CDC data: home birth on the rise

1 comment on this article Posted by SarahWhedon in birth on January 26th, 2012 , tagged with , , , , , , .

The CDC released new data today on home births in the U.S., finding that “the percentage of U.S. births that occurred at home increased by 29%, from 0.56% of births in 2004 to 0.72% in 2009.”  This increase mostly represents non-Hispanic white women.

The report says “Women may prefer a home birth over a hospital birth for a variety of reasons, including a desire for a low-intervention birth in a familiar environment surrounded by family and friends, and cultural or religious concerns.”

We don’t know how many Pagans choose home birth, but we do know that Pagans are highly likely to prefer unmedicated births attended by midwives.

Depending on where you live, you may be able to get that kind of birth at a birth center or a hospital, but it is certainly the norm for home births.

According to the CDC report, “In 2009, 62% of home births were attended by midwives: 19% by certified nurse midwives and 43% by other midwives (such as certified professional midwives or direct-entry midwives). Among hospital births, only 7% were attended by midwives.”

Did you plan a home birth?  Was it motivated by Paganism or did you have other reasons?

Birth Guardians: Jane Hardwicke Collings

2 comments on this article Posted by SarahWhedon in birth, Birth Guardians on January 16th, 2012 , tagged with , , , , .

This is the first in a new series, inspired by Radical Doula Profiles, profiling people who work with pregnancy, birth, or the postpartum period (prenatal massage therapists, childbirth educators, OB/GYNs, doulas, midwives, lactation consultants, labor & delivery nurses, pediatricians, etc.) and are Pagan or work with a Pagan community.  If you would like to be a part of the series please send an email to paganfamilieseditor@gmail.com.

What is your name?

Jane Hardwicke Collings

What kind of work do you do with pregnancy, birth, or the postpartum period?

I am a midwife, I’ve been attending homebirths since 1984.

I give workshops called “Pregnancy The Inner Journey.”

I have started and run a school – The School of Shamanic Midwifery.

In what ways does Paganism affect your work?

Paganism completely informs my work, specifically with the interconnectedness of everything and everyone,  the wisdom of cycles, celebrating the seasons and the Goddess and God energies.

How can we honor what is sacred in childbearing?

By getting out of the way and so allowing the mother to connect with her divine nature and give birth. This happens through respecting the mother’s biological need for privacy and protection (an ‘undisturbed birth’) during her labour and birthing experience, so she can access the altered state of consciousness that is the blueprint for labour and birth and so connect with the sacred dimension of birth and herself and the baby. If she is disturbed this doesn’t happen. Disturbance can take many shapes.

If you could tell Pagans one thing about pregnancy or birth, what would it be?

Everyone has the birth they need to have to teach them what they need to learn on their journey to wholeness. There are no successes or failures, simply the birth experience that the mother’s mindset, beliefs and fears enables. Preparation for birth needs to include acknowledging and letting go of your fears, and updating your beliefs. It REALLY maters how a baby is born, and how a mother gives birth, so unnecessary intervention (and most of it is) is to be avoided.

Find Jane Hardwicke Collings on the web at:

janecollings@bigpond.com
www.moonsong.com.au
www.schoolofshamanicmidwifery.com

Review: Birthrites

0 comments on this article Posted by SarahWhedon in birth, pregnancy, review on January 11th, 2012 , tagged with , .

Birth is the archetypal rite of passage for a woman, containing the essential elements of any ritual: separation from normal life, a profound transition during which the participants occupy a timeless time, followed by re-entry into society in a changed state.  It can also be seen as a holy sacrament; the entry of a soul from another plane into this earthly dimension. – Jackie Singer, Birthrites

Birthrites: Rituals and Celebrations for the Child-bearing Years was a fortuitous find for me, a book stumbled upon in a bookstore and title hastily scribbled down before I agreed to read my toddler a picture book.  From home I emailed Jackie Singer and she was kind enough to send me a review copy to read in quieter moments. 

