Celebrate Fertility!

I think our ancestors were onto something. They celebrated fertility and fecundity. A round belly was something to proud of... for both mother and father. In some cultures, couples did not marry until the woman was pregnant.

Today, we have a twisted sense of fertility. During our most fertile years we are urged to abstain. We suppress our fertility with fake hormones. We install foreign bodies into our wombs to make them inhospitable to growing babies. Sex is recreational rather than procreational.

Suddenly we find ourselves older. Everyone begins asking if we'll ever have a baby. Now, however, it isn't so easy. Our most fertile years are behind us. Every cycle becomes a stressful wait for ovulation and then another even more stressful wait to see if we conceived. After months of unsuccessful trying, we go to fertility specialists who load us up on drugs and run expensive tests. More often than not, they return with a diagnosis of "infertility from unknown causes." Then we're told of the options... all of which range from expensive to outrageous. And they offer a very slight chance of success.

We've got it all wrong. We're missing out on all those fertile years. We're set up by society's and our own expectations. Time is fleeting, and before we know it, so many of us are left with that indescribable yearning for a baby. Before it is too late, think your plans through. I think our society needs to rearrange priorities. Let's celebrate some fertility.

At Least You Have a Healthy Baby

"At least you have a healthy baby..." How many times have you heard this? While in the case of an emergency, we would all do whatever was needed to protect our babies, why should this be the standard of care? Why should we expect to undergo interventions that cause our babies stress, violating exams and have to be a spectacle to whoever wants to peek into the hospital room? Why should 1/3 of us expect to be cut open to deliver out babies?

REACHE (Regional Association of Childbirth Educators) of Washington State is presenting a conference called "At Least You Have A Healthy Baby: Exploring the Forces Behind the Cesarean Epidemic" on April 18, 2009. For more information, check out their website at http://www.reache.info.

New CafePress Store & Website

We're building our website: http://organic-birth.com! While it is still a work in progress, I welcome feedback!

And if you've admired any of the artwork I've featured here on my blog, I have a CafePress store now that I'm slowly adding my various pieces to. The link is http://www.cafepress.com/organicbirth if you want to check anything out.

If you have admired a certain artwork I've posted here that you don't see over there yet, drop me a line and I'll get it added faster.

How Baby Experiences Birth

Have you ever noticed in a hospital birth how the baby is treated as an incidental passenger? The mother is encouraged to have drugs and lie on her back. Hmmm. The drugs DO cross the placenta and lying on her back can compress the large arteries that feed the uterus and placenta, and then the baby. I wonder why baby is distressed?

Next, the baby is unceremoniously pulled out with hands, vacuum extractor or taken out surgically, depriving baby of the tight squeeze that is needed to press fluid from the lungs in preparation for breathing.

The baby is suddenly in a very bright place (ever seen how bright those lamps are they point at the birthing mother's vagina? Yikes!), the temperature drops, and in many cases baby is whisked away to an exam table, without feeling a comforting touch from his or her mother. How frightening would that be?

What do you think is going through that baby's mind? Despite what tradition says, babies are very aware. They are aware of what is going on before they are born, and interact with mom or dad when they push on baby's foot through mom's belly. The baby needs to be with mom immediately. If there are problems, at least keep baby within mom's reach so she can reassure baby by touching an arm or leg. The baby knows what mom's touch is like... s/he has felt it through her belly since they were large enough to press against it.

There is some research that suggests babies know if they are wanted or not. They feel fear, rejection, love and comfort. How can anyone separate a baby from its parents when first born? How can they poke a newborn with needles, shove tubes down their throats and handle them roughly? How can they take newborn boys and circumcize them? They are so open and vulnerable.

As human beings, we need gentle, loving touch to survive and thrive. How can we expect babies not to carry trauma from a rough entry into the world when it was just a "typical birth?" Babies are born ready to be imprinted with their parents' faces and touches. Instead the first touch they feel is to be yanked out. The first face they see is most likely wearing a mask. What would you feel if you were to enter a place like that and have no way to escape?

All babies deserve love, gentleness and comfort. They deserve to be treated respectfully. There is the saying that in the eyes of a newborn baby you can see the wisdom of the universe. How sad that we don't pay attention to that wisdom. Instead we feel it is our duty to strip these babies of any wisdom they had to impart to us. I say it is time to learn from our babies. I know mine have taught me more than I ever imagined was possible.

Bucket Babies

Okay, I can't keep quiet any longer. Every time I go to the store, I see all these poor babies stuck in those portable car seats. I call them baby buckets. Their parents lug them in and out of the store, put them in the shopping cart or lock them to the child seat of the shopping cart. How comfortable must it be to be swung back and forth awkwardly as your parent carries you in something like that? They're not ergonomically designed for the parent to carry easily, and they're heavy. The poor baby is swung one way, then the other as the parent struggles to carry it into the store.

