Yippee! I now have all my manuals for the doula & cbe courses. Also the six birthy books I chose from the reading list are here. It looks like a box full of pure gold. I was thinking I might like to close myself in a room for a couple weeks and read it all...but then I thought I might miss my life and family too much. In reality- I'm going to take a couple more weeks off from blogging...but I'll be back mid-July full of hopefully insightful things to say about the wise birthing wisdom of Grantly Dick-Read and Ina May Gaskin.
My sweet Josiah, tomorrow you will be five years old. Five years ago today, around 1 in the afternoon, I began having mild contractions. I paced like a tigress round our apartment, spurring labor on, as Daddy cooked me my favorite protein source, calamari. I stopped to relax and lean during each contraction, enjoying the first powerful sensations of labor. As afternoon turned into evening, Daddy and I went out to rent some movies. We knew active labor had begun when I began squatting in the aisles of the video shop! Suddenly I just wanted to be at home where I could focus. We called our midwife from home to see if she could stop by soon to check on me. She arrived around 8pm, and found me to be 9 centimeters dilated! I couldn't believe you would be in our arms very soon. I wished that I could stay in my comfy bean bag, but we headed out to the hospital instead, since that was our plan for your birth.
Five years ago today, I still had a few tough hours of labor ahead of me. You were a very big baby at 10 lb 6 oz, and took a few hours to work your way down.
Five years ago tomorrow, at 2:03 am on June 15th, surrounded by your Daddy's love, supported by a midwife and doula/nurse, I gave a final push, and out you spun. Your cord was the most beautiful brilliant blue I have ever seen. You had a little button nose, lots of thick black hair, and a broad chest like Daddy's.
I just finished reading "Why Pro-Life?" by Randy Alcorn, a snap of a book that presents an extremely compelling argument for the pro-life position. I've always been pro-life, but never heard such a clear and gentle exposition of scientific, moral, and social reasons for why abortion is so terribly wrong. Abortion clearly kills children. Even the so called "pro-choice" know this, and thanks in part to the advancement of ultrasound technology, this fact is getting harder to ignore. Abortion is a holocaust of unparalled proportion, costing 3,753 deaths of the precious unborn EACH DAY in America alone. Yes, that's 1.37 million children a year, which equates to a full 25% of children conceived in the U.S. yearly. Sad, so sad, and shocking.
Burdened now by a special passion for peaceful birth, for woman and child, for the family, I am deeply saddened by the continuing tragedy of abortion. For really, what birth could be less peaceful than a child intentionally ripped apart and sucked lifeless from it's mother's womb?
I was blessed to be turned on to the following YouTube short film by a fellow Childbirth International student. It is an incredibly beautiful portrayal of life inside the womb. The description by the filmmakers reads:
"Baby remembers her first home. Collection of original watercolors, music, and poetry. The thoughts of an unborn child.
In an unmedicated birth, the baby pushes its legs against the uterine wall to assist its birth. He also rotates his head and body in a spiraling motion to negotiate the mother's pelvic bones. In Holistic Midwifery (Volume II), Anne Frye describes these movements as the "Cardinal Spiraling Movements of the Baby during Labor."
The newborn displays reflexes that reinforce his role in birth. For example, when you press on his feet, he will press back, just as he presses against uterine contractions. If you place him face down, he will turn to the side, just as he turns his head in the perineal phase of birth. What a perfect design! Several animations of this phenomenon are available online, and here is one.
Remember that most of what you are seeing is in very very fast motion! Labor usually takes hours (if not days) of work for both mother and baby. However the actually emergence of the body is almost always very quick following the birth of the head, and to me this clip portrays that moment quite well!
Thanks to Enjoy Birth for the link to this beautiful montage of HBAC mama Katie and family as they welcome baby Drew. I love this birth story because: -mama educated herself and chose VBAC. -the birth was at home. -doulas assisted. -children assisted. -birth pool was used in active labor. -baby was born in his own time at 42 weeks 2 days. -Drew was 11 lb 8 oz and 23 inches long! -his cheeks are the best! -successful HBAC! Yeah!