This book isn’t written for an exclusively Pagan audience, but Singer’s experience in several religious communities includes Paganism.  So the book is very accessible to Pagans, and maybe even more useful than many Pagan books because she doesn’t offer ritual scripts that either cater to the lowest common denominator generic Pagan or else are so thoroughly embedded in a particular Pagan tradition as to require a great deal of adaptation to be used in a different tradition.  Instead, this book is subtle, complex, and offers lots of support and specific ideas for readers planning ceremonies appropriate to their own families and communities.

Underlying everything in Birthrites is the belief that as the coming generations will face new environmental and social challenges, “We owe it both to our children and to the world, to conceive, birth and welcome our children with as much love and prayerfulness as possible.” (178)

Singer is also careful to attend to a wide range of pregnancy outcomes.  While many families conceive, birth, and welcome children all with intention and joy, these are not universal experiences.  Birthrites makes plenty of space for ritualizing and honoring the sacred in the experiences of infertility, miscarriage, stillbirth, adoption, abortion, and even the deliberate choice to not have children.

This book will be of particular use to readers in the UK because Singer occasionally offers UK-based resources, but these in no way dominate the text.  I highly recommend Birthrites to anyone seeking inspiration and guidance in ritualizing the childbearing years.

You can read an excerpt from the book here.

Jackie Singer, Birthrites: Rituals and Celebrations for the Child-bearing Years.  Permanent Publications, 2009.

The first Spirit Babies ceremony in San Francisco

1 comment on this article Posted by SarahWhedon in pregnancy on January 9th, 2012 , tagged with , , , , , , , .

By Silverwing

On the night of the Winter Solstice this year, between fifty and sixty people gathered in the chapel at the First Unitarian Universalist Church in San Francisco.  Women and their loved ones came to honor their ‘spirit babies’ – those who had been lost due to a miscarriage, abortion and stillbirth.  It was standing room only.

As people entered the chapel, we invited them to write out thoughts and prayers and place them on the altar.  For those who couldn’t make it to the ceremony, we transcribed their emails and added them to the altar so they could be there with us in spirit.  The altar had a statue of the Goddess Tara in the middle of it, surrounded by flowers and candles.  We were greeted at the beginning of the ceremony with a beautiful voice singing “Amazing Grace.”

Isa Gucciardi from the Foundation of the Sacred Stream officiated the ceremony.   She talked about loss and the Winter solstice, including a Buddhist story of woman grieving the loss of a baby (the transcript of her speech can be found here). Chandra Alexandre, the founder of Sharanya and Jeremiah Kalendae, Beyond Sunday Minister from the First Unitarian Universalist Church, contributed stories from their spiritual work and readings from different traditions around the world.  Several women whose lives have been affected by miscarriage, abortion and stillbirth were brave enough to share their stories in front of everyone and lift their voices in song.  One woman invited us to speak the name of the child we had lost.

Perhaps for the first time, we were not alone facing our grief.   Isa said to us “You are all mothers” and let us sit with that thought for a while.  She led us through a guided meditation to connect with the power and spirit of the Earth – because, as she says, “it is the Earth that teaches all mothers how to mother through her example.”  After the meditation, we lit candles, brought them to the center of the room and placed them into a large cauldron of water as we sang about light returning both to the earth and to our lives.

After the ceremony, we gathered for food and drink in a room across from the chapel.   We wanted to give people time for silent prayer, reflection or to talk to someone if they needed support.  We collected all of the papers from the altar and will plant them in the springtime with daffodils.

Pregnancy loss can be so isolating.  Not a lot of people know what to say to women who have had a miscarriage, abortion, or stillbirth.  One goal for this ceremony was to honor our spirit babies and ourselves. Another goal was to have people leave the ceremony with a feeling of peace.  I can’t speak for everyone but I certainly left feeling more at peace and with a sense of community.

It was community after all that made this ceremony possible. Amber Dawn Hallet asked the church about sponsoring the ceremony, organized most of the people who contributed to it and led the campaign to get the word out all in a span of three months.  People who had never even met each other in person before the night of the winter solstice gathered in the chapel of the UU Church to make this sacred space together.

