outside the system

and…one of my all time favorite posts on licensed midwifery.  not just because she uses my drawing for outlaw midwife in the post.  but because i have not really heard analysis on the canadian systems of health care and midwifery.

ok a couple of years ago i was in chiapas talking to this california midwife at the midwifery clinic in san cris.  and i was telling her how making midwifery more professional, licensed, certified would lead not be helpful to empowering women in birth.  and she told me i was wrong.  didnt know what i was talking about.  and i kept trying to tell her that in minneapolis where i gave birth and is one of the most midwifery friendly cities in the states, midwives are afraid of losing their insurance and so risk out a lot of their patients way too soon.

anyways.

Wanting to be respected and admired is only human. As midwifery strengthens its professional framework, this respect will naturally emerge. Midwifery needs strong, outspoken, autonomous women to articulate a vision of birth with dignity for all women. Unfortunately, such voices tend to belong to women who are “outside the system.” Once women are in a legalized system, they are silenced. They can be coerced to give unnecessary pharmaceuticals to women and babies (oxytocin, erythromicin, vitamin K) and they become good corporate citizens. The real respect and admiration that comes from knowing that you are true to yourself is missing. This can be a terrible price to pay for a piece of paper and a guaranteed pay cheque.

…

Since women can give birth by themselves, the right of each woman to choose where, when and with whom she gives birth is the fundamental principle on which any healthy midwifery model is built. Thwarting the growth of the midwifery movement by making it more and more difficult for new midwives to get training and to launch their practices is ridiculous. Instead of constantly knocking the woman off the ladder on the rung below us, we need to reach down and give her a hand up. Training of the new generation is one of the strong suits of the medical profession and midwives would be wise to emulate that desire to multiply colleagues. The future of midwifery rests in the young women who are now working as doulas. This educated group of women is emerging as the midwives of tomorrow and they need all the support and nurturing that practicing midwives can give them so they can be ready to take up the challenge. When midwives focus their time and energy on training the next generation and quit trying to join the dinosaurs that are on their way to extinction, we will find power, respect and joy in our work.

doulas and certifications

thinking of this post on doulas and certifications

i think that learning all that you can about reproductive health and justice, pregnancy, birth, post partum care, breast feeding, conception, abortion, miscarriage, newborns, infants, and children, and so much more is vital to being a responsible birth worker.

i studied reproductive health and justice in a myriad of ways.  DONA doula workshop, books, internet, being mentored, sharing with birth workers, meditation and movement, assisting births, and talking talking talking with mothers.

i personally value sitting in workshops, being able to ask questions in person and long distance.  i found the DONA doula workshop interesting and it gave me a better sense of the attitudes and foci of the birth worker community in Minnesota.   but taking the workshop does not mean that i must apply for the certification.  or follow any organization’s entire track toward certification.  nor do i need certification to work as a doula or to be a trainer.

and maybe it is important for me to repeat that: i do not need certification from any organization to work as a doula or be a trainer.  yes, w/o certification i may not be able to work as lucratively for a doula organization as others choose to do.  but i can be a birth worker.  a really good doula.  and i can mentor others to becoming birth workers.  one of my mentors toward becoming a doula did not have her certification at the time but she had lots of experience, a great trust in birth and women, and a practice of solidarity with marginalized peoples.

family christmas

1. i come from a traditional black southern christian family.  well really its more like a clan.  from northern south carolina.

its important to know where one comes from.  in order to know where one is going.

and after christmas 2006 i realized that where i came from was seriously messed up.  and where i was going was away.  far away.

2. i was 7 months pregnant.  visiting my family for the holidays.  habibi had stayed in minneapolis to work.

What’s (radical) love got to do with it? Everything.

1.i am a mother. and when i first read jess’s piece that was what came to me: my motherhood. and how central my love with my daughter is in my organizing.
and i have followed the ensuing conversation fascinated. wow. there are all these permutations and experiences i hadnt perceived. so thanks to everyone for that. i will be thinking about this conversation for a long time.

when i say ‘radical love’ what i mean is ‘radical caretaking’. caretaking for me is concrete action. taking care of myself. taking care of others. on multiple levels physical, mental, emotional, spiritual.  it is providing space where others can take care of themselves.  where they feel empowered to ask for what they need.  it is  not because i like them (often i dont, hell, there are enough times in the day i dont like my daughter, but i take care of her…does that make sense?) but because they are another human being and they deserve to be whole too.

when i think of radical love. i think of being a birth assistant for working poor african immigrant teenage moms. and loving them. even though i may not particularly like them. not the kind of folks i want hang out with on a saturday aft. but loving them tenderly through an incredibly vulnerable moment of their lives. and that creates a bond between us. and yes they yelled not nice things to me in their final moments of labor. and they resent me because i am a stranger, not their boyfriend, not their mom. but because we have been really vulnerable with each other…the quality of the relationship is…more human(?)

