some of my birth favorite quotes

A Quaker friend once posed this question to me: why is breast milk so good? 

Answer: Because it is always warm, it’s always ready, and it’s up high where the cats can’t get it!
(and it is free!)

In pursuing happiness, he suggests, "We should have more trust in our own resilience and less confidence in our predictions about how we'll feel. We should be a bit more humble and a bit more brave." ~ Daniel Todd Gilbert, Professor of Psychology at Harvard University

“This may be the hardest part of being a doula: You have found that inner power and have seen it work a hundred or more times, but you cannot make that journey happen for another woman, no matter how much you love her.” ~ sss

“My job as a doula is to mother the mother, to be the best doula I can be; to make her feel that she succeeded with the tools that she had come with and that she was a success. She should know she did a smashing job at this birth and that I fully trust she will be an equally awesome mother, too.” ~ sss

 “If a doula were a drug, it would be unethical not to use it.”  ~ John H. Kennell 

 “Natural childbirth has evolved to suit the species, and if mankind chooses to ignore her advice and interfere with her workings we must not complain about the consequences. We have only ourselves to blame.” ~ Margaret Jowitt

 “The whole point of woman-centered birth is the knowledge that a woman is the birth power source. She may need, and deserve, help, but in essence, she always had, currently has, and will always have the power.” ~ Heather McCue

“Around us, life bursts with miracles--a glass of water, a ray of sunshine, a leaf, a caterpillar, a flower, laughter, raindrops. If you live in awareness, it is easy to see miracles everywhere. Each human being is a multiplicity of miracles. Eyes that see thousands of colors, shapes, and forms; ears that hear a bee flying or a thunderclap; a brain that ponders a speck of dust as easily as the entire cosmos; a heart that beats in rhythm with the heartbeat of all beings. When we are tired and feel discouraged by life's daily struggles, we may not notice these miracles, but they are always there.” 
~ Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk, teacher, author, poet, and peace activist.

 “It's not just the making of babies, but the making of mothers that midwives [and doulas] see as the miracle of birth.” ~ Barbara Katz Rothman

 “Many Western doctors hold the belief that we can improve everything, even natural childbirth in a healthy woman. This philosophy is the philosophy of people who think it deplorable that they were not consulted at the creation of Eve, because they would have done a better job.” ~ Dr. Kloosterman

 “For far too many women pregnancy and birth is something that happens to them rather than something they set out consciously and joyfully to do themselves.” ~ Sheila Kitzinger

 “However much we know about birth in general, we know nothing about a particular birth. We must let it unfold with its own uniqueness. ~ Elizabeth Nobel

 “Women's strongest feelings [in terms of their birthings], positive and negative, focus on the way they were treated by their caregivers.” ~ Annie Kennedy & Penny Simkin

 “A healthy woman who delivers spontaneously performs a job that cannot be improved upon.” ~ Aidan MacFarlane, author of The Psychology of Childbirth

 “We are made to do this work and it’s not easy…. I would say that pain is part of the glory, or the tremendous mystery of life. And that if anything, it's a kind of privilege to stand so close to such an incredible miracle.” ~ Simone Taylor

 “I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” ~Maya Angelou

 “The effort to separate the physical experience of childbirth from the mental, emotional and spiritual aspects of this event has served to disempower and violate women.”
~ Mary Rucklos Hampton

“There is a secret in our culture, and it's not that birth is painful. It's that women are strong.” ~ Laura Stavoe Harm

 “The most precious gift we can offer anyone is our attention. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

 “Sometimes the only thing that makes a woman’s pregnancy high risk is her choice of a care provider.” ~ Anonymous

 “Just as a woman's heart knows how and when to pump, her lungs to inhale, and her hand to pull back from fire, so she knows when and how to give birth.” ~ Virginia Di Orio

 “Anyone who thinks women are the weaker sex never witnessed childbirth.” ~ Anonymous

 “The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.” ~ Mark Twain

 “Waking up this morning, I smile. Twenty-four brand new hours are before me. I vow to live fully in each moment and to look at all beings with eyes of compassion.”
~ Thich Nhat Hanh

 “You are assisting at someone else’s birth. Do good without show or fuss. Facilitate what is happening rather than what you think ought to be happening. If you must take the lead, lead so that the mother is helped, yet still free and in charge. When the baby is born, the mother will rightly say: 'We did it ourselves!'” ~ From Lao Tzu, father of Chinese Taoism, from his classic text called, Tao Te Ching: The Way of All Life, 6th Century B.C.

 “Putting women in the position of coping with conflict when they should be concentrating on having their babies counts as an intervention in itself!” ~ Unknown

 “We are the mothers, after all, the ones who speak the cultural narrative and teach it through, well, old wives' tales, which is to say, the ancient, subversive, and immediate mother tongue, the language of metaphor and myth.” ~ Ellen McLaughlin

 “The source of love is deep in us and we can help others realize a lot of happiness. One word, one action, one thought can reduce another person’s suffering and bring that person joy.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

 “Speak tenderly to them. Let there be kindness in your face, in your eyes, in your smile, in the warmth of our greeting. Always have a cheerful smile. Don’t only give your care, but give your heart as well.” ~ Mother Teresa

 “A wizard is never late, Frodo Baggins. Nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he means to.” Gandalf in JRR Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings.