I have to admit, I was concerned about anti-abortion people showing up to protest the ceremony.  Put the word ‘abortion’ on anything and protest is a possibility.  I even asked my husband to act as a bouncer at the door if need be.  Seminary student Gina Pond and a friend of hers did some protective spiritual workings and maintained a physical presence at the doors to the ritual space before and during the ceremony.  I’m sure that did a lot to help and luckily we were left undisturbed.

As I escorted a woman out after the ceremony, she asked me “Do you do this every year?”  I responded, “We will. This is the first time we’ve done this.”  A woman who had just recently had an abortion was there that night.  Another told us she had been waiting over 40 years for something like this.  If anything convinced me that we had done the right thing by holding this ceremony, it was hearing from those women.

My hope is that we can continue to hold this ceremony once a year and inspire people from around the country to hold similar ones where they live. To that end, there will be more information about our ceremony and resources listed at the Spirit Babies website.  No one should have to go through the grief of a miscarriage, abortion or stillbirth alone.   The Spirit Babies ceremony is one way to make it so fewer of us will have to.

Silverwing is a health care provider working in the Bay Area. She specializes in women’s health and has been an activist and advocate for women’s reproductive rights for 20 years. She hopes someday to live in a world where women’s bodies are not politicized and it is no longer necessary to hide behind a pseudonym when talking about her abortion.

Editor’s Note: Read about the origins of the Spirit Babies ceremony in Silverwing’s previous post.

How to get involved

2 comments on this article Posted by SarahWhedon in Pagan Families on December 13th, 2011 , tagged with , .

Pagan Families has been growing as a resource on Pagan pregnancy and birth because of its many readers and contributors.  We’re up past 540 likes on Facebook, and the writers who’ve contributed to the blog number in the double digits.  That’s pretty exciting!

Are you a writer who’s been thinking about making a contribution?  Now’s a great time to have a look at our contributor guidelines and send us that post.

Here are some topics it would be great to see addressed here at Pagan Families:

  • * ritualizing adoption
  • * communicating with healthcare providers about Paganism
  • * energy bodies in pregnancy and birth
  • * dealing with pregnancy loss
  • * reviews of Birthing From Within and Hypnobirthing (the books and/or the courses)
  • * interpreting pregnancy dreams
  • * how to do a Mothering Way/Blessing Way
  • * divining/discerning when to have a baby
  • * midwifery as spiritual calling

This is far from a comprehensive list.  What other issues would you like to see addressed here at Pagan Families?

How the Spirit Babies Interfaith Ceremony came to be

1 comment on this article Posted by SarahWhedon in pregnancy on December 7th, 2011 , tagged with , , , , , , , , , , .

By Silverwing

Many years ago, a friend told me about the Mizuko Jizo, a Japanese deity that watches over the spirits of those who were miscarried, aborted or stillborn.  There are temples with gardens of hundreds of these jizo statues.  There is a place in Japanese society for women to grieve openly about their pregnancy losses.  There are ceremonies in Japanese temples for this, called Mizuko Kuyo.  The spirits of the unborn are called ‘mizuko’ or ‘water babies’ and they may come back again someday.

I told a friend about this ceremony when she had a miscarriage last year.  And then, earlier this year, I had to terminate a pregnancy due to medical reasons.  I remembered the Mizuko Jizo.  I got my own little statue, not from Japan, but from a Swedish artist on etsy.  I biked to the beach one afternoon and I did my own ritual to say goodbye to my mizuko.  It was a very off-the-cuff simple pagan ritual.  I consulted with a close friend who is a priestess to make sure I had something to represent earth, air, fire and water.  I asked that my mizuko go to someone who was ready for her.  I told her I would never forget her.  I left the beach and felt more at peace.  A few weeks later, I found out two people I knew were pregnant.  Perhaps my water baby had found a home.

A few months ago, I decided to get up in front of a roomful of women healers in a class on acupuncture and pregnancy and tell them about the ritual I had done.  Telling my story was one of the most difficult and important things I have ever done.  I told it through tears (and saw some in the eyes of other women in the room).  I told it because I want other women to know that this is an option for taking care of ourselves after we have experienced a pregnancy loss.  I find that in our society, we do not have the space to grieve openly about it.  And people often don’t know what to say to us.

