Listening and Observing: The Power of Birth in Story

Listening and Observing: The Power of Birth in Story

Childbirth may be one of the most powerful events that women experience in life. The sharing of women's personal experiences of giving birth provides an opportunity for greater understanding about how birth shapes and is shaped by our self-perceptions, our culture, and the trajectory of our lives. This evening will provide a safe space to experience the art of listening as we share our personal stories of birth in a way that honors the unique experience of each storyteller.

A part of Beyond Barbie: Piecing Together Today’s Woman – a series of performances and talks about issues important to women today

and in conjunction with Susan Singer's Not Barbie: A Celebration of Real Women 

which opens Sept 16th at 6 PM at Crossroads Art Center.

Who: Women and the people that love them are all invited to participate and/or observe.

When: Thursday, October 27, 7:00 - 9:00 PM

Where: Crossroads Art Center: 2016 Staples Mill Road, Richmond, Virginia 23230

Cost: $10 or $50 for the entire 7 evening series.

Tickets may be purchased on-line at http://beyondbarbie.eventbrite.com, through Crossroads Art Center or at the door. For more information please call 804-278-8950 or email jennikirby@crossroadsartcenter.com

Further information:

Birth is a transformative event, an everyday act that marks one of life’s most sacred passages. Pregnancy, birth, and becoming a parent are experiences that can empower us to become more than we thought we could be. For many women, telling the story of their child’s birth is an important part of this transformation. In the last decade, birth stories have become an emerging cultural narrative form.

While birth stories can be windows into individual women’s souls, they also have the capacity to enlighten, educate, and entertain. Sharing our stories shines a light on the many ways birth takes place in our culture, helps us transcend fears and perceived limitations, and empowers us to learn from our collective experience. Telling our stories can also strengthen women’s trust in their ability to do the hard physical, emotional, and spiritual work of birth.

For this evening, women are invited to listen to, and participate in, the telling of stories of childbirth in a safe, respectful environment that allows each woman’s tale to unfold without interruption. Stories of home births, hospital births, cesarean births, water births, parking lot births, adoptive births, singleton, twin, and triplet births, births of healthy babies, births of challenged babies, and births of stillborn babies are all welcome. The audience will listen to a variety of birth stories in the first person, then break into small groups where stories may be shared and observed in an intimate setting. At the end of the evening, there will be time for reflection on the experience as a whole.

We are especially interested in the moments during your birth when you faced a fear or learned something significant about yourself or about life. What helped you move through the experience? What made you laugh, what made you cry? What did you learn that might help the next woman walking the path toward motherhood?

Facilitators:

Thérèse Hak-Kuhn is the mother of 6 and has been involved in birth both personally and professionally for over 30 years. The Executive Director of toLabor, an international birth doula training and certification program, an attendant at over five hundred births and a facilitator of a variety of birth circles, she understands the necessity for women to able to tell their birth stories and having them truly heard.

Leslie Lytle, MS, CMA, RYT500 is Director of OmMama, LLC which offers prenatal and postnatal yoga and evidence-based childbirth preparation in the Richmond area, and prenatal/postnatal yoga teacher training programs nationally. She has worked with expecting women and new families for over 19 years, and has witnessed firsthand the power of storytelling in transforming women’s experience of birth.

Donate Profits or Pay the Artists?

Yesterday I wrote about the down side of charity auctions and being an artist.  Today I'll address an issue which has come up as I've been working on the performance series, Beyond Barbie.

In doing the work to plan the series, I've been interested to find that people sometimes ask me which non-profit we'll be giving our proceeds to.   When I tell them that the profits will be divided among the performers, they are sometimes surprised.  I think they feel that a project with this sort of emphasis on women's issues should support women's charities or other good causes.



I can understand their feelings.  I also strongly believe that artists should be supported for the work they do.  And this project is being put on primarily by artists and performers who are giving of their time and talent to entertain, inform, and engage audience members who will attend.  It's an interesting concept to think that we should donate our proceeds to non-profits instead of use that income to support ourselves and our art, much of which is helping change the world in ways non-profits typically do. 

Just to bring it into focus personally, in January I chose to quit my well-paying job so that I could pursue my art full time because I have a passion to change how people feel about women's bodies and the way the media portrays us.  I don't have anyone paying me for this work.  I have to raise my own salary through perseverance and dedication to my ideals.  I am spending 25-35 hours/week to put on this series while also preparing for my own huge art show, Not Barbie.  I don't have another source of income, so to be able to do this, I need to get compensated.  If I don't, I simply can't afford to do it.


