A mother's joys and sorrows

Two nights ago, Luca made it until 6am without nursing. I worked until midnight. He rolled over and cried at 4am, but fell asleep again. SUCCESS!!

We will just ignore all the crying he did last night and the night before. I think it has more to do with teething than anything. He is STILL getting in that 4th molar.

I'm re-reading "The Red Tent" by Anita Diamant. I read it once when I was very young (sometime at the beginning of high school). But it's a completely different story to me now after having experienced pregnancy, birth, and being a mother.

This passage in particular stuck out to me (page 226 in my copy). The character has just given birth:

"There should be a song for women to sing at this moment, or a prayer to recite. But perhaps there is none because there are no words strong enough to name that moment. Like every mother since the first mother, I was overcome and bereft, exalted and ravaged. I had crossed over from girlhood. I beheld myself as an infant in my mother's arms, and caught a glimpse of my own death. I wept without knowing whether I rejoiced or mourned. My mothers and their mothers were with me as I held my baby."

Almost all of the mothers in this story had 4-12 pregnancies and lost at least 2 babies and had 2 miscarriages. As a modern woman miraculously exempt from this type of pain, I can only imagine that the sorrow is equal to a mother's joy in intensity.

Modern medicine is responsible for both sparing most women from that suffering, and the theft of joy that a glorious birth will bring. Few women now experience loss; at the same time, those women are disempowered, shamed into silence, and no one is left to comfort them.

I had a home birth because I knew that, as a healthy woman, my chances of experiencing heartbreak were far less than my chances of experiencing pure bliss. I knew that in a hospital, my chances of experiencing loss might be reduced, but my chances of having a triumphant, ecstatic birth were almost certainly zero. This is the comfort zone of our culture- reduce the risk of birth, even if it means eliminating all chance of empowerment. Ironically, they have ultimately failed to reduce risk, with higher infant and maternal mortality resulting from cesarean births than with births like mine.

When I think of all the disempowered women struggling to raise their infants with litte help, struggling to recover from the trauma of being ripped open, poked, prodded, harassed, belittled, degraded, shamed.... and doing it all while being told suck it up, you have a (overly expensive) roof over your head and (low quality) food to eat, why isn't that enough for you? I wonder if that's any better than loss? For thousands of years, our mothers felt loss and love together, both at full capacity, and not only survived but flourished without the self doubt, depression, and disempowerment that comes with the modern definition of "woman". Men also are loosing their empowerment, being raised to think they must take from women in every area... get a woman to take care of you, to give you sex when you ask, to give you devotion when you have none, to be your mother instead of your partner, to take the life or dignity of other men who threaten their manhood... insecurity abounds, enforced by our style of consumerism which profits by it.

I'm not saying that we should all throw away our birth control and squat in a forest when our time comes. I also realize it is easy for me to say all of these things having never experienced the loss of a child. I'm very grateful I have the luxury of choosing not to have any more kids and to explore other paths of fulfillment in life. I'm grateful for plastic and vaccines and that I know what pineapples taste like. But I mourn for the lost days of clarity in the face of death and suffering, knowing what it means to be a woman or a man, and to be connected to others in sharing love and loss; to really know and feel what it means to live and die, not as a life-long struggle for survival... but as your birthright to thrive.

I think I'd like to start a red tent. A safe place for women to gather and talk about anything, once a month. It's already being done all over the world... but I don't think locally. If anyone knows differently, let me know.