a dream of two births

this afternoon i took a nap.  and i dreamt of being in a multi-tiered tree house with dark wet steps, ramshackled wooden rooms like in a fixer-upper house that is always being fixed up.  i was downstairs in the living room with a woman about to give birth.  she had asked me to be there.  this was her second or third child.  she knelt  on the couch with her head against the wall behind the couch and moaned and squealed and her baby came slithering out.  i didnt do anything but be there.  she pushed when she wanted.  she moved as she wanted.  i remember her rolling on the floor.  i remember her on her back.  at one point she grabbed my hand and squeezed.

while she was nursing her baby, a woman upstairs sent a child to ask me to come to her birth.  we walked up the slippery stairs.  it was raining.  her room had two maybe three walls the rest of it was tree branches shielding her from the rain.  patches of green and blue sky peeked between the overhead branches.  her child too came out of her body in the midst of groans and shakes and shrieks.  we were all wet from the drizzle.

i woke up happy and warm thinking about outlaw midwives.  why did these two dream women request that i be at their births.  they caught their babies in their own hands.  i barely did anything but hum under my breath, hold a hand, and witness.  they did not need me there at all.  but they wanted me there.

when i work as a doula, i work hard to make sure that the mother knows that she didnt need me there.  that she did it all herself.  i liked it best when everyone in the room is just enamored of the mother and child and i could slip out of the room with a soft goodbye and with barely anyone noticing my departure.  i like it best when they wanted me to be at the birth, but they know and i know, they didnt need me to be there.

one doula said to me that the best thing that she could hear from a mother is: i couldnt have done it without you.  and i cant help but think: it could be an indication of the disempowerement of the primacy of the mother during birth when a mother says that to a birth worker.

my beautiful cervix

my beautiful cervix…one woman took pictures everyday of her cervix for an entire menstrual cycle.  she is a doula and student midwife.

Each photo was taken at approx 10:00 pm every day starting the first day of my menstrual cycle.  I re-used a plastic speculum (order one here) and macro function of normal digital camera (and a very talented boyfriend with a headlamp).  For the duration of this project, we used condoms as our birth control method so as not to introduce semenal fluid into the photoshoot.  I did not use tampons or mooncups during my bleeding time either.

these pictures are so informative.  i especially appreciate that she tracks how she feels during the month.  and her sexual life.

i am thinking about how funny the cervix is.  how intimate it is.  what captured me about these pictures.  they didnt feel clinical but pornographic in the sense that they should not be seen.  not be talked about.  and then i realized it had been a while since i had seen my own cervix.  not since i gave birth.  how has it changed?  shifted?

i told a friend that i was looking at pictures of the cervix and he asked if it was an art project or informational.  it was intended to be informational but my strong and contradictory emotional reaction, my inability to turn away, my feeling that something taboo had been broken and yet could not think of the taboo that was supposed to be in place, and the innumerous visual and experiencial associations ( like sweaty summer sex and bath towels and aza’s mouth when she was a newborn) that occurred as i looked at the list of photos tells me that it is also art.

the funny thing is that the photos are so clear.  can you imagine she and her partner angling the mag light just right and then angling the camera while she is holding the speculum?  i wish someone had taken a picture of that.  it sounds so joyful and awkward.

a balancing act

BEFORE

i am not a primitivist.  i do not romanticize the past simply because it was before now.  i do not believe in some edenic before when all went perfectly.  but i do have to ask the question: how the fuck did the human race propagate itself before doctors, obgyns, or certified licensed and insured midwives?

let me put it this way: what does it take to call yourself a midwife?

i imagine that for most of human history midwives were just women who had given birth or were the sister or the mother or had been around for birth and knew the rituals, the songs, the calls that that community had developed around the emergence of new life into the world.  there was probably a well of community knowledge that could be dipped into held by various men and women in the community.  maybe some oral traditions.  maybe some drawings that acted as a guide and a recorder of history.  there were probably some herbs that were known to be helpful.  probably folks had watched other mammals give birth.

and they knew the particular women giving birth.  knew her temperment, her favorite foods, what her moods looked like.

when most ‘natural’ midwives say that midwifery is a calling found around the globe, i think this is who they have in mind: the mother, sister, aunt, cousin, grandmother, neighbour who came by and helped out.  the woman who had a knack.  who was in charge of gathering and drying the herbs.  the woman who took it upon herself to care.

this is the way birth is happening in a good many parts of the world right now.  as i type.

and yet the same ‘natural’ midwives will tell you how their craft is ancient and wise and sacred, based on the knowledge and lives and experiences of these aforementioned women, would be offended if that woman moved into their community and called herself a midwife.  hung a shingle outside her door.  and started attending births.

third/fourth wave midwifery and spinning babies

do you remember that democracy now! with melissa harris lacewell and gloria steinem talking about hillary and barack earlier this year?

it is one of the greatest exchanges that happened during the election imho.

it was the difference between second wave and third wave feminism…i know we are not supposed to acknowledge the difference between the generations approach to feminism…but i need the analogy to explain third/fourth wave midwifery…

well, alot of the midwives that i have met (primarily in minneapolis) are second wave midwives.  they have fought so hard for legal recognition that everything else becomes secondary or tertiary in their view.  and they are very protective over the ‘gains’ they have made, no matter how the privileging of ‘certified’ and ‘insured’ midwives has been not only negligent but destructive to women of color, the queer community, sexual and trauma survivors, imprisoned women, and many more marginalized in the birth community and in the world at large.