A woman wrote me expressing her desire that we should give 50% of our profits after expenses to a [very excellent, well-respected, very deserving] local charity.  Here is what I responded to her:

I can certainly understand your desire to help make a difference to nonprofit agencies in the area.  I am aligned with that, for sure.  I also believe that artists deserve to get paid for the work they do, and the artists involved in Beyond Barbie are working very hard to make a difference just as folks in non-profits do.

 My belief is that artists are a vital part of any civilization.  Artists help others become aware of the status quo and what about it needs to change.  If you think about any era of civilization, from the ancient to the present, you probably think about the art from that time, because it is the art that shows us what we need to know about the civilization.

Artists rarely get funding from the government or from private foundations.  They work behind the scenes, often living close to the edge because their commitment to their art is strong enough that they must do it, regardless of the cost.  Artists have a vision and work to realize it.  That is really no different than what non-profits do.  For example, I want to change how women feel about their bodies - I want advertisers to change how they portray women - I want to help us all accept our differences and give up judgment of others.  Those are laudable efforts.  I could incorporate into a non-profit, come up with a mission statement, rent an office, hire workers, and work in many ways to get this message across.  Instead I am choosing to get my message across through my paintings and through this series.  Is that any less effective than what a non-profit would do?  or any less worthy of support?

The night of our series on Birth - women will be telling their stories and sharing their joys and heartaches.  Those stories, more than anything else I can think of, will effectively help women see that they have a choice in birthing options and that all can be good.  It can lead to healing for those women whose births were less than what they wished they would be.  Counseling could help them.  Support groups could help.  And I believe that this night of storytelling and sharing their own experiences will do a world of good, even without a non-profit.

The night on Abuse - we will have professional storytellers (Megan Hicks and Linda Goodman) there who have put their hearts and souls into creating stories about abuse with the intention of helping people understand what abuse is and how it affects people, and to give them hope for healing.  Yes, [the charity you're recommending] is fantastic.  It is a god-send for women living in abusive situations.  I support it wholeheartedly.  AND perhaps there will be women who attend our program that evening who will feel called to go to [that charity] because they recognize themselves in the stories we're telling.  These stories can directly prompt people to action they might not have know how to take otherwise.  We will have lists of resources for them to use, wonderful non-profits and therapists, etc., if they chose to take the next step.  My assertion is that the women who have taken the time to process their own lives to the point where they can tell their stories, or the stories of their mothers and grandmothers or friends or lovers, deserve to be honored for their services, and in our society, money is one way of honoring people.  They should get support so they can continue to tell their stories so they can continue to make a difference.

I believe each evening we've planned has a similar ability to help people.  [...] My heartfelt belief [is]  that what we're doing is as important as much of the work that non-profits do.  Beyond Barbie isn't a money-making scheme.  It's a reaching out to community to offer our stories and our hearts to others to help them understand us and heal themselves.   Non-profits are a vital part of our society because there are few other ways for the hurting in our midst to get help and support.  My husband has worked in the non-profit sector for years, and I was a teacher for 25 years, so I'm very familiar with them.  Right now I am taking direct action to make a difference, AND I am ready to monetarily honor those who help me do it, to the extent the ticket sales make that possible.

Have you personally had an experience as an artist/creative where you felt your work was undervalued or misunderstood for the contribution it is to society?

What would happen if I really accepted myself?

If I truly accepted myself, my belly would be the most luscious beautiful voluptuous bit of flesh on the planet.  I would gaze at it lovingly, pat it absent-mindedly in meetings, paint it in warm glowing colors instead of cold putrid ones, and tell stories about its glory.

I would tell most especially about how it expanded lovingly to hold my precious children as they grew from cells into sentient beings.  How it grew to bulbous proportions threatening to pop or to topple me over with its lopsided heaviness as I plodded wearily through the final days of my third pregnancy while still nursing my second baby.  Yet it contained everything - my hopes for this child, my love for him, my health, his safety, a generous place to spend his first moments of this lifetime.  It protected him from my exhaustion and made sure he had enough food, enough liquid, enough oxygen, enough room, providing him seemingly automatically with just the right amounts of everything as I lay down to sleep each weary night, dulled to the distress of each day by my exhaustion.

If I truly accepted my belly, I would thank it constantly for offering my children such a safe and loving haven for their first nine months.

And I would realize it is my belly that taught me about prejudice and injustice and the cost of each.  My father's orders to hold it in cursed me and made me feel humiliated to be a woman, to have a woman's curves.  I head him tell my mother the same, and I learned to bristle at the injustice though at the time I had no recourse.

But now, thank you, dear belly, for not disappearing despite my two hundred adolescent sit ups a night.  Thank you for the constant reminder that you are the seat of my empowerment, my rage, my fight to help all women grow into their own bellies.

