Go see my dearest Mb and read her profound thoughts and questions on pain in labour.

Go now. This is important stuff.

J.

- Coalition for Improving Maternity Services Public (cims_public) email list:

OPPOSING BANS ON VAGINAL BIRTH AFTER CESAREAN (VBAC)

WHEREAS, the National Organization for Women (NOW) has a long history of supporting a woman’s right to make reproductive choices; and

WHEREAS, Vaginal Birth After Cesarean (VBAC) has repeatedly been shown to be a safe and reasonable choice for women; and

WHEREAS, VBAC labors that are not induced or augmented with drugs proceed without the need for emergency surgical intervention 99.6% of the time; and

WHEREAS, unnecessary cesareans pose serious risks to mothers, including two to four times a greater chance of maternal death; increased risk of emergency hysterectomy; injury to blood vessels and other organs; chronic pain due to internal scar tissue; increased chance of re-hospitalization; complications involving the placenta in subsequent pregnancies; and

WHEREAS, unnecessary cesareans pose risks to the infant, including an increased risk of respiratory distress syndrome; prematurity; the development of childhood asthma; and a 1-9% chance the baby will be cut during surgery; and

WHEREAS, over 300 hospitals within the United States have banned VBAC, including at least one hospital in every state; and

WHEREAS, it has been reported that some women seeking care in hospitals that ban VBAC have been forcibly anesthetized and C-sectioned when they try to withhold consent to surgery; and

WHEREAS, the right to refuse unwanted and unnecessary medical treatment is a fundamental right; and

WHEREAS, the right to bodily integrity is a fundamental right,

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that NOW oppose institutional and healthcare policies that deny women’s access to VBAC; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that NOW’s policy statements, brochures, and fact sheets concerning reproductive freedom include information on VBAC; and

BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED, that NOW and its chapters work with national and state health care organizations and providers to oppose legislation and public policy that would restrict women’s access to VBAC and to medically accurate and comprehensive information on childbirth and the right to choose VBAC.

—–
I couldn’t find this on the NOW website - but apparently this is the final wording and according to the email list message:
“the resolution is in effect and will stay in effect until no longer needed.”

A few of you have mentioned, in comments or via email, that you’ve been curious about Julianna’s birth - but have not wanted to ask. I swear I didn’t mean to be so mysterious! Although I haven’t gotten to where I’m totally ready to write the complete birth story - I’m happy to share the details. So go ahead, ask away. If you’ve got any questions about the birth, general or specific, please post and I’ll do my best to answer. Who knows - perhaps this exercise will get me on my way to writing the birth story - at the very least I should get some good cut and paste sections out of it!

Birth Stories

Several people have written me to ask about Julianna’s birth story. Will I write it? Did I already write it? Did they somehow miss it? When will I write it?

Other than Julianna’s birth poem and some emails to close friends written shortly after her birth to share the basic details, I have not written even a word of her birth story. I’ve told the story several times, ( Jess and Brooke in particular helped me replay the birth via phone calls in those tumultuous first days after she was born). I’ve also told the story a few times recently at Birth Circles, but I usually stick to the physical details and skim over the emotional stuff.

I keep thinking I need time to sit down, meditate on the events of her birth, integrate them into my body and soul a little more before I feel ready to commit the story of her birth to the screen. For me, there is an intimacy that goes into the careful choosing of words and phrases, backspaces and keystrokes that is much more profound than anything I can reach by speaking. In my writing the truth seems to carry more weight; the deliberate selection of words lets me inch closer and closer to being real. But writing takes time. That blissful stretch of time never seems to materialize – and I wonder if I don’t have to put aside lofty dreams about processing and integrating – and just record the details as I remember them. Deal with the aftereffects well…after.

Only thing is, I’m not sure I’m completely ready.

I recently read an academic paper on the recounting of Woman’s Birth Narratives*, how important this retelling is, what implications it has for recovery and healing, how universal it is across cultures and languages. This paper talked about the “bittersweet paradox” of birth. It explained that one of the common threads that tied together birth narratives around the world is that women use paradoxical combinations of words in their stories. The same words appeared in the birth stories of woman from China, Finland, Guatemala, Tonga; agony and happiness, painful and joyful, difficult and rewarding. This is also true of my daughter’s birth.

