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"I have need of the sky. I have business with the grasses. I will up and away at the break of day to where the hawk is wheeling lone and high and where the clouds drift by."   - Richard Hovey, 1894-1961

Sunday, January 20, 2008

The Business of Being Born




A few Saturdays ago, Mark and I went to see "The Business of Being Born," a film produced by Ricki Lake about birth culture in America. After the birth of her first child, which was in a hospital with unwanted medical interventions, she began doing research about birth because she believed there was another way for birth to be. Her second child was born in her home bath tub with a mid-wife present. This film is the result of her research.

I've been fortunate enough to have a very good friend who became a doula. A doula is a birthing coach, a mother for the mother, a support system for the new parents. So, I easily know more than the average person about what birth can be like. Even so, this film was very powerful for me. What I learned made me feel awe and anger, and lots of things in between. As Mark and I look at getting pregnant sometime in the next while (being purposefully vague) and as my friends become pregnant, the issues looked at in this film become even more important.

Here's a summary of what I learned:

early 1900s - 95% of births in the US are in the home with a mid-wife; more people go to medical school and get degrees in obstetrics; doctors led a smear campaign against mid-wives, calling them dirty, ignorant and everything bad associated with the "old country" and touted hospitals as clean and gleaming; fact is most doctors had never seen a live birth

1930s - half of births in the US take place in the hospital; xrays were taken of the pelvis which caused cancer in newborns

1940s to 1960s - women were told birth was painful and that there were drugs they could take to take away the pain, because they were "modern, liberated" women, they wanted drugs, not pain; fact is the drug (scopolamine) that was used didn't erase the pain, just the memory of the pain by erasing self-awareness and self-control, which meant women has to be physically restrained (tied down) during birth, all of which resulted in post-traumatic stress type memories

1970s to 1990s/now - drugs whose long-term side effects continue to be administered to women giving birth, thalidomide for morning sickness led to birth defects, cytotec to stimulate contractions caused ruptured uteruses

Now - 99% of births take place in a hospital, 8% of births are attended by mid-wives, 1% of births take place outside a hospital; the US has the second worst newborn death rate in the developed world; in the five coutries with the lowest infant mortaility rates, 70% of births are attended by midwives.

What birth is often like in a hospital
* a woman is laid on her back with her feet up in stirups, which is the most dysfunctional position for birth because it makes the pelvis smaller and makes it difficult to use stomach muscles to push
*a woman is in a room with lots of people she doesn't know and is told to hurry up
*she's given an epidural for the pain of the contractions, the drug retards contractions, so she's given pitocin to stimulate contractions that are longer and and stronger than natural contractions, so she gets another epidural, then more pitocin, by now the baby is stressed, so she "must" get an emergency cesarean section, which is major surgery and puts her at higher risk for uncurable infections (staph) most commonly caught in hospitals


Over 30% of babies in the US are born by c-section.

What a natural birth can be like
*a woman is surrounded by people she loves and trusts in a place where she is comfortable
*she can move around which helps the baby get in the right position to be born
*she's not rushed
*she experiences the pain of the contractions, but is better able to experience them because she has the support of a doula and midwife who remind her that her body was meant for this, her body can handle it, her body is strong
*she can catch her own baby
*she can hold the baby immediately after being born and fully experience the highest rush of oxytocin that she will in her life, oxytocin is the hormone that is released during orgasm and bonds us to another person, after a birth oxytocin bonds the mother to the child and triggers the mothering instinct

Epidurals dampen the oxytocin release. C-sections completely bypass the oxytocin release. Think about it.

For as long as I've been thinking about these things, feminism, body issues, vaginas and the like, natural birth always made sense to me. What really pisses me off is how our culture tells women that we're not strong enough to do the thing that we're built to do, that we have been doing for millenium (very well or we all wouldn't be here) without any "help" AND that we haven't questioned it. Our culture is scared of women who know their power - women who know and love their bodies. Giving birth is the most substantial way we have that we can know our power. A common theme in the film and in other birth stories is how transformative giving birth is. It is a rite of passage that our cultures ignores and devalues.