After I spoke, a woman who is a doula approached me.  She told me that part of her work was training women to be abortion doulas so that no woman has to go through this alone.  We got together a few weeks later and decided to organize a ceremony for women and their loved ones who have been affected by miscarriage, abortion and stillbirth.  We decided to call it ‘Honoring Our Spirit Babies’ and to hold it on the Winter Solstice.  Our intention is that the symbol of the returning light after the longest night of the year will bring hope to those who attend the ceremony.

Honoring Our Spirit Babies will take place on Thursday, December 22nd, 2011 from 5-7pm at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of San Francisco at 1187 Franklin Street.  The ceremony will draw from Buddhism, Christianity, Unitarian Universalism, Paganism and more.  Isa Gucciardi will be officiating our ceremony.  She is the Founding Director of the Foundation of the Sacred Stream.

This is a free event.  People from all religious and spiritual paths are welcome.  All those whose lives have been touched by miscarriage, stillbirth or abortion are welcome.  We encourage people to bring something (for example: a photograph, poem, statue, etc.) to place on the altar.  If you are unable to attend, you may email us a thought, prayer or wish to ourspiritbabies@gmail.com that will be included on the altar.

Silverwing is a health care provider working in the Bay Area. She specializes in women’s health and has been an activist and advocate for women’s reproductive rights for 20 years. She hopes someday to live in a world where women’s bodies are not politicized and it is no longer necessary to hide behind a pseudonym when talking about her abortion.

Meditations during pregnancy

1 comment on this article Posted by SarahWhedon in pregnancy on November 29th, 2011 , tagged with , , , , , .

By Jackie Singer

Greetings to all of you from the UK.  Sarah Whedon contacted me recently when she found a copy of my book, Birthrites, in a bookshop in San Francisco.  I’m touched that it was an actual physical book in a real life bookshop!  I imagine the pages in her hands, and feel a connection across acres of land and Atlantic waves to our little island, and me in my attic on a grey November morning.  Birthrites is not a book for Pagans per se, but it does deal with matters of Pregnancy, Birth, and all aspects of Fertility as if they were sacred experiences.  In my research I interviewed people from a range of traditions, and hope to provide inspiration and resources to anyone with a sense of the sacred, regardless of their path.  For myself, my relationship to nature and to the feminine mysteries is central to my spirituality.

I would like to share with you an extract from my book, which suggests meditation practices to do during pregnancy, in the hope that it may blend with what you are exploring and find a form that appeals to your own soul and imagination.  I do feel passionately that the way in which we greet and birth the new beings coming to earth at this time is very important.

 

Meditations in Pregnancy

Meditation to make contact with the child

In the first weeks of pregnancy, despite the immediate and dramatic changes to the mother’s body, the presence of the new being is very subtle.  For myself, during the early uncertain days, I felt that I wanted to reach out to the soul of the child and express a quiet welcome and an invitation to settle in.  This seemed in stark contrast to the language of screening and testing that is the way of our current antenatal services.  I wanted my first communication with the foetus to be, “Hello, welcome!” rather than “Are you normal?”  I contacted a doula (a birth partner) and was introduced to a different way of making contact with the baby, which was about sensitively communicating rather than objectively ‘scanning’.  Doulas work alongside midwives to support women emotionally and practically through pregnancy and birth, and I certainly found that involving one brought a more holistic approach.

This is the meditation that my doula guided me through, and which I was able to use on my own at other times throughout the pregnancy:
Sit comfortably and let your breath settle into a rhythm.  Bring your hands to your belly and bring your attention inside to your womb. Speak silently to greet and welcome the baby, and say anything you want about how you feel about its arrival.  See the womb as a room and visualise making it ready, just as you would for a guest.  Dust the surfaces, add fresh flowers, light a candle, whatever feels right.
Ask your baby if there is anything that it needs to help it come into life and just listen for responses.  (You may not hear words, but you might see an image or have an intuitive sense of an answer.)  You could ask how it feels about ultrasound or any other tests you are thinking about having.  Or use this opportunity to explain if there is something coming up that it needs to prepare for.   Later on in pregnancy you can ask if there is anything the baby needs to help it be ready for birth.  Finish the conversation and return to quiet breathing.  Open your eyes when you are ready.