Julianna’s birth was difficult on so many levels. Difficult to experience and difficult to make sense of after the fact. It was physically traumatic, but emotionally liberating. It was humbling, and empowering. It was immensely painful but also triumphant and victorious. Her birth taught me more about myself than anything I have ever done. It also taught me how much I have yet to learn.

Bittersweet paradox. Yes.

But already, the memory dims. I never really had a good grasp on the details, because it was fast and furious and chaotic and all encompassing in a way I never knew existed. What I do know: her birth brought me to my knees.

To make use of a particularly cheesy but very apt analogy - when Bella was born I rode the contractions like a masterful surfer atop the waves. I knew instinctively when the wave would crest, when surf would break. I knew how to keep my balance and was almost always able to see the horizon. I could stay in the moment but still be ready for the next challenge. In contrast, I spent Julianna’s birth underwater, knocked off my board over and over and over again, tumbling and spinning and pounded by the current until I didn’t know up from down and water from air.

Bella’s birth made sense, the pain made sense, I made sense. This time, in the moment, nothing made sense. The reality of her birth shook me to my core. I was forced to confront myself head on, all my issues, my need to control, my difficulty with surrender. I had to look it in the eye and barrel through. In birth, you don’t get a choice. You can’t run from your demons. You can only go forward. And so I did – not by conscious choice (because I’m sure at that time I would have gladly taken any available escape route had one been offered) but because that is the nature of birth.

What will make Julianna’s birth story different from the millions of difficult birth stories out there is the care I received at every step of the way. I was carried through her birth with so much love that in my memory it exists as a tangible force in the room. Julianna’s birth room pulsed with love. Not just love, but wisdom and faith and healing and power. When I think back to the time I spent on my bed before standing to push her out, the moments where there was a real chance that I would not be able to birth her vaginally, where I was in so much pain and overcome by fear…when I see those moments in my memory, I see nothing but peace and love and trust so thick that it vibrated and hummed through me and everyone else who was with me.

The only other memory of my life as profound came in moments before the death of my beloved grandfather. My family encircled his hospice bed, hands tightly clasped, arms around one another, as his spirit left the room. We spent our last moments with the man who had built a family of uncommon closeness, who had a life force so strong and vital that it filled the room and also filled my heart and lungs and soul, just as we spent his life. Together. I can’t even come close to putting it into words – but it had the same overwhelming intensity of emotion and connection as the moments before Julianna’s birth.

It makes sense that I pull forth the memory of death even as I reflect on birth – because these are the times in my life where I stood on the cusp between the physical universe and whatever exists beyond our comprehension. Where, as I said in my birth poem, I was “deep within myself and far beyond myself in the same moment”.

Julianna’s birth also gifted me with a renewed faith in midwifery, and a deep understanding of what it can mean to be “with woman”. It also, perhaps surprisingly, strengthened my faith in homebirth, and in the wisdom of a cooperative system between out of hospital care providers and the medical system. I had midwifery care when I needed it, and medical care when I needed it. I would not have had a vaginal birth in the hospital, I could not have received a transfusion at home. Even my transport went as smoothly and seamlessly as anyone could have hoped (um, except for the six firefighters that saw me naked – that was overkill).

I was treated with not just dignity and respect in the hospital, but even with gentleness and kindness. I will never forget the female doctor who attended me after I arrived at the hospital, senseless with pain and dizzy with the aching need to hold my baby. Even when her hands were deep in my uterus and she was scraping out clot after clot of blood - bringing me to levels of pain so intense that I felt them with every fiber of my being despite the morphine coursing through my veins- she was rubbing my leg, and speaking to me with so much kindness that it brings tears to my eyes now just to think about it. Even when she advised me to consider hospital birth for future children, she did so with concern and respect. I was blessed.

But then, eventually the birth high left me, and I got home, and I had to deal. At some point, when I was still reeling from the relentless totality of the experience, and overwhelmed by the reality of my physical recovery, I read Jo’s birth story over at Leery Polyp

During one point during her labour Jo’s midwife told her “this will not be the hardest thing you ever do for that baby”. That simple comment hit me like a ton of bricks. Sometimes it is the most basic of truths that gift you with the most valuable shifts in perspective. I realized, as I would imagine almost everyone who reads it would realize, the absolute truth of it.