 “There is no way out of the experience except through it, because it is not really your experience at all but the baby's. Your body is the child's instrument of birth.” 
~ Penelope Leach

“Women today not only possess genetic memory of birth from a thousand generations of women, but they are also assailed from every direction by information and misinformation about birth.” ~ Valerie El Halta

 “Three hundred thousand women will be giving birth with you today. Relax and breathe and do nothing else. Labor is hard work; it hurts and you can do it.”~ Unknown

 “The truth for women living in a modern world is that they must take increasing responsibility for the skills they bring into birth if they want their birth to be natural. Making choices of where and with whom to birth is not the same as bringing knowledge and skills into your birth regardless of where and with whom you birth.” 
~ Common Knowledge Trust

 “Ask me for strength and I will lend not only my hand, but also my heart.”
~ Unknown

 “Mothers don’t breastfeed, babies breastfeed.  Babies know how if we let them.” 
~ Dr. Nils Bergman

“Giving birth should be your greatest achievement not your greatest fear.”
~ Jane Fraser Weideman

“Attending births is like growing roses. You have to marvel at the ones that just open up and bloom at the first kiss of the sun but you wouldn’t dream of pulling open the petals of the tightly closed buds and forcing them to blossom to your time line.” ~ Gloria Lemay

“We've put birth in the same category with illness and disease and it's never belonged there. Birth is naturally safe, but we've allowed it to be taken over by the medical community.”
~ Carla Hartley,  Ancient Art Midwifery Institute

 “The traditional midwife believes that birth proceeds in a spiral fashion: labor starts, stops and starts, while the baby goes down, up and down, and the cervix opens, closes and opens. Nature has no design for failure; she holds her own meaning for success.” 
~ Sher Willis

 “Birthing is the most profound initiation to spirituality a woman can have.” ~ Robin Lim

There is a quote, by Laura Stavoe Harm that reads, “There is a secret in our culture and it is not that birth is painful, but that women are strong.”

More quotes coming soon

To leave comments at this blog, please email me at: ssskimchee@gmail.com

Birth: The Conference in Romania in 2019!

Birth: The Conference in Romania in 2019!
I've been invited to address an audience of young families and professionals in Romania this coming summer. I am reprinting my earlier article about them here to bring you up to speed on who these amazing people are:
I have dedicated my next book called, PUSH! The Sequel to the brave, revolutionary young families of the Muntele Rece district of Cluj-Napoca, Romania. Against all odds they are taking back control of their lives and the lives of their children after Communism all but dictated their very existence. They are choosing to have their babies at home, later home schooling them, and discovering autonomy for themselves.

  It reminds me so very much of the 1960s and ’70s in America when radical hippies like Ina May and Stephen Gaskin began to question the status quo. They deserve our deepest respect and support. I can only guess that the advent of the Internet in their little villages found a willing audience in these young people. They are educated, seeking souls, so very ready for change, and when they discovered what the rest of the world has been up to until now, they ran with it. But I am curious: why weren't they attracted to our materialism, or our free market economies and consumerism instead?

 I have gotten to know many young immigrant families over the years and many of them want everything and anything that smacks of America, even at the expense of forgoing their forefathers' traditions and way of life. They strike me as even more American than we are, in a way, hankering after the very arrogance we enshrine. But this is different. The Romanian revolutionaries are peacefully considering all their options and the direction they will choose for themselves. I wonder how do they choose among all of the innovative movements they encounter while being inundated with  the glut of information the Internet has to offer? This is epic, in my eyes.  

    

I have only the highest respect and regard for this tiny movement among them. They are slowly winning midwives, doctors, and others over to their side. Their network spans the whole of the former Communist bloc countries: Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romania, whose foreign policies often depended on those of the former Soviet Union.

Birth: The Romanian Conference 2019

This is a rough draft of the proposed conference:

Introduction: A Revolution

 In this talk 1970s and '80s in the US when there was a resurgence of midwifery and many felt that birth belonged in the family, not in what had become doctor and hospital models of care, essentially leaving the mother out of the process, and especially taking control of a natural process and turning it into an illness that needed to be managed medically. We will discuss what is possible in Romania today.

History of home versus hospital birth

 A look into Western allopathic medicine and our attitudes concerning alternative approaches. Many countries throughout the world have not turned to this philosophy and continue to trust Nature and what humans have successfully done for millenia. 

Maternal and infant deaths world wide

 Statistics continue to prove to this day that despite the advancements in medicine and the sciences, the outcomes of managed births in comparison to an uniterrupted natural process have not born better outcomes. The US and other so-called First World Countries actually fall at the bottom of the list for maternal and infant morbidity across the board. The US stands at the bottom of the list as 48th at this time.

Education & Training available world-wide

 We will discuss the pros and cons for training and/or depending on practitioners in your own countries. There are many schools of thought in this sphere, but I will try to give an unbiased look into all the choices out there that you might want to access. 