My power has been gestating there, growing and growing with just the right amount of everything.  And now it is becoming time for its birth.  It is preparing to enter the world just as my beloved children did, alive, awake, alert, and ready to make its mark on the world.

Accepting what is: Lelya Nisaa's birthing and nursing story

Many of my models write something for me after modeling for me.  This woman, Leyla Nisaa, wrote so beautifully about her experience with her son that I wanted to share it.  The picture which accompanies it shows her holding a necklace which her women friends made for her at her Blessing Way before her son's birth.  Each woman brought a bead to add to the necklace so that Leyla could feel the presence of each of them as she was giving birth.

 *****

My son is teaching me to love my body.  Before having my son, I’d look in the mirror, and all I’d see are my imperfections, my sagging breasts, fat rolls, cellulite, blemishes, gray hair, wrinkles, and stretch marks. I have been on every single diet there is: the grapefruit diet, Weight Watchers, Adkins, low fat, low cal, Slim Fast, the list goes on and on. I’d loose weight, go off the diet, and then all the weight would come back plus some. I never saw me when I looked in the mirror. I saw everything I didn’t like about me.

The planets were aligned, and all was right in the Universe the night I conceived my son. It was a lovely hot, sultry July evening. There was something in the air that night. 40 weeks and 4 days later I would meet the love of my life.

My pregnancy was rather uneventful. I had some pubic symphysis dysfunction issues (pelvic separation) at 17 weeks that made it very painful to walk. I measured big my entire pregnancy. My son’s father is over six and a half feet tall, so it didn’t surprise me that my son was measuring large. I started having signs of early labor on my due date, Monday April 11. I lost my plug that night and had amazing rocking contractions for the next 3 nights. They’d always stop as the sun would come up. It was so frustrating. At my doctor’s appointment on Thursday April 15 (Tax Day!), I had protein in my urine, and my blood pressure was sky high. I was told they were going to induce me that day, so to go home, and grab my things, eat some lunch and come back. I ended up going in to labor on my own almost as soon as we got to the hospital. I was natural, active labor for 17 hrs. I had progressed quickly to a 6, then went down to a 4, and my cervix was swelling. At 8am the next morning,  I opted for an epidural and pitocin as a last ditch attempt to avoid a C-section.  8 hours later, I was still at a 4. I was wheeled into surgery at 5, my son was born at 5:13pm on April 16, 2010. It was love at first sight. He weighted 9lbs, 10.5 oz, and was 20 inches long. He was the largest baby born that day.

 I had such a hard time processing everything. I thought I had done everything right. I had attended all my natural child birth classes, I had eaten right, I had a wonderful doula, and I had mentally prepared myself for a natural, medication free, intervention free birth.  To add insult to injury, my son never latched. I have inverted nipples which complicated things. I also didn’t have any milk for 5 days after he was born. It was another week after that until I finally was able to make enough milk for him. If I had more time at home, I probably would have worked harder at getting him to latch. I had to go back to work when he was 8 weeks old. I was so tired, and I was getting a bad case of postpartum depression. I felt so inadequate. Not only was I not able to birth my baby the way I wanted to, I couldn’t have the nursing relationship I so desperately wanted. It took months to finally feel ready to deal with everything that happened during my labor and his birth. I later found out that I have a low pelvic arch. With the way my pelvis is shaped, I wouldn’t have been able to get my baby out.

 Even though he wouldn’t latch, I was bound and determined to give him my milk. I pumped every time he fed. Pretty soon I had a nice supply of extra milk in my freezer. Then one day I opened my freezer, and was attacked by bags and bags of extra milk. I found a mama who was pregnant with her third baby, and needed milk. She had a congenital breast defect and was unable to produce enough milk on her own. I gladly gave her my extra milk.

In the early days, the only thing that seemed to comfort my son was skin to skin contact. I spent many days with a naked baby lying on my naked chest. I rarely wore a shirt when I was home. I was either pumping, or had a naked baby laying on me.  As he got older, he’d protest and throw a fit when his father or I would try to dress him. We soon realized, like most babies, he’d rather be naked. I was happy to oblige him. He’s spent more time wearing just a diaper, than in clothes. One day I was looking at him and I realized the same things that I fell in love with on him, his fat rolls, the dimples on his bum, fat, chunky thighs, were the same thing I despised in myself. It was a wake up call.

