As normal as Birth

As normal as breathing, as normal as a birthday celebration, as the 1st day of kindergarten, as a 1st kiss or a 10 year anniversary.

We made the acquaintance of some people from the Netherlands and the subject of midwives came up.

"You know, homebirth is a normal thing to do in the Netherlands"

Sigh...yes I know and normal in the UK, in Norway, in Denmark, in New Zealand, in Canada etc..

In fact we rented out house to two couples from Europe on two separate occasions who had homebirths...one told the story of how it was the middle of winter and no one wanted to go out to midwives car to get the birth stool because it was too cold. She spoke of how when someone finally got the chilled stool for her, the cold felt delicious because she was so heated up from labor.

Sigh...I am completely jealous of that midwife, that is most likely the least of her worries. Too cold to get the birth stool. She doesn't have to worry about the AMA, or physician supervision, or prosecution or client base.

A completely normal option for low risk women.

To be in a place where birth is considered a normal function of life...sigh...

I know that homebirth can be empowering and spectacular and transformational and spiritual and a gentle transition for the baby.

But for it to be just normal for families is an often overlooked thing.

Homebirth is completely normal, it is the most natural thing to occur for a family. I have said that to homebirthers and they sort of look at me strangely because here it is such a radical thing to do for many people.

My greatest wish if for everyone to have a normal birth, if it is empowering, transformational, beautiful, gentle, marathon like but rewarding...if it is any of these things great! But normal...yes, just plain normal for families would also be

well you know....fill in the word here ___________________

It should be normal for families to be the first ones to speak to, hold their child, and even be the first to touch their baby's head.

It should be normal for a woman to feel the physiologic urge to push, and push when ready not when she is deemed by someone "complete and ready to push"

It should be normal for children to witness their new family member emerging and to be in wonder, not fear about a new baby coming home from somewhere that they have no association with.

It should be normal for grandmothers mothers or to put a damp washcloth from her own bathroom against their granddaughter's /daughter's head and tell them that yes, this is hard and yes "you can do it."

It should be normal for a woman to vocalize in labor and not worry who is hearing through thin walls.

It should be normal for the mother to know everyone in her space and not worry about who will see her/hear her in such a vulnerable state.

Birth should be normal.

Full Moon

It has been so long since my words flowed onto these pages, I think the change to this blog was a bit premature. My El Paso Adventure in becoming a midwife was not over, is not over, it just is no longer in El Paso. I have found myself quiet because my struggles are so very internal right now. I felt the urge to bounce some of them out there in cyberspace today to your listening eyes and hearts.

I have taken all of my exams, finished all of my paperwork, a just waiting for the medical board to declare that everything is in order and give me a license #.

HA! For whom does that make me a midwife? In the legal sense I suppose.

My adventure into "becoming" a midwife is beginning, and like life in its constant state of flux. Some will say that you are a midwife always in process and that a piece of paper is just that: a piece of paper.

Crossing thresholds in life becomes solidified when there is a ritual to make it real for the person. When I left MLL, a group of us got together to have a lovely symbolic tattoo done on our ankles. A waxing moon symbolizing fertility and a full moon for those who had become mothers. In the future, we will add a waning moon to the onset of menopause, and become "crones". This was profound for me, most of the midwives at MLL have these very same tattoos. A few have all three moons. In a strange way I now look forward to the day that I have my waning moon.

I now find myself on the brink of having a piece of paper in my hands that says I have completed all of my legal requirements to become a midwife. I wish it were a tattoo, a more ancient symbol of threshold crossing. Something not floating nebulously in my hand but something etched into my skin.

I do feel like a midwife though. I don't feel like I need a tattoo, I just need a ritual to cross the threshold, for it to feel solid.

It is the human body that needs to feel its way through experiences, it is our minds that need the paper. Well not quite but your get the gist. I tend to feel my way through things with my senses, my most basic instincts.

For example, when I touch a belly to feel for the position of a baby, I do not generally visualize in my mind what I am feeling as Left or Right but sculpt an image with my hands that transmits a position to my brain but it takes awhile for it to form into words. I laugh at myself often because it takes me awhile to get whether the back is "right" or "left" or "anterior" or "posterior". I know the position, I have felt it, my hands know it but my darn brain takes awhile to convert it to a term that is appropriate for a chart or someone who wants to know what it is that I am feeling.

We are taught to chart all of this LOP, LOA, ROA, ROT, transverse, breech but the body feels so much more.