These babies inevitably start fussing and then crying at some point in the store. Do the parents ever take them out of the plastic bucket and hold them? No! The babies I see where I shop are pretty much ignored while they're in the baby buckets. If the parent reacts to them at all, it is just to try and shush them, without really looking in their eyes or even patting them on the tummy. My heart just goes out to them... the cries I hear either sound like "feed me" cries or "hold me" cries. What is so wrong with picking your baby up?

Out of all the bucket babies I've seen when I've been shopping the past six months, one dad actually stopped and picked up the baby out of the bucket. Kudos to him! I was so happy to see one parent respond to their baby's needs.

Think about it. Babies are put in car seats. In play pens. In strollers. Products are sold to prop a bottle to feed them. Are these babies ever held? Cuddled? Consoled?

I read parents asking advice online at various parenting sites, asking why their baby won't sleep when they leave him or her to cry it out alone in a room without the comforting feel of a parent's arms about them, or hearing a familiar heartbeat. My heart just breaks. And we wonder why children grow up feeling alienated, alone and like no one cares about them.

The mainstream baby industry is doing families a gross disservice by making ever more products to put baby in that discourages picking them up and holding them.

Babies need to be held... often. Babies need to feel safe and secure. They are too young to rely on themselves for consolation. They're BABIES.

Think back to your early childhood. What do you remember? I remember two memories from my early childhood vividly... one was a birthday cake with a sugar carousel on it, and the other memory is of standing at the screen door looking out and crying because I woke up and was all alone. I felt utterly abandoned and alone. I was very small... maybe two years old, because my sister hadn't been born yet. I remember seeing my mother's black car coming into the driveway. I still have issues about being alone and feeling abandoned. It has been a big issue in several of my own births.

Now back to these baby buckets. How are these babies going to grow up? What issues are they going to have from not being held? How do we teach parents that children are not inconveniences... that they are to be loved and comforted?

Yes, we have a baby bucket car seat. It seems the only kind you can buy for infants these days. But it stays where it belongs... in the car. Babies grow so fast anyway... let me hold my baby for as long as they'll stay willingly in my arms.

Trusting Birth

What does trusting birth mean?

For some, it is a frightening thought. How could we possibly birth without doctors, nurses, surgical procedures, machines and hospitals? But if this is so, how did we get so far? Certainly we haven't always had access to cesareans, episiotomies, IVs and epidurals.

A mere 30 years ago, the cesarean rate was less than 10%. Now it is over 30%. We're still women. Our bodies haven't changed in 30 years. Why can't women successfully give birth today like our parents did?

The answer is that very few trust birth anymore. This is a terrible loss for humanity. We live in fear of a natural bodily function. We see it on television on reality birth shows. We hear it from our doctors who tell us that we are not capable of passing our babies through our pelvises without intervention. We hear from nurses that we won't be able to bear the pain. What else are women supposed to think?

Fortunately, some women are finding the light at the end of the tunnel. Some of us are spreading the word that birth is something we are built to do successfully. As my friend Karen Strange of Newborn Breath says, "Birth is designed to work in case no one is there."

I admit that nothing is perfect 100% of the time. Let's face it... what is? There will always be a very small percentage of births that do need that extra help... and that is what hospitals and obstetricians are for. They are designed to deal with the unusual situation. Normal birth is so boring for them they need to do interventions to make it interesting.

But for those of us who have a healthy pregnancy, all we need is to let our bodies do their thing. Pelvises spread to let babies out. Women who embrace labor and move as their body tells them to help their babies get in the right position to make their grand entrance.

Why do I trust birth? Because I've seen it work. I've lived it. I've done the labor dance and have been the first to touch my baby. I'm not a big person... yet I've birthed babies over ten pounds at home. I have embraced the pain, have felt the baby move from my belly and through my hips. It wasn't easy, but it was worth every minute. I have felt that delicious hormonal cocktail that floods a woman's body after the natural birth of a baby. Flooded with oxytocin and love for my newborn, I have experienced that incredible babymoon while getting to know this new little person.

Maybe my views are a little simplistic. I may not be quite as confident if I were the midwife in charge of someone else's birth. But maybe that is the point. Maybe we should take responsibility for ourselves. Even if we have an attendant, we should be able to make the decision to be responsible for the outcome. Maybe that is the real reason I trust birth. I'm okay with the responsibility.