 I started to question the way I saw myself, and how I thought. It was the first time I was ever comfortable being naked for an extended amount of time. I felt that I was embarking on journey of self discovery, and at the end I somehow knew I was going to be a different person. I changed the way I dressed.  I felt my body deserved not to be seen as a sexual object, but as an amazing being that did an amazing thing. I needed to honor and respect my body for what it allowed me to do.  Being naked was no longer sexual. It was simply a way to provide comfort and food for my son. It didn’t matter what my naked body looked like, all that mattered was my skin gave comfort to my son. I saw my breasts as a source of food for my son, not as sexual objects.  For the first time in literally YEARS, I was truly comfortable with who I was, and what I looked like; I was comfortable in my own skin.

I strongly believe everything happens for a reason. I know now, that had I not been built the way I am, strong broad shoulders, and wide hips, I wouldn’t be able to wear my son in a sling . At ten months, he’s 25 lbs, and 29 and a half inches long. Did I mention, I’m only 5ft 3? He’s almost half my height yet I wear him every where we go, either on my hip, or on my back. Several people comment to me on what a “good” baby he is. Most of us are “good” when we’re happy. My son is happy, as long as he’s cuddled up next to Mama.

My body did an amazing thing. I wasn’t able to birth my son naturally, but I grew a big, beautiful, healthy, and strong boy. My son doesn’t latch, but I’m still able to feed him, and give him the best thing for him, my milk. At ten months, he still gets the majority of his calories from my milk.  I was able to help another mama make sure her son would only get breast milk.

When I look in the mirror now, I don’t see all the imperfections I saw before. I see soft flesh that provides comfort and food; I see amazing skin that stretched to fit my growing baby; I see strength where before I only saw weakness; I see wisdom, ready to be passed down to my son.

My son taught me to love, honor, and respect my body, for all the amazing things its allowed me to do.  

Raqs Illuminaire!

Chris and I just returned from a wonderful, fascinating performance at the Byrd Theater.  It was called Raqs Illuminaire and was a belly dance extravaganza!  There were 10 different performances by about 20 performers.  I don't really know anything about belly dancing, so I can't go into technical details whatsoever, but I can say that we enjoyed it thoroughly.

My previous experience with belly dancing was pretty awesome - at the blessing way (a sort of spiritual baby shower) before Dylan's birth, a friend of mine belly danced for the assembled group.  This might seem like an odd gift unless you know (which I hadn't) that belly dancing was created to help women give birth!  The gyrations in the dance form are perfect for laboring women to help relieve pain and to work through the contractions.  Amazingly, when I was giving birth to Dylan, even though I'd been throwing up and having other intestinal issues the whole 12 hours previously, I was able to move my body in belly-dance-like movements, and it actually alleviated the pain!  I would gyrate and by the time I reach 180 degrees, the pain was beginning to subside.  I was astonished.  It made labor completely manageable.  I became a convert then and there!  But that was over 18 years ago, and I haven't done anything with it besides think about it every once in a while.

But now belly dancing is coming into my consciousness more and more lately.  My friend Peggy O'Neill has been talking to me about it for years.  She teaches it in town frequently and, in fact, I think is who taught my friend so long ago.  Then there's Linda Hollett, an artist friend of mine who has studied it for over 20  years.  Alice Warner, the wife of another artist friend, has also danced her entire adult life, I believe. 

After my show, Sacred Flesh, in October, two more belly dancers contacted me - Dawn Flores is a very cool woman who teaches Goddess Dancing at Unity at Byrd Park.  She asked me to come to the class so I could see what's going on around town.  It was a terrific class, very empowering and fun.

Khalima is the other woman who got in touch.  She asked me to teach a class at her studio, Illumination, on Naked Self Portraiture, so that's the genesis of that course.  She also sponsored the Red Tent Evening which took place at the last new moon.  And she's who produced the show, Raqs Luminaire today.

And then there's Heather Addley (who's quite an outstanding photographer herself!) who modeled for me the other day.  She came to the studio with her 2-year-old daughter.  I photographed them both.  It was a delightful session.  Seeing Heather with her daughter reminded me of my days as the mother of young kids.  At one point, both of them were nude, and Heather was nursing her daughter while holding her little bottom with a hand to keep her from falling off her lap and pulling Heather's breast with her!  The way Harper climbed all over her while Heather continued the flow of conversation uninterrupted was so familiar to me from my kids!  Then, for the moments when Harper was occupied, Heather would switch gears immediately and tune into her self and her body.  She moved with a belly dancers sensuousness, hand movements, gyrations - the whole thing.  It was gorgeous!  The images we got from that session were so exciting to me.  Chris is already making canvases for me to paint a couple of them.  Heather has a wonderful Birth Goddess figure, reminiscent of Venus von Willendorf and the Earth Mother she evokes.  Of course I'll post the images as I work on them!


