Birth Peeps with Pam England

Building a Pain Coping Mindset Empowers Mothers and Prevents Birth Trauma

2012-02-26T10:16:00.000-08:00

Good Morning Birth Peeps,
Friday evening I gave a little talk at the New Mexico Midwives Association about how building a pain-coping mindset during pregnancy empowers women and prevents emotional birth trauma associated with not being prepared to cope with pain.

I don't think of pain-coping preparation as simply dealing with the sensation of cervical dilation, but rather a broader stroke of labor experience. Building a coping mindset includes preparing the new mother (and father/other mother) to embrace and work with the sensations of pain, but also uncertainty, intensity, and exhaustion.

It is interesting to me that the first sensation that alerts most women that labor has started is "pain".... and yet it is the last thing we want to talk about in a meaningful way. Mothers are well informed about the risks and benefits of medical birth, but often least informed about labor pain, intensity, and uncertainty and least prepared to cope with these primal elements of labor.

We'd like to think that because labor is natural and our bodies are made to do it that we will just "know" how to cope, that we will figure it out... hence the popular dictum, "Trust Birth." (And of course, if labor is short enough, and the woman has had certain life experiences up to that point that have prepared her, and her support team and environment are all in alignment, she will be blessed with a harmonious experience!)

It is my point of view that we cannot risk allowing women (especially first-time mothers and their partners) to figure this out--on their own--in labor. I respectfully think of new mothers (and their partners) as uninitiated. In traditional cultures, the uninitiated were not expected to initiate themselves. They were mentored through some kind of personal and experiential preparation so that when the Ordeal or new role in life occurred, they were prepared to meet it.

The catch word in birth is "empowerment." I work with mothers who have experienced emotional birth trauma related to being surprised and unprepared to cope with the normal pain of labor or how to labor in awareness (and self-acceptance) with an epidural. Feeling betrayed (by false assurances) is not empowering. Feeling unprepared for uncertainty and pain-coping is not empowering. Experiencing helplessness and not knowing what to do--does not engender empowerment. These lead to negative self-beliefs that are not true, but feel very true to the mother who was not prepared.

The midwives had so many good questions and shared experiences. I thoroughly enjoyed sharing a little time with them and hope to do this again soon.

Warmly,

Pam

A Poem, Pathways, for you

2012-01-28T11:09:00.000-08:00

Good Morning Birth Peeps,

This morning I began a new painting I am dreaming.
And, I rearranged my office; something I've attempted for months but had no inspiration, only frustration.
I was telling a friend I needed to be "more organized," a frequent lament of mine.
He suggested I strive for a space, an office, that would be "contemplative."
Contemplative, a restful place to work. I sighed with relief.
Instantly the judgment against myself fell, and I was motivated.
I should send you all a before and after picture of the transformation in progress.

Instead, I'll send you a poem about our Call... I found while I was re-organizing.
It is called PATHWAYS by Mark Nepo. It was published in the current Parabola.

"I don't know why I was I born
with this belief in something
deeper and larger than we can
see. But it's always called. Even as
a boy, I knew that trees and light
and sky all point to some timeless
center out of view. I have spent my life
listening to that center and filter
-ing it through my heart. This listening
and filtering is the music of my soul,
of all souls. After sixty years, I've run
out of ways to name this. Even now,
my heart won't stand still In a mo-
ment of seeing, it takes the shape of
my eye. In a moment of speaking, the
shape of my tongue. In a moment of
silence, it slips back into the lake of
center. When you kiss me, it takes
the shape of your lip. When our dog
sleeps with us, it takes the shape of
her curl. When the hummingbird
feeds her baby, it takes the shape
of her beak carefully dropping
food into our throats.

Ahhh, how wonderful when delicious words and poems feed us!

In-Love,
Pam

#30 Changing Our Response and Attitudes to Birth Fears

2012-01-17T19:39:00.000-08:00

Hellllloooooo Birth Peeps,
I have been away from this blog a long time because I became absorbed in writing, research, teaching, making a new website for bfwnewmexico.com, and recently, travel took me to Ojai Foundation in California for a week. Presently I am in Santa Barbara where Virginia and I will be working together this week.

This week, Virginia and I enjoyed spending time with sixteen wonderful birth mentors who attended the six-day Advanced Mentor Training at the Ojai Foundation in California. These women share various backgrounds in birth work and two common intentions:
1) Personal growth and awareness, and
2) Learning mentoring, visualization, storytelling and teaching skills that will help them prepare mothers/couples for birth in a holistic way.

One of the Threads of this training was about embracing personal and collective birth-related fears and worries, and to examine our own strategies to avoid unwished-for events (in life and) during the childbearing year. We began "within" by learning how to really hear, tune into and embrace our own fears and powerlessness in labor and life. What better place to take time to reflect than under the 700 year old Teaching Tree!

Then, we slowly built various skills and a framework to be able to truly hear, validate and embrace parents' fears and worries, and strategies--and to lead them in an uplifting visualization that might later prevent them from abandoning or judging themselves for whatever might happen in labor.

If every parent and birth peep learned how to hear, embrace and transform fears, worries, and strategies related to "being in control" during the childbearing year... If they could let go of just one or two things they are holding on tight to avoid. . . Birth really would change--because this process directly balances our neuro-hormonal-physiology!

When new parents are gifted with this process, with this "self-knowledge," before the journey begins, there is no telling how it will change their physiology and ability to relax and open even before labor begins, and continue to open and be resourceful in labor! A fear/worry ignored and denied is still very alive in the nervous system; it needs to be seen, heard, and embraced to be healed.

And when birth peeps gift themselves with this process and self-awareness, no doubt, they would see, hear, and respond differently to parents during the childbearing year.

I cannot go into this complex topic on a short blog tonight. But I might say a little more. The more we--as a birth culture--try to deny parents' their natural doubts and fears, the further we put this part of preparation in the collective unseen underworld; the more parents must try to deny it too, thus denying them support in one of the most important parts of their preparation work. If they feel ashamed to have fear, doubts and worry, they may censor themselves, isolate a part of themselves, try to figure it out by themselves. Shrouded in self-judgment (e.g., "I shouldn't worry," "I should trust," "What is the matter with me to feel this way?") they may become immobilized, waiting for someone else to explain, protect, assure. . . i.e. the proverbial "frozen in fear" response.

Bringing fear, doubt, and worry into the "light" and creating a new "story" about it ensures a new, although not always predictable response. This is one of the most important tasks of prenatal preparation.

Warmly,
Pam

#29 Meditative, Multi-Cultural Laborinths in Birth Rooms

2011-11-27T14:09:00.000-08:00

Greetings Birth Peeps,

This is Thanksgiving weekend (in the US), and for me it was a particularly special, even magical and blessed one. All weekend I’ve wanted to reach out to each of you, Birth Peeps, to share my gratitude with you for our shared work together, even though I don’t know all of you (yet), I know we are drawn together by a shared dream.

Today I want to share a painting I’ve been working on. I began this painting with a goal to finish it in two weeks… because every painting I make seems to take four months. I worked each morning toward that goal. Two weeks later I had gotten no further than an under painting! I continued working. It is now at least two months out and, I am still tweaking!

This painting began with a story my friend and hairdresser, Alberto, told me about his tias (aunties) in Mexico who were parteras (midwives). They used to tell pregnant mothers that they were warriors because in labor they would have to go to the underworld and battle with underworld spirits who held their babies. Each mother alone had go there and battle with the spirits to free her baby and bring it back to this world, to its new family who was waiting for him or her.

Inspired by this birth warrior mythology I began this painting using acryclic paint. There are many symbols in this painting, but I will point out just a few.

There are two worlds, an upper “natural world” and the labyrinth of birth, the underworld of labor, divided by a gold line. This gold line is how I draw contractions. Typically contractions have been depicted as hills (as shown on a fetal monitor), however, I found in labor that my attention went downward and deep within with each contraction—so I began drawing the contractions as downward dips. In this painting, at the peak of each contraction-dip, the mothers consciousness dips, trickles, pours, into the underworld…. then returns to her resting baseline.

You can see six “spirits” holding babies in Laborland, and a mother swimming out with a baby (top right of the labyrinth’s opening), and the Fire Keeper.

Last week I was frustrated because the colors in the labyrinth were flat, dull and dreary. I kept changing the colors over and over, still flat. Then about five nights ago I had a vivid dream that showed me what to do, which colors to use and how to add beads! I jumped out of bed, found my odd collection of beads, then mixed up the colors and went to work… a few hours later… Look, the labyrinth now is vibrant, expressing both the dark and light aspects of journeying in the underworld. I also added four shells and a gold pendant of Mary.

One of my visions of how I might help change birth in our culture is to make a series of beautiful multi-cultural, labyrinth meditation paintings (and eventually prints of those paintings) so that birth rooms everywhere will have LabOrinths for women to gaze upon, to trace with their eyes during contractions to help ease the pain and still the mind.

Perhaps like-minded Artists of the Spirit will join me in this endeavor.

In-Love, In-Gratitude,

and still tweaking this painting…

Pam

Change #29 OCCUPY BIRTH

2011-11-22T02:51:00.000-08:00

Dear Birth Peeps,
I have long been a fringe birth activist. I have been wanting to post "Occupy Birth" on this blog, but I don't feel I know enough or can remember all the statistics and arguments to make strong argument s as compelling as the activists we admire. And, when I study the trends in obstetrics and midwifery, I easily fall prey to my Victim/Judge. So, I watch from the sidelines and consider the arguments, I read, think, and wait... while I try to cultivate the Huntress/Warrior to carry my arguments and actions forward.

This morning I felt/heard a Call, it came one of our long-distance Birth Story Listening students, Shelley, who wrote a thoughtful post on our forum, and she shared a video with us that I want to pass on to Birth Peeps.

Here's the scoop: "Women are rallying for a December protest at Sharp Mary Birch Hospital in San Diego, which has the highest cesarean rate in the state of California. The larger purpose is to draw attention to the Cesarean epidemic issue/problem in our society. A doula and childbirth educator in the community put together this video clip to inform and inspire people to join in the movement. This video has been posted on FB, and it's going around like crazy."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiEwAN-AeIo&feature=youtu.be

This video is very well done and really fires you up. The message is simple and clear and a call to action. I would like to stand with the women at this rally in San Diego. I hope some of you will be there, or organize a similar gathering where you live.

I need to gestate my thoughts on hearing and changing the Collective Birth Story... but for now...
I wanted to pass this video on to all of you.

Warmly,
Pam

Change #?: HOLD YOUR APPLAUSE, PLEASE

2011-11-07T14:17:00.000-08:00

Dear Birth Peeps,

Several times I have heard of the following group “recognition” observance. It goes something like this. A group has gathered for birth storytelling or a birth movie, and a leader asks everyone who has had a cesarean to stand. The room is silent for a moment. The cesarean mothers sit. Then the moderator asks all the mothers who birthed normally to stand and applause breaks out.

Not wanting to assume I understand the meaning of this curious ritual, I would like to ask each participant, “Who is observing silence or applauding?,” and “What message are they intending to send to cesarean mothers?” Then, I would ask the cesarean mothers what meaning they took from this?

I imagine the “moment of silence” could be out of respect for a "loss." I imagine that, depending on which Story Gate of Return each mother is in, different meanings might be drawn by each woman; perhaps there is a time having one’s grief and loss of a desired birth witnessed in silence feels just right. But, not every cesarean mother is (still) in grief about her birth experience; some may feel they should be applauded too for having done their best or having survived their Ordeal. I have long ago completed my work with my cesarean birth and no longer carry any grief about it, so if I were standing in that room, the silence would seem to me to be a projection of someone else’s loss or grief, not my own.

And the applause for those who birth naturally, normally, or vaginally… I just don’t get it. If you/they are fortunate to birth normally, I can understand gratitude, but applause? I could also stand with this group, but "I" do not want or deserve applause for the Gift I was given; the opportunity to birth normally humbled me. I am especially disturbed by the juxtaposition of applauding one group, the Victors?, while asking the other group (?Victims) to stand in silence… should their heads be hung low?

We have a confusing double standard. I am learning about birth in undeveloped, occupied, or oppressed countries. Women may have to wait in agony for hours, begging for relief, drugs, surgery, even death. But help does not always come quickly if it comes at all. Some women do not survive the wait, their Ordeal. If they are “rescued” by visiting western medicine teams, we all sigh a sigh of relief for modern medicine reaching them. They might even be applauded for surviving, however they did it, by their village, by us.

I am confused by my own projections and where I draw a line in the Sand. But, I sit in my confused mind and enquire who is thinking these thoughts? Who wants to grieve? Who wants to applaud? Who is the ‘I’ that decides who should get a moment of silence and who should get applauded?

In-Love,
Pam

REFUSAL of the CALL

2011-10-21T07:01:00.000-07:00

Good Morning Birth Peeps,
This morning I received a thoughtful email from Katherine who was wondering about how "Refusal of the Call" played into Answering our Calls during the childbearing year. The "Refusal of the Call" is an important and necessary part of the hero's journey, it is an inevitable part.

As I have explained, the Call to Love, to Remember Who we are and live our authentic life, is coming all the time. It is not One Call, but a steady stream of Invitations. Most of the time--using the analogy of our phone technology--we have our inner Ear turned off, turned outward to the world, or put on our "Call Waiting." Why is this? Think about it in relation to your own life. What would change, what would it mean about you IF you actually answered the Call from Love to Love in your ordinary life? The Ego and the Judge Voice within begin to chatter and keep you in your former place -- of safety, following some Rule... protecting your boundaries...

At some point, a Call gets through and when it does it excites our passion, it wakes us up. We have a new vision. At first all we can see is what we will "get."

But then when the striving to achieve the goal begins, we realize the price, the work, both inner and in the physical world it may and will take to even strive for the goal.... and it might all be in vain. We might not be able to achieve it anyway...

And then the Voices of Doubt, which is the inner Voice of the Judge whose job it is to keep us in our old place, not take too many risks, stay in line, and avoid failing (again)--begins talking us (the inner Child) down off the high mesa where we actually saw a new possibility.

And this is the necessary part of the Call, the Refusal of the Call.

I have to return to the archetypal world of characters to explain this, it is how I understand it. It is the inner-Child who first hears the Call, who sees the new vision or remembers her purpose. It is the inner-Child, not the Adult archetype, that actually begins the hero's journey. It is through completing the arduous tasks of the journey that she becomes "more adult." With this in mind, it makes sense that the Child, at first excited when quickened by the Call--suddenly realizes, "Wait a minute! If I answer this Call, I will have to 'leave home,' What if I don't know enough? I am not ready. I need to study more first, get bigger, get a map..." Whatever it is... if the Child begins the journey without it, she may indeed be overcome, unprepared and fail in some way that she senses would be harmful.

So the Child hesitates; she Refuses the Call, at least for now. There is also a bit of the Love Warrior here ... foreseeing or overseeing Tasks of Preparation so this Child-Warrior will have a chance at succeeding.

I don't like to romanticize or over-simplify the real inner-work of the hero's journey. This Refusal is not a cop-out, it is not a failure in itself. This Refusal can be a process that takes a few days or weeks of "reconsidering" while weighing the risks and benefits and making a plan. Sometimes it looks like the would-be hero has fizzled altogether; before the hero can undertake her Vision or what she was born to do, she may need a decade of undoing old agreements or learning new tasks.

But now we return to our topic, Birth as a Hero's Journey. If our imaginary would-be hero is a pregnant woman, she doesn't have a decade to sort it out. She has a Vision, she hears a Call.... and there are mere months to Answer, to Prepare, to make the Descent Into Laborland....

This is our Question, Birth Peeps. This is Our Call.
How do we Mentor the initiates who hear a Call, how do we assist them through their Tasks of the Refusal so they don't miss this golden opportunity. Birth is a profound rite of passage, it only comes once or a few times in a life time. We also need to really look into WHY it is a profound rite of passage, and not let ourselves be lulled asleep with the comforting and familiar cliche phrase.

I am enjoying the emails I am receiving from those of you who are writing and living your Heart's Question. Those of you who have taken up the practice of the Heart's Question, or your Deepest Question, will Refuse your Call at least once if not a dozen times today. Good... use your Refusal to examine the Refusal. When you understand your own process of Refusal deeply, you will have the Wisdom and compassion to help the initiates who come your way to understand their own.

In-Love,
In-Love with my own Refusals,
I am,
Pam

Your Call is an Invitation to Awaken the Love Warrior

2011-10-11T11:59:00.000-07:00

Dear Birth Peeps,

When we prepare for birth as a hero’s journey, we begin with hearing our Call and answering this Call (whether we are aware of this or not). This Call—to act, to know, to do something you have not done before and that may even seem out of reach!--comes from Love itself; it is an Invitation to love yourself, to become your own Love Warrior. . . a Birth Warrior.

When I say the Call invokes you to act or to “do,” it is not necessarily to “do something” for the sake of achieving, let’s say, your fantasy fabulous birth or any other personal goal (although by Grace our actions may lead--or seem to contribute--to that desired result. This Call is answered from our Soul, not from our ego, not to Get something for ourselves. We are compelled to answer the Call, and in so doing, there is no attachment to outcome, there is no pride, no getting.

It is about Doing What Needs to Be Done Next—and nothing extra.

The Calls to Love and to Be and to remember who we are are coming to us all the time. The Call—to Love yourself, to bring your True Love to this moment of your life, to Be authentic—is coming to you as you read this blog, and again, with your next breath! We wee, but busy and important, humans often don’t tune into it because we are distracted in our hectic lives and world.

There are infinite ways to be called; the Invitation might come to you suddenly almost as an inner whisper in an unexpected moment, or in a dream, or one might be awakened by a call in the midst of the Ordeal of labor or while reading an article.

The Call is not about achieving, it is about your heart’s longing.

Oriah Mountain Dreamer describes her own Call in her book, The Call, as “a long wail of my heart [that] opened to its own longing.” She goes on to say, “Our longing may be just the beginning, just a door into a deeper knowledge of what we are and why we are here, but it is a necessary beginning. We cannot go deeper into our lives or the world [or I interject, into our childbearing year as a hero] until the heart has had its say, until the heart has been heard.”

You have to Hear your Call before you can Answer it, that is, before you can Live the answer.

Women are often directed to: “listen to your self,” or to “listen to your body.” This advice sounds sage, but! most modern women have never been taught to meditate, contemplate, to listen-in, or how to differentiate the feeling of intuition from the feeling of fear, or their own sense of danger that requires action from everyone else’s imagined fear.

Knowing your Heart’s Question is central to preparing for birth as a hero’s journey.

One way to tune into your Call is to tune into your heart’s longing. If that conditioned part of you says, “You can’t do that because….”, or “So-and-so will get mad if you do that…”, keep listening. . . Is this Voice of Doubt or caution coming from your Love Warrior or your Inner Child that wants to please and avoid getting in trouble or grounded!?

Listen deeply, earnestly, patiently. Feel … find your heart’s longing and intuition… Listen within for that one heartfelt Question that is tucked away. This step awakens your Huntress archetype.

Once you have it, write in on the wall of your heart, or on your bathroom mirror, and say it to yourself often during ordinary moments of every day—Don’t wait until you are meditating, or in a crisis, or in labor to remember your longing, your Question…

Ask yourself your Question during ordinary moments every day. Live the answer.

Your Heart’s Question is a living question which means you are compelled to live the answer in any given moment—even this moment—not just in labor. There are no wordy, logical answers to this question—you will manifest the answer with your whole being in the way you breathe, walk, talk, and live. Living the answer to your deepest question will form new habits of thinking and responding--and cultivate the Birth Warrior in you.

A few Examples:
What does this moment need?
How am I opening to this moment?
How am I bringing my Love to this moment?
When I speak my truth, what do I say next?

Please, share your Heart's Question, your Living Question, here... to help inspire others. Maybe you have had a life-changing experience by taking up this practice... please inspire others with your story.

Thanks,

Love,
Pam

# 27 FROM INNOCENCE TO GENUINE TRUST: LIVING YOUR HEART’S QUESTION

2011-09-29T12:14:00.000-07:00

My Dear Birth Peeps,
I have been away too long, and you have been patient. I thought of you all often, and missed you, and yet, the blogger needed time to reflect, rest, and write new material... but I am happy to be back and to continue our journey together as we compassionately change birth in our culture. We resume...I believe we are on change #27, a two-part entry.

PREGNANT WOMEN ARE CONSTANTLY BEING TOLD what to believe, fear, and do—after all “(acquired) knowledge is power”—and then they are told: “trust yourself!” The new initiate, trying to get it right, is clichéd with mixed messages.

When we have not yet lived a life-changing event, one that we anticipate living in the future (e.g., college, vacations, a wedding, childbirth), we can only idealize, dream, fantasize about the event from a place of innocence and trust. All children have done this. And so has every adult, at the beginning of a life-changing initiation, the initiate must begin in her archetypal Child, a natural place of Innocence and Trust. This is why when a woman is at the beginning of her first childbearing year, she is often in her archetypal Child, a place of Innocence and Trust--and why we must meet her there and listen to what she trusts and doesn't trust before we try to cliche her or lead her our way.

It is also a given that during the Ordeal (e.g., Ordeal refers to a trying event that may occur at any time during pregnancy, labor, or postpartum), she will lose some part of her innocence as the price for Wisdom—and “growing up.” We cannot keep our Cupcake of Innocence and have the Frosting of Wisdom, too! Did this blended metaphor work? You get the idea anyway.

And yet, there are many who do not understand this part of birth as a hero’s journey, who inadvertently encourage mothers to remain in innocence and vague trust. What exactly she should “trust” is up for grabs and will be determined by the one advising it. It might be an order to unconditionally trust her body, or trust in a benevolent Force to protect her, or trust the wisdom of some expert, or even to trust her own intuition—even though (she will soon find out) nobody else will trust or allow her to act upon!

For this reason, this cliché message to “trust” is often, or later becomes, confusing to the initiate.

When an initiate shares her Innocent Trust openly with others, she will invariably encounter one of two responses from: those who share or support her innocence and keep her dreaming sweetly, or from those who will dash or dismiss her innocence and trust in a misguided attempt to prepare her for the moment she loses her innocence. But neither sweet support nor jaded warnings serve to prepare the initiate to meet that moment that awaits her.

There is also the possibility the Seeking-initiate will encounter One Who Knows (i.e., one who has completed the journey, lost her own innocence and gained true wisdom and compassion)—one of YOU birth peeps!!

Or, she might be visiting this blog and take up a process that will help her genuinely prepare to meet the moment she loses her innocence during or after her Ordeal. There are countless ways to prepare the mind, heart, and soul for this moment, here is one:

Let’s lay the groundwork first with a little philosophical groundwork. Let’s think of the natural Innocence and Trust in something not yet lived as a “seed thought.” Within a seed is the full potential for a particular plant, tree, or fruit. But the seed must be watered often, even daily, and protected to allow for its full potential to be realized. Just planting a seed and “trusting it will grow on its own” does not ensure it will grow and later bear the fruit we need to sustain ourselves during the Ordeal.

The daily effort of watering the little “seed” of trust and inner-knowing with intentional practice throughout pregnancy matures and strengthens the gardener, too! The gardener becomes invested in, and “owns,” the plant. This is a very different experience and relationship from giving the gardener a full-grown tree that someone else grew and saying, “Here! Eat this fruit to sustain yourself in your upcoming Ordeal.”

We cannot assume that an initiate “has everything mature and ready within her at the beginning her Preparation or Ordeal. Telling a new mother, “Everything you need to know is already within you,” might misguide her to relax and do nothing during her Preparation Phase, when she should be taking action. Instead, she waits, trusting that this Knowing, this Oak Tree of Knowing, to magically sprout from the ungrounded acorn during the Ordeal. And this why so many mothers are in shock and feel lost, overwhelmed in and after labor.

Becoming pregnant does not automatically ensure a spontaneous awakening of intuition, knowing, and trust. The gestating-mother may have to do a little inner work and practice, take time to reflect, then take small, deliberate steps, even small risks, to try out and integrate her new knowing. Her success is dependent on daily attention to the practice, and often guidance and encouragement from a childbirth mentor or elder.

A NEW MOTHER NEEDS TO DO SOMETHING to water her newly sprouting mother-instincts, mother-voice, and nurture a genuine, deeply rooted, trust in herself and others. In this way we could say her initial pure innocent Child-trust is maturing as her baby grows in her. For her baby to grow she must feed her baby, not just trust her baby will magically grow, she must take action. By taking action, her Trust and Knowing is embodied, it is hers!, it is registered and rooted in her body, so that if and when her Innocence and Trust is shaken in labor, even if she is scared, she will not abandon herself.

In the Garden of Soul Change,
we are growing a new consciousness together!

Pam

BHJ: WHO IS THE WARRIOR

2011-08-20T16:22:00.000-07:00

Dear Birth Peeps,
(BFW Facebook has just reached 8000 followers! We're going to celebrate: follow this!)

Before we can understand the Warrior Story, we must first know the archetypal Warrior. Who is the Warrior? What are the characteristics of the Love Warrior, the Birth Warrior?
The archetypal “Warrior” is often misunderstood. I’ve noticed that the mere mention of the word “warrior” can trigger instant resistance if the listener’s mind conjures up preconceived, oversimplified, negative associations with “war” or a destructive male force (e.g., a Hollywood “Rambo-like” character). Instead of trying to understand the archetype, these people often try to (get me to) rename this archetype with something more tame, nice or and Disney-sweet.
On the other end of the spectrum, there are those who barely hear my introduction of the archetypal “Love” Warrior before they turn this powerful archetype (enamored by the word “love”) into saccharine jargon befitting an emotional “cheerleader” or “savior” greeting card character. In general, sappy idealism about anything invokes simplistic, absolute, or dogmatic thinking and behavior (manifested by the Innocent, Magical, Victim or Judge Child archetypes).

So far I’ve given you hints about what the Warrior is not.
What does it look like when our Warrior is active?

I am challenged to describe the rich complexity of the Warrior in a brief blog. I will do my best, but will probably leave a little confusion.

In traditional societies, warriors must first learn patience and “seeing” to track and Hunt. When mothers prepare physically and mentally for labor, they are activating and cultivating their Huntress-Warrior qualities so that in the "battle" of labor/postpartum challenges, they are ready to use their skills in response to situations that arise.

Rather than having an attachment to a preconceived plan, when we are in our Warrior, our moment-to-moment action is guided by a deepest Question, such as, “What does this moment need?” This Question keeps the Warrior awake, ever-looking to “see” what needs to happen next, and then she does it. She takes care of business in the world and household, and she takes care of (rather than abandon) her “inner Child.”
When the Warrior archetype (healthy adult ego) is absent or asleep, we must defer to the Child archetypes to try to do make “adult” decisions, have “adult” conversations, and take actions that a child or Child not equipped to do. For example, just as (most) children are conditioned not to question or defy authority to avoid consequences, when an adult is in one her Child archetypes, she also cannot ask a big, busy doctor hard questions. This is why so many informed parents who are in their Child archetype will meekly nod their heads and do whatever the doctor says is best. The Child archetype cannot questions, or challenge or defy authority. But, later, when she is back in one of her “adult” archetypes is back on the “job”, the parent will muse over what happened, “Wow, I fell under the spell during that visit. I didn’t ask the questions I knew to ask, and that I meant to ask.”

The Warrior is the part of us that sees what needs to be done, and does it, but does nothing extra. The Warrior acts. She is deliberate. Whereas Child archetypes (Innocent, Magical, Victim, Judge) wait for others (with more knowledge, skill, power) to know what to do, to tell them what to do, or to act on their behalf. The Child archetypes act from the past, from habit-mind, in order to achieve a particular desired future.
Child archetypes can be impulsive; they also tend to engage in over-planning and strategizing trying to: get it right, please others, and achieve the outcome that will make them belong, be loved, be praised. Later, they use the outcome and the reactions/approval/disapproval of others to determine whether they “did the right thing,” whether they are “good,” “strong,” “worthy,” etc. This then leads to second-guessing, promising to get it right in the future, and moving the individual further from self-love and self-acceptance. You may already be able to see how this might not be helpful during the childbearing year.
But a Warrior neither lives in the past, nor strives for a specific kind of future. The Warrior is immersed in the moment. Naturally she draws from Knowledge gained from her past, but this is different from following Rules and Promises and Plans made in the past. A Warrior would never take a rigid "Battle Plan" into battle and try to get everyone to play their part so she will have it her way.
When we are in our Warrior, we are “awake,” aware, decisive. We are flexible, spontaneous, creative, AND at the same time, we are focused, with direction and purpose.
Toltec Master Allan Hardman defines the Love Warrior as one who “lives passionately without attachment to outcome.” This idea of being passionate without attachment to outcome is very difficult to grasp and it requires discipline to embody! But, it is the defining quality of a Warrior and worth cultivating, especially during the childbearing year.

Another defining quality of the Warrior is one who “sees” what needs to be done next and acts, doing only what needs to be done and nothing extra (and, of course, without attachment to outcome).

Now you are beginning to see how, by the time the Storyteller becomes a Warrior, she has “no story”?

A woman cannot be a Birth Warrior before her labor; she cannot even be a Birth Warrior in the midst of the intensity of birth. She is not a Birth Warrior (nor does she have a Birth Warrior Story) because she birthed "normally" or without drugs, or got everything on her birth plan. I hope you are beginning to see that to become a full-blooded Warrior, every woman must complete the Return and integrate her experience on every level.

I am enjoying your responses and enthusiasm about the birth as hero's journey entries. We are almost finished ...

In-Love,
Pam

BHJ cont. Ninth Gate: Gate of the Elders and Love Warrior

2011-08-15T16:23:00.000-07:00

AUGUST 12, 2011

Dear Birth Peeps,
The Ninth and final Story Gate is the Love Warrior Story, and like the First Gate—it is also a Gate of “no story.” I also call this Gate the Gate of the Elders.

In this mandala, you see this Gate represented by two symbols: (1) a buffalo and her calf, and (2) a group of Elders who, having followed the Red Path all the Way, have completed their hero’s journey and their destiny.