Don’t worry if you don’t feel you had any clear answers to questions.  Sometimes just asking the question can bring about clarity because it acknowledges that the child has a point of view.   However, if you do have a strong intuition about a response, be sure to honour it if you can.  This builds trust and respect between mother and baby.

Marking the end of the first trimester

After the first 12 weeks of pregnancy the tiny foetus is fully formed and the pregnancy is much more secure.  It is as if a decision has now been made about whether this relationship between mother and child will hold.  In our culture this is commonly the time when the secret of the pregnancy is made public.  Traditional societies have acknowledged this threshold in more poetic ways.  Chinese traditional medicine holds that the ‘Shen’ (soul) of a child moves in at about three months.  This is the point in Acupuncture practice when a special point called ‘House Guest’ is warmed with a herb, ‘moxa’, in order to nourish the body deeply.  For Australian Aboriginals it is not until a woman feels the first kick from the unborn child that conception is deemed to have taken place, when a spirit child in the land springs up into her womb and sings the foetus into life.

One thing my partner and I did around this time in my first pregnancy was buy a big candle with three wicks.  Lighting one for me, one for him and one for the baby was a simple way to focus our minds on the growing family.  We sometimes just sat with him behind me, and the candle in front for a few minutes in silence, taking in the new reality.  After such times we sometimes had good conversations, which got straight to the heart of things and brought us closer.  I have to say it was much harder to find time to do this with our second pregnancy, added to which a candle with four wicks seemed to result in lots of leaking wax and mess!  An alternative way to mark the occasion could be to go to a special place in the land and take an offering for thanks, especially if you went on a pilgrimage to ask for the blessing of fertility before this pregnancy.

Meditation on circles of support

It is not only the mother who feels the need for extra holding during pregnancy; the father too bears a new responsibility, and may well feel a whole new set of demands upon him.  The following meditation, given to my partner and me by my Sufi teacher, focuses on the need of both parents to be supported as they prepare themselves for parenthood.  It can be done at any stage of the pregnancy.  You could of course do this on your own, if your partner is absent or unwilling.

Sit opposite each other so that the baby is between you, and hold hands if this is comfortable.  Settle for a few minutes as you let your breath find a rhythm and become aware of each other’s breathing.  Focus your awareness on your heart and on opening to the heart of your partner.  After a while, shift your awareness to the mother’s womb and to the baby safely held there between you.

Now visualise behind you the people who are supporting you as you go through this change.  Acknowledge your parents and grandparents, whether they are alive or not.  Then remember other family members and close friends and beyond these greater circles of support.  Behind all of these you might like to imagine a spiritual presence holding all of the human helpers.  You could see it as a guardian angel, powerful goddess, or a great dove holding out its wings and keeping all under protection.

Sit a little while in the knowledge of this support and practise leaning back into it, as if into an armchair.  Have an awareness of all the support behind your partner too, which joins up with yours to form a circle surrounding both of you with love.

When you are ready, return briefly to an awareness in the heart and a steady breathing.  Open your eyes when you are ready.  If you like, take some coloured pencils or pastels to make a sketch of this image or sensation.

 

Jackie Singer is the author of Birthrites – Rituals and Celebrations for the Child-bearing Years, published by Permanent Publications.  She lives in Oxford, England with her husband and two girls, and is musician, storyteller, and freelance celebrant, finding new ways of marking rites of passage and making life sacred.   Jackie has just begun work on her second book about Coming of Age, and would be delighted to hear from any parents or young people with a story to share on this theme.  See www.jackiesinger.co.uk.

Editor’s note: Watch Pagan Families for a review of Birthrites coming soon.

 

The Pagan Health Survey on Pagan pregnancies

1 comment on this article Posted by SarahWhedon in birth, pregnancy on October 20th, 2011 , tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Did you take The Pagan Health Survey last year?  The results of this survey were interesting for many reasons, including the little bit they tell us about how Pagans approach pregnancy and birth.