Creating protocols

  Are protocols needed? They just might earn you the respect that you might want from within your local medical communities. How can you work together? Is that possible? How do you draw up protocols unique to your situation? Legal issues concerning home birth.

Resources

There are thousands of books, videos, papers, studies, statistics and information on the Internet. Who do you trust? How do you find strong evidence for sane choices? I will try to consolidate the best of all this information and make those resources available throughout the conference.

WHO World Health Or and human rights--an in-depth look

     We can learn a lot from WHO, Save the Children, Unicef, and other international groups who have already been disseminating much of this education around the world and by tapping into their experience--their failures and successes--we might learn quite a lot and avoid wasting valuable time and energy. 

  

Natural birth vrs medication

   A look at what drugs are being used, what helps, what doesn't, and what are some of their properties. A study of the interventions and what they mean. We will also look at the evolution of the sciences of testing newborns and what does bonding look like in light of these so-called advances.

Perceptions of success vrs failure: realistic goals

 Again, learning from others who have been there like Ina May Gaskin, what do our goals look like? What does a successful birth look like? What are some of the very real dangers and how can you be trained to see them before you are in trouble? How can you avoid them? I was trained first, intentionally, to know what normal birth looked like, over and over and over again. Only then, when I could do it in my sleep, was I introduced to problems that might arise during pregnancy and birth. So, when my brain signaled that this was a yellow or red light, that what I am seeing now is not part of that normal, then I was trained in what to do, if I needed to actually do something, if I needed help or some maneuver I had been trained in. And, how can you learn this where you are now?

To leave comments at this blog, please email me at: ssskimchee@gmail.com

Stay tuned for my next books, PUSH! The Sequel: 37 more true stories from midwives and doulas, and Stone Age Babies in a Space Age World: Babies and Bonding in the 21st Century.

Even the Royals are Getting it Right!

Meghan Markel: doula forced to address reports she is working with Duchess Meghan Markel.

With her spring due date looming, the Duchess of Sussex will be putting together her birth plan. Previous reports claimed that Meghan has hired a doula as a well as a midwife to help deliver her baby, but it seems the speculation couldn't be further from the truth. Mother-of-three Lauren Mishcon, the doula in question, has denied the reports, explaining to The Jewish Chronicle: "It’s the result of a Facebook joke on my personal page and a very tenuous connection between my husband's grandfather and Princess Diana. The more I deny it, the more people believe it."

Earlier this week, reports of Meghan's doula surfaced in the press. The report claimed that Lauren has been helping Meghan prepare for the birth and even given Prince Harry advice on how to support his wife during labour. According to the excited chatter on the Doula UK members' website, Lauren joked on a message board: "I'm busy in spring. I could not possibly say."

Meghan is preparing to give birth in the spring

When asked by The Sun last week whether the reports are true, Lauren declined to comment. Her "tenuous" royal connection that she spoke of is that her husband is Oliver Mishcon – the grandson of solicitor Lord Mishcon, whose law firm handled the divorce of Princess Diana and Prince Charles.

It may not have come as a surprise if Meghan did choose to employ a doula. The Duchess is known to be a keen fan of yoga, mindfulness and other holistic practices. Doulas are also known as 'birth companions', 'birth coaches' or 'post-birth supporters', providing practical and emotional guidance during labour and beyond - they are not medically trained, but help mums-to-be achieve a positive birth experience.

The report comes as rumours circulate that Meghan will give birth at the Lindo Wing, like the Duchess of Cambridge. It was previously thought that Harry and Meghan would use a hospital closer to their new Windsor home, Frogmore Cottage, for the birth of their firstborn, but staff at the private maternity ward at St Mary's Hospital, Paddington, have been advised not to take holiday in April, sparking speculation that Meghan plans to have her baby there.

Will the royal couple welcome their baby at the Lindo Wing?

The Duke and Duchess will relocate to their newly-renovated property in March, allowing them time to settle in before Meghan’s due date, which she previously said is late April or early May. It has been suggested that Meghan could opt for Frimley Park Hospital in Surrey, which is roughly 16 miles away or a 30-minute drive. It is where Prince Edward’s wife Sophie delivered both of her children, Lady Louise and James, Viscount Severn, in 2003 and 2007.

Meanwhile, the exclusive Lindo Wing is almost an hour away and would involve driving through London traffic to get there. But Meghan could be sure of the finest treatment once she arrived; the £6,000-a-night maternity unit offers mums "five-star" treatment, with private rooms and en-suite bathrooms, and treats such as a post-delivery massage or afternoon tea to celebrate the baby’s birth.

The simple life: Birth in a log cabin

The Simple Life… Which was anything but. Back to the earth. Homesteading. The Simple Life. It was the hardest years of my life. We romanticized it. No TV coming in to brainwash our children. Grow your own food. Sit by the fire place and read stories every night by candle light from the candles you made with the kids, squeaky water pump, and chickens. No electricity, no running water. But, hey, most of the 3^rd world lives this way already, right?

photo: C. Slattery, 1988, La Crosse Catholic Times

Wrong! We decided that before we took the plunge, maybe we should practice for a while in our apartment before we took on something we couldn’t manage. So we packed up the radio cord and bought batteries instead, stocked up on kerosene lamps, candles, and matches, and got a big cooler chest. We took all the bulbs out of all the lamps, turned the heat off and turned on the kerosene space heater. We didn’t tell the landlord, either. We just took the cooler chest outside every night to keep the milk and cheese cold. If it was below 45 degrees F we were in luck. Above that, and I was just growing various cultures out there. Colder than that and the contents would freeze, which was OK too.

