Birth rites, birth wrongs
January 27th, 2010 § 2 Comments
It started innocently enough. When I first became pregnant 4 years ago, I was surprised at how quickly I became overwhelmed by negative birth stories. I made a very conscious decision to embrace only positive and life enhancing stories about birth, so that I could stay centred and delighted in my pregnancy and birthing time. I left conversations, turned off the TV or just simply tuned out whenever I felt that instinctual feeling that what I was about to hear wasn’t truly supportive.
That worked well for me, so a few weeks ago when I chanced across the ‘final episode’ TV birth scene of what I understand to be a successful Australian drama series, I felt able to view it for what it was, and I was terrified. There it was in all its stereotypical glory, labour portrayed yet again as an angry, confronting, dramatic, joyless experience.
The hallmarks of a ‘ratings worthy’ TV birth would seem to be:
- Woman screaming loudly and abusing anyone within a 500 metre radius – usually lying on her back in a bed surrounded by strangers and strange gadgets
- A remark about squeezing out a watermelon
- Dithering partner suffering an endless tirade of profanity for getting her like this in the first place
- Over bearing, doom laden doctor threatening the worst case scenario all the time
- An over-riding drama of some sorts which threatens everything
- A ‘phew we made it’ ending with everyone gazing adoringly at the babe, and mother looking only slightly dishevelled
Why do we never see lovely, gentle, calm, flowing, spirited births on TV?
Yes, birth is a life or death experience and one cannot take for granted the very thin veil that can exist between these two extremes, in both the babes and the mothers’ experience. Birth can be gritty, hard, messy and demanding on a woman in a way she has never experienced before.
Yet each women’s’ experience is so very different and I know, through my own birthing stories, and that of many other women, that labour is heartbreakingly beautiful, challenging, joyous and expansive. Yes! The process of labour can be all these wonderful things…not just the end bit when the baby is placed in a mothers arms.
What message are we giving our women friends when such a negative image of birth is so normalised in the media today?
A very new Hannah calm after a magical homebirth
So many women must approach their own labours with only these images to inform them about what birthing is like. And I can’t help but wonder what message we are giving our girls about their precious womanhood via this persistently negatively skewed portrayal of labour. It is heart breaking that so much of what makes us women is not honoured by the world in which we live.
I am not looking to blame the media or a patriarchal culture for current attitudes to birth. More simply there needs to be some acknowledgement somewhere of a simple truth.
Society views birth from a place of fear, rather than a place of love.
The effects of this seemingly obvious, yet enormous, shift in consciousness about birth would be profound.
There are many implications of the entrenchment of negativity around birth. At the most fundamental level it denies most women the opportunity to know themselves as powerful amazing creatures, and to transform themselves, through their labouring experience, in an entirely new way – spiritually, emotionally, mentally and physically. It denies our precious new children a passage into this world that is ushered by calm beauty. And on a larger scale this negativity denies women of their right to choose how they birth. The current move to criminalise homebirth serves as a poignant reminder of what happens when women, and men, lose the truth – that birth is love, not fear.
Meanwhile, in worse case scenarios, some pregnant women have no choice but to work until the birth, a time when rest and contemplation is preferable, if not vital. (Research suggests lack of rest may contribute to higher then necessary caesarean rates.) Doctors book dates for babies to be removed from wombs and childcare facilities are full as newly born mothers are forced back to work just to pay bills. Somewhere in all of this, the prevailing negative attitude to birth has a role to play.
And whilst our media cannot help itself but to resort to stereotypical birthing scenarios, we as informed and conscious peoples, can do more than just exercise our right not to watch.
We can attempt to bring some beauty to the world by talking more about our joyous births, by sharing our stories with anyone who will listen and especially sharing and supporting women who are yet to be mothers, but want to know a better way.
Birth is not a bitter experience, birth is a ‘once in a lifetime’ glimpse of the sacredness that is life.
There’s no place like home
November 18th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
Statistically, in Australia, a woman is more likely to ‘ give birth before arrival’ than she is to have a ‘planned homebirth.’ The stats presented in the Choices for Childbirth care program are 0.4% and 0.3% respectively. An overwhelming 97% of births occur in Maternity Wards in hospitals.