The Buffalo and her Calf.
Native Americans of the plains were dependent on the buffalo. With its sacrifice, the buffalo’s body and blood fed them, its hide provided shelter and clothing, its sinew became thread and its bones became knives and needles to sew the hide. The buffalo sustained them and so they equated the buffalo with Spirit that gives and sustains life, and on which humans are dependent.
One evening a few years ago, an old Oglala Lakota, Delbert Charging Crow, knocked on the door of my office. He was a quiet man with long grey braids and a box. We had never met, he was walking through the neighborhood and wanted to show me his animal carvings. I invited him in. We sat in the teaching room and one by one, he carefully took out small fetishes he had carved; for each animal he told me a story.
There was a horse, an eagle, a goat I think, and a “turning bear.” “Turning bears” have their head and neck turned sharply to represent turning one’s life in a new direction, a more positive direction. On the animal’s backs were tied a bundle of beads, a small feather, sometimes sticks, and a tiny leather pouch of sage (spirit food).
All of the animals, with the exception of one, the Buffalo, had a bundle. I asked Charging Crow why Buffalo did not have anything tied to her back. He explained that Buffalo does not need to carry food for itself because the buffalo is “food” for humans. The buffalo sacrificed its life to feed us, so it represents Spirit.

By the time the Storyteller reaches her Ninth Gate she has been fed by many listeners, advised by authors, and inspired by poets and spirit. She has deconstructed and reconstructed her story, given it new meaning, and “digested” it. Finally, no longer identified with the story, it no longer needs to be told or healed.
From that moment on, the now “elder” Storyteller becomes a bit like the Buffalo. An Elder Storyteller-Storylistener never tells her whole story to anyone. She keeps in her heart, knowing what and when to share a specific bit of her story—as Medicine. She doesn’t tell her story, or even a part of it, to get something back from the listener (e.g., sympathy, advice, assurance, praise, bonding). She may draw from her story-experience, without having to refer directly to it; Story Medicine comes in the form of a mirroring, validation, metaphor, or myth.
The little calf wanted to be there to remind us that our children are little story-listeners learning through our stories. Casual stories, judgments, and gossip, inform the young how to eat, love, give birth, and parent in such a way they will belong to the “herd.”
Grandparents used to be storytellers; children learned through oral history, family stories, fairytales, and legends. Hearing a story told (and animated) is much different than a story read or acted out on television.
If a child knows even one elder-Buffalo Storyteller, she will be given buffalo-story food. Later, even though she must go through her own hero’s journey initiation and ordeal, and climb her way out of the underworld, she will forever embody the story Medicine of the Buffalo Storyteller(s) in her youth. This kind of story becomes part of her internal map and thinking; it ensures her spiritual survival.
. . .

It is not likely an initiate will arrive at the Ninth Gate soon after giving birth, even if all goes well. There is a misguided notion that women who birth normally are not traumatized, or that they automatically attain some kind of magical Knowledge and can now teach others the “secret.” I would disagree.
It can take a long while to get to the Ninth Gate; there are no short cuts. We cannot get to the Ninth Gate by merely re-affirming positive affirmations, or by declaring we “learned a lesson,” or by just “letting it [i.e., the negative memories] go.” It is a deep descent, a steep climb. As Sufi Master Irina Tweedie once told me, “You have to want this as badly as a drowning man wants air.
The Key that opens this Gate is not one our rational minds can come up with, and certainly, no one else has the Key to our Ninth Gate.

The Elders in the North. The figures are small and few in number. In the scheme of this painting, you might not even notice them. In my own search for Ones Who Know, they were not easy to find. They don’t boast about their Medicine. They mind their own business, watching and waiting patiently for the initiate-Storyteller to arrive. They do not go down after the initiate-Storyteller, but perhaps Call to her from time to time.
Imagine birth in our culture when the numbers of Storytellers who complete this journey increase. This will happen when we begin to participate in birth as a hero’s journey, when we learn how to tell and how to listen to birth stories. This will happen when elders share their Birth Story Medicine with the initiates.

Today I have explained the symbols. In the next posting I will explain this Story, the pitfalls and tasks of this final Gate.

In-Love,
Pam

Another Change: Teaching Parents to "Hunt" during Pregnancy

2011-08-12T15:04:00.000-07:00

August 8, 2011
Dear Hungry Birth Peeps,
Nobody is always “one” archetype. No matter how much we want to identify with one particular role/archetype, we cannot say of ourselves “I AM ‘A Hunter’” (or I AM the Innocent Child, Magical, or Victim/Judge, etc). We cannot think of another as “one” particular archetype either, e.g., “She IS a Victim.” This is because within all of us is a cast of characters that come and go playing their parts depending on the situation, relationship, and our conditioning. If in a particular moment we are immersed in “hunting,” then, in that moment we are manifesting the essence of the Huntress; we are Huntress. But … in the next moment, if we tire of the hard work and want to give up… another archetypal energy may become active; in that moment we are Victim! And so it goes.

So, in any given moment, the Hunter/Huntress/Seeker essence is either active, dormant, or at best, still embryonic waiting for life experience and apprenticeship to bring it forth. For example, the Huntress is not yet awake or cultivated in a small child. Why? Because a young child or (an adult, who in a particular dependent moment, is in a Child archetype) is being “fed” or is waiting to fed by others, be it food for their body or the “food” of being told what to think, what to do or not do, or what to do next. So long as the child (or an adult who is in a Child archetype) is comfortable, secure, and being fed by others, there is no Call to Hunt. Hunting is for the Hungry…. and for those who have learned how to hunt.
Hunting does not come naturally to modern humans, it must be learned. Traditionally, youth apprenticed to learn the skills of Hunting. Pregnancy is an ideal time for new parents to apprentice with an elder Huntress or Hunter.
Traditionally, Hunters shared the bounty of the hunt with others; s/he fed the village, each member given according to their need and custom. The Hunt begins with personal hunger, but it ends with sharing the food with everyone; Hunters do not hoard the “food” for themselves. BIRTHING FROM WITHIN mentors are learning to Hunt themselves so that they can teach “hungry” new parents to hunt.
In BFW classes parents learn to stalk their own mind with mindful pain-coping practices, day by day, not leaving this skill to chance during the upcoming Hunt/Ordeal!
Are you beginning to appreciate the difference between teaching new parents to Hunt, versus the old model of teaching them a technique or a dogma, or giving them their answers. Once any of us "knows" and are assured, our hunger to know is sated and we become sleepy. We complain of being dominated by patriarchy, but this model of birth will not change with more information and knowledge served on different plates. It will not change until and unless childbirth teachers become mentors who know themselves had to hunt, who know how to Hunt, and who can teach this skill to the next initiates.

Coming up to the Last Gate! The Long Journey is almost over.

Warmly,javascript:void(0)
Pam

BHJ: cont. Eighth Gate: HUNTRESS

2011-08-07T08:49:00.000-07:00

Dear Birth Peeps

I’ve been away for a few weeks. . . hunting! I missed you. Today we meet again at the Eighth Story Gate: Gate of the Huntress. You can see the Huntress or Seeker standing before a golden Eagle who’s wings are spread. The Huntress is looking out, looking far and wide, to see patterns and the whole picture, to “see” and to understand her story in the context of her past and future, how it relates to stories from seven generations past, and within the context of birth in her culture. She has moved from her personal story to her story within a collective story.

What brings a story-teller to the Gate of the Huntress, the Story Hunter?
Hunger. A gnawing hunger to know Who she is, Who birthed?, and how her birth experience relates to her past, her future, and in general to the larger picture of birth in our culture. When she becomes Hungry for personal freedom, soul food, and “truth” she either starts learning to hunt or finds a mentor/elder/story-listener who knows how to hunt and “apprentices.”
As the story-teller approaches this Gate, her questions move away from “Why did this happen to me?” or “What should I have done differently?,” or “What should I do differently next time to prevent or avoid [fill in the blank]?”.

A new question, a deeper question, a soul-question, begins to form; it’s a question that no one “out there”, no book, no research, can answer for her. Hunger awakens the inner-Huntress and the story-teller begin to stalk her mind, her habit thinking, beliefs, her heart, her story. Finally, with her attention turned inward, with her Ear turned inward, she may begin to hear the answer within.
In due time, many story-tellers feel the pangs of hunger and begin to “seek,” but . . . if they don’t know how to “hunt,” or if they get distracted by life, or perhaps confuse “hunting” with gathering more information (a task of the Medical Gate), they never pass over this Threshold.
Not every story-teller makes it to, or through, this Gate. Many birth stories arrest, for years, even a lifetime, at one of the previous Gates. This happens because:

(1) The wounded story-teller either believes that the birth is now in the past and it’s time to move on, or, she turns her attention to gathering information for the do-over birth (either her own or every one else’s!!). Either way, she quits self-inquiry not knowing what delicious insights lie within reach and thus, settles into a previous Gate.

(2) The story-teller is proud as a peacock for making correct choices that brought about her desired birth experience; she is no longer in inquiry. She knows, therefore, her search and her journey are over.

(3) Our culture has few “elder birth story-listeners” who know the Gates, the tasks at the Gates, and the Medicine for story-tellers. In the absence of elders, the floundering half-initiated, who is trying to make it all the way “home” on her own after the Ordeal. . . often believes what she “knows” is all there is to know, and she quits searching or she meanders between the former Gates, losing her way.
Of course, with sustained self-inquiry, a story-teller could do this on her own. But without a birth story process, ritual, or story-listener, it may take more timeto get through the Eighth Gate. It took me eight years to get through this Gate—trying to figure it out on my own. Perhaps with One Who Knows, it could happen sooner.

Here’s why it matters: Culture, including our birth customs, in this generation and the next, is shaped and reinforced by stories and story-tellers. When the majority of birth story-tellers (I assume it is a majority, but who has counted!) are still in Gates 2 to 6 or 7, they are actively, though unwittingly, teaching and conditioning the next generation of parents and birth peeps from stories with “incomplete understanding.”

Why a birth initiate need a story-listener, One Who Knows, during her Return.
Imagine a child, abandoned suddenly in the wild. Alone and hungry. Very hungry. Every attempt to hunt fails because s/he doesn’t know the terrain, the habits of the prey, how to use the tools of hunting. But hunger persists, and so the young hunter keeps trying and learning, until finally (unless starvation wins out first) s/he understands in a grand way. . . and finally succeeds.
Ideally, in traditional cultures, youth were taken to the wild by an elder hunter and taught, in a systematic, holistic manner about the terrain, the habits of the prey, the tools of hunting, and an inner awareness of themselves as hunter in relationship to the prey and environment. Within a much shorter time the child gained skill and the risk of starvation in the process was minimal.
This is one of the models I am proposing to change birth in our culture.

Only a Huntress can teach another to hunt. Hunting is not a theory, it’s not something you learn from a book. It is embodied knowledge, and it’s knowledge that is passed on. And this is what Virginia and I are offering in BFW Birth Story Listening course. We believe that when our culture has “trained” birth story-listeners, more mothers, fathers, and birth peeps will make it all the way “home.” When this happens, the personal and collective birth story in our culture will change.

Are you hungry for more?

Love,
Pam

BHJ continues: SEVENTH GATE and the DRUMMER

2011-07-23T11:40:00.000-07:00

Dear Birth Peeps.

Today you see the SEVENTH GATE, an ascending ladder (on the right half of the circle, you may recall, there is a descending ladder into the Ordeal, into the unknown); a RED PATH, and a DRUMMER.

After the initiate-storyteller’s dialog between her wounded or prideful Victim and Judge has been heard deeply by herself, and possibly by a story-listener (although this may not happen, so we should not wait for this to happen), her mind, exhausted and relieved, will experience a pause. In this pause she may suddenly find herself at the Seventh Gate. This blessed pause is often filled with a new question, or new reason.
Until this point on her journey “home,” the earnestly seeking-storyteller may have sought approval or “forgiveness” from others. Regarding one at least one part of her story, she was probably caught in the polarity of right and wrong, fair and unfair, expectations and failure, and could not begin to entertain the thought of letting go of blame or pride, of embracing what happened, of giving “grace” its due in what happened, or “forgiving” herself or others for what happened or did not happen.
The Storyteller-Seeker may arrive here sooner than later with the help of a mature Mentor, but she may only pass through the Seventh Gate after a battle with the ego! Now, as she literally climbs up and out of the underworld of her Story, rung by rung, she is seeing her story in a new “light,” she is experiencing a lightness of being, a true change of heart. Passing through this Gate is hard-won, long-desired…

What happens if she does not pass through the Seventh Gate?
If she does not arrive here, a part of her will remain in the underworld of the Ordeal, and this is true whether her Ordeal is in birth, divorce, illness, or any injustice or hardship in childhood or life. She can always find the company of others who also suffered a similar Ordeal with whom to commiserate (incomplete) wounded stories, but she cannot enjoy the fruit of personal freedom and true wisdom until she passes through this Gate. Here the "choice" is to "be right" or to "be love."

When does the Storyteller get through this Gate?
The answer is not as trite or cliché as “when she is ready.” A Seeker can long to “forgive” and embrace, and yet not be “ready.” It depends on many factors. The mind and heart have been long tethered by ties to old beliefs, other wounds, relationships… It may take time to rewire the mind, to open the Heart again.
If you study your mind at this Gate your compassion for yourself and for others at this Gate (and at every Gate for that matter) will grow immensely. And THIS genuine compassion for your humanity is what this journey is all about. This is how the archetypal Love Warrior within is awakened and strengthened.

* Remember, this is an organic process, it is not contrived or forced upon ourselves or another, especially not your trusted Story-Listener! If so, then it is the Judge doing the “encouraging,” not the Love Warrior, and we are back at the Sixth Gate of Shoulds and Shame.

RED PATH.
Did you notice the white and yellow path has turned red? The red path represents the path with Heart, the way of the Love Warrior.

THE DRUMMER.

What Calls us to the Ordeal? What Calls us Home again?
Is it the ego or willpower?
Why do some people get stuck in the underworld of their Ordeal for a decade, a life-time? Why do others find their way “home?”
Ponder these Questions with me.

In the myth of Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth, a story from ancient Sumer… we are given an image, an idea. I will introduce you to the Warrior Queen in the midst of her Ordeal: Inanna is hanging on the Hook in the underworld. She is dying, she is in a great soulful transfiguration. Her feet cannot touch the ground, she cannot walk away from this. She is so far in the underworld, no one can hear her cries. A woman of power in the upperworld, she is now in need of Grace. In mythology, Warriors are often sent Allies; two Allies come, take her down and give her the Water of Life and the Food of Life. Inanna is a woman of power… and here she might be tempted to take up the power of the underworld, to rule the underworld. We all face this temptation.

This story is not only about Inanna, it is about human nature; it is about us! After a profound Ordeal, it is tempting to continue identifying with the trauma, the injustice, or the triumph. Living in the past, retelling the story, trapping others to respond in a certain way (pity, shared-anger, guilt, awe, etc,) or to engage in the “get even” or “get it right next time” games. Almost everybody has one Story thread still tethered to the underworld; keeping it tethered makes you feel safe (a reminder so you don’t do That Again!), or allows you a reason not to move forward…
So here the human being has a struggle. I do not call it a choice. I don’t think the human being “chooses” to stay in the underworld. In fact, I do not think she has a choice based on what she has experienced, learned up to that point. So how does she get out?

The Drummer might represent the Heartbeat of the Mother, comforting and calling us “home.” She might represent Ninshubur, Inanna’s maidservant who drummed around the temples of Sumer while finding help to bring Inanna back (another story, not for today!) As a woman (myself) who loves and trusts her independence a little too much, I love this part: Inanna, a woman of power required assistance to get “home.”
In this image…. You can see the Drumbeats represented by white dots penetrating the underworld, passing through all of the Gates of underworld… reaching the Ear… our inner-Ear. When we Hear the Mother’s Drumbeat we are compelled to keep moving our feet, to continue finding our way “home.”

In-Love,
Pam

BHJ continues: the Poetress

2011-07-22T13:40:00.000-07:00

Dear Birth Peeps,

In today’s snapshot of the hero’s journey mandala you see: see a Poetress writing on Golden paper, a white and black snake, two Ducks, and a mother carrying her baby walking …. There is a lot happening during this phase of the Return, and here is where we, as a society can continue letting this important phase slip away, or we can begin to cultivate it and get the mothers “home” from their initiation and Ordeal of birth and postpartum!

The POETRESS.

There is a time and place for everything. The Poetress cannot come to us, or be awakened in us, before it is our Time. If we try to “fake” it, our poems will be superficial and shallow, or equal to sound byte affirmations that sound good, but do not truly resonate in us and do not ring true.

“Poetry is a natural medicine, it is like a homeopathic tincture derived from the staff of life itself—your experience.”
--John Fox
Poetic Medicine

“Your story is important to tell. Tell it too linearly or literally," John Fox cautions us, "and you may not catch important underlying feelings, images, bodily sensations and postures, or metaphors that would surprise you and create growth were you to listen closely to what is written between your story’s lines.”

After telling the story to everyone and anyone, anywhere, the poet awakens and now turns her story inward. There is irony here: while the initiate/storyteller is ascending out of the underworld, suddenly she finds herself in a private descent, drawing her attention inwards. Instead of continuing to compare her story of pride or pain to others’ stories, or looking to others to listen, to affirm, validate, approve, or explain her experience, she begins to listen deeply to her own deep questions and to her own counsel.

Almost parallel to the Poetress is the solitary figure of a WALKING MOTHER. She represents the initiate-storyteller's journey into new territory; she is searching for her scattered story bones and bits, holding her own counsel. This she does even as she goes about caring for her baby and other activities of daily living.

GOLDEN PAPER.

This folded paper upon which the Poetress is writing is a continuation of the electronic fetal monitor paper trailing below. I think the meaning of this is abundantly clear, and poetic!

Why Gold? Gold represents balance and the sun; the moon is associated with the Feminine, and the Sun, the Masculine… so here the initiate returning from a profoundly Feminine, almost wordless experience… is finding Words (a masculine activity) to describe—for Herself—what happened and who she is.

TWO SNAKES. A black and white snake came to me, so I painted them in. When I was in Peru, I went to a small hidden cave. The entrance to the ancient cave had been known to the ancients; on either side of the cave opening were snakes, a black one and a white one. Snakes often get a bad rap nowadays, a squeamish response, but to the ancients they held more positive meanings. Snakes shed their skin after they grow. When the Poetress writes and speaks from her belly and heart, she too is shedding a former story for a new one that has been growing in her.

TWO DUCKS. What of the Ducks?
Last week it came to me that an image of “getting our ducks all in a row” needed to be painted in the Preparation Quadrant. That is what all initiates try to do and to maintain during the Ordeal, and they try to get those scattered Ducks back in a row during the Return. Try to get things back to “the way things used to be.”

Ha! Things will never be, can never be the way they “used to be” after an initiation, after you lose your innocence, after you see and feel and know what you did not know before!

Hence, two squawking Ducks in close proximity to the Sixth Gate!

* * *

If you want to be a story-listener healer, you must become comfortable with solitude; you must be able to carry your own Deepest Question into new territory. Only then can you reach your yet unspoken Words, your personal myth and "poetry," and be able to write and speak your own truth on Golden paper.

If you want to see the images better, click on them They should open.
I look forward to your comments and responses....

In-Love & Solitude,

Pam

BHJ continued: STORY GATE SIX: REVOLVING DOOR AND ASCLEPIUS

2011-07-21T14:47:00.000-07:00

Dear Birth Peeps,
It's a long journey back! Let's continue crawling out of the underworld and watching the Story and Storyteller evolve.

The initiate has arrived at the Sixth Story Gate, the Gate positioned at the dividing line between the underworld and the upper world, between the undigested, chaotic material of the Ordeal and soon will begin to reap the benefits of the integration work well underway… This is the Revolving Door of the Victim and Judge.

When do we arrive at this Gate during the Return? In some way we could say we visit this Gate Daily, maybe several times a day! For this is the Gate of the archetypal Victim-Judge. These characters or voices are part of everyone’s makeup, so you will quickly recognize them.

The Victim says, “It’s not my fault,” or “There’s nothing I can do about it (it’s someone else’s fault).” She tries and tries to get it right, but doesn’t quite; she feels helpless and powerless to get her needs met.

The Judge is pictured carrying his "Book of Rules," he likes to tells us we should be different, or should have done it differently, or what to do to get it right next time. He is telling us to do more, be more, try harder. The Judge tells you you should be like someone else (and ironically, that someone else’s Judge is telling him/her they should be like you!) Allan said another name for the Judge is Liar because it is impossible to be someone else, and it’s not true that to be good or loveable that you have to “get it right.”

Try this: Listen in on your mind-chatter: First your Victim will try to explain why you can’t do something, or why it’s someone else's fault… Then, your Judge will answer, telling you what you could’ve or should’ve done, or what you must do—next time. Keep listening: Your Victim will answer the Judge, the Judge will should the Victim. And round and round they go…. Thus the Revolving Door!

This same conversation happens between people too, and it happens between birth storyteller and birth story listener or childbirth “teacher,” i.e., anybody who is advising a parent anytime, about anything, during the childbearing year. In this case both storyteller and story-listener go round and round in the Revolving Door, and both leave feeling “that did not go well,” or “she just doesn’t get it.”

I learned about the power of the ongoing dialog between the Victim-Judge when I studied the Toltec work with don Allan Hardman (in 2004). And after learning about this Revolving Door in my own mind, it began to change how I listened to stories, and how I taught others to listen to stories.

You will notice the Wolf Eyes behind and above the Revolving Door. Wolf Eyes represents the third potential voice, the archetypal Love Warrior. The Love Warrior (LW) does not enter the Revolving Door. Rather, LW continues to talk to both the Victim and Judge (part of the pantheon of Child archetypes) until, upon being heard, they can get ouyt of the Revolving Door and take the next step on the Journey.

* * *
You will notice a seated Greek figure holding a staff, and a dog, in the mandala frame gate. This is ASCLEPIUS who represents divine healing and healing through dream invocation. As legend has it, Asclepius was born by cesarean, at the last minute, when his mother was placed on the pyre. At the Sixth Gate and Seventh Gate, the storyteller is preparing to “dream a new dream” of her birth experience.

Asclepius is typically sculpted/pictured holding a staff wrapped with a single serpent. What do the staff and serpent symbolize? From Edelstein and Edlestein’s scholarly book and collection, Asclepius, the symbol is explained:

“Those who avail themselves of medical science undergo a process similar to the serpent in that they, as it were, grow young again after illness and slough off old age.” The Serpent here represents a sign of “attention,” because attention is required in medical treatment and healing. The Staff represents the same, and also that the Greek physician’s life was a long journey of healing… he walked far and wide to heal.

Sometimes Asclepius is shown with a Dog. I considered painting a “hunting dog” as a symbol for the hero’s journey, but I decided to paint an Aussie. Aussie’s are herders; we must herd our thoughts on this journey, or perhaps as elders/storylistener's we can help herd wondering initiates to make sure they are heading home to personal freedom after their Ordeal. (My “best friend,” Gracey, is a beautiful Aussie. I painted her in this mandala.)

Later in 50 Ways to Change Birth in Our Culture, we will catch up to Asclepius again as we explore a model of a healing sanctuary I am thinking about.

This week, Rahel, who was on Skype in the Birth Story Listening course, saw the painting and realized that it is bigger than she had imagined. It is 36" x 36", and the image I sent to you today is about 6" high.

Love,
Pam

BHJ continued: STORY GATE FIVE: MEDICAL BIRTH STORY

2011-07-19T20:06:00.000-07:00

Dear Birth Peeps,

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

BHJ continued: STORY GATE FOUR: SOCIAL STORY

2011-07-17T18:07:00.000-07:00

Dear Birth Peeps,

If you saw my Nine Birth Story slide show a few months ago at ICAN or Doula Care, you would have seen a Butterfly Gate. You can probably follow the logic of the former butterfly symbol: we are like the flitting butterfly landing here and there when we tell our birth story, partially and quickly, to strangers, acquaintances, friends. The Butterfly Gate is no more: one day the Muse took my brush, wiped out the Butterfly, and I waited for another order. . . Late one night . . . the new Fourth Gate appeared in the symbol of ripples of Teacups to represent the Social Birth Story.

Check it out! Teacups… in ripples… giving us the feeling of a rock skipping over the top of a lake. The Social Birth Story begins to emerge immediately after birth with the first phone call or visitor; it is a brief story used to share the highlights. It is also used for bonding, story-swapping, bragging, and “competition” between women. When we begin to pay attention, we begin to notice that the Social Story is far from fixed! What is emphasized or left out, as well as the emotional meaning, changes a little each time it is told depending on who is listening. That’s why the symbolic Teacups are different colors, shapes, and sizes.

The “ripples” around the Teacups are speckled with dots. Sometimes the colors on either side match (to represent rapport and being heard by the story-listener), and sometimes the colored dots don’t match (to represent a lack of being understood). Not being heard, understood, or validated, while telling our story in those early weeks and months can be hurtful, and cause secondary trauma.

The Social Story is not just “social” chit chat, it is an underestimated, powerful force in creating the collective story of birth. Because it is a story told quickly, often to half-listening listeners who are swapping their own stories… all listeners potentially leave with their own meaning, inferences, even distortions… then pass them on to others, like the rippling rock creating endless waves in the collective story of birth in our culture.

Love,
Pam

BHJ continued: STORY GATE THREE: RELATIONSHIPS

2011-07-16T17:15:00.000-07:00

HI Birth Peeps,
You have arrived at Story Gate Three!

Fairly soon after the birth, the mother-storyteller* begins to approach the THIRD GATE: RELATIONSHIPS. She is examining who was there, who wasn’t; who showed up in unexpected ways; who, if anyone, abandoned her. She may be examining the change in her relationship with her own mother, family, husband/partner, friends, birth peeps, the new baby or older children, other mothers, and most importantly—to herself.

This Gate is heart-shaped, an ambiguous symbol, which means you might see a heart that opens or … a broken heart. The outlines of women- and men-figures represent any relationship… not just the couple-relationship.

Sometimes when we share birth stories, we want to tell and we want to know, what happened medically, interventions, outcome… but we often overlook the importance of the more subtle sub-story of various relationships before, during, and after the birth.

In recent years when listening to birth trauma stories, I began experimenting with trying to “name” the trauma source; I thought it might be interesting to be able to document the incidence of birth trauma related to particular interventions or complications. I expected the traumas would be “caused by” the “epidural,” “cesarean,” or “breastfeeding problems.” As I listened more deeply, I was very surprised to realize that the most frequent “cause” of birth trauma was related to relationship. It would be easy to overlook this because the events and dramas of labor, i.e., induction, long labor, cesarean, etc., overshadow the subtle story of relationship.

In our Birth Story Listening online course, you will learn more about what to listen for and how to respond in a way that may help the mother pass through this Gate with understanding.

In-Love,
Pam

*I am referring to the mother as storyteller for simplicity sake in the main body of the blog, however, the storyteller could be the father/partner or birth peep.

BHJ continued: STORY GATE TWO: RELIEF and GRATITUDE

2011-07-15T15:34:00.000-07:00

Dear Birth Peeps,
One of the ways each of us can change birth in our culture is to listen deeply to birth stories, to understand and embrace the postpartum journey through a mother's story. Let's continue.

Within the day or two of giving birth, most mothers are chatting circles-around,or gushing through, their second birth story Gate, the GATE OF RELIEF AND GRATITUDE. This is usually a short, repeating, litany of praise for anyone and everyone who helped in anyway; it is probably fueled by endorphins and adrenalin, as well as genuine and overwhelming relief and joy. In addition, in the early weeks of postpartum, a new mother is falling in love with her baby; her
attention is naturally directed toward learning to care for her baby, getting enough sleep, and hosting a flurry of visitors. There isn’t time for reflection, yet.

For many years I used to be confused when a woman—who had just endured a terrible labor ordeal, often with excessive interventions —would be gushing gratitude and giving fruit baskets. Did I miss something? Why isn’t she traumatized, asking questions, blaming or more upset?!

Unfortunately, hospitals collect patient evaluation surveys from parents while they are still in this Gate of Relief and Gratitude! So administrators pat themselves on a job well done, verified by “patient satisfaction.” I wonder if the survey were given (or given again) three to six months later, if the satisfaction ratings would be the same. I think this timing on the part of administration is probably a combination of not being aware of how the evaluations (i.e., birth story) might/would change over time and convenience: get the paperwork done quickly.

But then weeks, months, or years later, when this mother had time to reflect on what she lived through, she would begin to put the fragmented pieces together, learn more about birth, and question what happened. It was then that her story would spontaneously change, at a time she had the time or emotional reserves to sort it out.

Any Second Gate stories to share? If you were to draw your second birth story Gate, what would it look like?

Love!
Pam

BHJ: The Return Begins, FIRST GATE

2011-07-14T21:28:00.000-07:00

Dear Birth Peeps,
There is more that could be said about the Ordeal, but finally, it is time to begin exploring the third phase of the hero’s journey: the Hero’s Return, the Ascent. During the next week I will be explaining some of the tasks of the Return… focusing on the evolution and the resolution of the would-be hero’s (no she is not yet a hero!) Story about her Ordeal.
There is never just one birth story because the birth story evolves, organically, over time. After years of listening deeply to birth stories I observed an almost predictable order of appearance, I began to categorize “types” of stories—there are nine—and began to think of each of the nine stories as rungs of a ladder, a ladder the hero must climb all the way out of the underworld. Follow me as we climb out of the underworld on the story ladder. (Tonight is the first time I’ve ever used the ladder metaphor, it just came to me! Until tonight I’ve referred to the nine stories as Gates, in reference to the myth of Inanna who must pass through Seven Gates to enter and exit the underworld.)

First Gate

It was difficult to conjure up a symbol or an image for the First Gate, the No Story Gate. But finally this image came to me: An infant being cradled in a hand; the infant represents both the baby and the newly-born parents. Because this story arises in the deep underworld—within minutes or hours of giving birth—where everything is falling apart, the symbol is painted in dots with a swirl of dots, like steam from a hot drink, to represent the feeling of just being without a story.
In the hours surrounding giving birth, a mother is immersed in living the birth. It is not yet a story: there is no timeline, there are no words, there is no audience to hear the story.
Other people witnessing the birth, or visiting shortly after, do have words, opinions, and a story about her labor, birth, or baby. They begin to tell their story of her birth to her, and around her, and their story inevitably colors what her story will become.

But in those first hours, the mother and father are still spinning, stunned open in love or stunned by the intensity of what they have lived… they haven’t formed a story yet.