We had no choice but to keep the propane stove and the telephone on. The property we had our hearts set on in Colfax, Wisconsin had both. We eased into our first couple of weeks holding our breaths. I bought a tall laundry rack and washed clothes in the bath tub and hung them to dry. I found an antique iron, the kind you set on a wood stove to heat while you cook and touched up David’s work shirts with that. So far so good. 

Then we thought we were ready for the final, decisive step. With our four kids gathered around our feet, we pulled the plug on the refrigerator. I held my breath. I don’t know what I thought might happen, but the sky didn’t fall. We had crossed the line! We were now bona fide pioneers! We even read Little House on the Prairie to the kids by candle light every night.

My birthday fell on about our 3^rd week of the experiment. David gave me a copy of The New Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency: The Classic Guide for Realists and Dreamers--all 8 pounds of it. I read the thing cover-to-cover in a week. Then I decided it might be time for the next step: learn how to butcher a chicken. So, early one morning (so the neighbors wouldn’t see anything) on the back steps of our apartment building, with Chicken Little tightly tucked under one arm and Self-Sufficiency in the other, opened to the step-by-step how-to guide; I was ready. David was very chicken and refused to come out and help me. He excused himself saying we shouldn’t leave the kids alone in the house in case they woke up. But he did peek out from behind the curtain to watch.

I leaned toward the instructions in the book to see better in the semi-dawn light and at the same time, Chicken Little also craned her neck to see what I was looking at. David wished he had a camera at that moment – it was in the mid-1980s before cell phones came out.

OK, I told myself. If I want to eat it, I should be willing to kill it, too, right? I had everything ready according to the book: A pile of newspapers, a kettle of boiling water, a clay pipe about 8 inches in diameter standing upright on the paper, and my chicken, compliments of one of our Hmong friends. Well, it wasn’t as bad as I had imagined. Quite tidy, actually. The most Kosher, or painless way to kill a chicken is by wringing its neck with one swift crack. Then you step on the head, holding back the neck, with a firm grip on the body, and pull … and the head is off. You immediately fold the wings in and pop it, neck down, into the clay pipe. That insures you don’t have a chicken running around without a head, splattering blood all over the place. After 10 minutes you take out the chicken which has been bled, put the clay pipe aside, put the bird into the boiling water for 3 or 4 minutes, or until a wing pin feather comes out easily when plucked. You set the hot bird on the newspaper and pluck it. Then gut it, much like a fish and bring it inside. We didn’t have a refrigerator you remember, so we would have to cook or can it immediately. We tested our well water when we did move out to the log cabin. The well was 150 feet deep and the water was a constant 42 degrees, which meant we could pump water up and submerge a bagged chicken in a bucket for a while to cool it, or leave a jar of milk in a pail overnight and it would still be cool in the morning. In the winter all we needed was an ice chest that was raccoon and bear-proof. We learned that a large rock on the lid of the cooler doesn’t work. We had our share of raccoons and bears that first year, and a coyote, a bob cat and bull snakes. 

Our chicken and dumplings that night for supper was quite a revelation. It didn’t taste like any chicken we had ever bought from a store. It was amazing. Who would have thought? During the following year, while we were snug in our log cabin, we also got a little pig to fatten up. His name was Bacon. When fall came that year I learned how to pickle ham in brine, smoke bacon, render my own lard, and make head cheese. 

Our first winter was upon us. Imagine rows of hunky eye hooks screwed into the log walls of the cabin about 1 foot below the ceiling (the ceiling was only 6 feet high) and about 10 inches apart to string up clothes lines in the winter. I still had 2 babies in diapers, and now a newborn on the way.

First I piled dirty laundry, one basket full at a time into hot sudsy water in a washing tub by the wood stove in the basement. Then I beat the wash with a dasher – you can order them from the Amish non-electric catalog called Gohn Brothers. Up and down, just like a butter churn, except I had the clothes in a galvanized tub instead of a wooden butter churn. When I couldn’t agitate it any longer, I’d run the wash through the rollers, also hand cranked, until all the soapy water was squeezed out. A tub of clean water caught the clothes as they dropped off the rollers. Then you swish the clothes or diapers in the rinse water, dump your soapy water, rinse and fill the soapy tub with fresh cold water and crank your laundry through the runners once more into the 2^nd rinse. Dash it a while and then run it all through the rollers for a final “spin” cycle. Bring your clean wash upstairs. In the spring and summer I could hang it all on lines run between the scrub oak trees in our woods to dry and then pick off the wood ticks before I brought it all back inside. Diapers were easy: they were white and ticks are black or dark brown. The jeans were harder.

But in winter, the clothes had to dry inside, thus the rows of lines throughout the house. This wasn’t a tiny log cabin: it was a three story log palace. But the diapers and heavy things like jeans could take up to 2 days to dry, to the delight of our kids who would play hide and go seek among the vertical walls of sheets, diapers and everything else.

