Before I was a mother, I was a student, a philosopher, and above all a self-motivated learner. As early as junior high, I was contemplating the meaning of our existence and searching for a universal connection between all people.
I wondered what my true purpose was. I wondered how we could know anything, especially each other. How could we bridge that abyssal gap between one human mind and soul and another? I was convinced that we could never know any empirical experience besides our own, each individual an isolated island.
These questions, the conversations of philosophers, and my own contemplations were shelved as I fell in love, graduated college, married, and became mired in the bog of a 40 hour a week obligation.
When I found out I was pregnant, I was overcome with feelings of love and responsibility so enormous that they threatened to crush my beating heart. I still cannot describe the combination of joy, exaltation, and sheer terror that overcame me, filled all the empty spaces of me, and overflowed.
The most apt comparison I can think of is to what The Romantics called The Sublime: that feeling inspired by the majesty and vastness of nature, filling you will awe while giving you a sense of how small you are in it.
My baby was an amazing gift of insight for me. I was a vessel of life. I felt as if I had a mission, a passion, and a true and irrefutable connection to the universe and to Creation itself. A part of Perfection and Spirit and the Universe was busy multiplying itself in my abdomen! The loneliness and monotony of life as a working adult just melted away, and I began to research.
In a cascade of breathtaking revelations, my knowledge about pregnancy and birth bloomed. I was not content with skirting the edges of knowledge and accepting the bare minimum summarized in those What-To-Expect books. I dug deeper.
I did not expect it, but when I found Birth, I fell in love.
I watched videos, read books, and scoured the internet. Overwhelmingly, people are disconnected from their bodies and taught to be in absolute terror of birth. I began to realize that women have no idea the miracles which reside in their own bodies. Whatever cause to which you attribute these wonders, evolution or design, if you find the research, you will be amazed.
The pregnant woman has super powers. When I was pregnant, my senses were more alert. I could tell by scent what food was good for me and my baby and what wasn’t. I was more emotional but also more alert to dangers and comforts. As I watched my body swell and change, I thought to myself, I am a shapeshifter!
How little knowledge and faith most people have in this miraculous process. My reading led me to believe that ultrasounds were over-used and entirely too liberally interpreted, not to mention that the studies on high frequency sound suggested that they could be harmful, rupturing cells and possibly disturbing the growth of the fetus. Based on a lack of conclusive research, I refused a routine ultrasound.
The nurse was aghast. She stuttered that it was necessary. I asked her why. She stated that they needed to check the gestational size and age of the baby so that they could get an accurate due date. If the baby was determined late, they would induce.
I told her I didn’t believe in routine induction. She looked further horrified, and said to me, “Well, THAT could lead to a dead baby!” Offended, I asked for my medical information to be copied so that I could switch care providers. She made sure I knew that she was telling the doctor that I refused the ultrasound AND the internal exam.
When a fetus has fully developed lungs, he or she releases a chemical into the shared bloodstream, and this begins the cascade of hormones which lead to labor. When I found that out, I was amazed and awed. Then I wondered why so many babies were being scheduled and induced.
How little faith do we have in our own bodies that we let others manipulate us into interventions and treatments that we have never researched ourselves? How have we come to trust that our bodies will fail us? Furthermore, how has this system come to exist in which professionals providing care to a pregnant women often feel it necessary to threaten her with the death of her baby should she not cooperate?
My spirituality and love of the Universe and all that resides within was conceived with my son, but my true faith in the Great Universe was born in adversity. For every revelation, there was a backlash. For every choice I made which supported our optimal health, there was a social stigma.
I didn’t want medications to dull the sensations of birth because if you medicate the burn in a runner’s muscles, you steal his runner’s high. If you numb his legs, his gait will become sloppy, and he will injure his ankles.
I wanted to climb the mountain of childbirth with my senses wild and enhanced. I wanted to feel everything and open wide for my child to enter the world, without chemicals in our blood, without harsh lights, sounds, and scents.
