t accept the medlore, the myths, or anything JUST BECAUSE everyone does it that way. Look it up. Read books. Hit the internet.

For your own sake, and for every pregnant woman or new mother you’ll ever encounter, shed the burdens of the myths surrounding your OWN birth, or your mother’s births.
“Her/my hips were too narrow.”
“They needed to cut an episiotomy.”
“I/the baby was stuck, and nothing could have helped it.”
“The baby was just too big to come out the normal way.”

When I hear those stories, I ask a few questions, and the answers are almost always “No”:
Was she allowed to move freely during labor?
Was she given the support of one trained individual (doula, midwife) for the duration the labor?
Was she given any of the following options: multiple changes of position, equipment such as a birth pool, birth ball, birthing stool, a rope or sling to grasp and hang her weight from, acupressure, acupuncture, massage, encouragement to vocalize as needed, a comfort object or focus, mantra, any support person(s) requested, the ability to ask disturbing simulations to cease (even if it means banishing a specific doctor or nurse), etc.?
Did she or her attending physician or care provider consider birth a normal physiological event?
Was she allowed to progress normally, and let to push when she felt like it, and HOW she felt she should?

If I ask you to be there for me during labor and birth, give me all the benefits of an unimpeded labor and birth. Fight for my right to listen to my intuitive self and birth as I know how. Even if I doubt myself, reassure me. Have faith in my body, and know that I would do the same for you. I would do everything in my power to aid you.

Value me and my baby over hospital policy. Value me and my baby over schedules. Value us more than cultural norms. I would do the same for you. Tell me to scream and moan if you want, but guide me toward low, open moans, deep noises and grunts. Watch the tension of my mouth, and suggest things to relax it. Make me laugh, smile, or suggest I make out with my husband/partner. These things will relax my mouth and likewise relax my perineum.

Have faith that I can open wide without tearing. Know that it is a normal physical event for a baby to pass down the birth canal, twisting and wiggling and changing positions, and for my hips to widen, my perineum to dilate and efface (use the words “open” and “flower” and “bloom” and “relaxing” and “widening”) without any tearing or cutting.

When the baby is coming, let me be in an upright position or laying fully on my side. Help me avoid being flat on my back or even reclining on my back, because those positions narrow the pelvic opening. Turn the temperature up and dim the lights for me (and let me know what you’re doing as you’re doing it, and why). Shush people. I don’t want anyone to yell or scream at me at ANY point. Let it be quiet, let everyone be still. Let my baby come down, crown, and suggest I touch my emerging baby’s head. Let me feel every sensation. Catch my baby or help me catch the baby, but do everything slowly and with calm. It is not an emergency. The baby does not need to be separated from me. There’s no rush. Don’t even rush me to pick the baby up, or do anything. Again, don’t give orders.

Whatever I need to do, feel, or process . . . just let us do it. Don’t cut the cord. It’s still serving a purpose. Don’t touch the baby unless I want you to. Let me pick up my slimy baby and look at her. Let me shake and shiver and press her against my bare belly and chest. Let her take her first breath, but don’t jab things in her throat and nose. The mucus clears by itself. It really does. Wrap us in a blanket, and let me savor the moment.

Start cleaning up quietly, and only take the baby for weighing and other things when I’m ready to let her go. Take care of me, and offer a warm bath for mom and baby. Offer food, drink. Get us off to a good start with breastfeeding, and let the placenta deliver itself. Treat the blood, the cord, and the placenta with respect, and ask what I would like done with them.

Always offer more support, and if you’re no longer needed, say you’re coming back to help again soon, and depart quietly. Be available. Teach me how to latch the baby on the nipple, and talk to me about the benefits of ecological breastfeeding (including natural infertility). Teach me how to give her the benefits of skin to skin contact. Teach me how to use a sling or carrier, so I can have an easier transition into motherhood. Teach me the difference between Natural Infant Hygiene, cloth diapering, and disposable diapering. Teach me about baby sign language. Teach me the difference between family bed, co-sleeping, and crib sleeping. Teach me about the “fourth trimester”, and not to listen to people who urge me to let her cry it out.

Teach me to listen to my intuition when it comes to my health and the baby’s health. When I feel like something is wrong, go to the doctor’s and don’t take no for an answer. When I feel that something is right and good for us, let me make that decision and praise me for my assurance.

Give me resources. Give me education. GIVE ME CHOICES, and respect the choices I make. I pledge to do the same for you.