Winter was the hardest. Now I know what true cabin fever is. At one point, for an entire week it was minus 70 degrees Fahrenheit below with the wind chill and all. I couldn’t let the kids tromp out to the outhouse in that. I found a couple of chamber pots, complete with lids at an antique barn sale that week. As soon as one was even half full I’d take it out to the loo and dump it, wash it with a Lysol solution I’d mixed and a toilet brush and we’d be ready to go. Literally.

But the worst part was visiting Grandma, over the river and through the woods in St. Paul, that winter. The heavy rains that Autumn had washed out our driveway the last quarter mile up to the top of our mountain and the house. The gullies and ruts would have torn our car to bits. So we got a long toboggan and piled the kids into that. They were so togged up in their snowsuits and scarves that they couldn’t have walked even if they’d wanted to. David and I would pull it down the hill to the car parked at the bottom on the rural route. When we got back home later that night we would go back up the mountain pulling the sleepy the kids in the sled. Then we’d undress them one by one and put them to bed in the bedroom loft, stoke up the wood furnace again and crawl into bed ourselves.

I found a treadle (non-electric) sewing machine at a flea market and after cleaning and oiling it, figured out which parts I would need to get it into working order. Again Gohn Brothers, an Amish catalog from Indiana came to the rescue. They don't use computers, so you will have to call them or write. 105 So. Main St., Middlebury, Indiana, 46540 or call 574-825-2400.  I got a new leather wheel belt, a new bobbin winder washer and an assortment of bobbins. I ordered a bolt of birds's eye diaper material from them, too, and voilà! We also found Lehman's Non-Electric Catalog very handy those years.

Before Christmas one year I discovered that peanut brittle can be made in a jiffy on a wood stove. Mine heated up to hard crack in a matter of minutes. We made batch after batch and gave peanut brittle to all our friends that year. I could also make perfect yogurt by placing jars of milk with starter in the warming oven above the wood stove just before going to bed, as the last coals simmered down for the night. Baked beans were a constant presence in a crock on the back of the stove, bubbling away for days at a time. All I had to do was add more water and molasses every few days. Sour dough starter was also very happy and productive in the warming shelf above the hot plates. 

September 27th, 4:00 a.m.
I just couldn't sleep. I wasn't sure why, at least until contractions started at 4 a.m. I paced around for about 10 minutes and then called David who joined me downstairs by the wood stove. I knew from past experience that things were revving up quite fast so I had him call our midwife Roberta and our friend Nancy. She only had to come over the hill to our cabin from hers but Roberta had a 15 minute drive. We had not fixed the driveway yet that September, so visitors still parked on the road below and hiked the last 1/4 mile up our mountain to the house.

4:15 a.m. Nancy got there in 10 minutes and put on the tea kettle while David stoked up the stoves. In five more minutes I was huffing and puffing, keeping as quiet as I could so as not to wake the hordes upstairs in the loft. 

4:30 a.m. I rummaged through my birth box and laid out towels, sheets, and an assortment of other things we'd need before going back to breathing and pacing.

4:35 a.m. I started squatting while holding onto the wood stove. David knew instinctively by now that squatting meant we'd see a baby real soon.

4:40 a.m. Hannah was born. Nancy didn't even realize I was pushing. I kept that quiet too. When the cord stopped pulsing I had David find the cord clamps and cut the cord. Then he lifted Hannah up and held her close to his chest. She didn't make a sound either. She just kept looking up at him, blinking. He had not gotten the stoves going yet, and it was still rather chilly, so we watched as steam rose from her fat hot little body into the air, much like a turkey right out of the oven.

5:15 a.m. Roberta came into the kitchen grinning, not at all surprised that Hannah was here. She asked where the placenta was. We had forgotten all about it. She grabbed the bowl we had ready and had me stand up. It slid out in one perfect piece. The children started tip-toeing down from the loft, all wide-eyed, wondering who we had visiting so early. They all were instantly in love with our baby and never got enough time holding her. 

A day later I called the county offices and asked them to mail me a birth certificate.
The lady chuckled and said, "Oh, dear, the hospital takes care of all of that."

I explained that she'd been born at home. The lady was speechless. I said, "Let me give you our address to send it to." About 3 hours later that same day two child protection social workers came trudging up the driveway, eyes wide as saucers, mouths gawking as they took in the 3-story log cabin.
They tapped on the door, not sure what they would find inside. I was happily nursing my 11-pound newborn on the couch in the living room while my friend Georgianna was busy preparing supper on the wood stove. The house was quite tidy and the kids all actually had clothes on. (Occasionally they would disrobe as the spirit moved them, and wander out to the raspberry patch to graze there for awhile.) 

The ladies kept looking at each other and sort of stuttering. They were quite stunned. They commented then that Hannah looked so well, and I did too. Obviously this was not what they had expected. Georgianna served them tea and cookies and then they left, but not before leaving a birth certificate on the dining room table.

And now they are all grown up and scattered to the four corners of the earth, though the wind does bring them back throughout the year. I am so very proud of each one of them.

