Birth: the hardest thing in the world

“That has got to be the hardest thing in the world!” says an 80-year-old woman about birth. She has never given birth herself, never really wanted kids. “I think I’m too selfish.” She means she puts things that matter to her her first, that she likes things just so.

I end up talking to people about birth a lot; “my partner is a student midwife” is an easy segue into talking about all things birth. I have yet to breech the topic here yet, so this is my first go… it’s a little all over the place, but so is birth.

I think it probably is the hardest thing in the world—to grow a whole new being and then push it out of your pelvis. But, part of me wants to say, it also might be one of the easiest. Biology knows what to do to reproduce. A woman is not consciously working to do anything besides stay in and with the experience her body and soul are going through.¹

From what I have learned in the past few years of dating a student midwife and witnessing many friends walk through the portal of motherhood, the difficulty lies in the greater context surrounding the physical experience. The difficulty lies in the emotional and spiritual experience. The spiritual purpose of labor is to kill the maiden, so the woman can become mother. It is unquestionably hard to die and be reborn with a whole new role. (Bless all our mothers).

The difficulty also lies in the ways our society is not set up to support mothers physically or spiritually and the way pregnancy and birth are viewed— still largely as pathology rather than a natural biological process. We are still reeling from the “highly successful, ideological campaign to eliminate midwifery, appropriate women's control of childbirth, and convince the public that childbirth [is] pathological and dangerous” which transferred birth from the hands of women and midwives to doctors and surgeons.² Quick Halloween/Samhain shout out to all the dead midwives and lay medicine women who were murdered as “witches” over the last many centuries.

Midwives are returning to the scene — and never truly left it. Natural childbirth has been rising again in popularity since the 1960s with Ina May Gaskin and I’m sure many other unnamed women. I was born at home in a bathtub with midwives, and many women I know have birthed at home with no professional support. Women are reclaiming this sacred feminine sphere as their own again. Women are re-educating themselves and each other about physiology and the true needs of mothers and babies. The public is all stirred up and shouting about the pregnancies that women choose to end, but we also need to be talking about the pregnancies that women carry through. What choices do women have for birth? How are those choices protected or limited?

Whapio Barlett, a midwife and teacher said in an interview “I’m always watching what women want… I saw they wanted doulas at one point and now I see that they want something different; they want somebody to be a companion and a fountain of information through their pregnancy and in their birth and in their postpartum. And they don’t want that person to make choices for them. They want to make their own choices.”³

“[Women] don’t want that person to make choices for them. They want to make their own choices.” Whapio Bartlett

I’m not saying that nothing ever goes wrong or that women never need medical help, but for the most part, our bodies know what to do, and if you empower women to pay attention, they usually know when something is wrong. However, women have been told for a long time, in many ways that they do not know how to and cannot birth without direct management. So, there is lots of untangling to do…

Me with my godson, Salix last spring about a week after he arrived.

I’m also interested in the “selfish” piece: “I think I’m too selfish” …to have children. I sometimes think this too. I like having full days to work on my own projects in my own time. I like waking before Morgan to have the first hour of the day to myself. I am easily thrown off center and value the ability to take time alone when I need it.

The judgement that the word “selfish” carries bothers me. Because selflessness, as the celebrated opposite of selfish, is not a thriving and sustainable option. To care for yourself is to maintain and grow your capacity to care for the world. This is the principle of “inside-out” work. As a mother, if you are not cared for and do not care for yourself (or do not have the resources to care for yourself), then your children will suffer. This is a biological truth: mineral-deficient mothers produce mineral deficient children.⁴ And, could it be that part of being a mother is that your selfishness includes your children?

When I imagine this experience for myself, it is not the physical process of pregnancy and birth that will be hard, but the surrounding decisions and the fear of judgement from those in my life. What will be hard is being in my terribly busy and worried mind while my body does what it does.

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This Week’s Love Poem

I thought y'all might want to hear these poems read aloud:

An Artist in Love with Herself
Parks to wail and sob in the car 
about nothing in particular. 
Then drives slowly home
on a wet leaf road.
Pulls a bath, eases in
red flush and sweat sliding across her skin.
With damp hands, almost too hot
she finds all the subtle spots
where expectations have locked 
her water body into stone. 
On the couch, dining alone, 
she picks at her plate
full of salad, sweet potato, and steak,
wedges it into the fridge, feeds the dog, 
and warms a cup of milk -fresh and raw 
from the dairy down the road- 
adds cinnamon, sips slow.

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What I’m cooking this week

Bavette steak with side salad and roasted sweet potato with salty, buttery seeds — Steak is such a treat. And so simple: salt, pepper, rest, cook, rest, enjoy. I slightly over cooked this one, but it was such a tender cut that it was still perfect.

Slicing steak with the new little paring knife Morgan gifted me (it is so sharp).

Molasses and sweet potato sourdough — This one was a Morgan creation. I swooped in on second shift to put the two loaves in the oven. The first one was perfect, enjoyed with lots of butter and cinnamon and sugar. The second got a little dense, so I am making it into breadcrumbs to use in something else later.

Looks a little burnt, which is how you know it’s perfect. Jeff Nelson (my dad) says, “It’s hard to overbake break, easy to underbake.”

Fermented garlic honey — After watching a video on Instagram of some herbalist lady making garlic honey, I made my own on a whim at 9:30pm. Just peel garlic cloves (bruise them a little to release the juices) and cover with raw honey. I did not think about the fermentation though, and woke up to the jar oozing honey all over the kitchen counter. I have since moved it into a larger jar and put a lid on it… While it may sound a bit strange, fermented garlic honey is an excellent cold remedy/prevention.

1. This actually might be the hardest thing in the world. Ask me when I do it.

2. Behrmann, Barbara L. “A reclamation of childbirth.” The Journal of perinatal education vol. 12,3 (2003): vi-x. doi:10.1624/105812403X106900. An article exploring the shift in birth culture over three generations.

3. Riley, Nathan. “#94 - Whapio Bartlett: On Wisdom Keeping, with a Truly Legendary Midwife.” The Holistic OBGYN Podcast (2022). (Apple Podcasts) (Spotify)

4. Hill, Amber Magnolia. “76. Nature’s Ancient Design: Exalting Life by Honoring the Physiological Truths of Childbearing - Rachelle Garcia Saliga.” Medicine Stories Podcast (2021). (Apple Podcasts) (Spotify)