What makes me feel awe is the capacity we have as women for giving new life, for taking ourselves to a very hard place and transforming ourselves through it. That takes courage.

It's all well and good for me to say "yes, natural birth is a couragous and amazing and women were built to do it," but that still doesn't mean I have an idea what it looks like. Because of our culture, I didn't have a context for natural birth. I didn't know the stories that make it real. I haven't known many women who have given birth naturally, so it's hard to still realize, feel, do something other than intellectualize, what it might be like.

I've been reading "Spiritual Midwifery" by Ina May Gaskin, groundbreaking midwife of The Farm in Tennessee. The first 200 pages are nothing but stories of natural births. It's amazing. It's providing me that context. It's giving me the stories. It's teaching me about birth by sharing with me the stories of other women. This is also what makes the film powerful. Several families allowed their child's birth to be part of the film. It was so beautiful.

So, see this film. It will be available through Netflix by the end of February.

Check this stuff out for yourself. There's a lot of information" out there. Don't take my word for it.

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Monday, January 14, 2008

Garden Update

Here's the fava beans two weeks after planting - October 26.

Another two weeks - November 2. There are lots of little fava beans coming up.

I put this ladder in the yard by this tree for some reason. I don't remember now. But it's now a favorite perching spot for Orson AND me. I love it! In the afternoon, it's the best way to get some sun on my back. It's like my own miniature tree house.

This is the garden on December 30. The lettace has grown quite a bit. I only lost two plants. We've eaten about half of it by now. It makes a great salad! The fava beans have grown quite a bit. You can see a rouge potatoe plant and the lovely oxalis patch in the corner. Around here, oxalis is a very pervasive weed, with cute little yellow flowers. You can't pull it up because that helps the bulbs for next year. This oxalis is covering up some of Mark's favorite little white flowers, so he took the scissors to the oxalis.

From this weekend. The recent storms only brought down one branch (that I wanted down anyway) and one hanging plant (the pot didn't break).

This weekend, I'm having someone come look at my trees. I'm realizing (as I hang out in my ladder tree house) that it's probably not a good idea for me to try pruning these trees on my own. The ground's uneven, we don't have a tall enough ladder, they haven't been pruned in a decade and I've never done it before. Minor details. I'm going to look at these as lessons. I'm also in the process (read that - daydreaming stage) of garden planning for the spring.

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Saturday, January 12, 2008

Whew

The last two years have been doozies. I just created a list of major events because I couldn't keep it all straight. There is so much that has happened and changed in my life. I feel like youth is definitely over. Over the years, I've heard people mention Saturn's Return as a really challenging, changing time of life. I just realized that that time is now. Yes, it sounds really woo-woo, but it fits. Here's a description of Saturn's Return that describes my last two years better than I can.

Major events
February 2006 - agree to get hitched
March 2006 - start working at Save-the-Redwoods League, changing family dynamics
June 2006 - Turn 28
October 2006 - get hitched
March 07 - Mom goes missing
April 07- Move to Precita
June 07 - Turn 29
Nov 07 - Mark got 3 months notice
January 08 - Mark's last day at cnet

Ongoing for the last year
Lots of personal reflection
Cleaning up our financial house
Lots of gardening
Mourning Mom

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Sunday, January 06, 2008

New quilts



I've updated MadeByVelma.com with the rest of the quilts I made in 2007. There's a few I've started in the last week, but I'm calling those 2008. The above quilt, which Orson is so thoughtfully helping me with, is one that I've started. Currently, I have four quilts ready to be quilted. That's enough to keep me busy for awhile.


The quilt below, decorated by the White Streak aka Orson Buentzsch, is a quilt I got in Hawaii at a craft show. It has a lot of techniques I haven't used yet. And it's very Hawaii. It was my consolation prize for stepping on a nail and not being able to go snorkeling. I also forgot my camera at home, so you'll have to rely on Mark for the photos.