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Birth plans - Do we need them? Do we want them? Do they work?

But first:

Amy Poehler’s Over-The-Top ‘Birth Plan’

American actress, comedian, director, producer, and writer.

Borrowed here without permission.

By ParentsCanada on April 21, 2015

We are looking forward to the birth of our child and ask that the following wishes be respected during our birth process.

We have chosen to give birth in a hospital because of the outstanding facilities it makes available to us. We would also like to deliver our baby in a hospital since we spent most of our twenties getting stoned and watching episodes of ER, and so we know that delivering a baby is the best way to cheer up an attractive but beleaguered doctor. Please make sure our doctor is handsome and “cares too much.” We considered a home birth, but we just got our hardwood floors redone.
We also considered a birthing tub, but the mother is concerned the water won’t be warm enough. Is it too late to flood the hospital room? Or turn it into a really fun foam party? We are sorry for asking. The mother is very pregnant and would like to remind everyone her brain has turned into spaghetti...
The birth environment is very important to us. For that reason we ask that the lights be kept dim, noise be avoided, and the door be closed for privacy. We would also like people to stay “chill” and not “bring their own s#!t” into the room with them. It’s really important we feel “cool.” Please decorate the room with Nan Goldin prints and leather beanbag chairs. We would love it if you could bring in a silk Persian rug for us to destroy. Think Chateau Marmont if it was closed for repairs. Or the set of MTV Unplugged.

Speaking of music, we will arrive with our own. We plan on delivering our baby to the soundtrack of Pink Floyd’s The Wall while simultaneously watching The Wizard of Oz. If this kid works with us, we guarantee your minds will be blown!
We plan on handling pain in a variety of natural ways. Please have a birthing ball and back massager available upon request. An annoying nurse with an unfunny and teasing manner on whom we can focus our anger would be a welcome addition.

The mother would also like a punching bag, a screaming pillow, a mirror to smash, and a small handgun. The father would like a George Foreman grill, just to have.

We ask for vaginal exams only upon request. The mother requires at least a minute or two of chitchat before cold fingers are introduced. The mother would like to remind the staff that her vagina is the absolute last thing that she wants to have touched right now. The mother can think of a thousand things that she would rather have presently poked at than her vagina. Honestly, the mother doesn't know how the hell that baby is going to get out of there. The mother also would like to request that the handsome doctor maintain eye contact at all times during said poking.

If induction becomes necessary, we are aware of the nonchemical methods and would like to try them in this order: breast stimulation, sexual intercourse, and cervical cream. That’s right, you heard us. If this baby isn't coming out, we are going to start doing it and make you all watch. So, let’s get cracking.

We will use the squatting or semi-squatting position for pushing. Preferably the mother would like to “drop it like it’s hot.”

The mother would like to push at her own pace. The father would like to add that he hopes it doesn't “take all day.” We would like to feel our son’s head as he descends with the option to stick him back up in there if we don't feel ready. The mother should be given the freedom to walk around during labour. Light choreography is expected.
If drugs become necessary, we would like to go all in. We are talking epidural, helium and roofies. The mother would like to ask one last time why no one is taking seriously her request for nitrous oxide. The mother heard about women in England and Sweden and Canada being offered this at birth and apparently it works wonderfully to calm nerves and help with delivery...

If delivery assistance is needed, we prefer “suction” over “forceps.” If episiotomy is needed, we prefer “buttonhole” over “backstitch.” If Cesarean is needed, please inform us early so we don't have to go through the above first.
In the event of a Cesarean, the mother would like to be conscious. The mother would also not mind if you tweaked her abs while you’re down there. The father would like to be present and totally freaked out when he accidentally looks past the curtain and sees his wife’s organs stacked next to her like laundry.

The father would like to be involved in the “catching” of the baby and the “cutting” of the cord. At least that’s what he is saying right now. We'll see. Please don’t cut the cord until it stops pulsing. Please immediately let the cord blood guy in with his titanium suitcase so he can put the cord blood in a vault and keep it fresh. It will help us during the robot apocalypse.
After birth we wish to nurse immediately. Please do not introduce formula or bottles or pacifiers or water, unless those things stop this baby from crying. Why won’t he stop crying? Wait, where is everybody going?

We prefer our stay in the hospital to be extended to the longest period our insurance will allow. We need time for our heads to catch up with our bodies. We also need to catch up on some Judge Judy. Please know we are grateful and sore and happy and scared. We will hear our baby down the hall and recognize his cry and we will realize this truly is a sci-fi miracle sent to us from G-O-D.
That being said, if people buy gifts that aren't on the registry the mother will lose her s#!t.

The mother would like to take this moment to admit a few things. She thinks natural childbirth is amazing but she also likes drugs. She didn't put baby oil on her perineum and try to stretch it because she just never felt like it. She lied when she said she completely stayed away from lunch meat. She also skipped Lamaze because sometimes she can't stand being around other people.

That’s all. We good? Thank you in advance for your support of our choices. We look forward to a wonderful birth. We are excited but mostly scared. Have you SEEN the mother? She is TINY! How is this going to WORK exactly? Please advise.