Above the First Gate you see TWO LITTLE EAGLE CHICKS IN A NEST.
There is a common belief that by giving birth, mothers and fathers instantly become full-fledged parents; that parenting is predominantly instinctive. For most humans this is not true; parenting is more than just caring for the baby, it’s also involves a complex and profound social, psychic and spiritual transformation.
When a child is born, the parents are also newly born; we could say that (archetypally-speaking) the new parent is a Child-Mother or a Child-Father.
The eaglets represent the Child-Mother and Child-Father. The eaglets, who will one day be great hunters, for now must be fed eagle food to survive and grow their wings. Might the same be true for newborn parents? For parents to make it all the way out of their underworld of labor, and to complete their initiation and the transition to parenthood —they also need to be fed “eagle food,” the Food of Life and the Water of Life by their village. It takes patience and time to grow parent-wings.

In-Love on the Ladder!
Pam

BHJ continues: Shaman-artist and Spider Woman Labyrinth

2011-07-11T18:38:00.000-07:00

Dear Birth Peeps,
It has been easier for me to paint than write of late, so the painting has progressed. This week you will see many new images. Thank you for your patience.

Yesterday I showed the mandala painting to my friend Alberto (for the first time). We exchanged few words as Alberto looked long at the painting, taking in all the details. Later he said that this painting was not meant to “hang in a gallery. It is a power piece… for healing.”

Yes, it is meant to invoke a turning in of the mind, a healing; it is meant to be a psychic map. Even the painter’s mind is turned inward and taken on a daily journey.

Some years ago I happened upon an exhibit (at the Albuquerque Art Museum) of about four to six intricate pen and ink drawings by an African shaman. If memory serves me correctly, the shaman-artist would sit with a patient and patiently draw an incredibly elaborate, detailed drawing for hours; judging by the detail, it seemed a drawing might take days… The shaman’s “medicine drawing” was a wildly labyrinthine visual journey, including many intricate “Celtic-like” knots, and what drew me in to the drawing were the almost hidden little faces and tiny figures. I wondered who were these characters throughout the drawing? Were they spirits or ancestors peering out from within the loops or little windows and caves? What were they doing? Perhaps they were trapping, taking, healing whatever illness had taken over the patient’s body and mind.
I sensed how healing and calming the presence of an artist-shaman, who was absorbed in his/her own drawing trance, might be to a patient watching the drawing emerge.

One of the Tasks of the Ordeal is to confront Change, Death, and to anticipate and prepare for "Rebirth," i.e., one's new role as mother or father, all the changes that follow giving birth. The Great Myths, rituals and initiations are rooted in reenacting the inevitable tragedy, fear of, and Mystery of Life and Death.

Part of how we can change birth in our culture is to dare to prepare parents for this inevitable confrontation and change within themselves, perhaps within their relationship as they transition from being a "couple" to being parents.

In my new book, The Labyrinth of Birth, page 81, I describe Spider Woman's Drawing in the Sand. It is partially visible in today's image...

"When death comes to the stone-age people on Malecula, an island in the South Pacific, the dead person's soul approaches the entrance to the underworld and finds it guarded by Le-Lev-Lev, the Spider Woman. Le-Lev-Lev draws a single unbroken line in the sand, then erases half of it. The dead person's soul has to complete the drawing to be allowed to enter. If she (or he) cannot complete the drawing, she will be eaten by Spider Woman. If the lines are successfully drawn, the dead are allowed to enter the underworld where there is a beautiful lake representing the Water of Life."

Initiation involves preparing for and experiencing symbolic death and rebirth. This initiation myth and ritual of the Malecula points to conscious Preparation for Change, for Death (death of a belief, expectation, how the relationship was, and sometimes death of the baby, or the mother, or a loved one during the time of birth). In this mature way of holistic preparation, the initiate learns the pattern of Spider Woman's labyrinth before death or the trial comes.

Birth attendants are trained and trained to know what to do when the unwished-for happens in birth. Even if a birth attendant has not encountered a certain complication before her training is complete, her role-playing, tests, and conversations about that possibility have allowed her to memorize the path she would take should the emergency arise. So when this complication arises, like the half-drawn labyrinth in the sand, a well-prepared birth peep can do her part, she can complete the other half of the drawing.

In a similar way, parents deserve to be prepared before their Ordeal, so they have a clue how to "complete their drawing in the sand."

How is this done? This is the Task of the new Elders, Birth Peeps and birth mentors, to figure this out.

Warmly,
Pam

PS... You can order a copy of the beautiful Labyrinth of Birth book from our online store. This makes a wonderful gift for anyone you know who is about to give birth, and any birth peep who wants to learn how to teach this process to parents.

BHJ: The Ambiguous Gatekeeper Within

2011-07-03T19:20:00.000-07:00

Greetings Birth Peeps!
Last week I told you we would take another look at the Gatekeeper, the Guardian of the Threshold. It has taken me longer than usual to compose this posting, partly because I am possessed by the Gatekeeper of my Kidney, and everything takes longer these days. Tonight, I had a window of clarity and am eager to write you.

GATEKEEPERS are ambiguous, archetypal figures in myths, fairytales, and most importantly within our psyche. A Gatekeeper might be represented as masculine or feminine, human (e.g., Bidu in the myth of Inanna) or animal (e.g., Cerberus, the three-headed dog in the myth of Psyche). It may be protective, benevolent, or fiendish, and ultimately has the power to turn away the journeyer who is not ready to pass, or let through the one who is.

Meeting the Gatekeeper at a Threshold represents a psychic confrontation with an unconscious force that has previously held us back; it represents the embodied, almost ritual, experience of a mini-death, a mini-initiation.
You do not have an ordinary conversation with the Gatekeeper; the Gatekeeper is not your pal and will not be swayed by small talk and bargaining. The Gatekeeper must be given Something—something symbolic and specific, something hard to come by—that represents Knowledge, Sacrifice, and Readiness. This exchange is the Key that allows the journeyer to pass, e.g., the small cake Psyche gave Cerberus.
Or, perhaps as in the story of Inanna’s Descent, the Gatekeeper, Bidu, “takes” Something from Inanna--without bargaining and without her permission—not once, but seven times! At no Gate does Inanna ever “get it” and willingly “give up” her attachment to her identity, power, protections, and treasures. She believes she can have it all because she “believes” she is special, the master of her destiny, and uniquely deserving. Power and time have confused Inanna; she has misidentified what she knows and what she does with who she is. So, each time Something valued is seized, Inanna’s sense of self and the order of things is deeply confronted, and she shouts, “What is this? Give it back, that is mine, that is me…!”
Each time Inanna is further disrobed and walks away from a Gate, she must inquire, “Who am I without my ‘crown of beliefs’?,” “Who am I without my birth plan [being followed or honored]?” It is only when things fall apart and we are confronted by the illusion of “choice” that we find out who we really are.

As the initiate, the would-be hero, travels deeper into the Unknown, into the Ordeal, she will pass several, Seven, thresholds. Seven represents hardship, endurance, and determination.
In modern day birth as a hero’s journey, an essential part of the would-be hero’s preparation includes gathering up seven Things and Beliefs she believe will protect her in the Unknown of Labor. On some level, mothers, fathers, and birth peeps all must do this.
When the Child, the would-be hero, Prepares for her Ordeal—for her long-awaited Day—part of that preparation involves daydreaming, creating an “intention,” a do-able fantasy of how it is, will be, or should be; this is how the “birth plan” fits in. This fantasy, imagining, role-playing is part of the Preparation.
We cannot try to be superior to other hapless would-be hero's (who planned and brought all their stuff and ideals only to lose them) by not gathering our seven Things and Beliefs of Protection. Even having that thought, that self-important strategy, to outsmart the Way is the gathering of at least one prideful Belief… “I” am so clear and fearless, “I” do not need to bring along any intentions or secret hopes, or beads, or anything.” Hmpf.
If there is a "plan" to not have any such “plan” that means there is still a bargaining “I,” an identification with “I,” and an idea of what it means to be a good enough, smart enough, strong enough, loveable enough “I.”
Can you see that the power of the hero’s journey is here… in the “disrobing” of our illusions and masks at these Thresholds?

Can you see that the Thresholds we are talking about here are not built by the institution in a place “out there?” No! These illusive Thresholds are constructed, and maintained, by our own minds.
We have all spent time, often years, being “locked out,” left out, waiting at a Gate for the Gate to open, for someone to open it, waiting until we knew enough, made more money, until the time was right … and then one day, in a moment of Clarity… we laugh to realize that all along it was a Gateless Gate, it was open all along. We laugh and weep: the cosmic joke is on us. Then the inquiry begins: What kept us from passing through? Something “out there?” No! The mind. The heart.
This week the soul elves and Gates began to float between the two worlds, naturally blending into the background as layers of dots appeared…but the Question Marks remain, the Deep Questions are still being asked, whispered…..

And with a genuine change of mind, a change of heart, suddenly the Gate does not open, it literally disappears. There is no leap across the Threshold, it’s just that the illusion of a separation disappears and we are of new mind, of new knowing, new stature, role, or service in society.

Some people think of the underworld as dark, cold, cruel, or punishing (and they don’t want to go there, not in their imagination, not even with me in this painting), but I do not find it so. In the underworld/ innerworld our sense of perception heightens and priorities shift. When things are not as they seem, when we play a game where we are blindfolded, suddenly we hear more acutely—not only with our ears but with our body, too. The rare light in the underworld allows some things that had been in the foreground of our plans to fade into the shadows while mysteriously illuminating, enlarging, and making to sparkle small things and moments that would go unnoticed in our hectic, have-it-our- way lives. In the altered state of Laborland and other underworld journeys, time changes, the future is out of reach, and we cannot mentally or physically function at full speed. Suddenly, cracked open, we want to, and we must, see and to hear deeply, take in and savor the moment whether it is one called bliss or one …. completely and digest each bit slowly. Here we see and feel what we overlook in our ego-driven, full-speed-ahead lives.
I was thinking about all this when I covered parts of the underworld in dots the same color as the “underpainting”—so you could see the object or figure, but if you look closely, it is all held together by separate dots.

“If we look only at our problems, our inner world dissolves; if we look only at the world, it begins to dissolve. If we want to create art, we have to stitch together the

inner world and the outer world.” –Robert Bly

OUR TASK, BIRTH PEEPS, is to prepare women and men for birth in our culture. This taks is unique and complex; both parents and professionals desperately need soulful preparation and initiation by those who have done their work, who have been scattered and mended, who know Great Stories and who have come to know their own hearts and stories during their own Return. There is a great need for mature childbirth mentors and birth story-listeners who can simultaneously embrace and present the physical/medicalized worlds of birth and, at the same time be immersed in, and grounded by, a rich inner world.

A personal note about the process of painting in the last two weeks: When I began this mandala painting, I was not well, but I was not yet immersed in the “underworld” (or my inner-world) of uncertainty. Before last week, I had been feeling that the underworld figures, colors, symbols, and images in the Ordeal phase were initially flat and too rational. In recent weeks, inspired by a new descent into my own health/medical underworld, I am sourcing from my immediate experience and painting more authentically, not so much from what I know but what I am feeling into.

In-Love, in Celebration of your Personal Freedom,
Pam

2 Bly, Robert (1986). The Winged Life. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books. Pp. 3-5.

BHJ Continues: Meet the GateKeeper of the Descent

2011-06-26T13:12:00.000-07:00

Dear Birth Peeps,

This week I painted the GateKeeper of the Descent. She is not quite finished, but close enough. Today I am uploading two images. First, a small updated image of the center of the mandala so you can see that Asclepius, a Greek healer and Masculine seated figure, occupies the “Gate” on the Ascent, or Return (left side). So, the GateKeeper of the Descent on the right, had to be Feminine, standing, and not “human.”

I don’t know her name. The GateKeeper of the Descent emerged from layers of loose paint. … and we “talked” as she made her appearance. She kept moving her hands, she was a difficult "model" to paint! She said,

“

My Eyes are wide open, to See you, to See through you, to See Who You Are and what you don’t need any longer. My Mouth Sings to you the Deepest Questions in a Golden voice, ever-asking, “Who Are You? … Why have you come to this place at this time? ... What must you do? .... What price are you willing to pay?

”

“
My Hands are big because their Job is to Give and Take. Sometimes they will Give you a Gift you need on the Descent. Sometimes they Take from you an old habit, a burden, a belief … My Feet are big, they have wondered all over the worlds and underworlds… it’s a long Way. I have a Key. But you do not need My Key. The Door is Open whenever you are ready…
“

We need to prepare innocent, trusting, planning parents (if their labor/birth is meant to initiate them)--before they meet their GateKeeper in Laborland--that Life and Laboland GateKeepers don't bargain with you or let you "choose" or trade what will be Given or Taken. When it is time, it is just taken. Poof! Then you get to find out Who You Are Without that thing, relationship, belief...

The inverse is also true: we don't always ask or beg for the miracles and gifts that suddenly appear. (Yet we like to take credit for these!)

The GateKeeper concept part bothers a lot of people who want to believe that they will be in-control if they just believe the right thing, and believe deeply enough, or if they eat the right food, or whatever! In examining my own life and important Descents, I must confess I did not consciously, willingly, or graciously Give Up what was to be Taken; it had to Be Taken from me. (I did not "give up" my natural birth; I did not "give up" my Dream of Marriage; I did not "give up" my kidney!)

If you live long enough, you are likely to make at least one Great Descent in your life (and it may not happen during your childbearing year). I hope Life will Gift you with an eye-opening, heart-opening Descent. Many women experience a profound descent between the ages of 28 and 30. Sometimes this First and profound initiation comes in childhood, or much later in life. When it comes, we are in a battle between ego and soul, and it is often the fight of our life. The following passage from Robert Bly, The Winged Life, (with minor changes to fit our audience):

“When we fight for the soul and its life, we receive as reward not fame, not wages, not friends, but what is already in the soul, a freshness that no one can destroy….
This soul truth (which is inherent in young people) sustains them. It assures the young man or woman that if not rich, s/he is still in touch with truth; that their inheritance comes not from their immediate parents but from their equals thousands of generations ago; that the door to the soul is unlocked; s/he does not need to please the doorkeeper, but that the door in from of [her] is his, intended for [her], and that the doorkeeper obeys when spoken to
.”

Tomorrow I will tell you more about the GateKeeper within you, and the ones in your life.

Happy Summer Solstice (this week)!
Pam

BHJ Continues: Seeing in the Underworld

2011-06-20T22:15:00.000-07:00

Dear Birth Peeps,

It seems in our mundane, comfortable lives we can look but not see, or we are content with what we see on the surface. Sometimes we only see what we expect or want to see instead of all the vibrations and colors that are actually present. We often look carelessly in such a way that our seeing bounces off the surface instead of seeing through and seeing deeply into the matter.

In youth, ancient and modern women paint their eyes with eye shadow to be seen and adored by men. In preparation for a rite of passage or a descent into the underworld, ancient women ceremoniously painted their eyes in a symbolic gesture and prayerful anticipation of seeing what they had not yet seen… or for the Veil to be lifted that they might get a glimpse of the Holy. One of the Gifts of our descent into the Unknown, into the Ordeal, or underworld, is that in the seeming long, dark “night of the soul,” another Eye opens and we might begin to see what we have not yet seen.

So, when we begin to see birth as hero's journey, we also understand that one of the Tasks of Preparation and the Ordeal is to learn to see. How do we train young women to see both within and in the world? Once they see, and want to see, we might ceremoniously paint their eyes to acknowledge that their Mother Eye, their inner Eye, their Eyes are opening.

Eyes and learning to see are powerful symbols and tasks of this initiatory Ordeal. So yesterday I painted Eyes that are open and seeing in the Ordeal. The Eye is a universal symbol of illumination. In ancient Mesopotamia, the Eye was a motif representing holiness and a desire to see the Holy. In Egypt, the sacred Eye is called a wedjat. I like the Egyptian wedjat which resembles the marking around the eye of the falcon; I enjoyed painting this graceful symbol. Do you know the Egyptian creation myth that includes the wedjat?

The Creator, Atum-Ra created the First Children: Shu (air) and Tefnut (moisture). Shu and Tefnut got together and produced Earth (Geb) and Sky (Nut). Earth and Sky then begat nine children (one of whom is Isis). In one of the stories, Shu and Tefnut were lost in the primordeal Sea. So Ra sent his Eye to search for them. When the Ey

e returned, she was so very sad to see that Ra had replaced her with a new Eye, she cried; from her tears were born human beings.

When I think about seeing in darkness, I always think of how Jacques Lusseyran** described “seeing” as a blind man in his book, And Then There was Light. Here is a passage (I recommend you read the book):

“I could feel light rising, spreading, resting on objects, giving them form, then leaving them. Sighted people always talk about the night of blindness, and that seems to them quite natural. But there is not such night, for at every waking hour and even in my dreams I lived in a stream of light…

“As I walked along a country road bordered by trees, I could point to each one of the trees by the road, even if they were not spaced at regular intervals. I knew whether the trees were straight and tall, carrying their branches as a body carries its head, or gathered into thickets and partly covering the ground around them.”

This kind of seeing Lusseyran describes reminds me of the seeing associated with the Third Eye, sometimes called the “Eye of the Heart” or the “Eye of Knowledge.” Seeing with the Third Eye is about direct perception, intuition, imagination, inner visions and out-of-body experiences: the perfect Eye for Laborland where women are likely to have one or more of those experiences of seeing. So I painted the Third Eye.

The third eye on the forehead of the Hindu god Shiva is usually closed to gaze inward, but opens when there is need for destruction. This is a powerful symbol to contemplate.

In Love,
Pam

**Jacques Lusseyran (1924-1971) was a French political activist and a remarkable writer. He was blinded in an accident at school when he was eight years old. When Germany invaded France, he was 17 years old; he formed a Resistance group (with 52 boys), was captured and lived in a concentration camp for about 2 years until the liberation. His book and story are remarkable and inspiring.

Our Deepest Questions in the Ordeal

2011-06-17T14:30:00.000-07:00

Dear Birth Peeps,

In the Ordeal, there is always a time (or two) when what will happen next is uncertain and not entirely in our control (which is often true in life, but in the Ordeal we know with certainty we are not in absolute control). When we face uncertainty, powerlessness, or our mortality, Deep Questions come to us, e.g.,
Where did I come from?
Who Am I?
Why am I here?
Where am I going?

In this painting whimsical figures (soul-elves?, is there such a thing, it just came to me!) begin to emerge, each with a question mark coming out of his mouth. The soul-elves are positioned near the Gates, dancing, showing the way, chanting their Deepest Question. The one by Diving Woman mirrors her--he is upside down asking her, “Who Are You? Why have you come here?”

Who Am I? is the fundamental question of every quest. If you’ve heard the story of Inanna’s Descent, you know Bidu asks Inanna this Question, and he asks her, "Why has your Heart led you to this place from which you cannot Return unchanged or unscathed?." He does not ask this just once, but seven times as she passes through each of the seven Gates. If you know the old Testament, you know the question "WHO AM I?" is in capital letters (I was told it is the only phrase in the Bible that is capitalized because it is so important). If you’ve ever been in a great descent or a dark night of the soul, you have heard this questions as you tossed and turned, as you wept, and when you tried to find a quick way out of Fate.

Soul Questions or Heart Questions are not meant to torment you, they are meant to awaken you, to free you. They are Medicine Questions.

In the painting soul-elves are asking these Questions, but really... it is You who must be in perpetual Self-inquiry. Instead of following and believing the mindless chatter of the Victim and Judge in your mind, enter into Silence and keep asking these Questions as you cross invisible Thresholds, when you feel lost, despair, fear, abandoned, in pain, and even when you feel certain and proud of yourself.

Like this:
Who is Proud?
I am.
Who is the "I" that is Proud?
(Then Listen deeply, don't answer with ordinary mind, reason, and words.)

Who is afraid?
I am.
Who is the "I" that is afraid?

And so it goes with every possible emotion or belief you can identify with. You don't have to be in an ordeal to practice Self-inquiry. You can do this all the time, it's a wonderful practice. But in an Ordeal, it is especially potent.

I had a thought, or maybe I saw an image... of the initiated traversing a labyrinthine brain in the underworld...No matter what the circumstances are, no matter what the physical environment of our Ordeal or Quest, the true Descent we make is into our own Mind.... our beliefs and assumptions. I will just have to paint another hero's journey to express this image....

I will do my best to keep up with the blog and painting. My Golden Kidney is in stress and I am not quite myself these days. Not even a stressed kidney can keep me from painting and sharing with you, it may just be less frequent! Regretfully, I am cancelling the July Advanced Doula Workshop so I can focus on getting well. "I will be back!"

Pam

BHJ Continues... The Crocodile Goddess

2011-06-10T06:49:00.000-07:00

Dear Birth Peeps,

At some point during the Ordeal, the unexpected happens and things fall apart; expectations and best-laid plans fall apart; relationships shift or split altogether; our “mask” falls off and our strategies fall away. The would-be hero feels real terror as she spins around and faces her deepest fear, the very thing she tried her best to avoid or prevent--and in that moment--she loses control of that moment and of her future. The initiate finds herself--if only for an hour, perhaps for days, weeks, even months—spinning in circles trying to make decisions or find a way out. She might literally be brought to her knees or curl up in fetal position, convinced she can go no further.

This is not a sign of weakness, nor is it time to pull herself up by the bootstraps and keep going. If she has given it her all and is cracking open or falling apart, she is in an important part of the rite of passage; the necessary slow dying of the ego-mind. In this darkness and stillness, after the resisting and spinning, she begins to “gestate” so she can be born anew into new understanding, a new role.

A few days ago, my friend Lyn sent me an email introducing me to a little known, ancient Hindu goddess, Akhilandeshvari. In Sanskrit, “akhilanda” means “never not broken” and “ishvari” means “goddess” or “female power.” So, Akhilanda is the Always Broken Goddess; she is also called the Crocodile Goddess (link below).

A goddess riding a crocodile! . . . What could be more fitting during our trip through the underworld! I’ve never painted a crocodile before… but I set right to work. Painting this fearsome creature allowed me to enter into the power and essence of this animal archetype.

Crocodiles are present in many Hindu myths. The predatory crocodile plucks its prey from the banks of the river, drags it in its powerful jaws into the water, and spins it until it is disoriented… and breaks.”(1,2) Perhaps, Stoneberg suggests, the crocodile represents our reptilian brain, which is where we feel fear.

What does the Crocodile goddess represent in our daily lives and journey through our hero’s journey mandala?

When you are spinning and disoriented after your partner does the unthinkable or leaves you, or you lose your job, your home, or your health, in this moment you feel “broken” your future dissolves in front of you. Since this is mandala is primarily about birth as a hero’s journey, we need to consider circumstances when parents or birth peeps are likely to feel “broken” or lose sight of their future. For example, mothers who envisioned birthing normally anticipate “loss of their future” when, in pregnancy, they are warned or told an intervention (induction, cesarean, etc) may be in their future. When a baby is born premature, sick, or dies, parents experience a profound “loss of future.” You can recall or think of many examples.

When the Crocodile plucks us unawares from the banks of our comforts and routines, we experience sudden loss of control and certain uncertainty—not only of this crisis-moment but of our imagined future, too. In the croc’s spin, we can’t think what we would do next or even think to find a way out. We may try to protest, but shortly go to “pieces” (literally!) Unmoored from our steady idea of the future, we have no idea how to go forward; we are either indecisive or impulsively quick to decide. . .

Ancient mythology is ambiguous, so here’s another take: Akhilanda is not the fearsome Croc’s prey; she refuses to avoid or reject her fear; instead, she rides on it’s back.

Today I spoke with two mothers who had truly gentle, straightforward labors, births, and postpartum transitions. They did not encounter a crocodile or tiger on their journey. Although not every woman will need to ride her “crocodile” through one of the Gates of Laborland, no one knows that to be the case in advance. For this reason, mothers need to learn how face their tiger and ride their crocodile so that if they need to during their Ordeal, they know how!

Most birth peeps are prepared to encounter the unexpected in labor, they are trained to know what to do when the unexpected happens. Taking action during a crisis is one way to avert trauma, because when we take action we feel less powerless—in that moment. The trend is to inform mothers and fathers about what Ones Who Know will do in various crisis, but they are not prepared themselves to envision what they—as parents—will do or can do to help or to cope—i.e., ride their crocodile!

In-Love,

Pam

(Croc of Trivia for the Day:
A croc’s bite comes down with a whopping 5000 pounds of pressure per inch!

Mama crocs lay eggs in nests on the banks of rivers. Then they leave. Baby crocs have a special tooth to crack their egg. They make their way to the river, and find their mother, who then carries them in her mouth.

References
1 Stoneberg, Eric (2011, Jan). retrieved from: http://sugarhillyoga.com/2011/01/13/2738058935/

2 Peters Julie J.C. (June 6, 2011), “Why Lying Broken in a Pile on Your Bedroom Floor is a Good Idea.” Retrieved from: www.elephantjournal.com

AVOID SOY PRODUCTS DURING PREGNANCY

2011-06-03T06:26:00.000-07:00

Good Morning Birth Peeps,
We are returning to Change #2, Teaching Parents Prenatal Nutrition. Here is a brief, special announcement. Make sure every woman who is planning to get pregnant, is pregnant, or who may use soy formula, knows about the research regarding soy and the health of our babies.

SOY IS NOT A HEALTH FOOD:
AVOID SOY PRODUCTS DURING PREGNANCY

We typically think of soy products (e.g., tofu, soy milk and cheese, soy-meat, soy-based formula) as “health foods.” Soy is nutritious in small amounts, however it is nearly impossible for us to eat small amounts anymore as 55–70 percent of all processed and packaged food in supermarkets have some soy product in them! And, 79 percent of oil or fat in processed food is soy (in United States).1 Soy in one form or another is in your salad dressings, chips, cookies, crackers, breads, cakes, and chocolate. It’s injected into meat and cereal, gum, and organic food. It’s a main ingredient in power bars. Ironically, people on health food diets eat the most soy.

There is growing concern that a pregnant mothers ingesting excessive amounts of estrogen from the amount of soy in our diet (plus the phytoestrogens present in pesticides which are built into gmo soy and other foods), especially in the first trimester, may be contributing to health problems in the baby:
* low birth weight,
* malformation of the baby’s sex organs,
* thyroid function,
* the timing of the onset of puberty and fertility later in life.

Why are soy products a particular problem in pregnancy?
Soy contains isoflavones, a type of phytoestrogen found in plants, i.e., plant estrogen. Phytoestrogens mimic estrogen, block human estrogen and luteinizing hormone, and suppress testosterone in the human body.

Estrogen Overload on Fetal Development and Children’s Health
For the developing fetus, excessive estrogen during crucial stages may lower birth weight, affect subtle neurohormonal and behavior changes, sex organ development, and timing of the onset of puberty.

Girls: Before they are three years old, 1% of girls in the United States are growing breasts and pubic hair, by eight years of age, 14.7 percent of white girls and 48.3 percent of African American girls are in premature puberty. It is speculated that these girls are more likely to have been fed soy formula.2

Boys: Where as girls are experiencing premature puberty due to high levels of estrogen, more boys are experiencing delayed puberty, small penis growth, undescended testicles, and some are even growing breasts. Excess estrogen decreases the male hormone testosterone and luteinizing hormone (which signals the testicles to work). Pediatricians see so many boys with these symptoms, they have coined a name for this: “Developmental Estrogenization Syndrome.”3,4

There has been an increase in the incidence of a malformation of the penis called hypospadias where the urethral opening is on the underside of the penis, instead of at the tip. Correcting hypospadias may require up to ten surgeries. A British study (2000) showed vegetarian mothers are five times more likely to give birth to a boy with hypospadias than mothers who ate a varied diet.5

Let's all do our part to protect the next generation. Spread the word.

Pam

In the Ordeal or Underworld

2011-05-26T08:37:00.000-07:00

Dear Birth Peeps,
I am traveling today to lead a few workshops, but I want to send you another image and another step of the hero's journey.

When considering birth as a hero's journey, we begin to think in terms of "tasks" for the initiate or the "traveler." What are the Tasks of the Ordeal? What are we to do in the "underworld?" What is the "underworld?"

When a human being is living through an Ordeal, they are in the body, eating, drinking, washing clothes, making decisions and phone calls... they have one foot in this world, working, functioning, and often look ordinary... and another foot stepping over an invisible Threshold into the Underworld.

The Underworld can represent our vast unconscious. One of the Tasks of the Ordeal is learning, and learning occurs in the unconscious, it is a search for new knowing, it is a process of constructing new knowledge by reassembling bits of old learning stored in the unconscious in a new way. The Underworld is also where we have buried and forgotten parts of ourselves, our dreams, longings because we learned that doing, saying, and feeling certain things made us unloveable, or outcast, ashamed... So for a long time, while still in our Child, we have long denied ourselves certain ways of being buried in the Underworld, and at some point this unlived part Calls to us because it wants to see the light, to be lived... This Call, from Love to Love, is calling us to become more something, more whole, to live what we came here to live.

Every human being (and every family, religion, culture).... has a vast Underworld where things that are not acceptable are buried, forgotten, out of sight out of mind. When we learn (mostly as children, but at any time) that doing, saying, or being a certain way means we are not loveable, we do not belong, we will not get certain desired rewards... then we put that behavior or feeling in the Underworld.

One sure sign that something is in your Underworld is not only can you not do, say, or feel a certain thing, But! Nobody else can either! When THEY do, say, or express a feeling that is your Underworld, THEY remind you of what you have cut yourself off from, your own numbness, your own longing, curiosity, desire for personal freedom...So THEY are excluded from your circle, dissed, and used as examples, etc. Seeing someone manifesting what you have denied yourself is painful, and it is a Call to know this part of yourself.

The Ordeal takes place in the Underworld, which can be synonymous with the Heart or the secret recesses of our minds. And it is in this Underworld, this Ordeal... we may at last come face to face with something buried, it is here, perhaps in Laborland or postpartum.... we can finally be, do, or say, what we have never allowed ourselves. And this is one reason birth is empowering, and why it is indeed a rite of passage.

It is a passage from living an agreement or Rule we made or learned as a Child... and suddenly passing from the Child (archetypally speaking) to the adult, to a Mother-self, and one step closer to the Hero-Warrior.... still not a Warrior!!

In an oversimplified outline, overlaying the childbearing year as a hero's journey, labor would be the "Ordeal." And in many ways this makes sense because when a woman enters Laborland, from the first contraction... she begins a descent into her intuition, sensing, as she gradually becomes increasingly "mindless" and wordless. In this Underworld, we know what we know from the belly brain, we know in our guts what is happening. And yet, in our present culture what is in the Upper World is a different kind of knowing, evidence-based, rational, outcome focused, and so the woman learns even before labor not to trust or even tune into her gut. It can be said that it is not an individual woman who has put her intuition into the underworld, but a whole culture has done this.