I feel my way things very well in birth and prenatally. I have the muscle memory for skills. I have handled complications well, have handled many a normal birth well. My brain is wrapped around emergency procedures any my hands work well in those times.

So I feel it in my body, the settling in of this title of "midwife". And it is more definitive that a piece of paper from the medical board.

Community Birth

Kneeling Woman has a thread on community midwifery...something I have been pondering for awhile. I have been thinking that it is impossible, to be a community midwife in this place of over a million people. The wonders of community midwifery seem to be an illusive dream, that catching my neighbors baby only would exist in a smaller, more intimate space...until recently. I have come to think that there is a strong need for a re-vamping of the definition.

And then yesterday I was at the park with a friend and her children and out of the corner of my eye I saw a father and his two year old bundle of energy. I looked a little closer and there was a spark that I knew this person...Oh my...I had been at the birth of this two year old boy. The dad gave me a huge embrace and we began talking like we had known each other all of our lives.

I don't think this dad ran up to women in the park and embraced them often. The kind of instant intimacy that people develop in birth is mysterious and lovely and lasting. It felt good to see them and later on I stopped by to say hello to the mother as they had moved within 500 feet of our house.

The universe just clunked me on the head as if to say "Take another look Sunshine"
It was so nice to see this little angel running around. This is the 1st time this has happened to me(that I have run into someone in my neighborhood whose birth I have been to). I live in a bubble sometimes.


I have been rolling many ideas around in my head, hoping that they would form a coherent piece of writing, but really as I write the process generally unfolds. It is not edited very much really and tends to come from ...well I don't know exactly where it comes from. Follow me through these next few paragraphs and see where it goes. It is process of understanding my perceptions and working through them. Find out where your truth meshes with mine or separates completely.

One of the things that I try to understand is the basic need for community. I grew up in many places...in Hawaii, where the word Ohana (I know, some of you immediately think Lilo and Stitch) means an extended family, not just blood relations, but those people in your life who are close in other ways.

And then I became an adult in Southern California where I got the sense that everyone leads separate, independent lives, where I didn't know my neighbors. I have followed that model, I am afraid, for a long time. I had trouble keeping friends, had trouble as a new mother, finding and creating a circle of friends. It wasn't that I didn't get along with people, it was that I didn't know how to be who I am, around people that I don't know that well. I was/am terrified of being judged for being out of the mainstream, for being different, for being a teenage mother, for co-sleeping, for this...for that...the list could be endless. At time it is/was heartbreaking, I went through the standard feeling of being isolated, feeling that people were uncaring, cold, flaky...or even worse, that I was unworthy, that there was fundamentally something wrong with me. I also chalked it up to being a loner...I had spent much of my childhood as a only child and spent a lot of time in books and playing by myself.

And then...well last year happened yes, but many other things. I was thrown into a place where any damm insecurities I had were under a microscope. I was in a situation where I had instant community like it or not. (if you are visiting my blog for the 1st time, that experience is documented here)
And I discovered something... I got along with people even when there was conflict, even when I judged and when I was being judged. There were definite tensions, yet my life was richer for it.

So my ideas about community have evolved. I feel a bit sheepish for something that seems to be so simple, yet so out of my reach conceptually. I was so guarded in my life that I missed out on a lot of things.

It wasn't that San Diego had a lack of community, it was that I had the idea that community was something you were born into, that community was a group of individuals that were like you, than a community selected you somehow, to be worthy of being part of it. Sometime when I write things out of my head I think I am an absolute_______ (fill in blanks)

Sigh....

So here is to a new definition of community in evolution. What is yours?

 

Nexus

Nexus

Definition: Connection, Link; also a causal link
A connected group or series
A center, focus
That which unites or binds

And so begins another adventure.

Through a series of inspirational and synergistic occurances, I found the triple spire labyrinth image. The word nexus also popped into my head one day and so the concept is taking shape...NEXUS.

My other blog, although very valuable to me, represents a different period in my life.

What will unfold in these pages is still in conceptual form. I have many ideas though...I have ideas about the birth space, ideas about the connections to our mothers, ideas about forming community, ideas about culture and how to integrate and separate at the same time, ideas about making midwifery mainstream, for making our lives simpler and yet expansive. All these ideas tend to boil down to one thing though, the need for a connection, for love, the need to get out of our heads and into our hearts.

You will find intellectual commentary here, you will find opinions-political ones, but hopefully you will find a bit more than that.

So what do you think? What can you add? What is in your heart space that longs to be expressed. These questions are for me, but also for all of you that read in the blogspere, that are searching for "somethink" that might make their lives a little more connected.