**********

Yes, she is hysterically funny, but there is also that tiny voice that wonders if she will be able to keep it together while traversing this unknown territory we call birth. 

Now you can Google "birth plans" and print out entire 25-page doula documents to cover all your wishes. On the one hand, a birth plan alone tells me as your midwife, doctor or doula that you have done your homework and know most of your options. It also tells me you are willing to take control here and work hard to achieve your goal. (Now cast in stone, perhaps.)

In my childbirth classes I would have couples bring in their birth plans and read them out loud. Most were quite detailed and covered just about every eventuality they might encounter. These couples' birth plans were thoughtful and intelligent. 

Then I would ask them to cross out one item on their list that they would be willing to forego should the need arise. This was a surprise. It made them think: "Maybe this won't all go exactly according to plan." It was not easy to give up anything on those lists. 

Next I would ask them to cross off one more item that they might have to give up, and so on until my last question is, "What one thing here is the most important to you?"

Many moms and dads think they are a complete failure if they haven't succeeded in performing up to their expectations for this birth. Many mothers feel that their birth was a failure if it wasn't completely natural or they needed to consider interventions for any number of reasons.

Well, people, welcome to Parenthood. So what good are the birth plans, then? They definitely get you to learn a whole new planet here. There is nothing else like it. Birth plans help you map out what you think you can do and challenge others to do more than they ever thought possible. They force you to look at what is happening here and remove any wool that is still covering your eyes. Yes, it can be scary. No, you can never be prepared enough, or learn enough or research enough. You will have to look deeply into your soul and find strength to face this next new chapter. You can do it. I remind mothers during labor that they are now joining all the mothers and grandmothers from all the ages past and in a way they are all here with you, rooting you on.

The birth plan is not cast in stone. Some couples find that really hard when they need to explore options with their providers during birth. Some say that the birth plan sets people up for disappointment. I think it is a good first step but we must remain open to change, a more fluid option here. We know babies have a mind of their own, often excersizing their independence as early as at their imminent liberation from the womb.

Here is a short video of my very favorite liberated feminist at 5 weeks old. She certainly had a mind of her own at her birth. She is also my newest grandbaby. Welcome to the world, Maraki!

To leave comments at this blog, please email me at: ssskimchee@gmail.com

Wet Nurses and other Alternatives to Bonding

Only in our Western Society has anyone ever asked, ‘what will I feed my baby?’ and ‘where should my baby sleep?’ No other mammals dress their little mammals, nor has another mammal ever looked for an alternative to breast milk (or decided that breasts were for sex and not milk.) We are so very smart that we have thought up all these wonderful anti-bonding behaviors, probably while seeking our own convenience (or pleasure, or both) apart from our babies. This goes back in our history to at least the Middle Ages.

            I also wonder about the whole mindset behind employing wet nurses when it first became fashionable. Were the gentry too ‘dignified’ to nurse their babies? Did only animals do that, meaning breastfeeding?  During the 16th to 18th centuries, well-to-do mothers in Europe and the Colonies rarely nursed their own babies. The infants were given to wet nurses and returned home only when they were weaned, if they lived. Most fashionable women of the period wore corsets made of leather with stays of bone. The corsets not only broke ribs but often damaged breast tissue and nipples, making breastfeeding impossible. Employing wet nurses was also a sign of a family's elevated status in society. (A History of Wet Nursing, LLL International, March 2007.) Did wet nurses bond with their charges, and vice versa? And then were these babies weaned and abruptly separated once again, for the second time, from the one person they thought they could rely upon? I can understand employing a wet nurse in an emergency, for example if a mother died in childbirth. But to choose or refuse to nurse one's own baby intentionally and give him to a peasant, who, back in the Middle Ages hardly lived up to the same standards of hygiene and cleanliness as that of her mistress. Besides, the wet nurse would often abandon her own newborn in favor of this new, more economically advantageous arrangement: she would be housed, well fed, and paid for her 24-hour-a-day services, though the wet nurse would often have no child of her own in the end when all was said and done.

            About the same time, during the Middle Ages, the first pacifiers were invented. A rag soaked in chamomile tea would sedate a crying infant, replacing the much needed calories in mother’s breast milk. In Holland, I read in one book, the rag was knotted and dipped in whiskey. The infant mortality rate was known to be high during this era and I don’t doubt that practices like these contributed significantly.

            The cradle was employed during this era. A mother could multi-task finally: get another child to rock the baby to sleep so she could cook or clean. She could rock the cradle herself with her foot while spinning or weaving, another convenience. When the cradle went out of style it was the (un)doing of one doctor in particular whose thesis was that if infants were being trained to be rocked to sleep, they would never learn to sleep on their own, were smart enough to manipulate their mothers (sounds familiar?) and that the cradle was producing spoiled children, though adult size cradles were not being produced to accompany young adults to college that I know of. But I wonder again why cradles were replacing the important skin-to-skin contact babies needed? Another little piece of non-bonding trivia: In the 1700s, “…cabinetmaker Sheraton, in his Cabinet Dictionary, designed a cradle which included a spring mechanism designed to keep the cradle rocking for an hour and a half-- a function now accomplished by electric motors in this age of preoccupied childcare providers.” (Graham Blackburn, furniture maker, author, illustrator, and publisher of Blackburn Books, Bearsville, N.Y.)