Once again the Muses moved us forward in the Mandala, so I will take you back through some of the earlier stages the Ordeal.

So, the lower right corner, a cold black underworld corner.... wanted to be filled with an imaginal animal, and Underworld figure. Borrowed from the fantastic Toltec art at Teotihuacan in Mexico...

In the Underworld Ordeal I cannot paint images that make sense, that are concrete... I cannot paint images that might represent one person's birth Ordeal but not another, and besides, it is not an IV, or a cesarean, or any of the typical symbols we might associate with birth as an Ordeal that make this part of our journey an Ordeal. While these things are supporting actors in this Great Play of life, the true Ordeal is happening in the psychic realm, in our minds, in our Hearts.... and we are using labor, postpartum.... to take us "home," to break an old agreement, to grow up, to learn self-love. But this does not come easy. The closer we are to giving birth to the baby and to ourselves... the more psychic resistance we encounter.

But... if mothers knew this was part of the journey, they would have a much better chance of understanding their mental Ordeal during and after.... and this understanding would change everything.

So much more to say about all this, but travel preparation takes me away. I will write from Canada.

Pam

BHJ: The Ordeal Begins

2011-05-22T13:01:00.000-07:00

Dear Birth Peeps,
We almost never know the day our Preparation Phase is complete, and we are never as prepared as we would like to be. There is a notion rooted in wishful thinking that if we are "prepared," we will know the Way, we will not get lost or suffer too much.... If we waited until we were "ready" and fully prepared, we would never make the plunge or take risks (and there are those who live their lives like this, waiting for some imaginary moment of readiness or perfection).

The image that came to me was a dolphin and a pregnant woman diving into the Ocean. I did not "plan" to have the underworld represented by the Ocean, but of course it works because the Sea or Ocean is a symbol of the Great Mother, the Great or Dark Feminine in its depth, fluidity, formless potential, unceasing movement. And "diving" into the Unknown, the Ordeal...is a rich, ambiguous symbol of Innocence and Trust, Courage, and Determination in the face of risk and danger.

I painted the image as it came to me, wondering why the dolphin? Friend of humans, an Ally? I looked "dolphin" up in a book of symbols: "a widespread symbol of salvation, transformation and love...in Cretan and Etruscan mythology, the dolphin carries gods, saves heroes from drowning or carries souls to the island of the Blessed...Entwining an anchor, the dolphin may be a symbol of prudence (speed restrained).(1)

Ahhh yes! "Prudence (speed restrained)" ... The dolphin becomes the perfect messanger and symbol of the Ordeal where we are compelled to keep going, slowly feeling our way, even in the midst of periodic exhaustion and collapse...the dolphin buoying us up when needed. The dolphins Heart and Spirit is represented in red

The etymology of the word dolphin is derived from Greek word delphis, and delphys which means "womb." Perhaps the symbol of leaping dolphins once represented sexuality or the promise of regeneration.(2)

In the Underworld, things are not as they seem; nothing is certain; ideas and things come apart. And so I instinctively began to paint in dots... then was reminded of the powerful Aboriginal paintings I saw in Australia...so I brought in a pathway of dots I remembered from one of the Aboriginal paintings.

When the Childbearing Year is a Hero's Journey, the Ordeal can occur at any time. We tend to think of labor as the Ordeal, however, keeping with the ambiguous rule of this "map," it can occur in pregnancy, or postpartum, or even during more than one period.

When the Ordeal begins, one way to go is to embrace it, to dive in. Another way is to wait, to dip your toe in the water to test the water... or wade in slowly.

Initiates can cautiously wait, wade, or dive in. Who decides? At what moment do we know...? What influences determine how we cross this Threshold from planning, comfort, and "knowing" into the Unknown, the Ordeal that will forever change us, inform us, and initiate us.

Contemplating this journey and these questions, and for sure living through it, grows wisdom and compassion. This journey takes us far from certainty and knowing and drops us on the doorstep of Humility and Love.

In-Love,

Pam

1. Tresidder, Jack (2000). Symbols and Their Meanings. London: Duncan Baird Publishers. p 67

2. Barnes, Craig S. (2006). In Search of the Lost Feminine: Decoding the myths that radically reshaped civilization. Golden, Colorado: Fulcrum Publishing.

Tasks of Preparation: Leaving "home"

2011-05-21T06:42:00.000-07:00

Dear Birth Peeps,
Nowadays, when we think of preparing to have a baby during those precious few months--our culture turns our attention to keeping medical prenatal appointments, consumerism (buying baby things), prenatal yoga, and a baby shower or gathering. Childbirth classes may be on that list, and most classes have a "list," an agenda of their own.

But when we look at the childbearing year as a hero's journey, then pregnancy becomes a time for soul-preparation. As I said last week, the tasks vary because some are personal and some are collective. Today I'll mention a few of the collective tasks to give you an idea of what is possible here when we change the paradigm.

The First inevitable task is to "leave home." You can't go on a journey and stay "home." An image of leaving a physical dwelling, a house may come to mind (which is sometimes the case) but on our soul-journey "home" represents an inner place, a relational place; it's about where and with whom you hang out in your thoughts and beliefs, and where you "feel comfortable."

This First Task is therefore uncomfortable, so much so, that many people don't realize the significance of it, or can't actually take up this Task... or at least not before the Ordeal.

"Leaving Home" is an invitation to break away from assumptions or beliefs that were instilled in us as children by adults (through casual remarks and storytelling, intentionally through instruction, or even through our own child-imagination!). Until this critical moment in our lives, we may have assumed certain assumptions and rules (around birth and parenting) made sense and were absolutely the way it is and should be.

Stepping into or toward another level of adulthood, parenthood, consciousness... requires us to take a step away from at least one or two beliefs, assumptions, or relationship with someone who still holds dearly to those assumptions.

"Leaving Home" can be an emotional or social crisis for some mothers (or others) on the birth hero's journey... because leaving home may mean not going along with family traditions, expectations and beliefs of your own parents, friend, even your partner, or the dominant culture. So it may sound freeing and adventurous, but initially this step alone can be daunting.

As we create a new paradigm for childbirth preparation, this Task must be talked about, planned for, and supported. If a young woman is not supported in this Task, it is easy for her to succumb to family, peer, social, caregiver, or partner pressure, and to make this journey "staying home." Of course, if succumbing to what others think is right doesn't quite work out in the Ordeal, THAT realization may become the CALL that wakes her up, opens the door, and THEN her journey actually begins!!

When this first Task alone is lived, birth in our whole culture changes. Every generation has a new assumption, a wave... but wouldn't it be wise to have the elders be a part of the new wave, rather than the uninitiated reacting alone? Every generation is compelled to "leave home," it is part of human development. However, in the guided hero's journey there is one important difference!

With preparation from elders and the initiated, there is a change that the journeyer will be more prepared within... so that in leaving home she does not "leave herself," she does not abandon herself. With guided preparation, the journeyer undergoes certain "training" so her mind is disciplined, so she has learned certain skills she will need in her Ordeal... and these are not skills she can know to develop on her own as she is yet uninitiated. She needs an elder, an initiated by life person to help her in this preparation.

Presently, peers who have incomplete understanding are doing the initiating (through unprocessed stories, opinions, jokes) and advising whether the initiate should leave home or not. Presently, pregnant women, initiates, are being overloaded and bombarded with information electronically--but there is no "relationship" or contemplation with an app coming thru your smart phone. It is a tragic mistake to think that evidence-based information can replace an elder who speaks to the heart of the initiate and helps her grow determination and self-knowledge.

There is so much more to say about this, but it cannot be done through this blog. Again, it takes time to contemplate the depth of this paradigm, and in my workshops about the hero's journey, we can do exercises to begin to embody this piece.

Other Tasks of Preparation (for Birth as a Hero's Journey) include practical things, such as learning to cope with pain, mindfulness, learning a new language, and preparing for your Return.

We give very little thought to postpartum in this country... and yet, in the ancient and classic model of the hero's journey... the Return was given a great deal of consideration. In the ancient model, the would-be hero often anticipated being wounded or lost in the Ordeal and arranged for help to ensure her/his Return. So, prenatal preparation for postpartum is a critical piece, a missing piece in our culture.

The painting is continuing, New images are coming to me and appearing on the canvas.
Tomorrow I will post an image....

You cannot learn this paradigm from "a book" or from this blog alone.... this is an ambiguous, multi-layered model that requires you to contemplate its meaning in your own life, in observing others, in reading old myths, or while watching modern movies... you will see this template everywhere.

In-Love,
Pam

Preparation for Birth as a Hero's Journey

2011-05-15T16:23:00.000-07:00

Hi Birth Peeps,
It's time to continue our journey in Birth as a Hero's Journey. Travel interrupted the painting process, and I had to wait for a new image to come to me. I wanted an image that represented long term, big picture, conscious and unconscious life preparation for the big things we take on in life, or the big things that come our way--which include birth and the transition to parenthood!

In the photo you see the addition of a "row of shoes," from baby booties, children's shoes, soccer shoes and soccer ball, heels ... to hiking boots... Shoes are ambiguous and collective symbols that speak to each of us... walking through our life.

Below the shoes you see a shelf of books, from baby/children's books to text books... We learn from formal schooling, novels, and all sorts of written word.

So what does a woman need to do as part of her conscious preparation before birth and her transition to parenthood?

I like to think of the Preparation phase in terms of specific Tasks--specific to the mother (or the journeyer). There are certain tasks that are shared by many, and there are tasks that are personal. These tasks do not include buying baby things or showing up for prenatal appointments. No, these tasks are of a different nature; these tasks prepare the pregnant woman (and the father/other mother) for her new role as a mother.... Again this is beyond preparation to be a good health or baby product consumer.

I'd like to invite you to think about what the collective Tasks of Preparation might be. These Tasks will prepare the "initiate" by helping HER develop her ego strength, spiritual strength... and other changes that will build her Endurance during the Ordeal--in this case, labor or the hard work of those first months of motherhood.

If we want to begin to "initiate" parents, not just inform them, WE have to begin to see differently, and think differently. Please, feel into this, or reflect on your own experiences (what you did, or wished you had done, to prepare in this soulful way) and jot down your ideas. It seems it is difficult for followers to comment on this blog, but if you can figure out how to do it... please respond to this blog as this is a conversation that will be very juicy.

Warmly,

Pam

A Childbirth Mentor's observations of two childbirth classes

2011-05-10T17:59:00.000-07:00

Dear Birth Peeps,
I was in North Carolina for a week, then home, recovering and catching up, so I have been out of touch with you. My last blog posting was on clarifying the true objectives of childbirth classes--and really asking ourselves what it is parents are learning. One of our BFW Mentors wrote me a thoughtful response about her recent observations of two childbirth classes in her area.

"One class was from a home birth perspective, the other was in the hospital. Both teachers thought, and said, that they were open to different perspectives on birth, but they clearly were not. Both teachers, in their own way, seemed to be driven by trauma around birth, and would validate only one perspective: theirs.

"One thing that was lacking in the home birth classes was preparation for when things don't go smoothly. It is important for classes to inspire parents around the beauty of birth, the great mystery of it, and the truth that birth often unfolds smoothly. . . when left alone. Not all labors are meant to be left alone; it's important for parents to feel empowered in knowing when to ask for intervention, and feel good about accepting it.

"To only briefly acknowledge the possibility of things not going so smoothly, and to immediately downplay it, may leave parents without tools to get through their labor. [I noticed] the teacher would catch herself while describing a complication, and upon sensing rising tension in the air, she would immediately say things like, 'But that is not what is going to happen with you. That is not the type of birth you’ll have. You’ll be at home and things will be fine.' And the parents would immediately agree. I understand why she did this; she wanted the parents to feel confident in their ability to give birth. And, although the parents were happy to hear her prediction that their birth would be "fine,"... I suspect their fears are still simmering just below the surface. To say that difficult things can happen, but then try to quell fear through talking about how unlikely it is, does not empower or prepare parents.

"At the hospital, the childbirth classes could hardly be called classes. You put it perfectly when you said they were “An Orientation to the Policies, Beliefs, and Attitudes of Birth in Our Hospital.“ There was a lack of important information, time spent on unnecessary information, and some downright mis-information. It was so hard to witness.

"And its funny, I’m just realizing how much time she spent “selling” herself and her classes to the parents. She told them, 'You will all do great because you will be prepared since you took these classes.'or, "When a nurse says there is a 'screamer' in room 103, I know its not one of my mommies.'(The teacher constantly referred to the babies as 'my babies' and mothers as 'my mommies,' which absolutely drove me crazy!) [Examples include:] 'My mommies know that hee-hee got you in and hee-hee will get you out,' or, advice such as, 'Don’t waste your energy screaming.' It was maddening.

"What struck me about these classes was the pure innocence of the parents. . . to watch their facial expressions, and hear what questions they asked, and what questions they didn’t ask, was really eye-opening.

". . . I wanted to take them all home with me and mentor them . . . [offer them] the opportunity to grow, look within, build confidence, widen their expectations around birth, challenge themselves, develop tools for coping, and build connections with other parents!"

It takes great discipline and self-awareness to not "sell" a desired outcome, and to be able to have dialogs about the wide spectrum of possibilities in a way that the parents are informed and self-aware.

For a teacher to call a a pregnant woman-client, "mommy," or refer to another laboring mother as "a screamer" underscores our concern that the purpose and potential of childbirth classes are undervalued in our culture. I propose that the whole model of childbirth teacher training become a discipline that includes more in-depth preparation and personal growth--in addition to acquiring a certain body of contemporary birth knowledge.

Pamjavascript:void(0)

Birth Story Medicine: Topic of Radio Interview on Wednesday

2011-04-25T18:14:00.000-07:00

Dear Birth Peeps,
One way to change birth in our culture is to heal our birth stories, and bring awareness to how and where we tell them.

Join me and Marianne Perchlik, who is interviewing me about Birth Story Medicine, on April 27, Wednesday morning, 8:30 to 10:00 am EST on her show "The Quilting Hour."
Go to http://www.wgdr.org/quiltinghour.html to find out about live streaming.

Pam

#25 cont. Suitcase Full of Assumptions and Agreements

2011-04-23T17:51:00.000-07:00

Hi Birth Peeps,
After the Child internalizes their Book of Rules and grows up, s/he leaves home to make their way in the world. They pack up their clothes, books, and whatnot -- and the invisible Book of Rules they learned or made up as little kids--and they continue to follow those Rules.

After the Call, there are several tasks that ideally need to be done before the Ordeal begins. I have not yet been inspired to paint images for those tasks. However, the next image that did come to me this week was a metaphorical Suitcase of Assumptions and Agreements, made and gathered in childhood, and carried through out life. Not only do we carry it about with every move, new relationship, and new job, but we also pass the Suitcase down to the next generation.

In a dream I had years ago, I saw my Great Grandmother being given an overstuffed leather suitcase on her wedding day, and I saw her pass it down to my Grandmother on her wedding day, and then to my mother on her wedding day. In the next dream-scene, I am sitting in the shade of an crab apple tree in one of my childhood homes, emptying out the suitcase, looking at all the agreements on scraps of paper...sorting them... keeping some and putting others in piles to return to my mother and my grandmothers (who gladly take them back from the grave).

From the dream I realized that we all preserve certain assumptions and "traditions" from our family of origin, and continue living them (because they are familiar or still work for us); others we do not keep.

So a few days ago the Suitcase of Rules wanted to be painted next the the descending ladder, and suddenly a few sheets of paper blew away in the wind. Clearly, the suitcase won't fit through the hole descending into the Ordeal Phase, the underworld of labor.

(By the way, the other day I was having an appointment with Alberto, my hairdresser, who is from Mexico. He was telling me about his dos tias (two aunties) who were parteras (midwives). He said they taught mothers that labor was an "underworld, and labor for women was battle so they had to be Warriors. Do you know what the battle is about?, he asked me. They believe the mother must go to the place between worlds to get her baby, sometimes there is a great battle for her to get the baby and bring it to the family...)

When a human being makes a hero's journey, whether it is through labor or illness... it is inevitable that one of the old agreements/assumptions will be taken, or broken. And this little death allows for the birth of a new agreement or belief.

Warmly,
Pam

#25 continued... Spider Woman's Drawing

2011-04-22T12:24:00.000-07:00

Hi Birth Peeps,

We are going to go out of sequence. I've been working daily on the mandala painting, making the geometrical lines and shapes more exact, and many minor changes. Here's a photo of the whole mandala... in progress.

A few days ago I woke up and the muse said, "Put the Spider Woman Drawing above the bones." I got out of bed, made tea, and painted in my pajamas.

When I first saw the Spider Woman Drawing in a Through the Labyrinth by Herman Kern, it drew me in, even before I knew the story about it. My eye, and my finger wanted to trace it over and over. Here is the story (it's in the Labyrinth of Birth)--in case you haven't read it, I'll include it here:

"When death comes to the stone-age people of Malecula, an island in the South Pacific, the dead person's soul approaches the entrance to the underworld and finds it guarded by Le-Le-Lev, the Spider Woman. Le-Le-Lev draws a single unbroken line in the sand, then erases half of it. The dead person's soul has to complete the drawing to be allowed to enter. If s/he has prepared for her/his "death," she/he will know how to draw it...and will then pass to the underworld where there is a beautiful lake (representing the Water of Life). If the person is not prepared, cannot complete the labyrinth... then Spider Woman will eat them.

I was very surprised when this wanted to be painted in... it is here for now, but it might be covered up. Tomorrow I will post yesterday's painting and story.

Change #26 Shining the Light of Truth on Hospital Classes: Tell the Truth #1

2011-04-21T07:49:00.000-07:00

Good Morning Birth Peeps!

My muse has been directing the painting... out of order. Imagine that! I've asked for some direction today for the next section in sequence so all the birth peeps can follow logic, but you may have to follow my muse with me. Tomorrow we will continue the Hero's Journey.... Today let's begin a mini-series of "Tell the Truth" ideas to change birth in our culture.

On Sunday I had my favorite veggie crepe and salad breakfast at the Green Café with Tara, a critical-thinking friend who is also a doula. She was telling me about how during their first pregnancy, she and her husband signed up for childbirth classes at the hospital where they planned to birth, but for some reason that class canceled after the first two of six, and they were referred to complete the series with another teacher in another childbirth class in a hospital only 17 miles away.

One childbirth class is as good as another, right?
So they transferred classes, no questions asked.

Tara observed that the classes were only 17 miles apart, but they were worlds apart. The first hospital had a 17% cesarean rate, and the second had a 35% cesarean rate. Not surprisingly, this was also reflected in the two hospital’s classes, where not only were the teachers and curriculum “worlds apart,” but so were the attitudes and expectations of the parents. Parents in the second class (who had received prenatal care from, and who planned to birth at, the “high cesarean rate hospital,” seemed to have adopted that hospital’s attitudes. For example, when Tara announced to her first class that she was hoping to have a water birth in that hospital, the teacher and parents accepted and talked openly about this idea. But, when she introduced herself and her water birth plan at the second hospital class, one father said, “Water birth is gross,” and the teacher did not use this as an opportunity to talk about the benefits of option of water birth. Parents who form a class are not merely passive recipients of information in a medical birth culture, they are also unwitting “teachers” and participants in perpetuating it.

Although there are exceptions, for the most part, hospital childbirth classes don’t actually teach parents about childbirth. The only thing they teacher can teach is how to be a patient in the hospital-that-paid-them? Hospital classes don’t tend to teach parents about the wide-range of choices that are available nowadays—only the choices that are available in that hospital.

To be fair, some home birth classes and other methods of childbirth preparation can also be one-sided and omit conversations and preparation regarding certain aspects of medicalized birth in our culture, e.g., how to negotiate decision-making in the hospital (in case there is a transfer), or how to cope with pain, or how to give birth by cesarean.

So, today’s proposal for changing birth in our culture:

Tell the Truth. Don’t mislead parents. If classes don’t actually teach parents about “birth” from their perspective and offer practical information about a wide-range of options that are possible, then, don’t call the “childbirth classes.” So let’s all tell more of the truth now by calling hospital childbirth classes that teach about birth in that hospital what they really are: An Orientation to the Policies, Beliefs, and Attitudes of Birth in Our Hospital.

Pam

Answering the Call

2011-04-16T09:12:00.000-07:00

Good Spring Morning to you, Birth Peeps!

I am often aware or tuned into a Call to action, and I know almost immediately when I am Refusing a Call... but I don't always know when I have said "yes" or what exactly I just said "yes" to! We always think in the beginning it is one thing, and it turns out to be something quite different. But if we knew what was ahead, we would have said a logical no. In retrospect we may be able to construct a story about "answering the Call" (or any other part of the hero's journey), but when we are living it, we are in the labyrinth of life and don't quite know where we are or how it all fits together.

The hero's journey and all the moving parts I am describing to you are not something you can figure out with certainty in your own life. This work is more subtle, ambiguous--it's not like hard science where things can be measured, analyzed and "proven." However, this model provides a framework for understanding Great Stories, certain fairy tales and myths, and your life.

We can make a lot of jokes about "Answering the Call," e.g., "Did 'I' agree to THIS?,' "Okay, I've changed my mind now, I want to reverse this Call!," and so on.

At some point we do take a "yes-step," sometimes it's an enthusiastic leap, (or perhaps Spirit or Fate shoves us) in the direction of our Calling. From that moment on, it seems as if all the forces about us and within us conspire to bring about events that help us incubate, gestate, or prepare for the desired new "birth" of self or a particular mission.

Here is a favorite quote of mine from The Soul's Code by James Hillman:

"There is m ore in a human life than our theories of it allow. Sooner or later something seems to call us onto a particular path. You may remember something... an urge out of nowhere, a fascination, a peculiar turn of events... This is what I must do, this is what I've got to have. This is who I am."

I want to reiterate that what the Call was really all about may become more apparent years later. When I think back on my cesarean surgery/birth experience as a hero's journey now, I had no idea at the time what I was being Called to. My uninitiated, youthful, egotistical mind was certain I was making "informed choices" and that the desired birth I had "chosen" for myself was my Call, so of course I leaped and said yes. Now I tend to think that when it is Love Calling us to Love, true self-Love,, Love will use events in our lives to wake us up to the healing we took birth for. To get that healing often requires a great shock, loss, wounding...It isn't always as pretty as the "Secret" makes it sound... although there is a thread of truth in everything.

Living the hero's journey is an ambiguous and multi-layered. Our Western minds want to make it rigid, linear, pin it down... but it can't be (unless you are writing a fairytale or biography and the events have to follow a sequence to make sense).

So the question often comes up around birth as a hero's journey. How do you know if you are experiencing this or did experience it? Let's continue the journey, and later you can decide for yourself. Here's a hint: the Hero's Journey doesn't have anything to do with having the birth you want(ed), birthing normally or having/not having interventions, it's not about not taking drugs... this is all about something that can't be charted in your birth records. It is the inner journey of birth. We'll continue next week. Hope you have a lovely weekend.

Pam

Refusal of the Call

2011-04-15T08:09:00.000-07:00

Good Morning Birth Peeps,

The Call inevitably calls us away from “home,” that is, away from at least one aspect of what we were raised to believe, or what our family and friends would approve of, who we think we are, and away from what has been comfortable for us in the past. If we were not “called away” we would still be doing what we have always done and believed… and while this is part of the mundane life we all must live to get on in the world… if we are still “at home,” we are not actively in a hero’s journey.

Part of the hero’s journey must include Refusal of the Call. Naturally, this Call to “leave home” is disturbing or even alarming, and thus invokes the necessary “Refusal of the Call.” This is when we begin to feel nostalgia for our roots; we rationalize and argue for common sense ; and we weigh “what will people think” against taking the risk to follow our soul’s longing. In “Refusal,” we hesitate to speak or act in response to the call—and are almost compelled to revert to old, familiar patterns of behaving.

Why Refuse the Call to Love? Because leaving home activates the human’s biggest fear: abandonment, loss of approval, being alone, or being blamed if the journey “doesn’t turn out well.” On some level we know that undertaking this journey will change us at a core level, and therefore our relationships, and this is a kind of psychic/social “death.” We fear death, even physical, social, and psychic little deaths.

And because we don’t always feel ready, worthy, prepared enough to answer the Call to something new. It may be wise to wait, to grow spiritual strength, to gain information or skills that will insure our ability to endure and Return from the Ordeal.

Consider times in your life when you Heard the Call and Refused the Call. How did you know to wait rather than leap impulsively into the adventure? What, or who, would you have had to leave behind? During the Refusal, what happened?

Everything is exactly as it should be, the only way it could be in this moment. If it is time to wait and grow Soul and skills, then do this wholeheartedly.

Tomorrow, we will consider Answering the Call.

In-Love,
Pam

Hearing the Call

2011-04-14T11:54:00.000-07:00

Dear Birth Peeps,
Today’s mandala painting update…. The fallopian flower hangs over the ovary represented by a life force in orbit with a golden egg bursting forth. The baby is falling into its world and life from a spinning galaxy representing Spirit…. which is also sending the archetypal Call into the Ear.

In her eloquent poem, The Call, by Oriah Mountain Dreamer, she begins:

“I have heard it all my life, a voice calling
a name I recognized as my own.”

The would-be hero is Called to make the journey “home,” to Love. There are three mini-phases of the Call: Hearing the Call, Refusing the Call, and Answering the Call. Today we will consider from where the Call comes and on Hearing the Call.

“Sometimes it comes as a soft-bellied whisper.
Sometimes it holds an edge of urgency. But always it says:
Wake up my love. You are walking asleep. There’s no safety in that!”
--Oriah Mountain Dreamer

From where does the Call come? The Call comes from Love--to Love; Love is constantly, relentlessly calling to us. We often fail to hear the Call over the chatter of our ego-monkey-mind; that's okay, it is persistent. Eventually we tune in to hear the Call that is whispered or the one that is embodied in a burning feeling that we must do something, know something, go somewhere—even when it is irrational. The Call may come in the form of a word spoken or written by another, through illness, accidents, accidental meetings, or dreams.

We often think of the Call as a call to action or a profession, for example, “I was called to be a doula,” “I suddenly had an overwhelming desire to be a mother,” or “I had a vivid dream I was birthing without hands.”
These Calls wake us up to use our work and life (as a mother, partner, professional) to realize the truth of who we are, to loving ourselves, to taking another step on the hero’s journey.

When you think of birth as a hero’s journey, what are the varied expressions of the Call? What is it you were, or are called to, as a mother? As a birth peep? (Hint: this Call is more about you, not a mission statement to change or heal others. In the hero’s journey, you are using birth work to grow your soul!) What is Calling you?

Hear Your Call,

Pam

First Phase of Preparation for the Hero's Journey

2011-04-11T20:33:00.000-07:00

Dear Birth Peeps,
I am home from the ICAN Conference in St. Louis where over 250 passionate women (and a few men and lots of cute babies) gathered to learn about cesareans from many experts in the field. This was a well-organized, warm, gathering--and I learned a lot, met up with old friends, and made many new friends, too. Some are joining Birth Peeps. Welcome!

I'll say more about ICAN and cesarean prevention and healing soon, but let's continue with Change #23. Almost the first thing I did when I returned from St. Louis was change into my painting clothes and get out the brushes. My easel is broken, so I painted with the canvas on the floor. (Today my son, Lucien, came over and helped me glue the crack in the easel so tomorrow, I should be working in an "optimal painting position!"

The Hero's Journey is divided into three phases: Preparation, Ordeal and Return. I like to further divide the Preparation Phase into Unconscious Preparation and Conscious Preparation. The symbolic Ear in the upper right-hand corner of the painting, along the line that divides the Unconsc and Consc phases of Preparation in this mandala, represents the archetypal Call... The Call which invokes the Conscious Preparation Phase. (More on this later this week or next.)

When we are wee, innocent, magical-thinking, dreamy children.... we are rapidly, often passively, learning so many skills and lessons that will potentially serve and limit us during our adult life. These "lessons" are represented by the small notches along the rim of the mandala circle. There are millions of these moments!

We aren't learning these skills with any intention or foreknowledge that they will help us through an Ordeal twenty or thirty years or longer down the road...kids can't even think that far ahead! And yet, these social, mental, and physical skills will one day play a part.

We try to avoid unnecessary trauma for children, and yet sometimes a trauma in childhood plays a positive role in activating skills and personality characteristics that will later be helpful in an Ordeal. It's not that we "needed" the trauma, but being resourceful humans, we may source some strength from it.

When we were children, adults consciously and unconsciously taught us about being human, and how to fit in and function in our culture... in whatever way they understood it and learned it from the humans who taught them!

Pre-verbal children learn through verbal and non-verbal messages. And, because they don't censor what they see and hear, they see and hear EVERYTHING.... As soon as they have language, little humans begin naming everything, and they ask adults about the meaning of everything or they give their own meaning to the life around them and in them; that's why as soon as humans have learned enough language to tell stories, they become perpetual storytellers--ever narrating their life.

The task of seven year-old children (+/- a few years) is to learn Rules and to MAKE RULES. They want to know the Rules for games and for being human; they tend to follow rules, and they insist others to follow rules!

While everyday life is going on, e.g., ordinary conversations at mealtimes, facial expressions,special events, bedtime storytelling.... children ever-observing the world around them, listening, sitting in the car, playing at the feet of adults, watching tv, reading books....are making and reinforcing Rules that give their world order, keep them safe, tell them how to fit in or withdraw...

Some of these Rules they learned from the adults around them. If a Child is frequently given food when she says she is hungry, she makes an assumption about a number of things: food, asking and receiving, and security. This predictable relationship with food and her adult caretaker shapes many Rules and expectations around other relationships. Children generalize. If their primary caretakers are loving, that is their whole world and what they expect of others. And the inverse is equally true. If a Child is hungry and asks for food, and none is given, or the adult blames the Child... then the Child begins to tell herself a certain story and makes Rules to survive another way.

Rules and beliefs are tethered to emotion, memory, and longing. And some of the Rules the child makes up because they don't know the Rule, or the Rule they were given doesn't fit...

Every Rule serves a purpose: They tell us how to get love, be loveable, safe, and belong. And there are Don't Rules, Never do...Rules, and Always do...Rules. Rules often sound Absolute, but many Absolute Rules have a hidden Exception that only the Rule-Maker knows--(and this is what makes us so complicated and unpredictable at times).

In the painting, I depict the Child earnestly, eagerly, and attentively learning and writing down all the Rules he and she are learning. The little girl is proud that she has learned the Rules and knows what to do to be loved, to belong, and to get it right.