As a woman who chose homebirth, I realise that I am truly in the minority, but it is through the open hearted sharing of birth stories that all women, their families and their communities, can appreciate the many birth choices available to women.
So when I was approached by Heather Millar, to write about my own experiences for an article she was writing on Natural Health for Women, for Priceline Magazine, I was honored to share what our birth choice meant to my family.
Read her article here “When it comes to taking care…”
Did they have prams in Pompeii?
November 2nd, 2009 § 2 Comments
I nearly got to see the Pompeii exhibition, in the throes of its closing week at the Melbourne Museum. This morning when I awoke I realised today was my last opportunity, and there was no way of going sans the wee children.
So I packed 14 bags, enough snacks to feed a small village, awfully complicated pram that now has booster seat and no steering control, our resident packhorse, emergency warning kit, assorted age appropriate politically correct amusements, four season wardrobe… oh and not forgetting the two toddlers I own, and schlepped them all the way into the city, a two hour drive (made especially long if no-one naps or my music selection is not to their distinguished tastes).
On arrival, I faced all the usual city hassles we know and love – no parking at the Museum, endless blocks to secure a street park and only a $50 note for the coin operated ticket machine, so after a quick café stop, an emergency toilet run in the middle of a sushi hand roll and 38 serviette’s – the minimum for removing bubbacino from a child’s face, we were ready to embark on the pram trek over the highlands of the Nicholson St gardens (which looks quite flat until you are pushing the combined total weight of 38 kg in pram and children).
Pizza oven
A blessedly short queue for the Pompeii exhibit and my excitement is reaching fever pitch. Pompeii fascinated me as an 8 year old girl and this has stayed with me a lifetime. I can smell the ancient proverbial pizza.
So imagine my dismay when, on approaching the ticket counter I spot a “small print” kind of sign that says “NO prams or strollers in exhibition.”
Now I have a 20 month old son who lives by the edict that he can be anywhere but beside me in 3 seconds or less, and a 3 year old daughter who will try anything once, but wont accept there are limits until she has found them “ALL BY MYSELF MUMMY!”. The idea of carrying / dragging / hand holding 2 wiggly toddlers (and all the other related paraphernalia) in an exhibition with other assorted life forms was less than desirable.
‘No pram, no life’ it appears. I abandoned my plans and forlornly accepted the free tickets the lovely woman behind the counter offered me for the “pram approved” Children’s Museum, when she realised how gutted I was. I did wonder however, if wheelchairs would suffer the same fate as prams and be excluded from the gallery – I doubt it. In protest, I was tempted for a moment to allow my children to offer the gallery a yoghurt and banana inspired installation art piece on display case # 42, but even then the wait to get in, some 90 minutes or more, defeated plans before they could even be made.
So my little ones had a wild time exploring the delightful little world of the Childrens Gallery. But the closest I get to an excavation is the sand pit with the paintbrushes, where swarms of school children brush away at the grains to reveal plaster cast dinosaur bones, little Skyes lost tooth, and someone’s cheese sandwich from last week.
So all this got me thinking about how inhospitable the world can be for a mother with young children, and how often I find myself using the disabled services on offer, as a mum.
Isn’t that telling? We mums are probably one of the largest ‘demographic’ groups, but with the least amount of helpful stuff! Sure most of us are already a little bit grumpy through persistent sleep deprivation (which doesn’t end when the baby sleeps through contrary to popular belief), weary for the heavy training schedule we endure through the physical lifting of squirming toddlers (my biceps have never been bigger) and are UN standard negotiation experts extraordinaire, able to leap prams in a single bound, but sometimes we’d just like it all to be made a little bit easier for us to be in the real world with our fellow adult human beings. Why does motherhood sometimes feel like having a disability?
So Pompeii Exhibition, you will miss me this time and I will have to be content with my precious memories of walking your stone laid strade over 10 years ago, but world out there if you can listen and heed for just a moment – pram or no pram, we should not be limited by the fact that us mums can rarely travel solo.
And I am wondering – did they have prams in Pompeii??