            Exactly! Preoccupied childcare providers. Why do we value our non-bonding time and space above the needs of our children? I believe we honestly think we are not harming them otherwise how could we have been so oblivious for so long? To our small minds do we think we must be able to tangibly see abuse or harm before addressing it? The long-term effects of behaviors don’t cross our minds in most circumstances. I have written about it already, but I come back repeatedly to my observations of the researchers in Minnesota turning over every single minute pebble in their search for the hidden cause(s) of autism. (Genetic flaws in specific races is now on the top of the researchers’ lists at this time.) Everywhere except the broken bond we have created ourselves, perhaps because it is invisible, versus vaccines, for example, whose levels of mercury we can quantitatively measure, though I don’t think we can ignore their side effects any longer, either.

            While we employ nannies, baby sitters, and daycare we not only raise the expenditures in our budgets, we also create more non-bonding time for ourselves. Convenience? We have more time to create more ‘important’ (and costly) things to do. No wonder our standard of living in the U.S. in particular, and the Western World in general is so high. We think we must have a two-income household to survive, but in reality, we often create that level of need ourselves.

The French have an old saying that goes something like this: every baby is born with a loaf of bread under each arm. ~ as quoted by Dorothy Day

            When we were having our babies, we lived below the poverty line intentionally, not because we knew about the importance of bonding, but because we didn’t want to pay taxes that would be funneled into the military and the (then) Vietnam War. We home schooled, gardened, ate locally and seasonally, canned a good portion of our food using a pressure canner on our wood stove, raised a pig named ‘Bacon’, made our own clothes or shopped second hand, and created our own ‘organic’ entertainment. I didn’t work outside the home (a log cabin at the time). Our children were amazingly independent very early, which surprised us. We did not realize that by having one or both of us present all the time – they didn’t have a baby sitter once during those years – they felt completely secure and chose their own time to branch out into other levels of relationships. We called them our ‘free-range’ children. I didn’t feel like some camp's activity director, either. I was too busy. If I was kneading bread, they each got a little lump to destroy on their own. Theirs fell on the floor, adding a few cat hairs along the way, got over-kneaded, tasted, licked, and poked, and then went into the oven along with my loaves. They ate theirs for lunch, slathered with homemade jam. If I was cleaning one of the cabins with a baby tied on my back, (we maintained a retreat on 70 acres of virgin oak forest in Wisconsin back then, receiving an average of 600 guests a year) they all came along, inspecting bugs along the paths through the woods, eating wild black berries, having mock weddings in which they threw acorns in lieu of rice at the conclusion, the boys having peeing contests, seeing who could hit the farthest tree.  Ruth tried but never scored.

            They met people from all over the world: a pianist who played for them on our old upright (that I had bartered for a handmade quilt), a cleric from England whom they introduced to Dr. Seuss and employed him to read to them every night during his stay; artists, priests, nuns, writers, storytellers, monks, hermits, travelers – they all came for shorter or longer stays in the cabins. Our children observed all of them and gravitated toward the more well-adjusted folks among them; believe me, we got all kinds. This was the world our fifth child, Hannah was born into, (while I hung onto the rung on the front of the wood stove, while squatting and pushing.)

            The year was 1987. She was our 5^th child, born just under 3 years after Rachel who was born 2 years short of 5 weeks after our twins, Isaac and Ruth who were born on the Farm* with Ina May Gaskin and the Farm midwives in 1982. The twins were born 2 years minus four days after our eldest, Abraham. I had breastfed all of them well into their second year, using breastfeeding alone to space our babies. (Breastfeeding and Natural Child Spacing: How Ecological Breastfeeding Spaces Babies, by Sheila Kippley). Hannah, like her sister Rachel before her cost us all of $25.

They identified with Laura and Mary as we read every single Little House on the Prairie book to them by kerosene lamp, stopping to make Almanzo’s pancakes, or Pa’s button lamp, or dolly quilts from scraps like Mary’s. (Yes, Abe and Isaac also learned to sew by hand.)

Hannah was the easiest baby yet as all her siblings adored her and entertained her constantly. I did not realize the level of bonding that was happening between them as siblings but it has remained with them to this day. They are all grown up now and we are grandparents. The time really does fly by. We did not always find the right way with each child as this or that one tried to find their own independence and looking back we see things we could have done differently, but we are proud of each one and who they have become.

Note: By the way, the $25. Hannah cost us bought 1 box of maternity sanitary pads, 1 box of Chux for the bed afterwards, and Slippery Elm tea which I used to prevent bleeding after her precipitous birth. The others had all come very quickly which can cause hemorrhage sometimes, so I wanted to be prepared. The receipts are in her baby book. There isn't much else there, though. It never became an item on my list of priorities.

*see 2^nd edition Spiritual Midwifery, by Ina May Gaskin, p. 169, and A Natural Delivery of Vertex Twin Birth DVD, c2005 Birth Gazette Video.

To leave comments at this blog, please email me at: ssskimchee@gmail.com