Later we will revisit how Rules play a crucial part in the Ordeal and Return. But this is enough for now.

Warmly,

Pam

The Fallopian Flower and Baby

2011-04-07T07:22:00.001-07:00

#25 continued....

2011-04-07T07:21:00.000-07:00

Dear Birth Peeps,

As I write you this morning, my bags are packed and I am preparing to fly to the ICAN Conference in St. Louis where I am giving a talk on essentially the Return portion of the hero's journey. During her Return, the would be-hero (she's not a hero until she completes the Return) must pass through the nine birth story Gates. Or she will will remain in the "underworld" of birth--where she will have plenty of company in our culture! More on that later.

Today I wanted to take my readers from the beginning, so you can understand the profound possibilities in seeing birth as a hero's journey. And so, in my mandala, we begin in the North. (This is still the underpainting...as it develops, I'll return to this image...) You see a "Fallopian Flower" and her ripe egg/seed, and a baby falling toward the circle, which represents the world, her world, her life, the beginning of her journey.

An innocent human being is born into a world, a culture, a family, a religion, a certain kind of diet, and millions of beliefs, assumptions, Rules... and the Child begins to learn. At first the learning is unconscious, then when language and reason develops, the child becomes conscious of what s/he is learning. But, learning is always unconscious, the conscious mind just realizes or articulates what has been learned.

That's all I have time for today, we will continue....

Pam

Change # 25 Envision the Childbearing Year as a Hero's Journey

2011-04-04T14:17:00.000-07:00

Dear Birth Peeps,
Last week I showed you the beginning of a 36" x 36" acrylic painting of a mandala I am making depicting birth as a hero's journey. I hope you will enjoy learning more about birth as a hero's journey as you follow the painting.

I started out with an idea of what I wanted this mandala to express, and how I wanted it to be same or different from the first HJ mandala I made a few years ago. I often paint at the crack of dawn for an hour or so, and again before I go to bed. Friday night I began painting around 10:30 and was surprised to discover when I was washing my brushes that it was 3 am!

Now a few weeks into the painting, it is beginning to "speak" to me. Sometimes I have a dream that guides the next image that gets painted on the canvas; I dream a brush painting a symbol or line--and that is how I know what to do next. Before I begin each session, I stand before her and ask her how she is, what does she want next? Then I follow... For example, last night when I asked, she said, "The Gates are all closed... you need to open them."

"What! I'll have to repaint three Gates, and I like them!..."
She insisted... and told me what color to use to rub them out and so, I begin again.

Other times my muse comes through a chance phrase in a book or a conversation with a friend. On Saturday I had breakfast with a friend, Joseph, who is a scholar and poet. He was telling me about Judson Jerome, author of The Poet and The Poem.... when Joseph said, "the poet Names things..." I saw clearly in my mind the Poet in my painting, and where she must be. I could not wait to get back to the easel to scrumble in a place for her....

Mandala is a synonym for sacred space or enclosure, a space created for a ritual or in this case, a rite of passage journey. In Sanskrit mandala means circle or round object. The circle represents the womb, sun, moon, eternity, and the Masculine principle. The square represents the Feminine principle, the four elements, stability. There is a dynamic relationship between circles and squares.

You can see the yin/yang symbol in the large circle representing dynamic movement in the hero's journey; the spots in the two halves of the yin yang symbol remind us that masculine and feminine energies are interdependent. Presently the yin/yang colors are too contrasted--a new softer color is needed.

This photo brings you up to Friday...We will continue tomorrow.

Warmly,
Pam

Change #24 Teach Youth about the History & Evolution of Birth in Our Culture

2011-04-03T20:29:00.001-07:00

Dear Birth Peeps,
On Friday I was a guest speaker at a charter high school in Santa Fe where my eldest son, Sky, is a history teacher. The kids in three of his classes got a kick out of having their teacher's "mom" be his guest speaker! I shared a few colorful and key highlights of childbirth and medical history with the students, and answered questions about birth in our culture.

Childbirth will be one of the great rites of passage in many of these youths lives, and yet they are not prepared to understand birth in a cultural context, or any context—until they are in their third trimester! We all know that “passive” childbirth education begins long before a woman/couple becomes pregnant—and too often that education is rendered from television and birth stories which may entertain or arouse emotionally-charged imagery—but may not challenge youth to think about childbirth in a broad context of history and culture.

History courses usually focus on politically and economically relevant events such as wars, inventions, revolutions, but rarely touch on how “mundane,” peripheral events, such as birth and medicine, were influenced by, and influential in, those events.

I prepared a brief power point presentation with images of ancient and modern birth, and interesting characters such as Ignaz Semmelweis (who is famous for observing the difference in death rates between doctors’ and midwives’ patients in a Vienna hospital and made the connection between childbed fever and germs being introduced from unwashed hands—because doctors came from autopsies to births without washing their hands in the good ol’ days), William Smellie (who in the mid-1700’s went to births in drag to make the ladies feel more comfortable with a man in their birth room) and Mary Breckinridge and the midwives on horse back in rural Kentucky....(How did the midwives arriving at home births on horseback with just a pair of scissors and herbs in saddle bags achieve remarkable results in home births in the late 1920’s? They had no drugs, no IV’s (not invented until late 1930’s), no drugs to induce labor or kill pain, no forceps or means of performing cesareans—and yet no mothers died and the neonatal mortality rate dropped dramatically after the midwives came, and remained well below the national (hospital) averages. They taught mothers good prenatal nutrition, and they did not interfere with the natural process

I actually had a few learning moment of my own while presenting. In 1600, an English physician, Chamberlin invented forceps. In that era, many children were orphaned and poor, and made their living in factories. There were no child labor laws, and children were exploited; they worked long hours in dark factories and had little food—which affected normal bone development causing rickets. Rickets contracted the pelvic opening; women with rickets had more difficulty birthing normally. It would be three more centuries before there was anesthesia, antibiotics, IVs, suture, or surgical skill to perform safe cesareans. So Chamberlin must have seen women suffer and die, and he invented a way to intervene—the only way he could think of at the time.

For almost four decades, I have been stuck in an absolute, unyielding belief that Chamberlin and his invention, forceps, were barbaric. This is because I was a very young nurse and midwife when I first saw forceps used; I did not have a historical perspective—until Friday. In a singular moment in the high school classroom I felt a wave of understanding and compassion expand my understanding (which is not to say that forceps should not be used with caution and skill).

In one of Sky’s classes he showed his students a very cool video of an “animated” line graph that showed when the average of death rates in various countries increased from the turn of the century to present. From 1900 to 1940, life expectancy was about the same everywhere (30-40 years). Around the mid-1940’s, the life span in developed countries began to rise rapidly, by 1950, it was 68 years!

What happened in the 1940’s?
Penicillin was discovered in 1929 but not developed into a pharmaceutical until the early 1940’s; other antibiotics followed. IV’s were invented in 1935, and improved and made available after 1940. Those two changes alone saved many lives on the battlefield and in hospitals. These important contributions simultaneously coincided with the ongoing campaign to eradicate midwifery and move birth to the hospitals. But it was not the “hospital” or the absence of midwifery that made birth safer: it was primarily attributed to antibiotics, IV’s and blood transfusions.

The students were completely present and asked great questions from a place of innocence and wisdom. Every class raised the questions: Why are there so many cesareans?, Why did they bottle feed babies?, How could they think that formula was better for the baby than what mothers' own bodies made?, Why did they give mothers Scopolamine? (Why indeed?!), and What about home birth?

I wanted to show you photos of Sky and I in his classroom... but the student photographer took blurry photos (maybe it’s my camera because a lot of my photos turn out the same way!). Nonetheless, the image of these youth considering the history of childbirth will be remembered by me and, I imagine, all of the students as well.

Please, find an opportunity to teach youth about the history and evolution of childbirth in our culture.

Good Night,

Pam

Embodied Teaching & Learning with Paulo Freire (#23 cont'd)

2011-03-30T07:15:00.000-07:00

Good Morning Birth Peeps, Welcome New Peeps!

When I was in Seattle, my good friend, doula, and one of our beloved mentors, Carrie Kenner gave me a book she values. And I now value it; I read most of it in two sittings! Some of you have read it; it has sold 750,000 copies since it was first published in 1970 (by Continuum Publishing International).

Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire

In the Foreword it is noted that initially Freire's thesis was thought of as "a contribution to illiterate adults in the Third World. If we take a close look, we may discover that his methodology and his educational philosophy are as important for us as for the dispossesed in Latin America..."

...and I put forth that we may find his philosophy and approach will help us understand childbirth "education" and guide our paradigm shift. The book Carrie gave me is tagged with twenty stickers of favorite passages that parallel birth education in our culture. I'll share just a few to stir our change-embers this lovely spring morning.

"The oppressed suffer from the duality which has established itself in their innermost being. They discover that without freedom they cannot exist authentically. Yet, although they desire authentic existence, they fear it. They are at one and the same time themselves and the oppressor whose consciousness they have internalized. the conflict lies in the choice between being wholly themselves or being divided; between ejecting the oppressor within or not ejecting them; between human solidarity or alienation; between following prescriptions or having choices; between being spectators or actors; between acting or having the illusion of acting through the action of the oppressors; between speaking out or being silent, castrated in their power to create and re-create, in their power to transform the world. This is the tragic dilemma of the oppressed which their education must take into account
."

Friere's next observation describes the dominant method of childbirth preparation which largely orients parents to the medical model! Of course, we have a dilemma here; we must weigh the emotional cost of not orienting them to that model when they are mere weeks away from entering it. Again, I push for year long classes as a model that allows time for the uninitiated to embody the paradigm shift.

"Indeed the interests of the oppressors lie in 'changing the consciousness of the oppressed, not the situation which oppresses them;' for the more the oppressed can be led to adapt to the situation, the more easily they can be dominated. ...

"The truth is, however, that the oppressed are not 'marginals,' and not people living 'outside society. They have always been 'inside'--inside the structure which made them 'beings for others.' The solution is not to 'integrate' them into the structure of oppression, but to transform that structure so that they can become 'beings for themselves.'
"

I could excerpt another dozen observations, but perhaps digesting excerpts slowly is better--to allow you to make connections to what you see (or even do) in birth in our culture. Friere refers to Lenin's belief:

"Without a revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement."

Paulo Friere interprets this to mean that "revolution is achieved with neither verbalism nor activism, but rather with praxis, that is, reflection and action directed at the structures to be transformed. The revolutionary effort to transform these structures radically cannot designate its leaders as its thinkers and the oppressed as mere doers."

If we, Birth Peeps, are truly committed to changing birth in our culture, everyone must reflect and take part in a new dialogue that includes deep listening--and more reflection. We cannot wait for a spokesperson or leader to bring about this change on our behalf. Change is at once an individual effort (subjective) and a collective effort when change ultimately occurs for the people, by the people. We do not necessarily all need to act together under an organized plan, but as more individuals reflect and act, momentum builds and collective thought changes.

"

It is absolutely essential that the oppressed participate in the change process with an increasingly critical awareness of their role as Subjects of the transformation. If they are drawn into the process as ambiguous beings, partly themselves and partly the oppressors housed within them... they will merely imagine they have reached power."

Please write your reflections and actions.
Warmly,

Pam

cite: Lenin, "What is to be done?" in Essential Works of Lenin by Henry M Christman.

New Birth as Hero Journey Mandala in Progress

2011-03-26T18:12:00.000-07:00

Hi Birth Peeps,

This week I've been working slowly on a new mandala painting of Birth as a Hero's Journey. I thought it would be fun to share with you.

It is my belief, when we begin to see and live the childbearing year as a hero's journey, birth for women and caregivers will change in profound ways. More on this soon,

Pam

Change #22 HOPE

2011-03-22T11:35:00.000-07:00

Dear Birth Peeps,
It is too easy to become jaded, righteous, or hopeless as we consider the state of the world, and birth in our culture. If we become hopeless, who will dream the healing, who will take action? A friend of mine shared the following excerpt from Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit.

"Causes and effects assume history marches forward; history is not an army, it is a crab scuttling sideways, a drip of soft water wearing away stone, an earthquake breaking centuries of tension. Sometimes one person inspires a movement, or her words do decades later, sometimes a few passionate people change the world; sometimes they start a mass movement and millions do; sometimes those millions are stirred by the same outrage or the same ideal and change comes upon us like change of weather.

"I say this to you because hope is not like a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. I say this because hope is an ax you break down doors with in an emergency; because hope should shove you out the door; because it will take everything. All that the transformations have in common is that they begin in the imagination, in hope.

"To hope is to gamble. It's to bet on the future, on your desires, on the possibility that an open heart and uncertainty are better than gloom and safety. To hope is dangerous, and yet it is the opposite of fear, for to live is to risk.

"...Hope calls for action; action is impossible without hope. To hope is to give yourself to the future, and that commitment to the future makes the present inhabitable."

In-Love and Hope,

Pam

Embodied Teaching & Learning, continued

2011-03-15T12:23:00.000-07:00

Dear Birth Peeps,

I am swirling in the Tao of Embodied Teaching and Learning. One cannot exist without the other. One feeds the other.

A friend of mine told me she overcame her fear of snakes by going through a guided process with live snakes and a "snake mentor." It was not a cognitive (thinking/talking) process. There were no affirmations on her fridge. It was not about exploring her feelings about snakes. Her relationship with (and feelings about)snakes changed through living a hands-on experience with snakes. Now that she is "One Who Knows," she cannot simply help another person who is afraid of snakes overcome this fear by telling what she experienced and learned. However, because she has drunk from this Well, this Water of Knowing is in her body and mind now, and she is more capable of guiding someone through an embodied experience of changing fear into being able to respond--not just with snakes, but in other areas of their life!

Embodied learning and teaching is manifested when we go to the edge, when we take a risk and DO the thing we had not yet done, or thought we could not do. We must live (not theorize) a new relationship with our environment, people, or ourselves.

I am inviting all Birth Peeps to consider what you would do, could do, perhaps have done, to bring birth preparation back into the body. You might not ever do it (I have some ideas that this culture would never allow for) but it is in thinking freely that we get out of the box, and perhaps we find a new task or process the culture would allow for.

Here's the thing. Embodied teaching is not a "tool box." We don't have a "kit" to bring to class. We must become so alive in this approach that, while we may rely on some standard embodied teachings (like the ice contractions for pain-coping practices), we can see what the specific task is for the person we are teaching, and co-create a way for the learner to take a small risk or experiment to experience it.

There can be no attachment to outcome when we undertake embodied teaching or learning. We cannot know ahead of time exactly what the outcome will be, i.e., what the learner will know or do differently, or that in learning they will make "better choices" or have a certain kind of birth/life.

Embodied teaching and learning is rooted in relationship; a sensory and visceral relationship with our immediate environment, emotions, breath, humans, and the chaotic sea of thoughts and assumptions.

When we ourselves have not dared drink from a Well of a certain kind of experience or Knowledge, that knowing is not yet ours. In this case when we want to help, we are inclined to source from the knowledge and experience of others and give cliche advice (or we may lead others to attempt to avoid the thing we ourselves have not yet faced and integrated). It might just be that we can only take others as far as we ourselves have dared to tread, or have been fated to tread!

Time is a great teacher. I think this is why Taoists valued longevity... not because living on earth in itself is so great, but that it takes a long time to have and to integrate experiences that gift us with wisdom and personal freedom.

Warmly,

Pam

Change #21 Embodied Teaching

2011-03-07T09:03:00.000-08:00

Dear Birth Peeps,
I am in Seattle, on my way home to Albuquerque today. I gave a talk at the REACHE conference, the Regional Association of Childbirth Educators, and also a few small talks to the public on Birth as a Hero's Journey and Birth Story Medicine. It was great to spend time with Carrie Kenner, Angie Dobbins and all of the BFW Mentors in the Sea/Tac area.

At the REACHE Conference, I talked about Embodiment, and that it has its own intelligence. Embodied learning is that which cannot be learned from a book, video, power point, or the internet. Embodiment is a way that allows the Word or Image to become Flesh.

We live in our bodies. We birth in our bodies and our emotions. We express and access our knowing through our bodies, non-verbal expression and movement. And this kind of knowing is more direct than any other kind of knowing or learning.

To be an embodied teacher, we must live what we teach, not download it from someone else's knowing (evidence-based information). Although this may be a piece of the inspiration or motivation to learn, it is not the terminal gate of embodied learning!

To be an embodied learner, we must be alive in our emotional and feeling body, and in our imagery. Rather than being in a hyper, note-taking, tense state, (that of rapid beta brainwaves), we must be in a relaxed and receptive state, that of the alpha brainwaves (slow).

Western culture (from kindergarten to professional training as adults) is primarily focused on "disembodied" learning and teaching. Learning to be an "embodied teacher" and to present material in such a way that the receiver is "embodied" is not something we know in our bones. This kind of learning and teaching has literally been "bleached out" of our bones. But anything learned can be unlearned, if the motivation and vision sustains us long enough.

When I began midwifery school, I started in my heart. I had a vision, hope, and trust that filled my being. Of course, every journey begins in Innocence, Trust and as the inner Child, and and some of the initial naivety and innocence is modified in any worthwhile journey. But it was beyond a wholesome modification and maturation. By the end of my training, I was midwifing from my head, disconnected from intuition, and, over time, far from being intact in body, mind and spirit. From my own disembodied being, I taught childbirth classes to parents, from my head to their head. I gave them mixed messages about trusting their body, but separated them from their body with all the heady information. It makes sense that I gave birth the first time from my head, "evidence-based" all the way to the operating room.

It took almost a decade, with constant effort, experiments, and attention to bring my attention, trust, and knowing back down into my body. And to unite what I knew and trusted in a rational way with what I knew and sensed in my body.

The essence of the hero's journey is about learning; it is about embodied learning. It is not about adventures, or getting something.

We begin learning (or begin the Hero's Journey) lop-sided. We are either too much in our Feminine, or too much in our Masculine; we begin too much in our heads, or too much in our senses; too independent or too dependent. As we go through an Ordeal that often takes years (not a three-day weekend, or an "aha" moment, or a few months), we must cultivate and utilize the intelligence, qualities and energies of the "undeveloped" aspect of our self. This is a long, meandering process. Most of it occurs beneath consciousness, beyond conscious intention, and we may not see that it is happening until it "has happened." And then we are "suddenly" able to do things we could not do before, or think in a way we did not understand before.

Through the hero's journey of embodied learning, we do not forget the first learnings, or even abandon them. Rather, our knowing, learning, and capacity for learning, teaching, and problem solving is expanded.

I will continue this thread. But I have not connected with you--my Birth Peeps--for a week, so I wanted to send you my thoughts before I board the plane.

To really change birth in our culture we must prepare parents and birth peeps in a completely new way, which means all of us must unlearn and learn a new way of being, teaching, and learning.

In Seattle...
Love,
Pam

Change #20 An Opportunity to Learn Our Pain Coping Approach LD

2011-02-28T16:11:00.000-08:00

Dear Peeps,

We patiently teach children to cross the street, step-by-step (even though most could probably learn on their own if we let them take their chances--teaching them how to do it--and making them practice with us increases their chances of success).

Birth stories are the most powerful teacher we have, and every birth story is teaching our young and pregnant woman how to cope, or not cope, with the intensity and unknown of labor.

Building a pain-coping mindset is not a "belief." It is learned through repetition, practice, and small successes. It is embodied knowing, embodied in the nervous system.

So learning how to help parents realize what they have already learned, unlearn it, and learn a new mindset is critical to changing birth in our culture.

Virginia is figuring out the technology so we can offer YOU, our Birth Peeps, a pod cast or a Conference Call to share more of the BFW practical approach to building a pain-coping mindset--so you can begin sharing this with parents.

Stay Tuned,

Pam

2011-02-23T09:10:00.000-08:00

Good Morning Birth Peeps,
Kimberly responded to Change #20 telling us about her childbirth classes, and how about five minutes is spent during each class mentioning pain-coping. This is not unique. Many parents over the years have told me that with all the other information and videos that were given, teachers simply "ran out of time" for pain-coping and either "squeezed in a bit of relaxation" at the end, or promised to do more the following week. More time is dedicated to epidural information.

Over the years, postpartum, enlightened (if not burned) parents have taught me that most of the information they learned in classes (including my classes at the time) was not useful in labor, nor could it be remembered in the haze of labor's trance and exhaustion.

The one thing parents have consistently told me--and sadly still are telling me--was that they wished they had learned more about how to embrace and cope with pain, intensity, the unknown, and surprises.

From the wisdom and pleas of unprepared parents, and from knowing (both as a midwife and a mother) what they were saying was absolutely true, I changed my classes decades ago. The Birthing From Within model is based on the wisdom of parents.

There are four beliefs that motivate me to dedicate so much time to building a pain-coping mindset in classes:
1. I believe that the one thing for certain almost every mother will face and embody throughout labor, beginning with early contractions, is an unfamiliar, growing ever stronger, physical experience of dilation (call it pain, rushes, waves or whatever you like), exhaustion, and feeling "lost" or "uncertain" from time to time. Almost every mother will tell you it was more than she expected. She deserves to mentored to meet and move with the power of labor.

2. I also begin with the knowledge that as labor progresses, women shift from rational or thinking, rapid beta brainwaves toward their maternally intuitive, imaginal, slower alpha/theta brain waves. Women labor in their body. Labor is not a concept or a plan to be followed in their mind. So, I want my classes to engage and train the part of their brain in which they will spend most of their time in labor. I want the parents to cultivate emotional and physical skills and mental concentration: things they will need in their labyrinth of birth. At most we have twelve short hours to do this!

("Side Bar:" That said, most of the Fascinating Facts parents learn in their beta-note taking-class brain will fall away in the passion of labor. This is why so many women complain or shrug their shoulders when asked about their childbirth class. They say, "It all seemed interesting at the time, but it wasn't really useful in labor. Don't think I'll do that again." Or worse, as one father told Virginia recently, their previous classes were "boring," "a waste of time," and "irrelevant." And this rap is the recommendation given to peers... which may account for the fall in childbirth class attendance.)

3. Fathers, other mothers, and birth support people also need to learn mindfullness practices--to center themselves in labor; they also need to learn mental concentration in order to support and entrain the mother's efforts in labor. They need step-by-step experience (not cliches) to build genuine confidence in pain-coping and solution-focused thinking. When a mother's support people are afraid of, or uncomfortable with, her pain, intensity, or exhaustion in labor, the mother sees this and may want to take care of them by controlling or stopping her expression of pain in any number of ways. It is imperative for the support people to be prepared--so they will not feel powerless.

Perhaps it is natural for women in labor to find their way through the pain and intensity. I believe this is often true. But, it is new for fathers/other mothers to stand by and witness someone they love "in pain," and perhaps it is natural for them to want it to stop. For this reason, 60% of my attention during pain-coping practice goes to the father/other mother/birth companion. Their confidence and personal mindfulness practice during labor may entrain the mother during labor.

4. If labor progresses quickly, normally, and the mother is well-supported with no additional surprises, she and her partner could probably get on without all this fuss and training. Lots of women/couples do--and many can not. Since we don't have a crystal ball to know what she will need, we cannot rest on the theory that labor is natural and that all (modern) women know what to do.

What Change Can We Bring To Birth in our Culture!
1. Every childbirth class begins with a pain-coping practice. At least a half hour of every two-hour class is dedicated to building a pain-coping mindset. Building a pain-coping, solution-focused mindset is not the same as learning to relax or some stylized breathing pattern or technique.

2. Parents don't just hold ice for one minute "to see how long a minute long contraction is"!! I am hearing this nonsense from many parents. They tell me that their teacher made them hold ice for a minute -- how could this gimmick possibly be helpful? Is it a bad misunderstanding or poor imitation of BFW classes?

What parents in BFW classes do is learn a pain-coping practice, then... ice is held for a one-minute "ice contraction"--for several "contractions" in a row--to experience, embody, and really learn and refine the practice. Without ice, the practices would be sweet little meditations that didn't really require concentration or focus.

3. There is so much more to building a pain-coping mindset in classes... which can't be explained in this blog. It is a major section of our Level One Introductory Trainings and it required three CDs in a set for teachers called How to Teach Pain-Coping Practices.

* * *

So Kimberly, you still have time. Since your classes don't have enough time to prepare you in pain-coping, please write the office and ask Raquel to send you a Pain Coping Cd for Parents as a gift from me for inspiring this blog.

Warmly,

Pam

Change #20 A Teaspoon of MIndful Pain Coping During Every Prenatal & Class

2011-02-20T10:04:00.000-08:00

Dear Birth Peeps,

There is a common belief that if a woman believes birth is "normal," if she has a positive, confident attitude, and is committed to birthing without drugs, that her belief and attitude alone will carry her through labor. And sometimes it does!

I so want to believe that if she just believes in herself and the process it will be enough, but experience and birth stories inform me that women (and their partners) are too often surprised by the intensity of labor that is progressing normally (not to mention protracted labor), and find themselves completely unprepared to meet it. It is this shock, shame, and/or feeling of helplessness that is emotionally traumatizing to women, perhaps more so than the physical experience of it.

Today's Change is something so basic, so ordinary, so unglamorous, it is often overlooked by the most caring of birth peeps. A mother can have a dozen prenatals, meetings with her doula, even take classes, and nary a word is said about how to cope with the physical and emotional intensity of labor--except of course to reassure her that having an epidural is her choice.

It is my conviction that every mother and her partner (regardless of whether or not a an epidural is planned or will be part of her birth) need to be prepared and shown various ways to cope with emotional and physical intensity and uncertainty of being in the labyrinth of labor. (A woman/couple needs these skills because they may birth too fast to have an epidural, or the epidural might not take, and, in addition to pain-coping, a woman/couple will benefit from mindfulness skills during/after an epidural, during birth, postpartum, and parenting.)

When we learn any new skill, embodied practice makes the master! Not beliefs. Since pain, exhaustion, shaking and other sensations of labor are felt in the body, then pain-coping mindset and skills are best developed gradually, with small successes, in the body.

Beginning in the third trimester, if not sooner, I propose every prenatal visit include a five to fifteen minute pain-coping practice. This practice is absolutely done "without attachment to outcome," meaning without coercion to birth without drugs or any implication that doing so is better. Simply teach the mindful pain-coping, mind-centering practice. Then send the mother/couple home with homework: she/they must practice every day during the week or two weeks. Practice can be done during "meditation" or during periods of stress (traffic, work, etc) in her ordinary life. Each time she practices, her nervous system is learning how to respond to breath, she is learning how to quiet her mind and focus. This is nearly impossible to learn in labor.

I think it is safe to say that the majority of birth peep training, from medical or midwifery school, nursing, or childbirth education, the focus is more on epidurals (for or against) and informing mothers about tests and technology, and very little time is spent training the birth peep how to motivate parents to learn mindful coping practices. If this changed, if just four to six prenatals included mindfulness practice, the conversations between birth peeps and parents would change. And the conversations parents have in their own minds, before and during labor, will change.

We cannot leave this task to parents. How can a parent (even a mother who is a doula, nurse, or midwife herself) teach themselves to cope and be mindful in labor when they have never been in labor before? We can no longer leave this task to the majority of hospital taught childbirth classes if we know they will not learn this skill there... Maybe someday the tide will turn again and these skill will be taught as they once were!

I don't want to make this blog an info-mercial. However, if you are interested in doing this but don't know where to start, there are two Pain-Coping Practice CDs in the BFW Store: one on pain coping for parents, and the other is pain-coping for teachers. Either one would give you some ideas of how to begin.

Thank you for listening,

Pam

P.S. This posting is not meant to stir up the arguments about a woman's right to choose drugs/epidurals in labor, or what "normal" birth means, or that some women need epidurals. All of those considerations are valid, and not in contradiction to t

Change #19 Republicans Propose Cutting WIC’s Budget: Write Your Congress Representative Today!

2011-02-14T14:29:00.000-08:00

Dear Birth Peeps,
Since the beginning of time there have always been the Haves and the HaveNots. Not only is the discrepancy between the Haves and HaveNots widening, but, it infuriates me when certain wealthy people in power show so little compassion and concern for the HaveNots. Sometimes changing birth in our culture involves writing a letter to our (well fed) state representatives.

Lots of parents worry about feeding their kids, especially parents who are living at or below poverty. When pregnant women and young parents have to choose between healthy food, and enough of it, and paying rent... they often opt for cheap food: high carbohydrate, processed food. Milk, fresh fruits and vegetables and healthy meats and fish are luxuries.

The recession, unemployment, and foreclosures have hit low-income families the hardest. One of the fastest growing segments of the homeless population is families with children. Single mothers working at minimum wage who can’t pay rent, mortgage, and all the bills—especially if they lose their job—are finding themselves living in stressful, over-crowded living situations, on the streets, or in shelters. Research indicates that the increase among poverty and homelessness is disproportionately attributed to mothers and children. The Brookings Institute found a 34% increase in homelessness in 2009, with a 24% increase in children who are homeless.

In New Mexico, about a fourth of our kids and families go to bed hungry every night. These parents have to choose daily between eating (or eating better foods) or paying rent.

Recently President Obama announced a noble goal to end childhood hunger by 2015. Then, last week Republicans proposed budget cuts. Birth Peeps need to speak out on behalf of one in particular, cutting nutrition supplements (WIC) to low-income mothers and children by 10 percent. If this passes, millions of low-income families will be affected.

Republican Harold Rogers from Kentucky said: “We have taken a wire brush to the budget and scoured every program to find real savings that are responsible and justifiable to the American people. Make no mistake, these cuts are not low hanging fruit.”

Once again, they have taken the wire brush to underserved mothers and children who can’t even afford to pick or buy fresh fruit! How is taking food supplements from the tables of low-income mothers and children responsible and justifiable, especially during a recession, with unemployment and foreclosures? I’m sure the world would benefit from taking that wire brush to other “programs” that cost billions.

W.I.C. (a Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children) started as a pilot project in 1972 (and was established in 1974) in response to concern about under-nutrition of mothers during critical stages of fetal and infant growth and development.

WIC provides specific nutritious foods, nutrition education, and health care referrals at no cost to its low-income participants. Mothers who are pregnant or nursing, and their child up to five years old, who meet certain income requirements and are thus “at nutritional risk” are eligible for WIC. In 2010, over 9 million women and children were enrolled in WIC (9, 175, 429 to be exact). The states with the highest enrollment were New York, Texas, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, but the number of people living marginally at poverty level or in dire poverty are rising in every state.