However difficult Julianna’s birth, it was but the beginning of our dance together. That does not minimize or negate the impact of her birth, or deny the need to process the experience. It does, however, serve as an important reminder. We are often required to do difficult things for our children, and we do them because we must, because we want to, because we are mothers. Birth is a rite of passage, it is a transcendent moment, it is an integral piece of complex relationship between mother and child. It is a beginning. The beginning of many rites, many transcendent moments, the beginning of a complex relationship that will grow and shift and change a million times over.

I’ve asked my birth companions to share the story with me many times – trying to grasp a little more of the experience for myself. Immediately afterwards I had this overwhelming need to hear the story, to ask questions, to force understanding. My head was still spinning from the intensity of it all – and I badly wanted someone to give me something that would make it stop. I think I felt like if I just heard the story a few more times it would start to feel like my own, instead of a blurry fuzzy story that didn’t even seem real. Little by little I began to realize that I couldn’t reach the depth of understanding I sought because I simply wasn’t ready. I let it go and decided to let it come as it wanted to come. As I said in Julianna’s birth poem;

“the truths of your birthday will continue to be revealed only as I am ready to accept them”

And so here we are. I know the birth was hard and painful and difficult, but I can’t remember it with any immediacy, at least not know, six months later. That organic sense of what it was - what it really, really was - has eased away in sleepless nights and silken skin and spit up milk and belly laughs and every day life. Right now, I’m not at all sure that the memories I have aren’t merely fragments of moments pieced together in some semblance of order based on what others have told me. I’m not even sure if things happened the way I recall. I’m also not sure that matters.

And so, in a long and rambling, convoluted sort of way – this post is to tell you that I have not yet written a birth story, to share some of the reasons why, and a bit of the processing I have done in the months since Julianna was born. When it is written, it will be – (in the words of my friend Kori who inspired this post) “a story of letting go of expectations without letting go of convictions. And most of all, it will be a story of transformation—exactly what every birth story should be.”

*Making Meaning: Women’s Birth Narratives, Lynn Clark Clallister. JOGNN: Clinical Issues, V 33 N 4. pp 508-518

Came across this interesting press release that addresses the top ‘trends’ in pregnancy and birth.

Number one on the list of trends is Birth Networks. As a part of the grassroots effort that initiated this trend, I am especially interested in this one. The Arizona Birth Network has been (excuse the horrid pun) a labour of love and it is incredibly gratifying to think of other women across the country, equally passionate about birth, growing and strengthening this effort within their own communities. Do you have a birth network in your area? Are you involved? Tell me about it.

On the topic of birth, there is an incredible discussion forming on Brooke’s blog right now (read these three posts and the comments that follow). It is no secret that Brooke is beloved to me. I believe her raw honesty about her own experience, her gentleness with others and her talent for writing all serve to make her the perfect person to lead us in such a vital discussion. When I read Brooke’s birth writing I am touched in a deep level - touched and inspired and reminded of why I began my journey into the world of birthwork.

I want to thank her for baring her heart and soul and letting us ride along on such a private and complex journey. For giving us insight into the center of her healing and her torment. To open yourself up like that, especially when the topic is one so precious, is never easy. It takes courage and determination to create change. I believe Brooke to be a champion of women, and a guardian of birth. I believe she will one day move within the birth world - move and dance and inspire and create change. My instincts tell me that as she moves along her own healing journey, that her words and spirit will create a circle of healing that extends far beyond her own experience.

C-Sections, Breastfeeding and Bugs For Your Baby
[Opinion] What the doctor probably won’t tell you

The science nerd in me (Bachelor of Science - Biology Major / former Research Coordinator/ lover of all things grounded in fact) loves this article. I’m not so sure about some of his phrasing (’creepy ritual of eating the mother’s placenta’?) but I think he does a good job of breaking down some of the basic facts of birthing/breastfeeding…when it comes to biology, everything happens for a reason.

I eagerly await your thoughts.