We whisper it…
We whisper it in circles, on social media, in quiet exchanges between friends, in the look between two women carrying their babies in a local coffee shop.
Birth has been sabotaged, taken from us and done to us. It leaves us broken and tired, with unresolved trauma and tension and blame, self doubt, self hatred and tears. So many bloody tears.
And yet, if we’re one of the few … the few who “got lucky” or opted out of the system that controls our births we too whisper that. Because we don’t want to further break the hearts of birthing women and people, who don’t share our joy, our passion and our awe of what we did and how we did it.
We’re told if you just do this course, or read that book, buy this product it will all be ok. “Leaving the system that makes us or takes from us untouched” (Anna Funder).
Funder wasn’t talking about birth specifically but patriarchy in general, but she perfectly encapsulates how we (women and birthing people) are constantly wondering amongst ourselves if it could have been different. We’re blaming ourselves, for being too old, too young, too far, too narrow hipped, too sick or too black, or each other. When in actual fact it’s the system, the industrial medicalised model that took birth from us and transfigured it into something terrifying and ugly and painful. Something we don’t do but that is done to us. With surgeons, instruments, drugs, beds, doctors, coercion and fear.
Are enough of us joining the dots or are we still constantly, mindlessly walking into a system that is in a near state of collapse, that does not recognise our individuality, our hopes and our dreams, about the life growing inside us and how we wish to birth it. A system that fails to understand the dance we lead with life and death every time we bring new life into the world. A system that fails to recognise and respect our bodily autonomy and the significance of not just this moment, but all the moments in our lives that have brought us to this point. Because most (not all, never all, but most) of us wish to birth our babies the way we know we’re able.
They won’t let us give birth so we must take back what is ours. Our bodies ability to create, grow, nurture and birth life.
My hope is that having someone by your side who understands and appreciates your individuality and your choices will enable others to feel secure in the decisions they make, and feel they have true support and acknowledgement of this incredible transformative event they’re moving through. Hire a doula. Become a doula. Support birth as it used be supported … as the incredible once in a lifetime experience that it truly is.