The Republicans want to cut WIC’s funding by 10%, which is about 758 million.

This proposal will be voted on this week. Don’t Delay!! Today, write or call your Representative and let them know that we, a wealthy country Must Feed all of our Mothers and Children. The unborn and the infants of low-income women are our future; if our children’s brains, bodies, and psyches are starved during this crucial formative phase of life, no amount of nutrition can make up for it later.

Pam

Practice presenting "intact facts" from the center, without attachment to outcome

2011-02-10T15:57:00.000-08:00

Hi Birth Peeps,
I'm a bit late, have lots of projects on the burners these days. This may be preachin' to the choir, but I said I'd send a few more comments on circumcision.

Just yesterday a friend told me about someone she knew was circumcising their baby for the same reason that has been used for a century, cleanliness and to prevent sexually transmitted disease. My friend knew it wasn't accurate, but didn't know what other facts to offer up. She was quite surprised to learn the following!

Remember, we are changing birth in our culture with kindness, patience, and understanding. If this subject riles you up, return to as centered a place as possible before you teach. If you tend to avoid conflict, and turn to "whatever the parents choose" as a way to reinforce your old agreement, see if you can stretch a bit and find a way to simply talk about the facts--without being attached to outcome (that outcome being to avoid conflict or to prevent the circumcision).

A Few Intact Facts:
• The foreskin is a retractable, double-layer fold of nerve-rich skin—it is the only such tissue on the human body uniquely designed to protect and lubricate the glans (head of the penis) and to provide sexual pleasure.

• When the foreskin is amputated 20,000 nerves are cut, as well as damaging other nerves in the penis.9 In addition, blood vessels are severed, forever disrupting the normal blood flow to the penis.10

• The foreskin on an adult penis is 12 square inches.

• Because the foreskin is the most sensitive part (and the glans the least sensitive), an intact penis has four times the sensitivity of the circumcised penis.11

• When the foreskin is amputated, 75 percent of the total source of pleasure is lost—before the boy will ever experience that pleasure.

The glans and foreskin at birth, and before circumcision
• In the womb, from about 16 weeks gestation, the glans is covered by the foreskin.
• At birth, the foreskin is almost never retractable; it is naturally fused to the glans.
• The fusion naturally dissolves in childhood, the average time is about ten years, but it may take longer (or never retract, and that is normal, too).

Circumcision Complications
The incidence of medical complications, 2 – 10%, ranges from mild to severe. There are twenty different potential circumcision complications, including hemorrhage, infection, permanently altering the length and shape of the penis, and in rare and tragic cases, amputating the penis.
However, keep in mind two complications that affect 100% of circumcised males: severe pain during the procedure and permanently desensitizing and eliminating 75% of sensitivity.14

Change # 18 Let's Catch Up ... and Eliminate Newborn Circumcision

2011-02-07T12:36:00.000-08:00

Change # 18 Eliminating Circumcision
There is still a taboo about talking openly about the “circumcision decision.” Some parents avoid talking about it with one another. Awkward silence is kept again when Birth Peeps consider it a “personal” decision—and shy away from providing the current evidence-based information parents need to overcome the cultural myths they grew up with, and in order to give true informed consent on behalf of their infant sons.
Or, at the other extreme, Birth Peeps make it “their personal cause” to protect the baby, present information in a charged manner, for example, calling it “genital mutilation.” This language, intended to motivate, sometime causes additional resistance and confusion.

If parents are to give truly informed consent, and if we are to reduce or eliminate the practice of newborn circumcision, the subject can no longer be taboo or avoided because it is “personal.” Babies depend on their parents to be informed, to choose for them. In America, one of the first and most important decisions parents will ever make for their son is whether to decline or provide consent to have his healthy foreskin amputated (circumcision) in the first weeks of his life.

It is an important decision because foreskin amputation is irreversible, painful, and it carries certain risks. Not only does current evidence-based research need to be considered, but also the wishes of the other parent, and others (relatives and religious affiliation) who may take an opposing position. The topic can be so charged for couples that they come to a standstill, while resentment grows and isolation divides their marriage. Not talking about it insures one parent will defer to the other, and this is not something either one can “forget about.”

In addition to evidence-based information, parents attitudes are changing. In one survey parents who chose not to circumcise their sons said “that their decision wasn’t based on whether or not circumcision was beneficial or harmful, but that it is not their place to decide on elective surgery for their child . . . Since it is his body, not theirs . . . he can make the decision when he is older. By leaving him intact, they are leaving him with a choice [and not making him live] with an irreversible [foreskin amputation].”6

In the world, 80% of men are not circumcised. In 2000 a survey of declining circumcision in Great Britain predicted that only 1.5 percent of boys would be circumcised by their 15th birthday.(3) Canada’s circumcision rate cascaded from 44% in 1975 to only 4% in 1995.(5)

However, about a third to a half of America is still clutching to its long, unique, and bizarre love affair with male circumcision for “medical and moral” reasons. In 1893, a doctor called for the immediate and mass circumcision of all American boys, and by 1900, 25% of boys were circumcised to “desensitize” their penis.(1) The upward trend continued until 1971 when 80- 90% of newborns in the United States were routinely circumcised. Nowadays, as more and more parents learn that circumcision is very painful, medically unnecessary, and that they can decline this procedure for their baby boy—they do.

This is evident in the decline of newborn male circumcision in the United States – from 56 percent in 2006, to (possibly) 32.5 percent in 2009 (stats are not confirmed yet).(2 ) A recent Medicaire study found their population still choosing circumcision 55% of the time.

I think it's time to catch up with the rest of the world and stop doing routine foreskin amputations on newborns.

How will you go about opening this dialogue with parents, and between the parents? If you have been reluctant until now, what has kept you from talking about it? How much do you know about circumcision?

In a day or so, I’ll drop by with a few circumcision history and medical facts.
‘til then,

Pam

Change #17 Motivating Mothers to Be Hydrated Before/During Labor

2011-02-04T17:28:00.000-08:00

Dear Birth Peeps,
Welcome new Peeps! Glad you have joined us.

Tonight we will move to a new Change, although we have not yet exhausted our consideration of changing our collective attitude toward prenatal ultrasound. When something becomes "routine," when it is referred to as "routine," it seems like we begin to equate it with "benign" and "proven safe." No urgency to question the status quo. And this is when it is imperative for us to stay awake and to continue to thoughtfully question whatever has become "routine."

Let's Drink to Change # 17
Today's change may not seem particularly exciting, and yet it could change birth for many women, reducing the length of time they are in labor, the "need" for augmentation, or cesarean. So it fits the criteria for our group commitment to change birth in our culture, "drop by drop," paying attention to small things we might otherwise take for granted.

In BFW I recommended mothers drink 4 ounces an hour in labor. That seemed do-able! Last week while doing a little review-research, I found a study, published in 2006 (so some of you may already be aware of this), of 300 first time mothers who received either four or eight ounces of intravenous fluids in labor. Mothers who were better-hydrated with eight ounces per hour actually had significantly shorter labors, and a tendency toward fewer cesareans.

Of course, I am not suggesting that every healthy woman should have an IV to achieve better hydration. But why not let moms know about this study, and let it motivate them to really pay attention to their hydration as their due date approaches; to stay well-hydrated before labor starts, and to drink more in early labor.

Finally, someone reading this blog might be looking for a research project. I'd like to see this study done with women who drank fluids in labor, showing which drinks and how much influence labor outcomes and lengths of labor.

Warmly,
Pam

Citation
Eslamain, L, Marsoosi, V., and Pakneeyat, Y. (2006, May). Increased intravenous fluid intake and the course of labor in nulliparous women. International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. 93(2). 102-206.

Pregnant Mothers are Carrying their Grandchildren

2011-01-31T14:18:00.000-08:00

Pregnant Mothers are Carrying their Grandchildren

Dear Birth Peeps,
Yesterday I went dancing with my friend Sharon, who is a nurse-midwife. She asked me what I was up to, and I mentioned I was researching the safety of prenatal ultrasound and she immediately said she was not comfortable with prenatal ultrasound, “It hasn’t been researched enough.” She told me when parents ask her to order an early ultrasound, she asks them why. When they say they want to know what colors to decorate the nursery and what colors of clothes to buy, she tells them to be safe, “Buy yellow or green!”

Mothers and fathers should consider that in order to determine the baby’s gender, ultrasound waves are pointed directly at, and are heating, the genitals of their developing baby. Many babies are exposed to ultrasound multiple times during pregnancy, some are getting even more exposure from the keepsake (or “4-D”) pictures taken at the mall (which can take up to an hour). No one can be absolutely sure what effects this popular practice is having on the long-term health of the child; or how much, how often, or at what gestation it becomes unsafe.

At what point do we become cautious? Whom do we trust? Many people say ultrasound is safe, but is it too soon to say? How do we know for certain that sending in high frequency waves of heat pointed directly at the heart and genitals of our unborn will not have consequences during their adult lifetime?

These questions call to mind another prenatal intervention that was believed at the time to be safe, and yet was later found to have caused serious genital, brain and behavior problems in the offspring, and even in the third generation!(1) Fading from public memory now is the era when diethylstilbestrol (DES) birth defects were discovered. Have you heard of DES daughters? Well, there are also DES sons and DES grandchildren.

I’d like to present a little review of this obstetric bungle from the US Center for Disease Control:

Diethylstilbestrol (DES) is a synthetic estrogen that was first manufactured in 1938. The prevailing theory at the time was that miscarriages and premature births occurred because women did not produce enough natural estrogen. So, in the name of prevention, between 1938-1971, doctors prescribed DES to an estimated 5 to 10 million pregnant women—and their unborn children--to prevent miscarriages and avoid other pregnancy problems. Hundreds of thousands of DES sons and daughters were also born in Canada, Europe and Australia between the 1940s and 1980s.

In 1953, published research showed that DES did not prevent miscarriages or premature births. However, DES continued to be prescribed until 1971. Does anybody ever practice evidence-based medicine?

In 1971, about thirty years after the practice of prescribing DES began, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a bulletin advising physicians to stop prescribing DES to pregnant women because a rare vaginal cancer was being found in girls and women who had been exposed to DES before birth.(2)

DES, believed to be safe, even though ineffective, was in fact not safe. Later research classified DES as a carcinogen and teratogen (Maydl, etl. 1983). For years, there was a huge scramble to confirm or disprove the claim that DES caused vaginal cancer in women. Before long, mothers were taking their daughters to be screened (and sometimes treated) by a gynecologist, because this rare form of cancer was found in girls as young as 8 years old!

And what about our sons: DES sons? The scope of health problems linked to DES includes: reproductive tract abnormalities, testicular cancer, behavior effects such as depressive disorders, and sexual differentiation disorders of the brain and body.(3)

DES seemed safe. The babies exposed to DES looked healthy and weighed in just fine at birth. Not all birth defects are visible at birth. Nobody knew for thirty years.

As I write this blog, until long-term effects across generations can be determined or disproven, my intention is to raise awareness and caution among both parents and birth peeps. It is my hope that we can exercise more patience, more "wait and see," more hands-on assessment. For decades, health practitioners made, and can still make, a reasonably accurate assessment of how the uterus is growing, the position of the baby, and some people develop very good skills at estimating fetal weight (I’d like to find a study to see if a skilled practitioner is as accurate or more accurate than ultrasound). Evidence-based research is not showing that multiple ultrasounds improves the baby’s health at birth.

If the baby seems like it is growing slowly, eat better and eat more! Food grows babies and placentas; ultrasounds won’t make the baby and placenta grow.

If a mother has gestational diabetes, give her excellent nutritional counseling so she can eat well and maintain her blood sugars. Weekly ultrasounds won’t prevent, or treat, a baby growing too fast from a diet high in calories, sugar and fat.

Warmly,

Pam

After-thought: Some readers who are learning that there may be possible risks with prenatal ultrasound have already had one, or even a few. To date, there is no conclusive evidence that a single exposure during pregnancy will have long-term effects on your baby. Begin where you are. Give the recommendation for ultrasound serious consideration, look for alternative ways to achieve and maintain a healthy pregnancy.

Citations
1 Titus_Ernstoff, L., Troisi, R. et. al. (2009, November). Birth defects in the sons and daughters of women who were exposed in utero to diethylstilbestrol (DES).

2 Retrieved from: http://www.cdc.gov/des/consumers/about/history.html

3 Kerlin, S. (2005). Prenatal Exposure to Diethylstilbestrol (DES) in Males and Gender-Related Disorders: Results from a 5-year study.
[A very thorough] paper prepared for the International Behavioral Development Symposium 2005

Sinistrality and Ultrasound

2011-01-26T22:22:00.000-08:00

Dear Cindi and Birth Peeps,
Cindi wrote us about her child being born left-handed when there isn’t an obvious hereditary link and said she'd found a few articles linking left-handedness to prenatal ultrasounds. So I gathered up my notes on this topic to share with you.

Sinistrality or being sinistral means "left-handed," oriented toward the left, or going counter-clockwise.There you have a new "word for the day."

8-15 % percent of the population is left-handed as a result of heredity. One of my sisters is a “lefty,” and my housemate tells me many of his relatives (born before the introduction of prenatal ultrasound) are left-handed—by heredity. However, in recent decades there has been a puzzling rise in left-handedness. When the rate of left-handedness rises above 9 % in offspring born to right-handed parents and above 35% for children of left-handed parents--something other than heredity is impacting the unborn. Doctors have known for a long-time that when left-handedness is not genetically-determined, it can be a sign of brain damage. Prenatal ultrasound has been suggested as the common factor, or “insult,” causing the new rise in left-handedness.(1)

An increase in non-right-handedness (left-handed or ambidextrous) has been associated with ultrasound exposure from early studies (Salvesen, Bakketeig et al. 1992; Salvesen, Vatten et al. 1992; Salvesen, Jacobsen et al. 1993; Salvesen, Vatten et al. 1994).(2,3,4,5). This effect is significant because it implies that ultrasound can change the lateralization of the brain, which represents a significant shift in brain development. At the time of these studies in the early 90’s, ultrasound output was much lower, and examinations much shorter than today. Recent FDA regulation allows for a delivery of 8 times higher intensity!

In another study (Keiler, 2001)(6), left-handedness and prenatal ultrasound was studied in a cohort of men born in Sweden between 1973 and1978 who enlisted for military service. One group comprised of 6,585 men were born in hospitals that used ultrasound routinely (the “exposed” group). The other group, 172, 537 men, were born in hospitals without ultrasound (“unexposed” men).

Among men born between 1973 to 1975, no difference was found in rate of left-handedness between the exposed and unexposed groups.

As the use of prenatal ultrasound increased between 1976 and 1978, left-handedness in the “exposed group” increased 30 percent above the normal hereditary incidence; furthermore, when mothers received more than one ultrasound, there was a greater incidence of left-handedness in their offspring.(7)

On her “The Healthy Home Economist” website, Sarah points out that premature babies are five times more likely to be left-handed, and that the brain of the developing male fetus develops more slowly than the female, and puts boys at greater risk for ultrasound injury.

Something to think about.
I’ll be back with a few more interesting studies I found later this week.

Pam

Change #16

2011-01-24T13:25:00.000-08:00

Dear Birth Peeps,
I had a busy weekend teaching, and wanting to do a little more research on prenatal ultrasound… so I am a few days behind. But let’s begin.

During his 30-year career, Dr. Christopher Olson observes that the use of ultrasound has “ballooned.” Initially doctors were warned about potential risks to the developing fetus from the heat generated by ultrasound waves, so diagnostic ultrasound was used with caution for specific purposes.

Ultrasound has become the standard of care for diagnosis in medicine and is even used in physical therapy to heat-treat deep muscles. But, Olson observes, “amniotic fluid absorbs more heat energy than solid tissue. And, the developing brain is known to be sensitive to a number of “environmental stressors” such as alcohol, drugs, and hot tubs. He raises the question, “Is it possible that the amount of heat generated by multiple ultrasounds lowers the threshold in a fetus that puts it at increased genetic risk of autism and related neurological disease?”1

Ultrasound has become as popular as apple pie, but some of you may not actually know how it works and how it affects fetal tissues. So allow me to present or review the basics.

Ultrasound is a pressure wave that causes air around it to vibrate. It works like radar, sending sound waves to a “target” and making a “picture” from the sound waves that bounce back. In prenatal ultrasound the “target” is the baby’s yet undeveloped, and developing, body, and/or the developing placenta or amniotic fluid.

Since the expectant mother cannot feel (or hear) the high frequency sound waves or rise in temperature, she is not aware or alarmed by what is happening to her baby. However, when receiving ultrasound waves, babies tend to move away from the stream of high-frequency sound waves. They may be feeling vibrations, heat, or both.

A study was conducted to “hear” what babies hear when they are subjected to ultrasound. Ultrasound waves, aimed directly at a miniature microphone placed in a woman's uterus, recorded sound "as loud as a subway train coming into the station."(Samuel, 2001)2

Ultrasound waves heat the baby’s tissues when “taking a picture” or hearing fetal heart tones. The heat waves from ultrasound or doppler may be beneficial in treating deep muscle spasm in physical therapy, but it may present subtle or long term effects in the developing fetus. Although the research is still “inconclusive” before consenting to diagnostic ultrasound or getting a “keepsake” ultrasound picture at the mall, mothers and fathers need to understand why a temperature increase can cause significant damage to a developing fetus's central nervous system.(Miller, 2002)3

Why Heating the Intrauterine Environment and Baby May Be Harmful
Pregnant women are advised to stay out of hot tubs, hot baths, steam rooms, and saunas. Here’s why: The mother’s core temperature is 98.6. When she is immersed in a hot tub or bath, her body cannot cool off via perspiration, thus raising her core temperature by as much as 2 degrees Fahrenheit.

When a mother’s core temperature is elevated of as little as 2 degrees Fahrenheit, it can result in embryonic death, miscarriage, slowing down of fetal growth and weight gain, and developmental defects. (Edwards, M.J. et.al, 2003)4 One study reported that "women who used hot tubs or saunas during early pregnancy face up to triple the risk of bearing babies with spina bifida or brain defects."(Milunsky, A., et al. 1992)5

The unborn baby is in a little hot tub of its own in the mother’s body. So if the mother’s core temperature goes up —- for any reason (maternal fever, hot tubs, diagnostic ultrasound or keepsake ultrasound) -- her baby cannot escape elevated temperatures in the womb. This is important because, across mammalian species, elevated maternal or fetal body temperatures have been shown to result in birth defects in offspring. (Miller, M.W., et al. 2002)6

What’s interesting here is that mothers are warned about hot tubs, but not about ultrasound heat. Even if the research is still "inconclusive," mothers and fathers deserve informed consent, they deserve to be warned about potential risk of ultrasounds —- so they can make an informed decision about whether or not to take this risk for their baby.

Ultrasound heats bone at a different rate than muscle, soft tissue or amniotic fluid.7 As the baby grows in utero and its bones calcify, they absorb and retain more heat from ultrasound. During the third trimester, the baby's calcified skull can heat up 50 times faster than its surrounding tissue (Barnett, 1998), subjecting parts of the enclosed brain to secondary heat that can continue after the ultrasound exam has concluded.8

“The amount of ultrasound-induced [brain] heating increases with gestational age and the development of fetal bone. The rate of heating near bone is rapid; 75% of the maximum heating occurs within 30 seconds.(Barnett, 2001)9

There are more questions than answers at this time. One thing we have to consider is that we are trusting the health and well-being of our next generation to a technology that has not yet been proven safe, even though it has become the standard of care. More patience, caution, and research is needed to investigate:

• Acoustic output (more about this topic in the next blog entry)
• The amount of time the fetus is exposed to ultrasound waves
• If, and in what way, the number of ultrasounds during pregnancy affect the baby
• What, if any, teratogenic/toxic effects result at different stages of fetal development

But this research will not easy to do; “there are roadblocks to this research,” Olson warns, namely “fear-based resistance among clinicians in a litigious society to give up ‘safety’ of the current standard of care.”10 And, with the majority of mothers and babies now exposed to routine prenatal ultrasound, it will be more difficult to find control groups for comparative study.

In the meantime, it is up to us to inform parents, and for parents to ask themselves if the risks outweigh the benefits.

Parents need to know that the frequent use of ultrasound has not been shown to improve baby’s health or birth outcome. Except for diagnosing the gender of the baby, skilled birth attendants can make the other assessments with their hands. But this skill is rapidly being lost as more doctors and midwives refer parents to ultrasound rather than take the time to do a thorough hands-on exam.

We will continue with a review of the literature and other factors to consider in a day where ultrasounding our next generation in utero has become the almost unquestioned standard of care.

Pam

References:

1 Olson, C.D. (2009). Does ultrasound increase risk for autism? Journal of American Osteopath Association. 109(2), 71-72. Retrieved from Pub Med: http://www.Jaoa.org/cgi/reprint/109/2/71

2 Samuel, Eugenie. 2001. Fetuses can hear ultrasound examinations. New Scientist. www.newscientist.com/article/dn1639-fetuses-can-hear-ultrasound-examinations-.html. Accessed 11 May 2006.

3 Miller, M.W., et al. 2002. Hyperthermic teratogenicity, thermal dose and diagnostic ultrasound during pregnancy: implications of new standards on tissue heating. International Journal of Hyperthermia. 18(5): 361–84.

4 Edwards, M.J., R.D. Saunders and K. Shiota. 2003. Effects of heat on embryos and foetuses. International Journal of Hyperthermia. 19 (3): 295–324.

5 Milunsky, A., et al. 1992. Maternal heat exposure and neural tube defects. JAMA 268(7): 882–85.

6 Miller, M.W., et al. 2002. Hyperthermic teratogenicity, thermal dose and diagnostic ultrasound during pregnancy: implications of new standards on tissue heating. Int J Hyperthermia 18(5): 361–84.

7 "The ultrasound procedure: Physical effects and research." Birth. www.birth.com.au/class.asp?class=6610&page=5. Accessed 23 Sept 2006.

8 Barnett, S.B. "Can diagnostic ultrasound heat tissue and cause biological effects?" In S.B. Barnett and G. Kossoff, eds. 1998.

9 Barnett, S.B. (2001, July). Intracranial temperature elevation from diagnostic ultrasound. Ultrasound Medical Biology. 27(7); 883-8.

10 Olson, C.D. (2009).

Change #16

2011-01-19T07:57:00.000-08:00

Good Morning Birth Peeps,
I have been deliberating about how to go about presenting today's Change, which is also my chosen resolution for Changing Birth in our Culture in 2011.

During this year another book will be published. It is well underway. A video will be produced. Lectures, classes, and workshops will be offered... each of those may chip away at some form in this dream of birth in our culture... although I cannot know how.

When I was a young midwife I worked in a public clinic for a short time before my "firing" was inevitable, and I quit to save myself the embarrassment. I recall that one of my "failures" was that I didn't order enough ultrasounds. Instinctively, I did not trust this new technology. For the most part, I did not use a doppler: I used my ears and an old fashioned fetascope to hear the baby's heart beat. I never liked or trusted the idea of using ultrasonic waves as early as possible in the first trimester aimed at the developing heart just to amplify the sound of the tiny baby's heart beat. What are those waves doing to the developing fetus? And how is hearing this, or seeing a distorted image (back then they were more distorted) truly helpful? The early research was "reassuring," but I believed it was only a matter of time before the hidden changes caused by heat rays of ultrasound would manifest.

In recent months I have been researching the effect, and possible effect, that frequent ultrasound is or may be having on our babies and the next generation. I have interviewed caregivers who order ultrasound. And I have examined my conscience deeply as to what needs to happen next, what it is that I am called to do.

And it is to share the ultrasound research with you here, on this blog, in small installments so you can consider this for yourselves and... if you are moved, let parents know about it.

I am finding caregivers don't know about ultrasound risk (because as one caregiver told me, they work long hours and can't always keep up with the latest research in journals), and if they do know about it, they have a dilemma: It takes time to provide true informed consent. Clinics are too busy for caregivers to explain to each of the 20 or 30 patients that day, many of whom will be ordered an ultrasound, the potential risks--and leave the choice to them. Then there is the very real problem of habit mind: all of us tend to continue doing the things we were first trained to do; radical change comes hard. And finally, whenever something, like ultrasound, has become the standard of care, there is collective, not just personal, trust.

So I am going to approach this change methodically and slowly. Beginning tomorrow, and from time to time in 2011, I will present evidence-based research with the intention of raising awareness and caution in the hope that a collective conscience demands protection of the next generation's health.

As you are deciding what your 2011 Change or Gift to Birth in Our Culture will be, may I offer you an image that guides my own process?:
A Love Warrior does not act impulsively, unless the situation is so immediate, swift action IS what needs to happen next. Warriors are Hunters by nature, and Hunters are patient. They suss out the terrain, the predator, and--as all of nature is energy conserving (with the exception of Westernized human beings!)--the huntress acts deliberately, decisively, without ambivalence.

Respectfully,
Pam

New Year for Change

2011-01-11T20:31:00.000-08:00

Dear Birth Peeps,
I've been silent a while. Writing madly. I have not forgot about you. Our numbers are growing. Welcome newcomers.

I've been thinking about all of you--and me--in 2011 coming together to Change Birth in Our Culture. I like making New Year Resolutions or Intentions. I am asking myself a question that I will pose to you:

If there were one small change I could help bring about in 2011, and Fear--in any of her many forms--was not a player, and no other obstacles were allowed to stop me, what would I do next? What action would I take? What words would I speak?

I am choosing my 2011 Intention based on this and will share it soon. Would you please let us all hear from you, tell us what you will do in 2011 to Change Birth in Our Culture.

Fearless-in-Albuquerque,
I am,

Pam

Where are the Birth "Grandmothers" and "Grandfathers"?

2010-12-20T11:34:00.000-08:00

Dear Birth Peeps,
Let's continue with the cultivation of the birth "Grandmother" or "Grandfather" in our culture. Or perhaps we should begin with the "Missing Grandmother" report!

Elders (vs. Olders) emerge and thrive in consciousness and cultures where the young and the old are revered; where there is a purposeful relationship and interdependency between the young and the old. Why have our elders (birth elders) gone missing?

Let's face it: elders wear their long life experience, and their many trips to the underworld and back, in their wrinkles, on their "face map." However, in this culture, for decades, there has been a relentless marketing campaign that women should hide or alter their life face map; they should strive to remain "youthful."

In selling the proverbial "fountain of eternal youth" to generations of youth, the fashion/makeup/marketing/film industries have effectively blown up the relationship bridge between youth and elders. As women notice early signs of aging or their children leave the nest, instead of turning their intention inward to recapitulate their life and beliefs, or outward to begin sharing their wisdom, insight, and power with youth in need of mentoring, too many are preoccupied with striving to fit in, to not become invisible or marginalized.

An elder or a "Grandmother/Grandfather" is "One Who Knows." This kind of knowing is the "Know Thyself" kind of knowing. This knowing can only be had through living through ordeals, making many descents into the underworld, being a powerless witness as their beliefs and their "world" was dismembered--transformed--and put together in a new way. One Who Knows knows because she has learned (not from the unwished-for ordeals themselves, but) through a painstaking process of recapitulating those ordeals in order to internalized a soul-knowledge, a holistic viewpoint of life, and patience.

Olders tell worn-out old personal stories of wounding or conquest, or engage in mindless gossip. But elders are charged with telling Great Stories that heal, teach, and weave the listener back to her culture and to her purpose and place.

Where have the birth elders gone? We are living in a culture where young and old turn to the latest study and newest technology for guidance and entertainment. Our culture builds relationship with machines, technology, evidence-based stories (research is just another story) or being entertained--not with Grandmother Storytellers!

We are living in a time where many birth peeps start out in passionate service to birth work, inspired by a Calling. But without elders to harness that passion and slowly cultivate it to grow a strong inner container so the new birth peep can learn to hold the psychic power of birth, the hard work and unrealized dream of making a difference gradually morphs that passion into keeping a job or career security. Some birth peeps carry the activist/truth-telling torch for a while. In whatever role we begin our work, we begin by striving for an idealized outcome that is rarely realized. Year by year, we feel more and more frustrated, jaded, disillusioned, and burned-out.

In a sense, entering birth work is often an unexpected personal initiation. The Ordeal we undertake is never what we imagined; the very real disrobing and dismemberment of our ideals and efforts, is in fact our inner-initiation into the role birth-Grandmother. It is a gourmet "crock-pot" kind of initiation. To become a "Grandmother" one must slow cook in the cauldron until all the spices and juices have bubbled together; this can take decades! But modern people want everything to be microwave fast!

But, we do not know the way. We are like foreigners trekking in the Himalayas without an experienced sherpa who knows the way. Our culture misinforms us that when we teach parents or attend births we are serving, assessing, informing the parents, but there is little mention that while the mother is in a rite of passage, so is the new birth peep.

Without this understanding, too many good birth peeps, right in the middle of their own initiation--are overcome with futility, frustration, and powerlessness, and so, the need to do something new or more fun--wins out. Understandably, many "would-be Grandmothers" jump out of hot cauldron and go onto other ventures.

Their absence opens space for other "new initiates" to enter the work, to take up teaching because someone needs to do it and the elders have left. The youth take it up, doing the best they can, parroting what they learned but not what they "know." Without elders, youth are teaching youth before they are ripe and ready to teach.

What else can be done when so few stay long enough in the cauldron to become true elders.

I am speaking from my experience and point of view, it is not officially evidence-based fact. I myself almost quit birth work for the very reasons I have mentioned above. For a couple of years I went into a place of doubt and soul searching, asking myself, Would young people trust an older, menopausal, aging woman? I'm not so hip, I don't twitter... Customs and attitudes about birth are changing so fast--am I voice from the past that has no place in this birth culture? Maybe I should do something more fun....but then, fate put the lid on and I cooked a little longer in the cauldron. Now I embrace the new role I am growing into.

I am sharing this, not as a biographical note about me--but because I feel some of you who are reading this will identify with this and may be able to reconsider a decision or a self-image or self-doubt.

As Virginia and I lead workshops, everywhere we go we see newly-Called "daughters of birth work" slipping into their tepid cauldrons. We want to give them tools, stories, and processes that will support them when the heat gets turned up and the lid gets put on! We meet women who are experienced and wise Grandmothers in birth, but who do not know their worth--and are not sought out enough by youth (who are conditioned to turn to the "new" thing). It is my hope that the seasoned women in birth will not be marginalized, but utilized; we need your patient, far-seeing, wisdom, more now than ever.