I loved myself and my baby, and I had to fight tooth and nail for what I decided was best for us based on our research and revelations. I left traditional OB care and found a midwife willing to support me, and kept reading, kept watch those grainy videos of home births, and studying that moment of exaltation on a woman’s face after she has borne a baby of her body and her will alone.
That expression, I thought, is the expression of someone meeting God.
Since the first moment I held my baby, my faith in this Universe has been affirmed and reaffirmed daily. Every discovery, every sensation, and every new revelation has generated a momentum akin to a locomotive. Every natural thing about us is perfect and beautiful. If we could truly discern the whispering voice of intuition and see these wonders within and around us, we would weep with joy.
The composition of breast milk is absolutely perfect, changing moment to moment to support the growth of a healthy baby. Breast milk fights off infections, containing a million white blood cells in each drop, has a different composition if your baby is premature or ill, and is consistently what nourishes babies in the rest of the world until the average age of 4 years. Between 4 to 7 years of age, the human immune system fully matures.
Breastfeeding obviates the need for artificial pacifiers, and creates a very strong bond, releasing the love hormone in both mother and baby. Breast milk is a living manifestation of love in a very literal sense.
We know babies are meant to be carried. Our milk resembles that of animals which carry their babies on their bodies, with lower concentrations of fat compared to mammals, like wolves, which leave their babies for long periods of time. Our newborns have thicker, denser fat on their backs which is meant to keep heat in and protect them as they are held against us.
The most soothing motion to a baby is the average tempo of an adult walk. The way newborns curl their legs when lifted up is a flawless adaptation to their need to be consistently close on an adult body. Babies move and shift with us, as we walk, so in-arms or in-sling time counts as tummy time, building core strength.
Those who are held or worn cry less, receive more vestibular stimulation, often sit up earlier, and are more social, more engaged with the world as active participants, and are able to learn from their safe and high vantage point.
The temperature of the skin of an adult torso adjusts perfectly to warm a baby, performing better than plastic incubators, especially in the case of premature babies. You might have heard of Kangaroo Care. Premature babies experience less apnea if stimulated by the sound and feel of adult breathing, and the skin to skin contact is an unquestionable boon to a breastfeeding relationship.
Newborns are aware and able to communicate about their elimination needs. Around the world, diapers are a foreign idea, and millions of families sleep together in the same bed as the newest addition to their families and wake up in an unsoiled bed. We Western mothers are calling it Natural Infant Hygiene, Infant Potty Training, and Elimination Communication, but it is just a natural part of life we’ve forgotten.
Starting with pregnancy and birth, I could go on and on with these wonderful affirmations of nature’s plan. I am filled to the brim with them, and this knowledge sings in every cell of my body.
Everything and everyone in the Universe fits into this miraculous scheme. There are no missing pieces. There are no isolated occurrences. I never need to look at another human being and feel a mental chasm open between us.
I used to question why we are here. That question is no longer important to me. This journey I undertook with and for my son has led me to believe that we are under no obligations other than to simply exist. I now know deep in my heart that Existence is Love. There are no beginnings and no endings. There is only change.
I used to search in vain for a one universal thing that could bridge the gaps between our islands. Now I realize that the space that separates us is an illusion, a mere thought-construct. We are all born, and we all die.
Our society shies away from both of these universal events and treats them with fear. The more faith we have, the more knowledge we acquire, the less we try to control both birth and death.
Birth and death are inevitable. There is nothing that needs to be done to save a woman or baby having a normal pregnancy and a normal, physiological birth. Trying to interfere and control the process merely complicates and endangers both the mother and child.
I wish to believe the same of death, for when it comes for me, I do not want to be afraid.
The cycle which connected me, connects every living being. I was born and have given life. My fellow human being was also once cradled in the womb, was born, and will also experience the change of death.
Through my pregnancy and birth, I found the Universal.
Through my son, I found an enduring faith.
