You Were Meant To Fly

 There is a culture of fear surrounding birth.  This is not my idea, however it became a central philosophy for me as I began my personal discovery of the birth world during my first pregnancy.  That's right, there are birth philosophies.  My husband and I saw the film, "The Business of Being Born" and it highly resonated with us.  Up until we saw this film, we never questioned or thought about birth other than what we had seen in mainstream media and conversation.  The commonly held concept of rushing to a hospital while fully contracting in active labor, my husband whisking me in a sweat while I fought epic pain in a wheelchair to the check in counter, and being rescued by the hospital staff from the pain and discomfort of my labor, while strapped to monitors and IVs in a sterile hospital bed on crunchy linen and beeping machines monitoring all bodily functions, there are ice chips and epidurals since the pain is too much to handle and why let my ego prove how tough I was when I have modern technology to help me, before eventually pushing out my baby or if needed having a surgical birth at my doctor's discretion.  Voila! Except, I discovered that that version of birth was purely orchestrated, how much my eyes were opened.  

Rewinding to my own birth story is a part of this personal discovery as well.  Have you ever remarked on your birth story?  I certainly have, as I was born at 6am on the 26th of December.  My mother was in the hospital laboring on Christmas Eve, already past her due date by weeks, she was showing signs of pre-eclampsia, and given a medication to delay her labor through the holiday.  As a result, she suffered numbness in her arms and back, and vision impairment following my birth.  She was extremely lucky, unfortunately, she was traumatized by her birth experience, and growing up I heard the horrors of my own birth countless times.  So whenever I show my ID at the store, or am obligated to indicate my birth date and the person responds, "ouu a Christmas Baby!" "You must love having a Christmas Birthday?!"  "You must hate having a Christmas Birthday?" I cringe.  The truth is I would give anything for a birthday not associated with a holiday, because it seemed to be the source of my mother's neglected care, after all that was the 80s and things were very different then.  Or are they?

In many ways, we are taking in so many passive messages about pregnancy and birth, from biblical suffering against Eve's deceptive ways, to the dramatization of birth in popular media, to the every day stories we witness from friends and family.  All of these exposures form our beliefs surrounding birth almost without us even realizing that we are being conditioned to believe this one shared idea surrounding birth.  That was my realization. It's safe to say my outlook was entirely changed after watching the birth documentary.  I was shocked to learn about the medicalization of birth. It affected me personally, knowing the difficulties my mother faced with her hospital birth decades earlier.  What's wrong with that, someone may wonder?  Hospitals are wonderful places, they have NICUs and surgeons and state of the art equipment, who wouldn't want to give birth there? 

While where one gives birth is of great importance, what drives my personal birth philosophy even more is the concept of informed consent for birthing persons.  There is not enough time and space in this writing to elaborate the variety of ways in which this exact concept is compromised readily in hospitals and birth spaces in the United States.  Suffice to say, part of my work is challenging the spaces where informed consent is lacking.  And yes, I will admit, I have personally experienced the lack of informed consent in birth hospitals.  I am not pro homebirth or anti hospital birth.  I refuse to polarize birth that way, it only breeds contempt and misunderstanding.  What I am, is pro informed consent, pro mother, pro birth options.  If those qualities are present in the birth space, I believe that there are much better outcomes for mother and baby.  Of course there are many nuances to this discussion, it is a deeply personal choice for each person, where they give birth, whom they invite into their birth space, and what preferences they will evoke.  Ultimately, I believe in the entire outcome of birth, not just the physical delivery of a baby, but the emotional and physical well being of a mother and child.  This is something a mother will carry with her, for the rest of her life, and trauma free, fearless birth is the ideal outcome I would hope for all birthing persons.  As a doula, my biggest fear is that a mother wasn't heard or respected, that she was not given informed consent, and that she regards her body as incapable of birth.  

I am inspired by the growing number of women who are reclaiming their birthright, their feminine wisdom, and shedding the fear culture surrounding birth.  What if, instead of fear, we were fearless around birth? What if, we were meant to fly?  I believe we are.