Let us envision becoming "Grandmothers," doing our personal work while focusing on changing the world "out there." In due time, a generation of Birth "Grandmothers" will be revered, sought after, and trusted.

In-Love,
Pam

Change #15 EMBRACING ELDERS, GRANDMOTHERS & GRANDFATHERS

2010-12-13T13:26:00.000-08:00

Good Monday Morning Birth Peeps,

In Change #14, we considered the importance of, and the absence of, rituals and ceremonies to mark thresholds for birth peeps and parents. Which brings us to the next logical call for Change: to call forth our elders, "Grandmothers" and "Grandfathers" to do what only they can do: patiently instruct through the telling of cultural and mythical stories, and to preserve and perform the deep essence of rituals that guide the youth across thresholds they might hesitate to cross on their own.

Bill Plotkin is one of the great visionaries and authors of our time, and founder of the Animus Valley Institute. Plotkin spent at least three decades developing his eight-stage soulcentric model of being human. In his book, Nature and the Human Soul, he addresses the “indigenous process by which a human child grows into soul-initiated adult.”

In cultures that utilize the wisdom, extra time, and patience, of its older members to initiate its youth, there is a Bridge by which youth can cross over into adulthood. Not just any older person can build that bridge, as Michael Meade, storyteller, mythologist, and author of a new book, Fate and Destiny, points out. Meade makes a blatant and humorous distinction between elders and “olders.” He says most people just get old and become “olders.” All of us become older without effort. Few become elders.

So what happens to a culture—a birth culture—with few elders? Just look! It becomes a culture populated by adults who are trapped in eternal victim, rebel, or princess-adolescence, following ego-centric whims, security-seeking, risk-age- and death-avoiding, depressed, and numb (either naturally or by medication). A culture without elders becomes a culture of eternal adolescence because when it was time to “leave home” and to leave adolescent identity, there was no elder or death-embracing/death-defying tasks or ritual to allow the child-adolescent to “die” --and to be “born” as an adult.

“Every step of leaving becomes a step of arriving,” Plotkin observes, “As you separate from your former society-centered identity, you claim more of your nature-and-soul-centered identity.”

What does an elder look like? Plotkin captures the essence of the elder, the “Grandmother”/”Grandfather”:

“A genuine elder possesses a good deal of wildness, perhaps more than any adult, adolescent or child. Our human wildness is our spontaneity, our untamed vivacity, our innocent presence, our resistance to oppression, our rule-transcending vivacity and self-reliance that societal convention can never contain. We are designed to grow deeper into that wildness as we mature, not to recede from it. When we live soul-centrically, immersed in a lifelong dance with the mysteries of nature and psyche, our wildness flourishes.”

If you are young or not yet an elder, commit yourself to knowing thyself, to completing the tasks of each stage of life. Prepare yourself to become an elder, not just older. They are waiting for you!

If you know an authentic elder-mentor, and you are willing, please share your experience here. It is helpful for us to cherish and to remember how elders can touch us and make a life-long impression.

In Love,
Pam

#14 continued: Learning How to Initiate Birth Peeps

2010-12-07T10:26:00.000-08:00

Dear Birth Peeps,

We may need to start a new blog thread in 2011 for Rituals, Retreats, and Ceremonies for Birth Peeps--so that we can fully explore the potential of this much-needed change. We need an ongoing dialogue to fully understand what is needed, and to begin to deliberately and mindfully experiment to find out what would work in our culture--and then to do lots more of it. Perhaps in a decade or two, this idea of "initiating birth peeps" will have deep roots and bear fruit. It is not a change that can come quickly, or easily. This is because in the West we have not been raised to understand, expect,participate or lead, rituals and ceremonies for education/career transitions in life.

We must acknowledge that the holistic education of a Birth Peep must include personal and spiritual growth, and not merely the accumulation of facts, the demonstration of skills, or the passing of a certification/licensing exam.

There are many reasons and ways to experience ceremony. In general, Western people tend to think of ceremonies as "celebrations." Most of us have no training or tradition in creating ritual and ceremony, so we are experimenting--and this is a start. We like to keep things fun, light, and safe--so we set a date and place and invite people to come, including the "guest of honor." And then events, the "ceremony," the beading or singing....unfolds. Like being invited to a wedding where we "watch"...

It will not be enough to throw the Birth Peep graduate a party in which a novel ceremony is done "for" her or him. In traditional and wise cultures (now disappearing from the earth), the initiate had to fully participate in preparation for her/his ceremony. They were guided by "One Who Knows" (an elder), often put in seclusion, fasting, and had tasks to complete. Traditionally, a Great Story was told as "map," and preparation included risk, near death risk... so that the initiate's old self would die allowing a new self to be born. The preparation was itself a soulful journey, taking the initiate away from an old life, perhaps healing the wounds of the training itself, toward new understanding and self-knowledge.

We don't know how to do this anymore. We can't imitate it or we might cause literal loss of life as happened in Colorado with the "warrior" sweat lodge. We must learn it. Let us acknowledge that we are pilgrims on our own journey of preparation.

This Change is not everyone's Call. If it is yours, you must undergo patient preparation and training in order to plant these Seeds of Healing.

In-Respect, and in-Hope for Change,
I am,
Pam

#14 continued: Rituals for Entering, Immersion, & Return from Birth Peep Training

2010-12-06T15:08:00.000-08:00

When I speak to birth peeps who are immersed in-training, or who have recently graduated, I am moved by the tears I see well up in their eyes, how their faces flush or they hold their breath as if to contain the hurt, the disappointment, as they describe the training and how utterly exhausted, drained, and confused it left them. “The training was not what I thought or hoped it would be,” many lament. And then they quickly talk about the next step: getting a job or starting a practice.

“Wait,” I think (sometimes aloud, sometimes) to myself, “You are still in the underworld. You, and everyone returning from the underworld, needs to go through a guided process of integration and healing before you attempt to lead or heal others.

Losing one’s innocence is part of the hero’s journey--but perhaps they did not expect to have their hopes and enthusiasm dampened so soon. Not realizing how common this is, many think there is something inherently wrong with them, a flaw in their character or commitment. So they try to put their broken spirit behind them and dive into orientation, into work…

Prisoners, soldiers, and students look forward to their release/graduation date. But when that long awaited day comes and they suddenly “return” to society or to a new job, they often suffer from culture shock. They have been living in one world, and without a transition process, they enter another where people do not know where they have been, or what they have lived through or are living. It is isolating. The tacit message is to put the past behind you and move on. And yet we are inevitably tethered to our past and to the stories we tell ourselves about our past. Most of us long for meaningful recognition and integration time when leaving one world or role in life—before beginning another.

Other than a form letter of acceptance or a graduation party, presently our birth peep schools offer few soulful rituals or personal retreats for birth peeps entering training or transitioning to the work place. Change #14 is not an easy change or a "quick fix." Still it needs to happen.

If you know someone who is entering, immersed in, or returning from, birth peep training, if you can't create a retreat for them, consider offering them a little Water of Life (spiritual Food) or the Food of Life (physical plane support).

Perhaps it will be one of our birth peep readers Call to begin creating Birth Peep Transition Retreats.

In-Austin today, In-Love,
Pam

#14 continued: Nurturing & Mentoring Our Birth Peeps

2010-12-02T05:49:00.000-08:00

Good Morning Birth Peeps,
Today we continue considering Change #14. It is a fundamental change that must begin if birth in our culture is to truly heal and change. Otherwise we can only continue to rearrange the furniture in house built on a cracked foundation with a leaky roof.

The One that answers the Call to the work, training, or Ordeal, is not yet “the healer” or the “hero.” Rather it is the Child part of us that answers “yes.” The Innocent, Magical, Rebellious Child in us does have (and must have, in order to undertake the Ordeal of training,) a romantic notion of “the difference she’ll make,” how she will “save” others from the trauma she lived through, or whatever it is. In many cases, perhaps all cases, it is the wounded part of us in search of our own healing and understanding that undertakes the hero’s journey (in the name of helping or saving others). During our training, we also call on the Adaptive Child part of us because that part makes a “good student,” who gets all the assignments done, checks off the lists, gets our evaluations in…. almost on time anyway.

If we, as a culture, are to truly begin mentoring and initiating our Birth Peeps, we must understand deeply that every Birth Peep (and parent) begins this initiation-journey in her Child, and if she is mentored and guided to do her personal work, she has a chance of completing a (holistic) course in her Huntress-Love Warrior--and beginning her service to parents from a more intact, whole, centered place--not in her wounded, orphaned, exhausted, rebellious Child.

Consider that in our birth culture, many of our Birth Peeps (from doulas to doctors) complete training and immediately enter their professional work in a state of double wounding (the unhealed wounding that Called them plus the unhealed wounding from a course that demanded much of them but did not guide their personal growth). Because of the emotional, physical, and psychic demands of working in hospitals and clinics—which in the West rarely has any Mercy or personal growth support program in place for its worker-bees--it is almost certain that the already tender inner-Child of the new birth peep is destined to experience a triple wounding.

In the West, Birth Peep training is top heavy: we value, and therefore focus primarily on, “evidence-based” material, techniques, performance evaluations and outcomes, and being objective (i.e., impersonal, professional, in-service to the client or corporation—but not in-service to ourselves).

And yet, the real work in birth is holistic. The real work requires heart, soul, ego-strength, and a personal recapitulation (self-awareness) process to evolve spiritually and emotionally with the work, and not be perpetually exhausted, wounded, and slowly dismembered by it.

The image I want to leave you with today is this:
For birth to really change in our culture, Birth Peep training, certification and/or re-certification must welcome the Child and deliberately nurture, grow, and mature the Huntress-Warrior-Healer. The "Ones Who Know"(i.e., the Sage Fools who have made the Return themselves) must answer the Call to "heal the healers," not only in training but throughout the Birth Peep’s career.

Tomorrow we will continue Change #14

In-Love,
Pam

Copyright © December 2010, Pam England. This material cannot be reproduced without written permission.

Change #14 Birth Peep Training as Initiation & Hero's Journey (1)

2010-12-01T10:53:00.000-08:00

Change #14 We Must See the Training of the Birth Peep
as a profound Initiation and the Hero’s Journey

Dear Birth Peeps,
If you were fortunate enough to be trained by kind mentors in a safe and supportive environment that nurtured you through every phase and fumble of your training, consider yourself extremely blessed—your experience is rare—but it has given you an insight and gift that you can share with us as we tackle another change our birth culture is in dire need of.

If you are one of the many who felt broken by your training and perhaps, you feel a part of you is still in that underworld, it is my hope that this week’s letters will be a sliver of light to help you find your way “home.” As we join together, and complete our Return from the underworld of our training-initiation, then, and only then, can we truly be the Ones Who Know, and who can guide other initiates into, through, and all the way “home” from a training process that is in fact a hero’s journey.

There is so much to say about this subject, it may take me several posts to convey it. Rather than attempt to condense it, and trivialize this, I will take my time. I look forward to your responses as we move through Change #14.

First a brief review of the hero’s journey so we can share language and ideas. In general the hero’s journey has three phases, (1) The Call and Preparation, (2) the Ordeal, and (3) the Return. It could be said that your whole life is this journey, and that within our lives we may be blessed to undertake several hero’s journeys through education, relationship, career, and illness.

When someone is drawn to birth work we could say, and often do say, they were “called.” It is not a “job” that kind of “falls in your lap,” you are called to it, you are compelled to choose, and re-choose, it. Don’t think of this Call in a romantic sense, but rather as a soul-calling—it is “soul work.”
What calls the initiate to birth work? Usually it is a tangible event in our life that awakens an interest in birth work, or in a particular aspect of birth work. Some philosophers say it is work we “agreed to do before we were born.” So, at some point we say “yes” to this Call, and off we go!

In Love,
Pam
(copyright(C)2010 Pam England)

Recording Songs of Healing and Opening: an idea

2010-12-01T09:15:00.000-08:00

Dear Birth Peeps,
I am deeply moved by your responses this week. As I read each response, I could hear the songs--and imagined hearing them if I were weary in labor... I could feel the peace, the power, the healing.... and each one, each of you, opened my heart this morning.

Love Warriors "act," that is what distinguishes the archetypal Warrior from the Dreamer or the Victim who wishes things were different. Let us consider making a grass roots recording of the songs you mentioned, and maybe include the stories you shared along with them. I would like to make this available as a download... and maybe we could allow the download to "grow" as more people sing and contribute.

It is not a new idea. Maybe just put in the collective underworld for a while.
Thank you,

Pam

Change #13 Sing Her Across the Thresholds of Birth

2010-11-24T08:26:00.000-08:00

Dear Birth Peeps,

A few years ago I went to the hospital to visit a postpartum mom and stopped by labor and delivery to visit a midwife. We greeted each other in the hallway. I said, "Slow day? Nobody in labor today?" She looked surprised and said, "Every room is full!" I was genuinely confused. There were no birth sounds, no birth "songs. I listened again; except for the beeping of machines, it was as silent as the hospice ward my father-in-law spent time in. "How can this be?" And of course, every mother was medicated or had an epidural. The sound of her labor was clinical. Did the silence of that ward increase mothers' self-consciousness should she begin to make the primal sounds and "songs" of labor? Don't we all feel less self-conscious to sing and dance when everybody around us is doing it, loudly, badly, freely, and in-joy? Nobody wants to be the only one making a scene! Heaven forbid: we are conditioned to abide by the first lesson we learned in primary school.

So Change #13 may send waves of fantasy and resistance through birth peep-ville. If this takes off, it will probably change the very profit margin of the corporate birth world.

Have you heard about "Threshold Choirs?" This is a fairly new voluntary movement started by Kate Munger in the Bay area. It's a very simple idea. Two or three women form a local Threshold Choir chapter, they practice songs together every week, and sing to people who are struggling with illness or dying, often in hospice. Patients, their families, and the hospice nurses, respond positively to the singing. But then, people who work in hospice are already different, at the edge, and in a service-to-the-patient-(and their family)-mindset... so Threshold Choirs are welcomed there.

Threshold Choir members learn a range of songs so when they meet the patient, and feel into the mood in the room, their voices raised in song can meet that person at their Threshold, and assist by soothing or uplifting the recipients as each one crosses their psychic or physical threshold.

Threshold singing is a sacred gift, it is offered in humility, in absolute service to the one at the threshold. It is not an ego-driven "performance." Singers do not have to be "professional," or "trained." Singing may entrain all the scattered thoughts in the room, but the singers do not sing to bring about a particular mood change they believe would be best for the recipient(s). The Song is the Medicine, and they are the Instrument—when the Medicine is wanted.

Women in every stage of labor are crossing psychic and physical thresholds. So are their partners, and sometimes the staff. I can imagine birth threshold singing helping calm anxious, exhausted mothers in prodromal labor, perhaps allowing them to rest (or to allow medications to help them rest or ripen work better). Certainly, birth threshold songs might soothe and celebrate the mother/parents, still in birth shock, as she/they take the first psychic steps toward parenthood. What a lovely way to celebrate them.

What songs do you already know that could be Medicine for these Thresholds of Birth; in early labor; or postpartum? Perhaps repetitive chanting, non-English lyrics, spirituals, or lullabies? Please, write in your ideas so we can begin learning songs. Send in the lyrics, your sources where we can learn the melody.

What kind of music might help women cross the deep Thresholds in active labor, when they are deep in the trance of wordless-Laborland?

Drumming!

Layne Redmond is a musician, drum maker, and author of When the Drummers were Women. In her wonderful book she reminds us that drums were associated with fertility in ancient cultures, and that frame drums were associated with feminine sexual energy. Beating her drum connected her to the primal rhythms of life apparent in the sexual act. In ancient mythology, Goddess-priestsess’(Inanna, Hathor, Aphrodite, and Cybele) all played the frame drum to increase the energy of sexual attraction and the power of femininity. "In menstruation and birthing rites, certain drum rhythms caused the womb to contract, aiding the flow of menstrual blood or the birth of the child. A forceful beat of the dream could drive away evil spirits and purify a space where health and well-being could flourish."

Drumbeats send messages to the body, mind, and to others. In parts of rural Africa drumbeats may be used for long-distance communication, sending complex messages from village to village. When I hear the question (resistance) raised that singing or drumming for one mother might disturb another patient or doctor, I think it is equally possible that the music might also send a message of life, movement, joy to others, separated by walls, but sharing a similar journey in the hospital "village." But let's not let these individual possibilities stop us from dreaming a new dream; our dream must also include being sensitive to shared experience and finding solutions to problems as they arise.

We have all been energized and entrained by a drumbeat. Layne Redmond observed that, "Before the age of machines, in factory [and birth factory places], drums [and singing] linked people together, they measured the shared tempo of life, coordinated and energizing group effort. Since the Industrial Revolution, the grinding, discordant clang of … machinery destroyed the peaceable synchronization of natural rhythms and work."

I am suggesting that singing and drumming can help mothers find their own rhythm in labor and enter into the natural trance of Laborland. But, let’s also consider how singing or drumming would soothe and aid women who are birthing restrained, numbed, worried about their progress or well-being of their baby. Music could also be powerful Medicine for them as they cross their thresholds through labor, perhaps enhancing the drugs effectiveness as the mother relaxes and feels contained by rhythm of music.

Good Ideas Must Pass Through the Gate of Resistance

Let's go into the resistance that might come up in our own minds, or in the culture, when live music for birth thresholds is proposed. When we hear about how women in traditional cultures still hear drumming for them in labor, and how it helps them move their bodies to their own rhythm in labor.... perhaps we romanticize that bit of “National Geographic” news, or feel fleeting remorse that we don't have such a ritual, and then--we distance our selves from the idea, from our loss, and from our self-consciousness.

Perhaps we settle for a compromise, “I’ll bring a music CD,” and then further compromise, “… and wear headphones so it’s not too loud.” But women know the power of live music! We know it awakens the Divine Feminine in us. Live music is “alive,” and we are alive when we hear it and feel its vibration in our bones, and hips, and hair flying, and in our feet! Live music, not CDs, have always been used in rites of passage because it has the power to rock us and to entrain us.

Wouldn't it be great if every nurse, midwife, and doula had to learn to drum or sing as part of their holistic preparation to work with mothers in labor and postpartum. What if certification or re-certification required contact hours in music, singing, drumming? OUTRAGEOUS, I know! I can hear cries of resistance, "Has she gone mad? Are we supposed to go backwards? What if a mother doesn't want to be sung or drum across her threshold?" Alrighty then, we already know what to do, don't we? We can just sit there and watch the monitor and the clock and hope she “chooses” for the best.

And what if, worst-case scenario now, what if drumming and singing helped women and families (and staff) relax, and the rhythm made women move and go into trance... and the epidural rate fell... and this upset the corporate profit margins in obstetrics?
Hmmm... that would be a shame. Let's not upset this system.

For my American birth peeps, I wish you a happy holiday weekend.
For all of you, I hope you go out and hear, feel, and dance to live music… and write your fellow-peep revolutionaries here so we can get some tunes to start this change, change #13!

Love,
Pam

The Birth Revolution Will Not Be Televised

2010-11-22T09:49:00.000-08:00

Dear Fellow Birth Changin'Peeps,
I was talking to an old friend yesterday, a midwife and birth activist, about this blog. I was telling her about the guidelines I set for myself. I told her I had to hold myself to my first "rule:" not to resist, blame, or try to change the dominant system directly. To see clearly: not to be naive or innocent while abiding by that rule. ...And how I question my own rule. Perhaps it will require "war."

When I was in college, I remember being fascinated how in ancient Greece, Greek gods, goddesses and the myths wasn't a "mythology" to that whole civilization, the myths were "real." What changed that? People stopped believing. When beliefs change, civilization changes. But, until then, when millions of people are conditioned to believe a certain logic, or to fear a certain consequence, then that conditioned belief becomes the current dream of the culture.

So, in denigrating and vilifying the medical mythology of evidence-based management, we must believe in its power. Resistance actually feed it. Individual and small group resistance often feels futile; especially when we discover the corporate machine is deaf and well-funded. Our purposes are crossed. Futility fuels the feeling of defeat.

When each of us dares to take action, small but pro-active steps that reflect what we do believe, then we feed the new dream of birth in our culture. When we stop believing we are hapless recipients under the thumb of medical corporations and insurance companies, when we are no longer afraid of being thought crazy or ostracized, what small thing will we dare to do differently, today.

WE are the dreamers and authors of the new birth culture that envisions a holistic vision of childbirth for parents and professionals. We have to know what we are dreaming, rather than wanting to change the dream of nameless someones in the tower of the soul-less corporate world. Our new dream is big, it also embraces the positive role that medical birth management plays, and knows (or is learning) when to embrace it wisely.

My old friend considered this, nodded, and reminded me, "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised." Yes, indeed!

It takes kindling a Fire, then steadily feeding that Fire, to dream a new dream, together. We are narrating a new collective birth mythology. This requires millions of us to re-wire old beliefs and conditioned reflexes, to face our private fears, and to do this work, not for ourselves, but for greater good.

Tomorrow, we will sing across a Threshold.
In-Love,
Pam

Change #12: Prepare Mothers and Fathers for Cesarean Birth

2010-11-18T07:40:00.000-08:00

Dear Peeps,

One way to change the experience women have giving birth in our culture is to warmly, honestly prepare them for all kinds of birth in our culture. That includes cesarean birth.

Have you noticed how many times the mother who is in birth shock or shame after a cesarean is the mother who did not read or ask about it, because she truly believed it would not happen to her? (With the rising cesarean rate, even if it "shouldn't" happen to her, it might.)

If you were to ask her (or the father) what would have helped, she (or he) might say--"I wish I had known what to expect. It was such a shock."

We must not put the onus of holistic preparation on uniniated mothers or fathers, i.e., "if they don't ask, we won't talk about it." Mothers and fathers who are not prepared suffer terrible emotional shock, not from the surgery itself, but from their own innocence, cluelessness, self-judgment, and being so overwhelmed, that they disconnect to get through it.

Even when the tide of unnecessary cesareans turns back, some women will have cesareans. So, cesarean preparation must become part of holistic preparation. All mothers, fathers, other mothers and their birth partners need to be prepared to give birth-in-awareness by cesarean.

In the birth trauma work I do, story after story, is not about the cesarean itself, but the shock of not knowing what to expect, or what to do, or what it means about her as a mother. On the other hand, BFW mentors have often heard thanks from parents who, because of the sensitive role-play class on cesarean birth-in-awareness, were prepared and much less traumatized.

Parents who see midwives, doulas, and take classes--and hear not a word about what to do during cesarean birth--often feel betrayed. Oddly, not talking about cesarean preparation prenatally adds to their feeling of shame because the people they trusted (i.e., the people who 'trust birth') did not talk about it. Silence sends a meta-message something like, "cesareans are something that happens to unprepared, uncommitted women, or women who don't have protection from information and doulas."

When birth peeps (or even friends) talk, straighforwardly and warmly, about giving birth by cesarean in-awareness, we model acceptance and strength. If we have rapport with the parents, they embody our acceptance and strength. Think of this as an emotional homeopathic dose of Medicine against shame, withdrawal, the pervasive feeling of failure. And, if she does have a cesarean birth, she knows she has an ally in us: we dared to talk about it!

If you are one of the people she trusts (one of the people who 'trust birth') and you talked about giving birth by cesarean, even if you are not with her in the operating room, she knows you are "with her." She knows she can come talk to you later.

Not all birth peeps can talk about cesarean birth warmly and without bias. Some need to first go through a period of healing their own birth trauma or agreements against cesareans or cesarean parents. Then, it can be done.

There are many ways of teaching about cesarean. Some send tacit or overt messages of judgment, with reasons and ways to avoid cesarean at all costs. The positive intention is to scare or motivate a woman not to "choose" a cesarean, but in labor, we all know that "choice"and informed consent are nebulous,gray areas.

When I teach couples about cesarean birth, I feel it is a ceremony, an initiation into self-acceptance and envisioning themselves coping--even with an unwished-for cesarean. The teaching is about embracing oneself, not about avoiding and regretting.

Fathers and other mothers experience cesarean birth from an entirely different perspective. They too need support and preparation; they too, can be traumatized by lack of preparation. If we don't tell them, they will be so overwhelmed by the surgery environment. This week I worked with a lovely couple who was unprepared for cesarean birth, but had one. The baby was born healthy, taken to the baby table for the baby dry and wrap ritual... then given to the father and escorted out of the room to the nursery. The mother never saw her baby. ... not until hours later in the recovery room. This father had no idea he could take it to his wife, the mother.... and help her see him, hold him, on the operating table. He was utterly overwhelmed and shepherded out of the operating room without a clue of the options. Their experience would be so different if ...if only.... they had been prepared for cesarean birth-in-awareness.

Some of you may already be doing this. And for some, it is so counter-intuitive, you can't imagine how to talk about cesarean birth without sounding like you are "approving" it or hypnotizing them to give birth by cesarean. These are important considerations. It can be done though. If you want to learn one way to do this, take an introduction to mentoring workshop, or contact Birthing From Within for a phone class.

There are many ways to change birth in our culture. It's not only about changing the medical protocols and rituals, but in preparing parents to birth in the culture they are actually birthing in, and not the one we wish they were birthing in.

In-Love,

Pam

Change #11 Row Row Row Your Boat in the River of Life

2010-11-17T06:30:00.000-08:00

Dear Birth Peeps,

From childhood, millions of young women and men, including most of our fellow birth peeps (and myself), WE as a culture, are thoroughly, completely pacified, numb, and hypnotized by the medical model's rituals and beliefs--even in our resistance to it, we are hypnotized by its power. From time to time, a little voice in the back of our minds, or in the media, screams out to wake us from this trance, but then...as is the power of ritual and hypnotic language, another message, study, story (after all, repetition is the food for ritual and trance) is sent and the culture--that has been entrained to believe birth is safer with monitors and medical magic, or powerless to change the rituals of birth, falls back asleep again.

It's time for all us to really wake up. There is power in numbers, and there is power in repetition, repetition, repetition, and love. If we keep repeating new rituals of preparation, change will come.

Resisting and resenting the medical model is not the way--because resistance affirms the very trance we resist.

We must put our attention and intention into a new dream, one that arises in us, from us. WE must create-and repeat frequently--our own new rituals that reinforce our emerging dream and self-worth. As a culture of mothers and fathers and birth peeps, we are indeed numb and shaky, dependent, hypnotized like children who want to be safe and contained, want to get approval, and avoid conflict, disapproval, and above all: death. In every revolution, there is risk. There is a price to pay for real change. Like children, a few rebel--and are used as examples to keep the other children in line.

Real change comes from the bottom up. There is power in numbers. We cannot wait for the medical model, hospital administrators, or insurance companies to come to its senses. We cannot wait for another study to prove ...whatever it is we want to prove; evidenced-based practice is kind of convenient myth.

If we are paralyzed and believe ourselves to be dependent and powerless, we need to restore our spirit, muscles, and faith. We need to find our own way on the river of life, un-learn old beliefs, and learn new stories. A solitary river trip for six-weeks would be a great re-education for every pregnant couple and birth peep.

I'd like to tell you a story about a man who took such a trip in a canoe down the Mississippi. He was born in 1901 and contracted polio when he was 17. He was very sick for a while (the doctors thought he would die), then very weak, unable to walk. To renew his spirit and self worth, he arranged to take a solitary, six-week canoe ride down the Mississippi River--with $5 in his pocket. He had to be carried and placed in the boat when the trip began.

On the river, on his own, he discovered as do many people who live on the river, that the River provided everything he needed. He met people who lived on the river, enjoyed campfires and storytelling. Day by day he was learning. Rowing strengthened his muscles. At the end of the canoe trip, he had developed upper body strength, and was able to walk on his own with a cane. Equally important, he gained a new world view. What the river taught him he was to use the rest of his life.

This man is Milton Erickson, truly a wounded healer, the founder of his own unique style of hypnotherapy. Erickson is a legend, he died in 1980.

What are you thinking about right now?
What does the living metaphor of Milton Erikson's canoe trip say to you?

It speaks volumes to me. We need to initiate mothers, fathers, and birth peeps in a life-validating way. Not from books, research, resistance--but in the body, in nature, from stories on the river of life. Wouldn't it be crazy if childbirth classes became a life-adventure, learning survival skills, facing our fears and surviving. Learning metaphors about life, opening, change...from Nature.

Another crazy thought from Pam, in Albuquerque, on the Rio Grande.
Radical change is what is needed. Not smoldering, petty resistance. Let's keep thinking, talking, daring to really feel again... and all the while, remember to embrace it all, including the medical model.

Remember that how you dream the medical model arises in your mind, not "out there." When we can embrace it without being in a trance, then we have real power to "choose."

Row Row Row Your Boat.
Life is but a Dream.

Pam

Change #10 Create Healing, Harmonious Space

2010-11-12T10:36:00.000-08:00

Dear Birth Peeps,

Once Mullah was riding a donkey and the animal left the main path and started traveling the wrong way. One of the Mullah’s friends passed by and inquired where he was going. “I do not know,” said Mullah. “I’m going to the same place as this donkey.”

And that is exactly the energetic experience of expectant and new mothers (and fathers) who embody the mystery of life and birth--who might begin with the intention of celebrating their pregnancy and motherhood, and even birthing normally—but upon entering the chaotic, cluttered, often metallic environment of the medical clinic, they unconsciously begin following the donkey.

When we enter a space, the “space” enters us. Ambiance in clinical settings are an underestimated factor in our well-being, in our feeling welcome, perhaps even in our wanting to return to the space.

Years ago I worked in a public health clinic. It was a maze of long, winding hallways leading to cul-de-sacs of waiting rooms leading to examining rooms. But it was the blood draw room that sent me on a query about the messages clinic space sends patients, and also, whose space is it anyway (the patients or the birth peeps)?

Every inch of the walls of the little lab room was plastered with magazine cut outs of actor Tom Selleck (starred in Magnum PI); it seems the middle-aged lab tech was in a delayed adolescent crisis. The rest of the clinic was clean but drab; the cinder block walls were a uniform drab beige color. Old metal framed chairs lined in up in rows; a television in the corner blared. “Health” posters on the wall warned of dangers in pregnancy and oddly… promoted birth control. Women carrying life, about to give life, came to sit for hours on end, in this lifeless place.

My deepest question became, “Whose space is this anyway?” The state owns and maintains it, employees come to work in it, custodians keep it clean and in repair, parents visit it as patients. Probably many people think the space is cluttered, clinically “sterile,” even run down—wishing someone else would spruce it up. No one owns the clinic or takes ownership of its feng shui, yet everyone in the space is shaped by it.