But back to Raqs Luminaire!  Here's the description of it from the website along with a list of the performers who were in it:

Luminaire is a beautiful and genre-defying production produced by Khalima and explores the intersection of belly dance, music, theatre and magic. A process and exploration for not only the viewers, but for the performers themselves.

We welcome to the show local and regional performers of bellydance fusion and music.

Joining us on stage will be:
Khalima
LeVar
Sekhemti
The Rogue Bellydance Collective
Dana
Spoon
Somnium
Genevieve
Leyla Nissa
Hadara
Samiksha
Ayame

Tina Batya on violin

That was one thing that impressed me today - though belly dance is quite a sensual dance form, this performance was certainly not about sex, as people sometimes tend to think belly dancing is.  Sensuality and love of the body, definitely.  There were gorgeous women of every size up there on stage moving their bodies, feeling the gifts God gave them.  One who impressed me the most was a large African American woman who moved with such grace and sensuality, I couldn't take my eyes off of her.  There was also a petite woman who was perhaps of Indian heritage who was quite a master.  She balanced a bowl on her head as she shook and turned and twirled the rest of her body.  She was quite skilled!  The first dance featured Leyla Nissa as a woman giving birth aided by her attendants, Hadara and Khalima.  Leyla Nissa had her own real baby in a sling on her belly whom she "birthed" during the dance.  That was a lovely way to start the performance to remind or teach people that that was the origin of the dance form.

Khalima and the only man in the show, LeVar Carter, did a fascinating piece about death at the end.  Each had on an elaborate mask at the beginning which reminded me of Egyptian lore.  They did some lovely dance together, replete with yoga and contact improvisation moves.  Then there was Spoon who came on stage dressed in black with green neon lights outlining her body and light sabers!   All in all, it was a wonderful afternoon.

I left feeling like maybe I should go take belly dancing so I can become more confident in how I move my body.  These women shone!  Their confidence and joy in movement was apparent.  I want me somma that!

Home Birth vs Hospital Birth

When I was writing about the birth of my third child, Dylan, I became so thankful that I had been at home instead of in the hospital.  I imagine if I had gone into the hospital after having the stomach flu, they would have felt it necessary to intervene in many ways.  They wouldn't have let me eat or drink - that's standard procedure - I might have been able to suck on ice cubes.  (They're concerned if they have to do a C-section that I might vomit and choke in my own vomit, so they keep stomachs empty.)  At home I was able to drink when I was thirsty and I ate a little bit of chicken noodle soup.  I think they might have given me fluids so I wouldn't be so dehydrated.  So I would have been tied to the bed with IV fluids as well as with the fetal monitor.  Nancy used a low-tech "horn" she put on my belly to listen to the heartbeat.  She also had a stethoscope. 

In the hospital I probably wouldn't have been able to walk around or belly dance or sit on the toilet to labor.  I might have had to use a bedpan for the diarrhea.  I would have been perceived as a patient, not a woman doing something quite natural (albeit in a weakened state from the stomach flu).  Nancy knew I'd been sick, but to her I was a powerful woman giving birth - of course that was the normal thing to do.  The flu was tertiary, if that. 

I know hospitals have made progress since 1992.  Doulas attend many births to help women be able to follow their birth plans.  They run interference with the powers-that-be when necessary/possible.  I know that must make a difference.

But still the rate of cesarean sections is 33%.  In 1992 it was a whopping 23%, and that felt awful.  It has increase almost 50% by then.  What that says to me is that birth is becoming ever more medicalized.  It is more convenient to have a C-section - it can be planned.  The time frame is limited.  Everything can be sterile and mostly controlled.  Those are positives.

To me, though, C-sections disempower the woman and the birth process.  Women who have them once usually are told they have to have them again.  Their recovery time is long and arduous, making it harder for them to bond with their babies because of their limited mobility and sore abdomens.  The doctor is in control.  The woman can't see the birth process.  She is anaethesized and can't feel what is going on.

For me, realizing I could cope with the intense feelings of labor was empowering as heck!  Things shifted in me after I gave birth, especially after Laura's birth at home.  I felt like the most powerful woman on Earth!  I could do anything if I could give birth to a 9 lb baby at home with no drugs!  My body became my ally rather than just something to carry  me from place to place.  It was very, very powerful.

I ache for women whose doctors tell them they have to have a C-section at such-and-such a time on such-and-such a day, women who don't know the power they have in their bodies to bring another being into existence without interference. 

I hope that doctors become more acculturated towards the naturalness of birth and become more able to support women in making empowering choices for themselves.  I believe it could shift our society towards a gentler better world.