Inner Knowing

Inner knowing. So many people discount that today. Yet you always hear after a plane crash or other disaster that people just *knew* something was going to happen, so they cancelled their ticket, or changed their plans. So many of us hear this little voice inside and discount its wisdom. Pretty soon, the little voice stops trying to get through to us, and we're left on our own to sink or swim.

So it is with birth. Deep within we know what to do. Our bodies know how to conceive a baby, grow a baby, and push out a baby. The baby knows what it needs to do to help itself be born. Yet again, so many of us don't listen. We hear horror stories, sign up for cesareans and epidurals... anything so we don't have to listen to our own body's wisdom.

We are told by the medical establishment that birth is dangerous. At any moment the baby could die. We could die. Come into the hospital and we'll make all the decisions for you. We'll poke you with needles, fill you with pitocin to create tetanic contractions that will send your baby into distress, which will be picked up by our electronic fetal monitors that send sound waves into your uterus to aggravate your baby. What, it hurts? We'll give you this nice epidural so you don't need to feel a thing. Nah... we PROMISE it won't hurt your baby. Now that your baby is in distress, we'll hasten his birth. If it will take too long for a vaginal birth, we'll just roll you into the OR and cut him out. If you get an infection, that's okay... we'll load you up with lots of antibiotics to try and clear it up.

Hmmmm. Sounds inviting, doesn't it? I've had four hospital births, and while all of them were not that extreme, the general theme was the same. If I had a valid reason for birthing there, that would be a different story, but I was a healthy pregnant woman with a healthy baby each time I went there. The first time, I got that lovely cesarean package. My precious baby was lifted out of me behind a drape and I didn't see her until my incision was almost completely repaired. Oh, and I got the bonus of having the epidural wear off AFTER they strapped me down to the OR table, but BEFORE the cesarean took place while they searched for the anesthesiologist. I don't remember anyone being in the room with me... if they were, they certainly didn't respond to my overwhelming urge to push while my legs were tied together and my arms were strapped down. My inner knowing was trying to kick in... and I was trying to listen... but was unable to.

My last hospital birth happened with my second daughter. No meds. Almost no doctor... she rushed in at the last moment when my doula screamed down the hall to the nurse that the baby was crowning. It *almost* happened on its own. Well, actually, it did happen on its own... the doctor wanted me to turn around and sit for the birth, but I wasn't about to change positions... she had to deal with me upright facing away from her on the bed. That inner knowing took care of it all. I had begun to listen. I was in the position that was needed. My little daughter, however, had a bit of a rough start, and needed a little extra care at the beginning. I was somewhere else while they worked on her... my mind was trying to process the intensity of this birth that went from 5 cm to the birth of the baby in only a few contractions. I remember vaguely sitting on the bed staring off into space, idly playing with the umbilical cord that was still attached to the placenta within me while my baby was across the room being suctioned and stimulated. I didn't have the presence of mind to call her name or anything... something that probably would have helped her come into herself. My husband rushed in... he had been out checking on the other children, since I was only at 5 cm. His presence slowly brought me back to myself, and I began asking about the baby and talking to her.

The inner knowing was there... but was interrupted. By removing the baby away for treatment instead of treating her there with me, we both suffered. It took her several minutes to come into herself, and it took me almost as long to come back to myself. Only the presence of my husband pulled me back, then we both were able to communicate with our daughter and let her know it was okay to come into herself. We were there for her. It was okay.

Inner knowing. We all have it. We just need to learn to listen.

The Trust Birth Conference

It is unfortunate that the Trust Birth Conference is over. It was incredible! To those of you who could not come, look for recordings of the sessions to become available in a few weeks at http://aamishop.com .

This conference will go down in history as the conference that really helped bring homebirth into the mainstream. With the release of "The Business of Being Born," more women are able to see this option and question some of the routine practices that dehumanize them in the hospital. This conference built upon that, with the theme: Birth is Safe; Interference is Risky.

Our keynote speaker, Dr. Michel Odent, talked about how disempowering the vocabulary surrounding birth, pregnancy and even genitalia is all about shame and putting the woman in a place of no power. Yet it is she who gives birth.

As women, we should not be delivered. We should be the ones who actively give birth. Birth is a cooperative effort between a mother and a baby. Doctors, nurses and even my beloved midwives should not interfere. If there is a problem, of course they are on hand if needed. Otherwise, they are but witnesses to the miracle of birth.

I learned so much at this conference. Not only about our histories, but how to let the body do its thing instinctually, how to allow the baby his or her part of the birth, and how to promote a woman's abilities to trust birth, her body and her baby.

I am the mother of 8 children. It took me awhile to discover these things and not fight them. It took me awhile to learn to listen to my body and to let it do the work it was designed to do. But I have learned this lesson, and you know what? It works!