…where we often have little or no control, where we are wading into uncharted territory, where the rules might change at any minute, and where brave women (and not-so-brave women) have dared to go for millions of years and succeeded. If they hadn’t we wouldn’t be here today. My own birth
journey essentially began with my first baby. The only alternative (read sane) book out there in 1980 was the
first edition of Spiritual
Midwifery by Ina May Gaskin. 
I
devoured that book. I could do this,
I told myself and I did, having my almost 10 pound Abraham in a little birthing
room in a hospital before the doctor even made it. We checked out and went home
six hours later.
I wanted to do the
same thing when I became pregnant again. We knew it was twins before the doctor
did. I scheduled my own ultrasound to convince him. The only way I could have
them in Minnesota in 1982 was in an operating room after being prepped for
surgery. Then they would let me try to have a natural birth--which,
obviously, they were terrified of.
I called Ina May
for advice, who invited me to The Farm. I moved there for the fall and had a
beautiful birth which they filmed and called “Twin Vertex Birth,” which, by the
way, has been used recently in the movies “Birth Story” and also “More Business
of Being Born”.
After the twins we
had two more babies, three years apart. They were both unassisted home births,
though I had planned to have a midwife both times, but they never made it in
time. By the time we had five children I had taken a few courses and began to
seriously think about become a midwife. It all came together when I received a
fellowship in 1988 to go back to school and received my midwifery license.
Fast forward to 2010.
We had just returned to Minnesota after living in England. I would soon turn
60. I did not want to work in a clinic or hospital as
a midwife and be assigned two or three or more families per shift and have to
learn all of the new electronic monitoring and charting. I did not want to do
the boards all over again which could take up to two years to prepare for, so I
looked at my credentials and decided I could teach… and then I discovered the
birth community here in the Twin Cities and Doulas!
This is my dream
job. I don’t have to leave at shift change. I can be a grandma or a surrogate
mom to a refugee family who have no one else here. I am already called “Mommy”
in the Ethiopian immigrant community. I am honored and humbled that I can still
witness birth.
There are over 30
doulas in our group at Everyday Miracles. We have classes in Somali, Spanish,
Hmong and English. Yes, my scope of practice has changed. I don’t check
dilation or fetal heart rates, but I get to connect with amazing mamas and
support them during the most momentous event in the entire universe at that
moment, their birth. I am with them as their doula when they go from being a
woman to becoming a mother. I am so grateful.
with my twins on The Farm, 1982
“Logically,
the abnormal cannot be identified without a clear scientific definition of the
variations of normal. Obstetrics lacks this because the risk concept implies
that all pregnancy and birth is risky and therefore no pregnancy or birth can
be considered normal until it is over. In other words, one cannot claim both
the ability to separate normal and abnormal during pregnancy and the inability
to determine normality until after birth. The wide variation which occurs in
the healthy experience of childbirth is too large for a single, uniform
definition of ‘normality’, which can be used to define ‘abnormality.’” Marsden
Wagner
Stay tuned for more chapters from my books, Ma Doula and PUSH, the Sequel
No comments:
Post a Comment