Here’s a scenario for you:

You live in a world where ice cream is limited, and it’s a ridiculously special occasion when you get it. It’s life-changing and amazing. There’s a whole ceremony and everything. You can have ice cream like ONCE a year, and it’s recorded and changes your social and economic status.  For some people, having ice cream is a religious imperative. Some people don’t ever have ice cream, some have ice cream 6 times or 13 times or more (but receive some criticism for it).

Recently the ice cream ceremony has become more and more regulated. The Waiter now grades you on your ice cream eating, measuring every aspect of the experience, and it’s their job now to save you from potentially harmful (physically, socially, mentally) ice cream eating failures. They watch your hand and spoon carefully lest you drop or drip. They insist on you using a napkin at your neck and on your lap. They insist on a certain type of spoon, a back-up straw, a certain shaped bowl, and that you be laying flat on your back. People used to just eat ice cream from the cone, but that has been deemed uncivilized and dangerous to boot.

This back laying position is really hard to eat in and makes it more likely that you’ll drop a spoonful of ice cream (especially since you aren’t allowed to hold your own bowl), so more assistance and specialized equipment are needed. The Waiters and the Board of Waiters now declare that it is just as good to suck ice cream through a straw without making any other contact with the bowl or spoon because it’s safer, it leads to less ice cream waste, and it’s cleaner. Besides, how are people expected to get dozens and dozens of spoonfuls of ice cream neatly in their mouth in a flat-laying position?

They present it as a choice: Spoon (SOOO HARD, AND POTENTIALLY HARMFUL), or Straw? You think about this for a moment. Isn’t cold, beautiful ice cream really HARD to suck through a straw? Won’t you have to wait until it melts? The Waiter says, “Not if you suck hard enough!  Don’t worry, we’ll tell you when to suck and how hard.”

Then they tell you that once you use a straw to eat ice cream, you can’t go back to using a spoon. “First of all,” the Waiter says, “why would you want to? It requires repeated use of multiple muscle groups, coordination, and possible failure. Why would you go back to using a spoon? The straw is the way of the future. Besides, if you’ve used the straw, it’s really dangerous to go back to the spoon because you might have forgotten the special ice cream spoon techniques. Instead of risking it, just ask for a straw. Once you use a straw, you’ll always use a straw.”

You’ve heard of people ordering the ice cream to come to their homes in private, with Servers who merely scoop the ice cream into a dish! Those edgy rebels eat the ice cream upright, without straws, special bowls, special napkins, and without Waiters! Are they crazy? Some of these people use CONES and forsake spoons altogether. And you’ve heard . . . a few individuals eat ice cream UNASSISTED by Waiter OR Server.  How can they take the risk?

Now substitute “ice cream” with “birth”, “straw” with “C-section”. To me, birth really is a beautiful, sweet event . . . like ice cream. Sure there’s a small element of danger in a normal birth, but you can also get brain freeze if you eat ice cream too quickly. Ice cream is best with no guilt or fear, no rush, with friends or in a relaxed setting (and no lactose intolerance).  It’s also best if it isn’t micromanaged and quantified, and just like in birth, wouldn’t you rather be upright and in charge of your own mobility?

To go beyond the analogy, we know how to birth even more intrinsically than we know how to eat ice cream. We had to be taught to wield a spoon. Ice cream is a culturally specific food, and we learn HOW to deal with it, just as our East Indian friends learned culturally to eat food with the right hand. Birth is deeper than that.

Who taught the sperm to meet the egg and start the dance of life? Who teaches you to swallow, blink, or cry? Who teaches you how to eliminate (now where to, but HOW)? Who teaches your veins to move your blood? No one commands and teaches your mouth to smile and relax as you watch a funny movie or look at someone you love, and we certainly don’t measure the dilation and effacement of your lips as you laugh!

If allowed to happen, birth is a normal, physiological event. There is something not right about the way we birth in hospitals. The process takes our autonomy from us, usurps what should be beautiful and empowering–reducing birth to a disease that needs a cure. All around us people are waking up, renting The Business of Being Born, and setting up birth tubs in their homes.  There’s a documentary coming out soon called “Orgasmic Childbirth” that will show a lot of people that birth has the potential to be more enjoyable than eating a bowl of ice cream.

It seems more fulfilling to me to go THAT deep into myself, reaffirm my faith in the Universe, and be a vessel of pure creation, and enjoy the feeling of birth . . . than to eat a whole tub of Häagen-Dazs (even if I were lactose tolerant).  Every day, I wonder what to do about the crisis of maternity care and birth in our country.  If I could convince you that it could be so sweet, would you think twice?

Read this challenging artcle by Marsden Wagner, MD, MSPH for a better idea of what I’m talking about.