Birth #2: at home

In 1989 I found out I was pregnant again.  I immediately began talking to my friends who had had home births to find out how to go about having one.  I was happy with the birthing experience I'd had in the hospital, but in the meantime I'd become aware that there were other options which could work better for me and my family. 

At that time (and I believe still today), there was only one midwife in town who would attend home births.  She has a physician back up (she must by law) and is allowed to attend births in hospitals, but her primary practice is with women giving birth at home.

I went for my first check up with the Nurse Practitioner in the doctor's practice - standard procedure so she could screen me to make sure I was a good candidate for a  home birth - i.e. healthy, not high risk, aware of what was involved, etc.  The next month I met Nancy, the midwife.  I liked her immediately.  She was calm, sensitive, no-nonsense but very caring and kind.  She examined me thoroughly and explained to me what she was doing and what was going on in my body.  She gave me plenty of time to ask questions and to express any concerns I might be having.  I felt completely cared for and heard and safe.  She made sure that everything was going well physically - that's one of the things that makes home births so low risk - the midwives really know their patients and screen them for problems thoroughly each time they see them.  They won't allow the women to try to give birth at home if there is the slightest hint of a potential problem.  Of course, emergencies arise at times, and that is a risk that one takes when having a home birth.  I decided it was worth the risk.  I felt very confident that things would go well.  It was a gut feeling.  I was right.

On August 31, 1989, I woke up feeling good.  It was a beautiful, clear, cool day - quite the anomoly in Richmond, VA at the end of August!  I began feeling contractions fairly early so called Nancy to let her know.  She suggested I call her again when it got more intense  and I wanted her to come over.  I dressed in a very loose blue dress with nothing underneath.  I walked around the house then went out into the yard.  I sat on the porch steps in the backyard and meditated on the shadows sifting across the grass as the branches of the tree blew gently in the breeze.  My husband cut a fresh rose from our garden and brought it to me.  I contemplated the bud opening and imagined my cervix opening like the bud.  I felt the contractions, but I didn't perceive them as pain.  Instead they were simply helping my body do what it needed to do to help me bring my child into the world. 

The contractions began to get stronger so we called Nancy again and told her it might be a good idea for her to come over.  It was around 10:30, I think.  My mother had come over to get Andrew so he could have fun while we were otherwise engaged.  Nancy examined me when she got there and found I was at about 6 cm, shortly before transition when it gets very intense.  Because I'd been able to walk around and move as I wanted to the whole time, I hadn't felt more than mild discomfort at any point.  I felt an urge to sit on the toilet.  Since I was in my own home, that was what I did.  Nancy and my husband sat with me as I blew air out and let the contractions flow through me.  I imagined the rose opening up.  Nancy lightly ran her hands over my legs in a motion that was oddly helpful.  She told me I was getting close and asked if I wanted to give birth there.  I said no.  I had an image of giving birth squatting in the bedroom upstairs so we made our way up there, inbetween contractions (not on a guerney in the middle of a contraction like the previous time).  It was wonderful not having any pain medication this time.  I was able to use the time between contractions to relax and rest and calm myself to prepare for the next contraction.  I evoked the images I'd visualized for so many months to help me stay calm and peaceful.  I breathed deeply.  I moaned softly.

Once upstairs, I sat on the edge of the mattress on the floor.  When a contraction would come, I would squat and lean into Nancy - she must be very strong to have been able to take my weight.  I was at the pushing stage. I roared with power as I pushed.  The wave subsided.  I rested.  Nancy had me touch the baby's head as it was beginning to crown.  Another one.  I squatted and pushed into the pressure pushing into me.  Nancy reached in and widened my opening so I wouldn't tear very much.  I pushed again.  I tore some.  I roared somemore. The baby's head rushed out along with the rest of her body.  I pulled her out of me.  I was the first human being to touch her.  (12:16 PM) I lay back into the pillows and gazed into her eyes for what felt like eternity.  She latched onto my breast almost right away and nursed for at least a half an hour.  In the meantime, Nancy sewed me up and rubbed arnica and goldenseal on my vaginal tissues so I wouldn't be so sore.  (It worked - I felt fantastic as soon as 2 days later!  Quite a difference from the first time when the doctor told me he would sew me up nice and tight so my husband wouldn't even be able to tell I'd had a kid!  That made it hurt each time we made love for the three years between babies.  Not a holistic way to go.  But I digress...)  We had opted not to have the baby, Laura Anne, get shots or eye drops or any of the invasive things babies normally get in the hospital.  The only medical intervention we did was for me to get an antibody shot.  I am Rh negative, and I needed to get a shot in case Laura was Rh positive so I wouldn't build up antibodies against Rh positive blood - if I were to get pregnant again, that would cause issues with the next baby whose blood my body would try to reject. 

