Friday, March 21, 2008

Midwifery

So I'm in a new place with no friends, no family, no job. So how do I spend my time?...
Reading blogs of course!
One day in February I happened upon a woman's blog that linked me to another, that linked me to another, that linked me to another, and now I spend all the time I can reading these Christian/Crunchy/Green/Mommy blogs and loving every minute of it!! This surely isn't helping me quell my maternal urges, but I'm not about to stop anytime soon.
It has been so great for me to read the thoughts of all of these women who do a really great job of putting into words things that I think but can never really get out.

Last week I finished reading Spiritual Midwifery by Ina May Gaskin, a book that I checked out from the library soon after arriving to Washington. Reading that book was such a wonderful experience for me! I have been feeling called toward midwifery for the past few months, but I'm trying to take it slow and really spend the time discerning the right path for me. Ina May's book really kept my passion burning. So, today, I was meandering around the blogosphere when I saw a blog that linked to this article. It is so, so reassuring for me to see that people today are really dialoguing about childbirth. Natural birth is not a thing of the past. And I'm not sure if it's simply a result of my recent delving into this material, but I'm tempted to say that the conversations are growing. Maybe our country is making a turn... or at least we can look ahead to see the corner.

I'd like to leave you with another link... to a blog that cites another blog. Hah. If I were in school I would get an F for my poor citations. My apologies to those who aren't getting full credit for their work.
Please read.

Thanks

4 comments:

Billy said...

Your "mountain" in the post below is actually a volcano . . . the more you know.

Tricia said...

What is the "crunchy" in Christian/Crunchy/Green? I have never heard of being Crunchy before.

Sarah said...

Another fun fact! - Giving birth is more painful for humans than it is for pretty much all the rest of God's creatures because of...

WALKING.

It's true. The changes in our anatomy that allowed us to stand upright also created a narrowing of the pelvis. In most creatures, the birth canal is bigger than the baby, but in humans, it is almost the same size as what is passing through it. That means that the baby has to do a 180 degree turn in the birth canal to get its shoulders and head through. And that, my friends, hurts.

Interestingly, anthropologists in the book I was reading about this attribute this gradual change in birthing mechanics to relationships in our species and even the evolution of language. Because birthing became such a rough task with our narrowed birth canals, women started to help each other through the process. Since the dawn of womankind, women have been bonding over the task of bringing new life into the world - out of necessity. It was vital to survival of the race that when a woman enters labor, her distress signals other women to gather around her. And that bonding likely led to intimate emotions and the language to express those feelings. Perhaps humans share the capacity for empathy - which is unique to our species - because we learned to walk, sparking all of these changes.

Blows you mind, doesn't it?

Hannah said...

Tricia, "crunchy" is like granola. Crunchy granola. Natural living... get it?