“Feng shui brings the environment, and the people in it, into harmony.
Atmospheric ch’i molds human ch’i. Ch’i must flow smoothly and near a person
to improve his [or her] ch’i. It must be balanced in yin and yang.
If the current is too strong or too weak,
it can have negative effects.”
—Sarah Rossbach,
Parabola, Summer 1993

I decided to make the corner clinic where I worked beautiful. I got permission to paint murals on a few of the walls. I brought paints from home. On one dingy cinder block wall I painted a big red healing momma bear carrying medicine and feathers on her back. On another wall I painted a sweet mother and baby. We hung a few plants. Immediately parents and co-workers noticed and smiled when they entered this space.

There is endless talk about changing the medical model of birth. How to do it? Can it be done? What can each of us do today, this week, that won’t involve a lot of red tape in the labyrinth of bureaucracy? What can each of us do for under $10, and little free time, that will make a big difference?

In the bureaucracy of corporations renovations cost thousands and millions of dollars, and there is miles of red tape to get it done. So we, the little people at the bottom, wait for someone else to initiate it and do it. Change #10 requires you to "think small:" the smallest change can make a difference.

If you work in a public space, make an effort to spend a few minutes each day reducing clutter, restoring order, and adding a touch of beauty.

Add a single living flower, a spray of aromatherapy, a beautiful picture on the wall.

Play soothing or happy music.

Notice messages sent by “teaching” posters or other images on the wall; make a change if you want to send another message.

If you don’t have an office, but you travel to appointments: create a small, simple ritual for creating harmonious space for the session. By doing this little ritual every time you make a visit, the recipient and you shift into a new space—together.

In-Love,
Pam

Reminder: Labyrinth Booksigning at Ark in Santa Fe Thursday

2010-11-10T14:20:00.000-08:00

Hi Santa Fe Birth Peeps,
Please help me get the word out and remind parents and birth peeps that I am giving a talk and booksigning for the Labyrinth of Birth on Thursday, November 11th, from 4-6 pm at the Ark Bookstore in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Hope to see you there.
Pam

Change #9 Dream Incubation and Healing for Birth Peeps

2010-11-07T08:28:00.000-08:00

Hello Birth Peeps,
Welcome new Peeps, and thank you for your responses to this idea. Let's continue.

I am inspired by ancient Greeks (500 BCE to 300 CE) who turned to "dream incubation" for healing. First the "patient" had to try to heal him/herself using traditional medical and herbal cures of the time. If a healing was not obtained this way, then they could go to an Asclepieion Temple. Asclepius was a healer who was diefied; he is also known as a god of healing.

When the patient went to the temple, they first spent time unwinding from their ordinary life and travel, and prepared for their dream incubation. Through bodywork, hot tubs, psychotherapy, special food or fasting, theatre, music--all in a setting of beauty--they underwent a symbolic purification and cleansing in preparation for their dream-healing.

When ready, in the evening a priest trained in dream healing, wearing white robes, would take the patient to his or her cell or abaton, a private room with a couch for sleeping. The patient would hear hymns being sung, the air had a light scent of incense... and the priest gave special instructions to prepare the patient to receive a dream...a dream to show the way to sacred healing, a communion with the gods to which the patient was now receptive.

In the morning, the priest would come and hear the dream. There are many many recorded stories of dreams and healings during this time, throughout the Mediterranean, Europe and the Near East. Treating the body mind in healing, and engaging the patient in their own healing, went out of favor as patriarchal medicine took hold.

In my dream, I see a return to this wisdom. I see a great need for our birth people to have a place to heal, to renew their body, mind, soul and their dedication to birth work. This can be done. It is time to do it. I am preparing to help revive dream incubation by going through training myself. I trust many of you are eager to help, to come, to dream a new dream.

In Love,

Pam

Acknowledging the Wounded Healer

2010-11-05T08:02:00.000-07:00

Good Morning Birth Peeps,
I am spending this week in Ghost Ranch in northern New Mexico in a "bear cave" with seven international "bears," otherwise known as advanced mentors (from Spain, Canada, US, South Africa and Puerto Rico!). These wonderful women, committed to changing birth in our culture) have come far to enrich their skills in childbirth mentoring. Working (and relaxing) in the serene and beautiful setting of Ghost Ranch takes us out of our ordinary setting, therefore out of our ordinary mind, and helps us reach inward and expand outward in our personal lives and professional work.

Being in the extraordinary place of beauty awakened in me the dream of creating Healing Retreats for Birth Peeps.

Women and men who work in birth give a lot, day after day, year after year. After receiving formal training, most professional conferences are geared toward informing the birth peep in the latest research or technique so they can better serve the mother/family during the childbearing year. The focus tends to be outward: serving, protecting, and healing the mother and family.

Birth work is not ordinary work. While it can be rewarding it can also be psychically draining and emotionally "wounding. After months and years birth work takes a toll; as birth peeps accumulate unprocessed grief, guilt, frustration or powerlessness, s/he begins to move further away from an initial intention (to heal) and deeper into despair, control, and negative assumptions about themselves, birth, and parents.

Who is healing, and nurturing, our birth peeps?
How can (or do) "wounded," burnt out, birth peeps serve expected parents?
What needs to happen next?

In the model of Birth as a Hero's Journey, one of the most powerful archetypes is the wounded, shattered, dismembered, hard-working, determined, but lost, person...who may yet become, but is not yet, a hero in her own myth or live. This person--like so many birth peeps who answered a Call to serve women/families during the childbearing year--started out eager, enthusiastic, full of hope.... and gate by gate, birth by birth, year by year, she/he lost her innocence, trust, and dream.

We cannot expect to change birth in our culture by solely focusing on parents--trying to empower them through information and resistance, or by healing "their" birth wounds--without also healing our own.

Change #9 coming soon, not only to this blog, but to our culture: I hope!

Pam

#8 Dance Through the Childbearing Year

2010-10-28T11:51:00.000-07:00

Hi Birth Peeps,
The blog arrested this week, needed to move again. Which brings us to Change #8:
DANCING THROUGH THE CHILDBEARING YEAR.

I find it curious that the message is often sent to "move in labor," but in prenatal sessions and classes, parents "sit." In birth conferences, we "sit." Why is that? Perhaps like art, we leave dancing, and teaching dance, to the "stars" and coordinated experts!

But No! the new Birth Village must begin dancing.

Stephanie Larsen is an amazing woman who has created DANCING FOR BIRTH(TM), a refreshing, uplifting dance class for pregnant women, "Instructor Training," and an engaging DVD showing all the steps. After watching her DVD--I became really enthusiastic about dancing in pregnancy and birth. I loved the moves and the fun names she gives all the moves.

I asked Stephanie how dancing can help change birth in our culture. Here's what she had to say:

"When women start dancing, dancing brings a new connection with themselves--a connection that is not typically cultivated. Dancing increases acceptance of one's body, and love and respect for oneself; it increases self-esteem. Dancing informs a mother of what her body is capable of, and to feel pleasure to be in her body.

"In labor, women can experience an internal, intuitive, and ectatic state. This same state can be accessed while dancing. In labor, women rely on sensation and freedom of movement. Through dance a woman learns to feel sensation in her body rather than be numb to [or unaware of] sensations.

Women often feel suffering when they can't move in labor in the hospital, or they don't have the freedom to act upon the desire to move. Women can feel restrained by tubes, belts, and tethers of technology, but they can also lose their freedom to act, with or without medical tethering, by their own conditioning and disconnection with their bodies.

We give birth in our bodies. We cannot "think" and plan our way through labor. We give birth in our Dynamic Feminine energy and body; which means to move intuitively, mindlessly, and unself-consciously.

So Change #8 is about helping pregnant women and birth peeps to come alive in their bodies, to cultivate a new personal and collective relationship with our bodies by feeling pleasure and ecstacy and freedom to move--before labor and in labor!

I'm going to take one of Stephanie's DANCING FOR BIRTH trainings so I can bring her approach to my parents and workshops. I hope you will, too. Check her out at www.DancingForBirth.com or call her at 866-643-4824.

In-Love,

Pam

#7 Another thought: Public Birth Announcements

2010-10-20T16:40:00.000-07:00

As an after thought to #7, or another thought...

Several mothers have recently told me that newspapers in various places on the planet... still refuse to publish a birth announcement if the baby is born at home.

Why is this?! Whatever their reason, not announcing a home birthed baby keeps the notion out of sight, out of mind. Another way to bring change is to challenge and change this policy in your local newspaper--if it exists.

Pam

Change #7 A Multi-Billion Dollar Change: Home Birth Economics

2010-10-17T21:13:00.000-07:00

Hi Birth Peeps,
I read today that an economic analysis predicted if just 10% of healthy women in the US gave birth at home with qualified midwives, it would save $9.1 BILLION per year. (Presently 1% of women birth at home.)

In the US, childbirth costs more than any other health (or medical?) condition; in 2000 the bill came to $86 Billion, half was paid by taxpayers. This tally is twice the amount paid by any European country.

You don't always get what you pay for. Although we pay more for childbirth than almost any country on the planet, the US has the worst birth outcomes, more preterm births, infant and maternal mortality and other problems than other developed countries.

Another way to change birth in our culture: make home birth with midwives the norm, not the alternative. Health insurance (public and private coverage) should cover home birth because it is a safe, even a safer, alternative for healthy women.

Today I reviewed current research on home birth. In the past thirty years, the studies here and abroad keep coming to the same conclusion: When healthy women birth at home with qualified midwives they have improved and safe outcomes: fewer lacerations, hemorrhages,induction or augmentation of labor, infections, or cesareans.

I am curious why there is a collective fervor to support "research-based" obstetric care--except when it comes to home birth.

Pam

Change # 6 Genuine Gratitude for Birth Professionals

2010-10-13T08:29:00.000-07:00

Good Morning Peeps!

When we think of changing birth in our culture, most of us tend to think of informing women and stopping or reversing the escalating use of medical and surgical interventions in pregnancy and birth. This narrow vision for change pits two groups against each other; it might even be feeding an image of victims and oppressors. And, instead of cultivating real change and a collective healing, the opposing sides dig their heels in deeper to justify their stance.

Have you ever complained or felt that birth people "objectify" pregnant women, that they don't see or hear the moms?

You can change birth in our culture this week!

Look around at birth professionals in your circle or community. when you notice you have "objectified" a medical profession or professional, take a moment to deconstruct your assumption. Really "see" them as human beings. Perhaps really listen to what they are saying with beginner's ears. Feel their positive intention, even if you don't agree with their management or decisions.

Changing birth in our culture is not always about a fight or being right--e.g., "Lookie here, new research proves I'm right!" It's also about being human, being kind.

At least once this week, extend GENUINE gratitude to, or an acknowledgment of, a birth professional in your circle. It might be someone who:
* is "just doing his or her job,"
* took extra time with a patient,
* burned out,
* or even someone who is getting sued.

Perhaps healing begins by each of us seeing everyone and everything out there as a reflection of our own mind. When we have a change of mind, we have a change of heart. Change begins within and ripples outward.

Feel free to post how you changed birth in our culture this week.
Love,
Pam

Change #5 Continued: Year Long Initiation

2010-10-11T14:57:00.000-07:00

Welcome to all the New Peeps joining us.

I want to be part of the Change in our birth culture.
Beginning in January, I will lead a Year Long Childbirth & New Parent Initiation Class. You will be able follow my class--and my learning curve--on this blog...

Virginia Bobro, my business partner and fellow BFW Mentor taught a Year Long Childbirth Class last year. How many of you are doing this, or have done it? We'd love to hear from you.

Ready for more CHANGE? Change #6 Coming on Wednesday.

Love,
Pam

CHANGE #5 YEAR LONG CLASSES & SUPPORT

2010-10-07T14:12:00.000-07:00

Hello Birth Peeps!

For over four decades, our culture has been entrained to take six or more childbirth preparation classes in the third trimester. The focus is on labor. Initially the focus was on relaxation and coping during labor; of late, many classes are no more than an orientation to what to expect in the hospital, management when things go wrong, epidural information, and "choices."

Childbirth classes used to be a "ritual" of childbirth preparation; in recent years the number of women who take childbirth classes has fallen.

Many birth peeps (parents and professionals) feel six weeks is not enough time for parents to un-learn cultural myths and conditioning, and to really embody new beliefs. Waiting until the end of pregnancy doesn't allow time for prenatal nutrition education, making informed choices about where to birth and with whom, and to awaken the Mother-Father archetypes within.

When classes focus on the medical model (whether in support or in-avoidance), the "Patient or Consumer archetype" is awakened--not the nurturing and fierce Mother archetype! My vision of YEAR LONG BIRTH INITIATION includes activities that awaken and strengthen the Great Mother and Father archetypes before the child arrives.

When I envision YEAR LONG BIRTH INITIATION for parents, it is a holistic feast of activities and experiences, friends who gather with elders and mentors. In addition to information would be the maturing of a woman or a couple before they experience birth as a rite of passage and parenting as a new relationship.

So much emphasis is placed on preparation for labor-day, little time is left for preparing for parenthood. Many classes do offer a token childbirth class reunion once after all the babies are born, or perhaps a breastfeeding class--but during the first few months postpartum, most mothers and fathers need much more emotional and social support, as well as information sharing. Even if more postpartum information was given prenatally, new parents aren't ready for it until after they are parenting their own child! So a new standard might include regular meetings for several months after the birth.

Many people like this "idea"... Many know this kind of immersion and ongoing support would really make a profound change in the heart and soul of new parents, and therefore, the culture. So why not just do this? Some of us have tried. But the idea is foreign to all of us, parents and pro's, so entrenched are we in thinking of classes beginning in the third trimester. And the cost. How much would it cost? Is it affordable? And the time investment! People are busy, overworked, and then there's television addiction in the evenings.

Many young people spend a year planning a wedding, making great fuss over that day. So what would it take to make Year Long Childbirth Initiation just something we do in our culture?

During the next week, let's envision a new model of Year Long Childbirth and Parent Preparation, Initiation, and Support. We have to be fearless here. We have to get past all the barriers that keep us complacent with six week classes that are simply not serving our culture.

Love,

Pam

Thank you Dr. Fisk (change #4 continued)

2010-09-26T21:32:00.000-07:00

Humane Cesarean, continued.

The idea of "humane cesarean" or "natural cesarean" was conceived by Professor Nicholas Fisk, formerly a consultant obstetrician at Queen Charlotte's Hospital in London, in response to the rising numbers of cesareans in the UK.

Fisk showed that when a cesarean is performed slowly the baby is able to “auto-resuscitate” - start breathing unaided - while still attached to the placenta, just as it would in vaginal birth. The baby is “half-delivered” by the surgeon from her body and the baby's vigorous wriggles allow the lungs to expel fluid in a similar way to a vaginal birth. This reduces the risk of the cesarean-born baby needing help to breathe (a common occurrence after a cesarean).

Please, learn more. Read more about this online. Google! And... take the next step. Start talking to birth people and parents about what is possible. Make it happen -- in your home town!

Love,
Pam

(Still in Melbourne, Australia. Be home soon!)

#4 CHANGE BIRTH CHANGE CESAREAN CUSTOMS

2010-09-20T16:51:00.000-07:00

Virginia and I are about to close BIRTHING FROM WITHIN’s very first Introduction to Mentoring workshop in Australia!! We were privileged to meet 24 amazing and interesting women (one came all the way from Abu Dhabi), many of whom will join the BFW program and family—and become childbirth mentor ‘pioneers’ in Australia.

After presenting our module, “Cesarean Birth in Awareness,” Maggie, a warm and experienced midwife told us a story about a seed change in Australian birth culture.

Three years ago midwives at Canberra Hospital (Canberra is the capital of Australia) pushed for a humane change in how families experience cesareans. Now, at Canberra Hospital, cesarean-born babies are no longer separated from their mothers in theatre (operating room). When a baby is born healthy, it is immediately placed on its mother’s chest, skin-to-skin, wet and sticky. There is no blanket barrier between the mother and baby; the baby is not swaddled. Most of the time, the baby breastfeeds during the first half hour in the operating room! When the mother is taken to recovery, her baby is tucked inside her gown, skin-to-skin.

How did this change come about? It wasn’t easy. “There was a big fight before this could happen,” Maggie recounted. “Some of the midwives wanted to continue swaddling the babies before they were placed on the mother, while other midwives believed the babies could go directly to their mothers.”

Maggie told me her own story about adapting to this radical change in policy. She had taken a leave from her position as hospital midwife for a few years and returned after this policy had changed. During her orientation, Maggie’s mentor told her that now all babies—including babies born by cesarean—stayed with their mothers continuously and would be put directly on the mother after birth.

“So the first cesarean I attended, I dutifully took baby from surgeon, wrapped it, and then took it to mother. My mentor came over, unwrapped the baby and placed it on its mother so there was skin-to-skin contact. My mentor left the room and I swaddled the baby again because it was so engrained in me that babies had to be wrapped up because theatre is cold. So we had a dance: my mentor unwrapping baby, and I wrapping baby. It took me a while to understand skin-to-skin meant whole body contact,” not just the face.

The other change at the Canberra Hospital is making the theatre (operating room) warmer so the mother and baby are warmer. The new temperature is about 23°C, or 73° F. Other midwives in our workshop shared that a lot of hospitals in Australia no longer routinely separate babies from mothers, even in cesarean birth.

WHEN WE TALK ABOUT CHANGING BIRTH IN OUR CULTURE, EVERYBODY'S SMALL AND GRAND EFFORTS MATTER. BIRTH TOUCHES EVERYBODY. SO EVERYBODY MUST SPEAK UP: MOTHERS, FATHERS, GRANDMOTHERS, DOCTORS, MIDWIVES, DOULAS, NURSES, WRITERS, AND ARTISTS. WE CANNOT WAIT FOR THE POWERS THAT BE TO CHANGE BIRTH FOR US. WHEN MILLIONS OF US CHANGE OUR ATTITUDE AND EXPECTATIONS, AND WE SPEAK UP, WE BECOME THE CHANGE WE ARE WAITING FOR.

Stay tuned this week for more blogs related to changing birth in our culture by changing cesarean birth. Looking forward to reading your comments and experiences as we all “dance” between old thinking and new thinking.

Love from “down under,”
Pam and Virginia

Good Prenatal Diet Prevents Puny Pancreases and Little Livers

2010-09-15T18:20:00.000-07:00

Hi Birth Peeps,

This week each one of us can change birth in our culture by helping motivate (not guilt trip)--and lovingly feed--even one pregnant mom to eat well during pregnancy.

The pancreas normally secretes varying amounts of insulin in response to blood sugar levels. Diabetes occurs when the pancreas does not secrete sufficient insulin to regulate the blood sugar.

A lot of attention has been given to maternal weight gain and the baby’s birth weight as a measure of healthy growth and development. Research in the past fifteen years is showing how even a normal birth weight does not always reflect organogenesis—a fancy word that means the cellular development of organs in the fetus.

Diabetes is on the rise in young people. There are two kinds of diabetes. Type 1 (also known as Juvenile Diabetes, and thought to be primarily genetic) and Type II (also known as adult-onset) which is due to environmental factors. In this article, I am referring to Type II. There’s a lot of research being done to find out why some kids and adults develop diabetes, even when they are seemingly healthy, of normal weight, or without a family history of diabetes.

Researchers at Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston found a link between prenatal nutrition and diabetes. Pregnant mice were fed low protein diets in the third trimester (many people mistakenly think that after the first trimester, nutrition doesn’t matter any more); not surprisingly, they gave birth to low birth weight pups. Fed a healthy diet after birth, the pups gained weight and appeared as healthy as the mice fed a prenatal diet rich in protein. However, as adult mice, the majority of the low protein (LP) group developed diabetes. Why?

Normally, the pancreas secretes the right amount of insulin in response to varying blood sugar levels. Scientists discovered that in the LP group, the pancreas could secrete insulin, but it could only secrete a limited amount of insulin regardless of the blood sugar levels. In other studies, researchers found that when the prenatal diet was low in protein, pancreatic cells were smaller and fewer in number. And, that even when fed a good diet after birth, the abnormal pancreas cellular damage was irreversible.

So, eat a well-balanced, protein rich diet throughout pregnancy—grow healthy organs in your baby.

LITTLE LIVERS

The growth and development of fetal livers is dependent on many factors: genes, a healthy placenta, and maternal factors including a good diet. During the prolific growth and development of a baby's liver during pregnancy, the liver is sensitive to damange from malnutrition, infection and other chemical.

In one study where pregnant rats were give low protein diets in late gestation, the pups were born with smaller livers and abnormal liver function.

The size and health of the liver is not evident at birth, or in the baby's birth weight, but the size and healthy function of the liver is set before birth and follows us throughout life.

Virginia and I are in Sydney, Australia today. I am pleased to see our Peeps are growing in numbers. It's a bit difficult to find internet in some places, so I may not be back for a few days... Thinking of all of you all the same,

Pam

Many references are available: ¹ http://yourhealthcounts.net/good-prenatal-nutrition-the-importance-of-it

#3 of 50 Ways to Change Birth in Our Culture: NUTRITION

2010-09-11T00:56:00.000-07:00

Greetings Birth Peeps,
Today is our #3 way to change birth in our culture. Prenatal Nutrition. It may not seem all that exciting, and it is just that attitude that earned it top billing in our list of 50 Ways to Change Birth in Our Culture.

As a childbirth educator/mentor, I have been asking mothers for almost 30 years to tell me what they eat, and if they have received nutritional counseling from their doctor or midwife. This is how I know that our culture does not value the impact good nutrition has on the mother's health and well-being during the childbearing year. It is RARE to talk to a mother who has received sound nutritional counseling during prenatal care. Mothers more often report that their birth attendant dismisses their concerns about whether they are eating enough. One mother was told them to "trust her appetite," another was advised not to worry about it because "the baby is so small, it doesn't need much." (Both of these mothers were eating good food, but not enough protein or calories to nourish the baby and placenta, and all the changes occurring in their body during pregnancy.)

A lot of people think that after the first trimester, the baby is fully formed and is not as dependent on good nutrition. The baby's organs are continually growing and developing, not just in first trimester, but also important changes are still occurring in third trimester. So sound nutrition is important throughout the pregnancy.

Technology and advanced (intensive) baby care can do a lot for us... but as a culture, we shouldn't become passive and dependent on that kind of life-saving management. Instead, all of us--mothers, and people who feed and care for pregnant mothers--should do our part to nourish the mother and the life within.

If you have any inspired facts, research, good books or resources to motivate and feed our interest in this topic, please write in.

Pam

Magical Placenta Previa-Premie Story

2010-09-08T08:29:00.000-07:00

Another peep for Birth Peeps,

I am enjoying reading your stories and insights. How can we make a really difficult birth into a Magical Birth Story? Fortunately, we have a few years to process and integrate what happened "to us" and "in us" before our child can understand language to hear the Magical Story. So, if you can't imagine anything about the experience translating into a "sweet story" at first, you have time to heal.

My mother had five children, she was Catholic and a nurse, so she knew hospital policy which becomes relevant in the story. During her third pregnancy she developed a partial placenta previa and began to bleed around the seventh month. She was admitted to the hospital. I never knew too many details about what happened except this one poignant scene she felt compelled to tell me:

"I was bleeding, weak, kept falling asleep [in labor]. When I opened my eyes, I saw your father sitting in a chair against the wall saying the rosary. They only let fathers into the labor ward when the mother was dying, so I knew I was dying, but I wasn't afraid."

What an image! But to my child mind, oddly, it was kind of a Catholic, romantic, love story. My mother was alive and well when she telling me, so her fleeting thought was not a reality. Her reverie was a reflection on a powerful moment in her life, and it translated in my mind that we often brush death but are not taken, and life goes on. And, I remember thinking how odd that a father only comes in if his wife is dying and not if she is birthing.

This little story also reminds me to tell you one more thing. The story a storyteller tells is not necessarily the one the listener hears. Not every child would take an image of philosophical musings from the story I just told you. Another child might have heard a message about birth being dangerous, or your birth almost killed me.

As we are learning from the postings on this blog, one of the most important tasks of prenatal preparation is to consider not only our First Birth Story (stories) but, what we told ourselves about the story and birth in general as a child! The second half of this task of preparation is to inquire if that childhood assumption, belief, or promise absolutely true, relatively true, and what else is true. This changes our dialogue, our listening, and our new learning.

Can you see that if we don't begin at the beginning and hear our inner-Child's old-thinking, in some way, what we avoid and what we "choose," and the birth plan we are making now may be a comfortable continuation of the First Birth Plan made by the Child of little understanding. When we consider the meaning we gave our First Birth Story long ago, it may give our adult, or inner Love Warrior, a chance to show up, to step up, and and to participate more fully.

Coming Soon, Change #3 in 50 Ways to Change Birth in Our Culture.

Love,
Pam

P.S. I almost forgot to tell you the Premie in the Oven part of the Magical Story. Over fifty years ago when my sister was born prematurely(because of the previa), there was little that could be done in the hospital. My tiny, frail, ruddy-skinned sister, around two pounds, was sent home--to live or die. To keep her warm, she was swaddled and placed in a drawer on the open door of our electric oven. She was fed with an eye-dropper for a while. My mother, grandma and aunties kept constant vigil, sitting in front of the bundle in the drawer on the open oven door. A tall priest came to the house in his black robes and funny hat with the pom pom on it to give last rites. There was crying and more waiting. ... My sister lived and was as healthy as the rest of us. It is a remarkable story.

My First Birth Story

2010-09-07T10:43:00.000-07:00

Dear Birth Peeps,

Today Virginia read me a lovely story from a woman who recalled her own birth story through her father's eyes. It was deeply touching. I thought perhaps you would like to know my First Birth Story.

One afternoon, when I was seven or eight years old, I was watching a western on a black and white television. A pregnant woman was walking slowly around the camp at night, holding her back and looking uncomfortable. She climbed into a covered wagon. It shook a little from side to side; I could hear sounds of breathing, moaning, and suddenly the cry of a newly born baby!

My eyes opened wide as I realized this pioneer woman just had a baby by herself in a covered wagon in the middle of the desert! My hero! This woman was so brave! A feeling of awe and respect for strong women stirred within me. As I instantly embodied this brief scene in a western, I imagined myself giving birth alone and being strong.

Within minutes, my mind began to turn a new question, “How did the pioneer woman give birth without a doctor?” It seemed impossible, brave, even dangerous all of a sudden. I ran to another room where my mother was ironing to ask her how it was possible for a woman to have a baby without a doctor.

My mother, in a matter-of-fact, almost impatient manner, said, “Women have been having babies for a lot longer than doctors have been around. We’ve had babies without doctors for thousands of years. Birth is just something your body knows how to do!”

Wow! My faith was restored. My body knows how to have a baby! I am awestruck with this news. I tell myself, "One day I will be powerful and invincible like the pioneer mother."

Within minutes my mind began to turn this piece over and a few minutes later I went back to ask my mother another question; she was ironing sheets. “Mom, did you give birth without a doctor?” I knew she had given birth in a hospital, but did she have a doctor? Suddenly there was a gap in logic or truth between her first answer and how she may have given birth—and like children do, I found the gap and latched on to it.

My mother answered, flatly, while folding the sheet, “No. I gave birth in the hospital. A doctor delivered all of you. But I was born at home, my mother had me in an apartment. And her mother [my grandmother] had seven babies in a small upstairs apartment in Chicago.”

In an unforgettable moment, I felt oddly betrayed by my mother. In contrast to the pioneer woman and my grandmothers who were (according to my innocent child understanding) self-determined and brave, I suddenly saw my own mother as “weak.” At seven years old, where did that perception come from? I remember walking out of the room, going back to the western on television, a bit crestfallen and confused.

On that day I think two things happened: (1) The seed for being a birth activist was planted, and (2) I made my First Birth Plan: to be "strong and brave" like the pioneer woman when I grew up and gave birth. As children do, I quickly forgot about this little initiation. Yet, it seems this moment in time must have played a part in my decision to become a midwife so I could assist women in home birth, and my decisions to have a home birth (even after a cesarean birth).

It’s a matter of timing and luck to be exposed to a certain message at a certain time. If my First Birth Story had been a traumatic birth story instead of the pioneer mother in the western—my first, core agreement about birth would have been very different. There is no telling how my experiences as a mother or my life-work in birth would have unfolded.

Looking forward to hearing your First Birth Stories, and the agreements and promises you made to yourself.

In-Love and On the Birth Wagon!

Pam

Change #2: Tell Children a Magical Story of Their Birth

2010-09-05T10:13:00.000-07:00

Dear Birth Peeps,
As you are thinking about your first birth story (stories), I'll continue with a few more thoughts about how change begins with our children.

CHANGE 2: TELL CHILDREN A MAGICAL STORY of THEIR BIRTH

My mother told us several versions of her, our, birth stories. I relished the "magical" stories about the day we were born. For my younger sister, Laura, my mother would say, "You brought the first snow... You were born in the night and when the sun came up, there was a white blanket of snow on the earth." I still think of that story and image every year on the first snow, "my sister brought the first snow."

When a child hears a story that conveys that the day they were born was the worst, most painful day of their mother's life, that their birth hurt their mother, "almost killed her," or details of unwished-for interventions that she had to suffer--what do you think the child feels?

Young children are in "magical" thinking which means they think "they" cause things to happen, that something they did causes their parents to fight, cry, get divorced, or suffer in labor. They carry this guilt and grief, and from their innocent, misguided beliefs they create a constellation of stories about their world, relationships, who they are, and about birth.

No matter what happened in labor, a child wants to know about "their" birth and that their arrival was special. So, find something that was special about the day your child was born, something you thought about, something funny that happened, or something the child did that was endearing, funny, or cute.

Imagine telling a child their birth story as a child's version, a sweet, Magical Story of the day they were born.

A Magical Story is meant for the Child. It is not a medical, factual story, it's not fantasy, and it's not a "lie." It is a unique version of the story that focuses on something special about that child's birth-day: it is a story a small child can hear, and wants to hear. As the child grows up and becomes an adult, there will be plenty of time for adult stories about birth--when they have enough life experience to understand a more complex story.

Some parents tell the Magical Birth Story on the child's birth day, a kind of birth day celebration ritual. My boys love their birth-day story. Each year, it is told a little differently. Each year the child hears it differently. Maybe as they grow up, a few more details will be added. My 19 year-old son smiled when he heard his birth story this year, and he heard something he's never "heard" before. It is still his Magical birth story.

Love,

Pam