Late August has arrived, and I have nearly completed 40 weeks of gestation. I wrapped up what Ina May Gaskin refers to as “outside” (paid or alienated) work last week, and all that remains is to rest and make final emotional and physical preparations for welcoming baby Popcorn into this world.
Though I have cared for hundreds of women through some stage of their pregnancy, birth, and postpartum needs, I find myself in awe of the experience in new ways. I am on the brink of one of the most incredible life changes I may have the opportunity to experience–though already participating in creating this life inside has already been remarkable.
Nourishing myself with favorite pregnancy snacks: fresh fruit, Greek yogurt with dates, and “uterus tea” in delicious early autumn air.
Now that I am feeling mostly recovered from a demanding final week on the job, sleeping many hours nightly, taking extended afternoon naps, and not quite having the energy to check off too much else from my to-do list, I find myself open to the possibilities of what comes next. I get to what I get to: today, the phone call to sort out my breast pump order (my very expensive PPO was apparently grandfathered in under ACA and is not required to cover this important benefit), getting the seasonal flu shot (out just in time to offer baby placental protection) while picking up wedding photos my partner and I finally got around to ordering to frame, and planning to prepare a favorite dish for dinner tonight (homemade ricotta and red onion marmalade pizza, perfect for a cool evening).
I am feeling loved and supported and grateful for the fabulous crew and cooperative body that has my back and believes in me and my body’s ability to bring this baby into the world in the comfort of my own home. Pregnancy has been easy so far–I haven’t experienced too many of the aches, pains, indigestion, swelling, emotional turmoil, and sleep troubles that many women suffer through. I hope this continues into the next stages. I looking forward to lighting this candle, and knowing that the friends that participated in my Blessingway, who will be in Berlin or the Canary Islands and in the SF Bay Area will light their matching candles while they sit in vigil with my labor. I look forward to wearing this eccentric necklace comprised of beads from my friends and family near and far, which will also accompany me in my journey through labor and birth. I look forward to meeting my baby with my loving partner my my side, whenever the time is right.
This eccentric necklace is comprised of beads given me by friends and family, to be worn during labor and birth. The candle will be one of 6 lit during my labor around the globe. The bowl they sit in was a wedding gift from my grandmother.
Like this:
Like Loading...
Related
I am a nurse-midwife practicing in full-scope (reproductive health and birth care) in a community birth setting in the Midwest. My clinical practice is an extension of my longtime commitment to social reproduction (a close cousin and friend to intersectional -- perhaps synonymous to, depending on who you talk to!) marxist feminism and reproductive justice activism.
I write anonymously to protect my job security and make clear that these are my personal opinions, and to make clear that I am also a professional whose personal opinions can also be separate from the care I provide. (While I personally believe in abolition of the prison industrial complex, I still have clients that are cops/married to cops [etc.] and maintain respectful, compassionate clinical relationships with them.)
I was called to midwifery circuitously, through my love for reproductive rights and an interest in providing abortion care. Then I met midwives and learned about the intertwined legacy of midwifery and abortion, and I fell in love with birth. In my practice, I have worked as a primary care midwife in a Federally Qualified Health Center and campaigned fiercely for true midwifery in a hospital setting rife with obstetrical violence (and lost that fight!). I have learned how to bring midwifery care from the belly of the beast in a large teaching hospital that functions in many ways as an assembly line of medicalized birth. I have also had my heart broken by my own midwife when I realized that my dream job in home birth was actually a nightmare in many ways. I have found healing through communities of midwives that work to support each other through the traumas of toxic healthcare workplaces.
I am constantly learning, working on my personal and professional growth, and striving for accountability, particularly as an anti-racist that benefits from white privilege.
Midwives of the Revolution is meant as a nod to Marx and Engles's writing on the process of social revolution, as well as an aspiration to be among the midwives fighting to transform the perinatal health system in the context of the struggles for reproductive justice. The social revolution it will take to win reproductive justice will have to involve birth workers, other health workers (unionized, and not; professionals and not), educators, abolitionists, environmentalists, and of course childbearing people and families.
I love the way that Marx's collaborator Engles (a brilliant philosopher and activist in his own right) describes the dialectical process of childbirth, which, for me, also undergirds my commitment to bodily autonomy and reproductive justice. To paraphrase, some of the events that midwives are called to may be "violent" or forceful, like childbirth -- not unlike revolution and social struggle: The fetus is negated by the neonate, who can only be brought about by the force of childbirth. The midwife facilitates that transition, as force (or social struggle) facilitates the transition from one form of social relations to another.
Scolding the philosopher Duhring, Frederick Engles defends the social force required to fundamentally transform society: "Force, plays yet another role in history, a revolutionary role; that, in the words of Marx, it is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one, that it is the instrument with the aid of which social movement forces its way through and shatters the dead, fossilised political forms."
(Anti-Duhring, found here: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch16.htm#087)
Midwives of the Revolution 