Part 2 continued from last
month http://www.susunweed.com/herbal_ezine/June05/childbearing.htm
As a spiritual midwife, my primary responsibility is
to empower the mother to give birth spontaneously. The
tendency is to enroll in the cult of experts who say,
"I know more about your body than you do." My
responsibility as a healer is to return any projections
of power upon me to the family I am serving. The truth
is that I am not medically nor surgically skilled, ~ I
cannot deliver a mother's baby for her. Rather, I remind
the mother that she is the only one able to give birth
(her other option is to be delivered) ~ and I support
her every way I can. In this way I am able to respond
to my original calling ~ to be the guardian at the gate.
To aspiring healers who are called to attend childbirth,
I advise the following; first, midwife, heal thyself,
Next, do no harm. Remember your own birth and forgive
any trespasses upon your soul. And always, listen to the
still, small voice within ~ and the voices of countless
mothers before who gave birth with dignity and as a natural
expression of sexuality. Last, realize that mothers who
give freebirth can connect with the Source of all creation
and be the God-Us in action.
It is an honor to see the original face of any new one.
Each baby born holds the light very purely and as a spiritual
midwife, I greet the new one with celebration and gratitude
for the ordinary miracle of birth.
Humility, patience, trust, integrity ~ these qualities
are essential to a spiritual midwifery practice. I was
called as a young woman myself, yet traditionally it is
the grandmothers who are asked by Spirit to be midwives.
Now that I am a grandmother, I see the wisdom in first
being seasoned by life before answering the call. However,
as a young midwife, I would take my children to births
with me, considering this the best part of their home
school experience. Therefore I encourage young midwives
to be who we really are ~ if we have children, to give
a living model to the families we serve by being real
mothers and taking care of our own children. Hygieia College
was founded, in part, to meet the needs of mothers desiring
to increase the upward mobility of their minds as mothers.
Our college holds all gatherings and workshops with children
not only invited, but honored.
At the edge of the millennium, more midwives are being
ordained by the God-Us to heal birth without being indoctrinated
nor controlled by medical licensure. In that one legal
definition of a license is permission to do what society
considers "dangerous or immoral, we are choosing
to be midwives based on authentic need. Homebirth is not
dangerous or immoral" ~ actually the converse is
true ~ hospital birth is dangerous and immoral. The U.S.
is 20th in the World Health Organization's statistics
on perinatal mortality and morbidity. In other words,
there are 20 other countries in the world where it is
safer to give than birth than in an American hospital.
The other countries with better statistics almost exclusively
use midwives rather than doctors.
But what about the "consumer" or "patient"
~ do they not need protection? Let me clarify that I am
not suggesting a "buyer beware" attitude toward
midwifery. If a midwife is capable, she will stay in practice.
If a midwife is not serving her community, she will eventually
not be asked to attend anymore. We do not need the State
in our bedroom for indeed, birth is a woman's expression
of sexuality ~ and in my practice, not under legal or
medical jurisdiction. Traditionally midwives are the wise
women, the herbalists and psychologists of their communities.
They knew who was sleeping in whose lodge ~ and being
attentive to the sexual dynamics of their communities,
could facilitate the sexual energy of birth. A major eradication
of wise women took place in the dark ages and most midwives
were destroyed as "witches". It has taken a
long time for a renaissance in birth to occur. Midwives
today must be courageous to practice in our constrictive
and litigatious climate. Sometimes the most courageous
amongst us are targets of litigation. Midwives need the
support of the entire healing community to face the challenges
ahead.
In 1986 I gave birth underwater to my last baby, Halley
Sophia. As in our last three births, we hired no expert
to attend "just in case". All my work is devoted
to making every mother a midwife ~ so I practice what
I preach. I live in a state where parents have the right
to chose where and with whom they give birth so we broke
no law. Yet, in my neighborhood there was an unease which,
in my pregnant, intuitive condition, I sensed. I went
to my neighbor's church on a fast and testimony meeting
day and addressed the congregation all at once. I said,
"I have prayed about this birth and have been told
that being home is our sacred place. However I have one
fear and that is, if something goes wrong in this birth,
I'm concerned what you would think. So, I now ask that
you pray for a perfect delivery at home." After the
meeting, the very ones who had been in the most fear about
our upcoming unattended birth, now were enrolled as allies
for they soothed me with stories of their own relation's
various births at home and promised to pray for us.
With all these prayers, during Halleys ecstatic birth,
I had a vision where I had eyes all over my body and could
"see" multi-dimensionally. I realized that I
was like the White Hole in astrophysics ~ that source
point where something new comes into material existence,
the opposite of a Black Hole. My uterus is the universe
~ I am the stargate. As mother, I am the means by which
life creatively expresses itself and giving freebirth
is akin to the origin of stars. In other words, I know
how God-Us must've felt giving birth to the universe.
How can my personal experiences in birth serve the world
now? One idea of how evolution works, is the morphogenetic
field theory of Rupert Sheldrake. It has been popularized
by Ken Keyes in his book, THE HUNDREDTH MONKEY. What this
idea states is that there are leaps of evolution for an
entire species which occur simultaneously amongst all
members regardless of geographic location. In regards
to childbirth, I observe the phenomenon of morphic resonance
in this way ~ more and more families are choosing to freebirth,
all over the world. When a critical mass is reached of
ecstatic rather than suffering birth, there just may be
a leap of faith. All mothers may remember that we are
co-creators of life and have totally within each of us
the capacity to show the world what our love looks like
in the form of a baby. Whenever I give a talk or workshop,
I imagine that the one mother who is the "critical
mass" for freebirth may be attending and inspired
by my word medicine to reclaim birth.
Indeed, each mother I speak with, in my mind, is the
hundredth monkey, a change agent for evolution, as well
as the God-Us incarnate. For as the canon of Hygieia College
states, Healing One Mother is Healing the Earth. Blessed
Be the Babies!!
Copyright © Jeannine Parvati Baker
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