what they seemed to be much more concerned with is protecting their status and the status of certified midwives in order to advance their cause.  they do so by looking toward women’s cultures that are black and brown and saying: see!  see!  those women have ‘natural’ birth.  and we, white women, are using those black and brown exotic women’s cultures as a model for us to change birth in our white communities.

currently diggin

blogs and websites i am currently diggin.  check them out.

quirky black girls: i am one of the contributers for this blog.  and i am proud of it.  it is part of the quirky black girl movement taking over the internet.

birthing project usa: the underground railroad for new life: a friend just hipped me to this organization/movement and i am amazed that i had never heard of it before.  its been around since 1988 and is focused on improving birth outcomes in african american communities by pairing an expecting mother with a sister who is the mother’s friend and advocate until at least the child’s one year birthday.  they also have a parallel program for expecting fathers.  incredible.

muslimnista: blogging on islamic feminism.  superb analysis.  if for a second you think that being muslim and being feminist cannot occur in the same body, on the same blog, think again.  what i love about this blog, honestly, is that it reminds me of the muslim women i have hung out with around the world.

radical doula: radical doula just sent me some real love in terms of a recent post of hers and i have got to send it back.  frankly, when i began this blog a year and a half ago she was the only other doula blogging about issues like race, sexuality, class, etc. and especially about reproductive justice.  the ways that the pro-life movements rhetoric disempowers women who choose to give birth as well as those who dont.  super-inspiring.

black girl get free: iresha also blogs for quirky black girls and i love her writing.  in her latest post she says:

Not only should Black Women be enlighten, but in order for the survival of their existence, they must embrace all things that the dominant culture sees as inferior and reject societies imposed racial and gender formation of them. The Blackness of Black Women’s beauty, and the culture that is seen as deviant by others, can also be seen as resistance from Black Women….Black is always seem as something “bad”, BUT White is not complex enough to use for Black Women, because Black Women’s beings are too complicated. Darkness is where things cannot be seen and creation has been bought forth. Also, bringing forth a creation is not an independent action but one that is created communally, by Black Women coming together. Its always good to create new things and embrace what our ancestors have left for us to discover their creations. So whomever said that darkness is dull and murky must have never seen the light that Blackness creates.

plus she is also from the va (what! what!) so represent.

mamita mala: mamita is real.  a real poet.  which you know the moment you read her work.  and a real person who blogs about her life as if she has no other choice but to be concrete, passionate, detailed, and self-aware.

revolutionary motherhood: i wrote for this blog as well.  (i did not list every blog i write for…so there…) and i love the women who post here.  the work is diverse, surprising, mama supportive, self-contradictory and authentic.

kameelah writes: she is a photographer.  she loves lists.  she is a public school teacher.  and a hijabi.

so as i was finishing up this post, i realized, hey, there are four sites that are authored by black women, two by latinas, one that is racially diverse, and two that focus on muslim women (which is not a race or ethnicity but is treated as both in the states), and thought…you know what this is what new media is about.

unassisted childbirth

today i am going to hip you to the unassisted birth culture.  frankly, for all the strangenesses and weird alliances (can you say witches and fundamentalist christians sharing notes on childbirth?) i love this movement…and this blog has in large part been an exploration on the empowerment of women during pregnancy, birth, and mamahood and i believe that unassisted birth is a large part of that.

unassisted birth (a birth without birth professionals) is not everyone’s or most people’s imagined ideal birth scenario.  actually i was talking to my teacher from palestine a week ago and when i mentioned home births he said: people still do that?  ha ha ha.  but i do believe that in the core of our culture we need to know that birth happens.  it does not do so because of any professional or any machine, it simply happens because that is how the human race brings forth the next generation.  and that each of us has the right to decide what we are going to do with our bodies. we must decide for ourselves whether and how we are going to conceive, carry, deliver and  care for our young.  we must learn the ways that our body and our minds communicate to our person.  that the bodies intuition must guide us.  and if that intuition says scheduled c-section, then do it.  and if it says give birth in the woods next to a lake on a bed of mushrooms, do it. 

we do not live in a culture that honors this knowing.  and for those of us who seek this knowing without the vestiges and garb of patriarchy, white supremacy, homophobia, and other oppressions, it is harder for us, because we are going against the grain of ‘motherhood’.  our culture does not have models for anti-oppressive revolutionary pregnancy and birth.  and so we have added burdens (as if we do not have enough already) of creating these models, living these models, and sometimes, dying by these models.  these models which are so life-affirming and yet because they are so heretical to the ‘powers that be’ give our culture’s leaders permission to jeopardize our life and our children’s life in order to discredit these life-giving paradigms.  and yet we must continue to fight.  not simply for ourselves, or our children, but for the women who are looking for models…they must learn that they have the power to create their own.