healing community

i want to offer some hopes, prayers, blessings, and ideas for making things better in our midwifery community:

well family care

home birth midwifery in my area is pretty much for clients that are white, upper-middle-class, straight, and of child-bearing age.

this ain't right.

traditional midwives didn't just deliver babies. they engaged in the healing work of entire communities. men, women, children, babies, elders. as women, we have always held the knowledge and power of healing within ourselves, passing it down for generations from wise-woman to wise-woman.

when we compartmentalize women's health into a very exclusive, child-bearing clique, we do most of our community a disservice. when we almost exclusively provide home-based, herbal, DIY, radical, supportive health care to bougie white women, we betray our roots, sever our bond with the wise-women of our ancestry, and exclude the vast majority of our community.

i believe that childbirth is under the attack of a white-supremacist, capitalist, patriarchy. so is women's health. so is men's health. so is children's health. so is the process of dying.

i loved "the business of being born" film. i would also love to see "the business of dying," "the business of having HIV or AIDS," "the business of eating," etc.

what i'm trying to say is that the process of childbearing cannot be separated from the rest of the process of being human. when it is, we leave a lot of people out.

if as wise-women and potentially as midwives, we focused at least on the whole woman to start out with:

• menarche celebration
• pre-conception counseling
• nutritional counseling
• lesbian/trans-gender/bisexual-friendly health
• STI screenings and treatment
• herbal therapy
• self-healing (a.k.a."DIY")
• infertility counseling and treatment
• herbal abortion and/or menstrual extraction
• menopausal celebration, counseling, and treatment
• palliative care

maybe we could start here and then move out to heal the world. what do you think?

a radical community of midwives

one person cannot fulfill all of these needs. therefore, to make these things happen, we have to come together and help where we can, learn from each other, and encourage safe space, compassion, and respect.

in our midwifery community there is a lot of shit-talking. some of it is for very good reasons. but it is our responsibility, in order to provide quality care for our whole community, to use consensual processes to deal with grievances together as wise-women.

imagine a community of midwives working together:

women of different backgrounds, experience levels, philosophies, ages, and truths all working toward the common goal of providing quality well-woman and well-family care to our community.

holding each other accountable for our words and actions.

our integrity will grow with every birth, death, joy, mistake, love, laugh, and tear.

granny midwife

this job has got me thinking about getting high..-er education.

birth in this country sucks. with the second highest infant mortality rate and not much better maternal mortality rate in a "developed" country, birthing women need all the help they can get.

but...

reasons i hate (the) midwives (in my area):

1. they think they're soo cool
2. they say stuff like, "if i couldn't get that baby out..."
3. they fight amongst eachother way too much
4. they don't clip their fingernails and leave scars on (my) baby's head
5. they don't respect patient confidentiality
6. they totally wrap their egoes up in the whole "babycatcher" thing

i have talked to some people in my community about how i think that the model of midwifery - the young, hip thing who makes her living doing home births, is very competitive, and totally worn/burnt out - just doesn't work.

it seems there are reasons why traditional midwives, meaning the organically grown, evolved and ancient variety developed the way they did. women that grew up seeing natural childbirth among their sisters, mothers, cousins, aunts, friends, helped when they could, and had years and years of experience were the real midwives.

they knew a lot of what could go wrong, how to prevent those things, how to help and how not to help, and more than anything had the experience and the courage to deal with emergency and non-emergency situations with the same level of calm and skill.

midwifery these days seems to be forced. it seems like it's fashionable to be a midwife (in certain social spheres).

to think that a woman can be a midwife in 2 to 4 years is absurd. it takes years and years of experience to develop the cool-headed confidence and skill necessary to be responsible for the lives of two or more souls. it takes seeing it go wrong and not freaking out many times to develop the involuntary, automatic, but absolutely precise skill necessary to stay controlled in an uncontrollable situation.

to think that a woman can be a midwife and also a full time mom and partner is absurd. the commitment is total. the schedule is relentless.

to think you can make a living wage as a midwife is also absurd. to take as many clients as you would need to and without charging a class-exclusive sum, you would burn yourself out in the first 5 years. throw a couple kids and a partner into the mix and you'll be burnt out in the first year and a half.

yeah, i think about being a midwife...when i'm 65. or 70.

strip mining and epidurals

i witnessed a beautiful vag birth tonight. a baby girl oozed silently into the world, thick with vernix and bathed in amniotic fluid. she was pink in seconds and flew right to her mama's breast, unhindered by gravity or any other worldly tethers.

it was an epidural birth, but went so smoothly. it made me happy. the last epidural birth i witnessed scarred me, but the scars were not as permanent as those of the wounded woman, tears hot on her face and chest. exhausted and then defeated the moment she heard the word "cesarean."

i don't think epidurals are smart, but i don't blame women for getting them.

in a world where no one trusts, loves, or respects our bodies, how can we?

in a culture where women are not "able-bodied," where we're "hysterical" and under-valued, how can we believe in ourselves through the pain, the wires, the tubes, and the men's voices telling us about an "easy" way out?

most women think that birth should be as easy as flipping on a light switch. and they don't think about the blood-stained scalpel beyond their decision for an epidural any more than they think about the coal-stained lungs of the men behind their electricity; the scar that may remain on their bellies forever is as forgotten as the strip mined, bleeding earth.

it's where the education comes in, though, i think.

when we are educated, we become empowered.
when we learn to name things, we gain our own strength and power.

i got this link for "cesarean art" from at your cervix's blog.

i love it. but beware. it's real.