For the MEDICAL BIRTH STORY GATE, I painted a white metal, hospital Gate with a First Aid Cross on it, and a clock on the left post. To the right, an “EMERGENCY” sign hangs in the background… to represent the undercurrent of fear and doubt, the pervasive meta-message parents receive in prenatal care, classes, peer birth stories, and television… that birth is a potential emergency to be tested-for and medically managed…. So our culture’s birth imagery, language, birth plans, unspoken worries are all tainted with avoiding or choosing medical management of birth, or surviving a potential emergency. It is not just "the facts m'am, nothing but the facts" when it comes to this story, there is a palpable trust-fear tension around this Story in our culture... Also to the right... a fetal monitor strip, almost like stairs... follow this strip in a couple of days because it will transform into something else... in the same way that our birth stories are naturally, organically evolving into new stories, new understandings.
What’s the Story at the Fifth Gate? The initial accounts of “what happened,” told soon after living through any intense, unexpected, or shocking event, are often fragmented and not in sequential order. One clue we are approaching the Fifth Gate is when a storyteller begins ask others who were at the labor/event, “What happened, when and why?”
Putting the story events into chronological order could be likened to putting together a varied-bead necklace, but, before the knot is tied, the beads slip off the string and scatter. Our first task is to gather up the beads; our next step is to recall the order in which the beads were strung and try to recreate the pattern in the necklace.
Naturally, this objective, chronological, fact-filled account is the one filed away in the medical record; it is also the Story-version elicited from mothers by birth peeps during an intake interview. Medical Birth Stories can also be useful as anecdotes for teaching purposes in books, classes, and lectures.
So, in the West, the Medical Birth Story is the dominant birth story, and therefore, the most valid or validated birth story. Medical birth stories are found everywhere in books, internet, classes and tv (it’s so pervasive that even homebirth stories can have elements of medical birth stories with similar objectivity, jargon, etc.). It is almost inevitable that every parent will tell this version of their Story at least for a while during the sorting out “what happened” phase. It saddens me a little to hear so many parents tell their birth story--indefinitely--as a Medical Summary, using medical jargon to justify, explain, or debate their labor “management.” And of course, the predominance of this story told casually everywhere maintains it as the dominant story.
I want to convey an abstract idea: I believe that birth in our culture will change when the birth stories are healed, when the way birth stories are told changes. When Medical Birth Stories, whether the in-gratitude for version or the traumatized-by version are the dominant social and education stories, the stories reinforce the “dream” of medical birth. The solution, which may be a fantasy, is brewing… stay tuned!
The Medical-storyteller might be animated, emotionally-charged, or seem detached. I always wonder they are passing through this Gate during their story-evolution, or if they will get stuck at this Gate, i.e., this version will become their final version. If so, something will always be missing, because no matter how important, valid, or painful the “management” of labor /birth /postpartum was… there is a version of the story that wraps itself around personal or spiritual meaning waiting up ahead.
We cannot “rush” the initiate toward or through this Gate. It may be difficult to hear this story, or to hear it repeatedly as the storyteller is sorting it out and putting the pieces back together again. Remember, story-listeners: while the storyteller is sorting out her story, the medical story, try not to “support” her with story-swaps, do-over birth advice, or vilifying the medical model. What to do instead? Indeed. What is the Medicine for this Gate?
Warmly,
Pam
If your final question was rhetorical I apologize for answering.
ReplyDeleteOne of my most wise and strong woman-friends underwent a traumatic hospital birth. The healing, it seems, the medicine for the Gate of the Medical Birth Story, is to tell ones story over and over to a woman who sits still and listens and loves. And eventually her story will unfold when she has reached the inner-most fearful memory. Which, as you have said before, is always a reflection of a relationship around her.
When she pin-points the beginning of her births unraveling, she can rebind the root of her experience, and heal from the inside out. Then, the lights will begin to turn up and she will move beyond the tales of "and then the doctor did..." and "and then they gave me this" to "Despite my hurt, the chemicals dripping though tubes, and feelings of abandonment I then gave Birth to my son, so bravely."
Thank you for sharing on this blog... yes I am asking for readers to share here... to create a dialog about this important topic.
ReplyDeleteSometimes, the storyteller does reach the kernel of the story through repetition. Unfortunately, this does not always happen. There remains a risk that the story will become stuck, or "memorized" and continue to be told by rote... and in a sense, the storyteller (in this story) remains in the underworld--sometimes for a decade or a lifetime.
You mentioned that having a loving listener listen may help the storyteller go deeper, and THIS is true.
Warmly,
Pam
I have been steeping this question again today and came upon an idea that works when one gets writers block or can't quite work out where a painting is going...
ReplyDeleteMaybe asking an abstract question would be enough to bring the Story-teller back to her Ordeal. For instance, if she gets caught up on what happened right before she was moved from her Labor Room to the Operating Room could the story-listener ask her something like, " What were the sounds of that transition?" or "Where were the clocks in the room?" "How did the lighting change on your journey to the Operating Room and how did it make you feel?"...
Would these things be too pushy and potentially push the story down the wrong path or could it be just the thing to get her to stop, meditate, and remember some bit she is missing which could then help her find the key to passing through this very Gate she is stuck behind?
Danielle