Cultural anthropologist Kimberly Hedrick conducted the research using participant-observation, interviews, and an internet survey with 1,598 respondents.  She presented her results at the American Public Health Association conference in Denver, Colorado in fall of 2010 and the Pagan Studies Conference in Claremont, California in January 2011.  She also circulated talking points and a PowerPoint presentation from which the following discussion is drawn.

The survey gathered demographic data, including the important finding that Pagans are likely to need health professionals who are sensitive to sexual diversity:

“The most important demographic distinction is that the Pagan community is very accepting of sexual lifestyles outside the heterosexual monogamous norm…The Pagan patient is likely to be just as concerned, if not more so, that a health care practitioner is sensitive to the GLBTQ community, as she is about having her religious beliefs respected.”

Here’s the part that’s particularly relevant for Pagans having babies.  An enormous 96.9% of respondents said that they would choose an alternative practitioner (other than a doctor or nurse) for pregnancy.  Hedrick notes that, “The majority of Pagans would opt for natural childbirth attended by a midwife, with less than 20% saying they would find drugs acceptable for childbirth.”

Also more than 30% of respondents consider pregnancy to be a time to call on the aid of a priest or priestess.

This tells us that the skillful support of both midwives and spiritual leaders is desired by Pagans during pregnancy and childbirth.

Hedrick concluded that healthcare providers (and we can extrapolate that this would include ob/gyns, midwives, labor & delivery nurses, and pediatricians) need to have cultural competence and sensitivity around Pagan religion:

“Being generally clear about respect for religious diversity and complementary treatments can assist in gaining trust, and every hospital should ensure widespread knowledge of religious diversity so that Pagans do not face ridicule or prejudice when they state their religion on admission forms. Finally, Pagan clergy need the linkages, assistance, and respect that other religious leaders receive from health professionals.”

To this conclusion I would add that also Pagan clergy need to be informed and sensitive to the spiritual experiences and needs of their community members in pregnancy and birth.

The Pagan Health Survey: The Worldviews and Health Care Choices of Wiccans, Druids, and Witches By Kimberly Hedrick, PhD, Cultural Anthropologist.

Responding to Ina May: The sacred is multiple

5 comments on this article Posted by SarahWhedon in birth, pregnancy on September 15th, 2011 , tagged with , , , , , .

Editor’s note: I asked some of our regular contributors to each respond to a quote from midwife and natural birth advocate Ina May Gaskin.  In her new book Birth Matters Gaskin wrote:

Birth… matters because the journey through pregnancy and birth offers an irreplaceable way for women to explore their deepest selves – their minds, bodies, and nature… There is a sacred power in the innately feminine capacity of giving birth.  It is one of the elemental, continuing processes of nature that women have the chance to experience, and it is the one act of human creation that is not shared by men.

This short passage stimulated some quite different responses.  We’ve heard responses from Suus and Lilly, and today we have C. B. Cabeen’s response:

Like Gaskin, I feel the sacred in some of our most basic biological processes:  in the cycles of birth and death, in the way they nestle immanent inside us and secretly structure the world outside, in the way they burst into day-to-day life and change whatever stories we thought we were in.  My life tore open the year my mother died, which was also the year my first child was conceived, and I found myself dancing to deeper and older rhythms than my plans had encompassed.  Feeling the pulse of the sacred as I did was a blessing and consolation.  My daughter’s birth felt strangely ordinary after that, like it was something I’d done before.  After all, my body knew what it was doing.  Some months later, as I nursed my daughter, I whispered, “My people have been doing this since before we were human.”

Nevertheless, the first time I read this quotation of Gaskin’s, it sounded like a slap.  When Gaskin writes that birth is something that “women have the chance to experience,” I add to myself:  some women, not all.  And when she writes that the experience of birth is “an irreplaceable way for women to explore their deepest selves,” I wonder about those women who don’t experience birth.  Calling a topic sui generis or utterly unique, as Gaskin does, is a common rhetorical move when you’re trying to establish that your subject is important, but it can also establish poisonous hierarchies.  Is a woman who chooses an epidural cutting herself off from the sacred, or is she having an equally valid experience, even if it’s a different one?  And what about a woman who can’t conceive?  Is she doomed to lesser knowledge of her body?  Surely not.  The knowledge of herself and her body that she comes to as she tries to conceive is just as accurate, and just as valuable, as the knowledge that another woman might gain through birthing.  Women who don’t want to or can’t bear children haven’t missed out on exploring their deepest selves.  Instead, they know themselves in part as people who haven’t given birth.