Nancy drew a bath for me with a potful of wonderful herbs in it to help my body mend quickly.  I didn't want to let Laura go, but I went downstairs to take a bath and left the baby with her daddy so he could love on her like crazy.  That was when Nancy put her into a canvas sling and weighed her: 9 lb. 11 oz.  She was pretty darn big!  Laura began to cry and was difficult to soothe.  I got out of the tub and went back upstairs.  A short time after I got settled in, Mom and Andrew came bursting in the door to see the new arrival, bringing flowers they'd picked and arranged in a sweet vase.  Andrew came over to me and peeked in at Laura.  He was very sweet with her.  I don't remember his ever being jealous.

A couple of hours later, a friend came by and brought us some beef stew and Grands rolls that her husband had made for us.  It was the best food I'd ever eaten!  Made with so much love, so hearty, just perfect.  Friends brought us a series of meals for the next week or two so we could concentrate on just being with Laura and acclimating her to life with us. 

Giving birth to Laura the way I did, at home, without drugs, was the most empowering experience of my life.  I was completely conscious of what I was doing.  I had made clear choices about what I wanted and, thankfully, fate cooperated, and I was able to give birth at home with my husband and the midwife there, with complete privacy and freedom to do whatever felt natural and right to me.  There were no unnecessary interventions and Laura was born into a beautiful room in her own home.  We didn't have to be uprooted to go home.  We were home.  We were cared for wonderfully by Nancy and then by friends and family who made sure we were well taken care of. 

That birth changed my feelings about my body too.  When birthing Andrew, I hadn't felt like I was in charge.  The birth was done to me as much as I did it.  There were so many things involved I couldn't control.  With Laura's birth, I was in charge.  Not that I was in control - it would be foolhardy to suggest anyone is in control in a birth - but I was empowered to birth my baby the way millions of women before me had done.  I knew I could do it.  By myself.  Nancy supported me.  My husband was wonderfully present.  But I gave birth.

It's the way it should be.

I hope that women are beginning to take back their power in giving birth.  It is one of our fundamental rights, and it is a gift we give ourselves and especially our children to bring them into the world in this way.


*******************
My brother just sent me a message with his memories of Laura's birth.  It's fun to see it from another perspective.

And right after the birth, Mom called me in my classroom at Benedictine High School, where I was teaching a German lesson on the first day of the academic year. I had just started off speaking German to this beginners' class, drawing my family tree on the board and talking about my family. "And this is my sister," I said in German. Then I made a gesture with my hands to indicate a big belly and said she was pregnant. One of the 9th graders - who is now one of Obama's bodyguards - tried to interpret, "She's fat?"


Then the phone rang. They (WE!) thought it was eerie when the news came that Laura Anne, 9 lbs. 7 oz., had just been born. Three of the students in that class were on my soccer team, which had its first practice that afternoon. Between school and practice, I went to see Susan and Laura and got the necessary information (though I still don't understand why people don't ask, "How cute is she?" They always ask, "How much did she weigh?")

As we ran our laps around the soccer field, one of them - who is now a Registered Nurse! - started chanting, "Laura Ann, 9 pounds, 7 ounces" and everyone joined in.

Two months later, the day the Berlin Wall fell, Susan was celebrating her 30th birthday. I used that event as an opportunity to have the German students learn how to write a birthday card, which we then gave Laura Anne's mother. On it you could see: Paul DeTrana, 147 lbs., Brian Lambert, 132 lbs., David Dart, 97 lbs. Or did we translate everything into kilograms for her?

Nursing my boy!

We moved to Richmond when my son was 4 weeks old.  When my mother came to Ohio to meet her grandson, she happened to mention that if we wanted to live with her while my husband went back to school, that would be OK.  I guess that planted a seed, and we moved in with her the day before Richmond's biggest snowfall of the year (16 inches) and a couple of days before VCU's semester started.  I immediately reached out to try to find friends and community.  I was blessed to find La Leche League, a support group for breastfeeding women and their babies.  I had become an ardent nurser and would pull out my breast whenever and wherever my son needed to nurse.  I think that might have been uncomfortable at times for others, but I was not atuned to their discomfort.  I was atuned to my baby and his needs.  I was also a bit strident about a woman's right to feed her baby in public the way nature intended him to be fed.

My favorite nursing story occurred at the National Gallery in Washington, DC.  My husband and I had driven up there with Andrew to see the Georgia O'Keeffe exhibit shortly after she died.  I love her sumptuous paintings of flowers especially.  Her colors and forms are exquisite.  As I was slowly perusing the exhibit, Andrew, who was about a year old at the time, became restless and started indicating that he wanted to nurse.  I cradled him in my arms, pulled up my shirt, began to nurse him, and went on looking at the art.  When I was in front of her gigantic cloud painting, I heard a couple of women beside me speaking in German.  Since I speak fluent German, I perked up - I always love talking to people in other languages!  What they said made my stomach leap - "Schau das mal an, was die Frau da macht!  So eine Frechheit!"  (Look at what that woman is doing!  It's so rude!)  I looked over at them and saw they meant me, so I said, in German, of course, "Naja, dafuer koennen wir alle die Kunst in Ruhe anschauen."  (Yes, well, and because of that we can all look at the art in peace.)  They gawked at me then turned away quickly and made their way out of the gallery as fast as they could.  I felt happy that I'd been able to defend my right to nurse in public. 

It wasn't all that common to nurse in 1987, and there certainly weren't provisions made for it in public places.  There weren't even changing tables in the bathrooms.  I remember changing Andrew's diaper at the table at a restaurant once.  The woman I was with, who had not yet had children, was a bit appalled, but I think it was better than using the bathroom floor - gross! 

Being in La Leche League was one of the best things that could have happened to me.  The women in the group were very conscious parents and thought a lot about the best way to bring up their kids.  It was so helpful to have people to talk to about issues I was having and to find out whether it was something to worry about or not.  It was also quite empowering to learn more about birthing alternatives.  The next time I was pregnant, I made quite a different choice from the one I'd made the first time around...

Memories of Birthing in a Hospital

I got some very exciting news yesterday!  My brother and his wifel who live in Germany, had their third child, Julia April.  It sounds like Bianca is a powerful birther, and the birth went off without a hitch.  My brother said that his wife doesn't react much to pain, so the birth seemed very easy (to him, at least, and to me on the phone 3000 miles away!)

My joy over their new baby led me to remember giving birth to my children.  I have three birth children, two sons and a daughter, and a stepson.  My first child was born in a hospital in Sandusky, Ohio with a DO attending.  (DO's are slightly more progressive than ObGyn's in general.)  The other two were born at home here in Richmond.  I conceived my first son in Vienna, Austria and went through 5 months of my pregnancy there.  It was very different from being pregnant in the US.  When I first went to the doctor, I was given a Mutter-Kind Pass - a mother-child pass - in which to record all my pregnancy information.  It was wonderful and so logical to have one place to keep all the information and for the doctors to be able to look at to follow my progress.  I orginally planned to stay in Austria after I had my son, but my husband at the time was working on a book (and not earning money), so I would have had to have continued to work, and he wouldn't have been able to continue writing, so we came back to the good ol' US of A where he could work as well.  Ultimately I think it was a good choice, but I missed the perks of having a child in Europe.  For example, my brother OR his wife can take off a full year with 2/3's pay then another 2 years without pay (but still with health insurance paid) with the guarantee that he/she will get his/her job back when he/she returns.  In addition, they get Kindergeld, a stipend for each child they have.  The population in Germany is shrinking, so the government subsidizes people having children.  Pretty good deal, huh?!

Birthing in a hospital was fine.  I didn't know all that much about possible alternatives, so it seemed awesome - after all, look at the results - a fantastic baby boy!  It was a bit bothersome to have been tied down to the bed by the fetal monitor most of every hour, but I didn't know better.  At one point I felt a strong urge to sit on the toilet and labor there, but I felt too embarrassed to do so in case someone saw me on the toilet.   Another time I was screaming as I was going through transition.  My husband was in the room but no one else.  It was scary.  The pain was very intense, so I screamed.  A nurse came rushing in and shushed me, telling me I would upset the other patients.  A little bit later, in the middle of a contraction, several people lifted me over onto a guerney to take me into the delivery room.  I did not use nice language to let them know how I felt about that!  Once there, I had to wait 2 hours to push until another woman had her baby.  The darvon (twilight sleep) meds they gave me "to take the edge off" put me to sleep between contractions only to rip me into awareness when the contraction crested, leaving me almost panicked by the pain with no time to prepare for it peacefully.  The medicine wore off as I got to the point of pushing, so those two hours in the delivery room were quite intense. 

But all of that paled in comparison to seeing Andrew's head begin to crown in the mirror at the foot of the bed.  The doctor had me touch him, then he handed him to me as he was born and I brought him up on to my chest.  I felt the Spirit of God in the room as Andrew was born.  Pure spirit.  Pure love with a force I hadn't even known existed.  As I entered the realm of motherhood in that instant, I was transformed by a force as old as the Universe and more fierce than a raging hurricane.  I have loved unconditionally since that moment and will forever more.