You could add to the list of exceptions:  what about women who’ve had multiple miscarriages or stillbirths, but no live children?  What about women who choose not to have children at all?  What about women who weren’t born women?  And within each of these categories, you’ll find a diversity of experiences again.  A more pagan approach to childbirth might help remedy the tendency to essentialize it: I know that the sacred is multiple, and that the labyrinthine paths it follows aren’t always where I thought I wanted to go.

 

Christina is an eclectic witch orbiting Reclaiming.  She enjoys finding ways to ritualize activities that aren’t traditionally religious–most especially indie tabletop roleplaying and scuba diving–and incorporate them into her spiritual path.  For the last two years, Christina’s spirituality has focused on motherhood.  Her ruminations on parenting can be found at Mouthing the World.

Responding to Ina May: Not a universal experience

2 comments on this article Posted by SarahWhedon in birth, pregnancy on September 14th, 2011 , tagged with , , , , , , .

Editor’s note: I asked some of our regular contributors to each respond to a quote from midwife and natural birth advocate Ina May Gaskin.  In her new book Birth Matters Gaskin wrote:

Birth… matters because the journey through pregnancy and birth offers an irreplaceable way for women to explore their deepest selves – their minds, bodies, and nature… There is a sacred power in the innately feminine capacity of giving birth.  It is one of the elemental, continuing processes of nature that women have the chance to experience, and it is the one act of human creation that is not shared by men.

This short passage stimulated some quite different responses.  Yesterday we heard from Suus, and today we hear from Lili:

I love and respect Ina May. She is changing how pregnancy and birth are handled in the United States, which is a much-needed vocation and a high calling. What she speaks of I have personally experienced- a true woman’s mystery. But from my own personal experience, I can say that Ina May Gaskin is only referring to the most ideal and wanted of pregnancies and births. I experienced what she is talking about in my second pregnancy, but not at all in my first.

The first time I was pregnant, I was a teenager (who was scared and ashamed of getting pregnant and who was judged by friends, family and strangers for being so). Because of my predicament, I tried to pretend it wasn’t happening- until my body would no longer allow me to deny what was happening. It was a hard lesson- ignoring your “problems” does not make them go away. I gave up my child for adoption, and the whole experience left me with scars, PTSD, and a desire to never experience such powerlessness again.

Finally, as a woman in her late thirties, I wanted that ideal pregnancy, birth, and child that Ina May proclaims in her quote, despite my myriad fears. I had found my voice and no one could force choices upon me to which I did not freely agree. I assembled a team of people (midwife, partner, doula) to protect and nurture me. I finally found the experience that Ina May describes.

But I am keenly aware that this birth experience- of deliberately conceiving a wanted child, seeking midwifery care in lieu of a doctor (midwives spend more time with their patients and support them holistically- versus a doctor who sees you for a few minutes each visit), creating the spiritual container for such a miracle, and birthing with a team who were all behind my choices- is not a universal experience.

I truly wish this spiritual experience for every woman- but I know intimately that it cannot happen unless the basics are met. This means conception only when a woman is ready and desirous of it, pregnancy and birth according to her own plan and her body’s rhythms, and support and loving care from multiple people during a vulnerable time in life. Only then can a woman experience the spiritual side of pregnancy and birth, when all other physical and emotional needs are met. We are far from this experience universally. Let us work to make conception, pregnancy, birth, and childrearing a choice. Let us work to make them the spiritual lesson they were meant to be. So mote it be.

 

Lily Shahar Kunning, aka Witch Mom is a mama, student, priestess, and blogger- not necessarily in that order.  Her interests include parenting, Witchcraft, crafting, sustainability, and theology.

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