I have had almost every kind of birth experience possible: hospital, medicated, homebirths with midwife with/without doula, one child I birthed entirely by myself, C-section, and VBAC. Giving birth is definitely one of the most vulnerable things a woman can do, and there are multiple reasons I can see why Jesus likens his Passion to a woman in travail. I personally didn't hit my birth stride until #3 because regardless of how much you witness birth...experiencing it is just something you can't entirely prepare for. Even when you are experienced there can be curveballs that must be fielded.
What I've kind of learned over the years is that regardless of what kind of birth you experience (natural, medicated, surgical, etc...) the kind of support you have AFTER giving birth is just as, or in some ways almost more, important than during birth itself. Obviously every woman is different so there's a lot of different experiences, but I recall reading about post partum care in Colonial times. Other women would come and take turns serving the family for 10 days. Every woman got 10 days even if they didn't need it, because 10 days would give more time to those who needed more time to recover without making them feel burdensome. I think that's the type of ritual that would be beneficial to revive among women as well. Good post partum support can heal even somewhat traumatic birth memories.
Yes. My sister-in-law, who in many ways has values very different from mine, continued to take meals to moms during COVID. She had her husband video her as she cooked so they would be comfortable with all the precautions she took to avoid giving them any illness she might have had without knowing. I thought that was such a thoughtful thing for her to do.
Meals kept us going when we had our fourth baby in four years, and it's something I continue to do regularly for people after new babies and surgeries and other hospitalizations. It's such a real, tangible way to care for people, especially people with large families like yours. <3
Apart from the direct beneficial effects on mother and child it would forge an intergeneral community and a close comeradeship within the cohort as well. So yes, I'm all for an revival, but it would mean saying yes to a lot more interdependence.
Apr 16, 2023·edited Apr 16, 2023Liked by Leah Libresco Sargeant
That as well.
I've been thinking about the place where I live. There are about 40-50 women relatively close by. I know about half of them by sight, some of them not at all, three are friends, four are acquaintances. Whoever has no children works fulltime, so I rarely see them.
If we had more time and if we those of us who are at child-bearing age were pregnant more often than once or twice and if we cared for each other postpartum, I would know them all quite well - boggles the mind, really.
I've been thinking about the question ever since you asked it. Just had my first kid, and I'm not actually sure that having witnessed births would have made me any more prepared. I've never been present at someone else's birth, so the closest I've gotten were the birth videos from our childbirth-prep class at the hospital. Those mostly just made me dread the process more (and it wasn't a question of medicated/non-medicated -- the videos covered both and both had about the same effect on me). And once I was at the hospital for delivery, listening to the woman next door screaming in pain *definitely* did not help me relax or focus or anything else you're supposed to do in labor. So IDK -- maybe I'd be mentally tougher if I'd been at births when I was younger, before I had to seriously think about being in labor myself, but I'm not sure witnessing them as a young adult would be/would have been helpful.
Also re: what other commenters have mentioned about connections between labor and Jesus' passion -- that was a very comforting and helpful thought for me to hold onto in the weeks before delivery. I'd never thought of there being a connection until a couple months ago, but God showed it to me when I needed it.
I had 6 births, 5 unmedicated (the 1st with demerol), 1 in a birthing center and 4 at home. I am who I am because of those births. I know now why Christ was not given anesthesia in Gethsemane; I now know why Gethsemane was absolutely necessary. There is a mantle of power and wisdom that descends on those who choose to endure necessary bodily suffering for the good of another soul. This most intimate and humbling of bodily experiences produces the most transcendent of emotions. I never really knew love--not really--until my body gave birth. 'The greater the pain, the greater the love for the child.' Be there, in your body, fully in your body, for birth. The gifts you give and the gifts you are given thereby are incalculable. A doula I know wrote the most eloquent of expressions of this: you can find it here--
I think there's a lot of beauty in birth, and real balm in uniting our suffering with Christ. But, just as with martyrdom, we should accept what suffering we receive and not long for something more extreme than what we are offered.
A friend of mine just had her baby girl diagnosed with brain cancer. It's going to be a very hard time for her and her baby, and I know that her love is shaped by suffering alongside her child. But she didn't *need* the agony to love—hard times reveal and prove our love, but it's the patient practice in easy times that prepare us for hard times. We don't need to worry that if we suffer less we cannot love; we don't need to tell people in grave situations that they could *only* learn love this way.
Correct. But when the suffering is given to us, we do not shrink but lean in. We will all have our Gethsemane, and that is for a good and wise purpose. We don't have to "like" suffering to acknowledge its good and wise purpose in our lives.
I think what’s notable in the saints is that are so attentive to God’s work in their lives that they can hold onto hope in huge moments, but that every small moment of joy or difficulty recollects them to Christ.
I am glad you had positive experiences with unmedicated births but I think we should be careful not to set idealized standards for birth. Some women feel they have failed at childbirth when they end up with an epidural or C-section and that is just nonsense. I love all of my children equally (and have felt the same about childcare for them) even though some of their births were more painful than others. In my view, a more helpful approach to promoting bonding is to advocate for more tangible societal support for new mothers.
We can walk and chew gum at the same time. We can put forward an ideal, work for it through tangible action to help everyone reach for it, and then we can accept when life is not ideal. Accepting when life is not ideal is also a form of suffering that gives both power and wisdom. But ideals are indispensable.
The infant mortality rate in premodern society is not my "ideal." 1 in 2 children died before puberty. Mothers frequently died in childbirth. There is a lot of "wastage" in human evolution. This is not an ideal, it's a fact. Our great grandmothers would be baffled by this rose glasses idealism.
This is a conflation of two different ideals: the ideal of giving birth safely and the ideal of giving birth powerfully. There is power and wisdom that comes from childbirth that our foremothers would never gainsay, despite the less safe conditions in which they gave birth, for they experienced it personally. In regards to the first ideal, the MMR has dropped by 45% worldwide since 2000, but still remains higher than it could be, so there is more to do. But in terms of the second ideal, none of what our foremothers experienced was wastage in the eternal scheme of things. None. We can love a child enough to bring it forth into the world, knowing we will experience pain and suffering to do so. We can shrink from the bitter cup and still drink it for love. This deep mystery is what underlies the old midwives' saying, 'The greater the pain, the greater the love for the child.'
This old midwives' saying - I don't think we're doing any woman a favour in using it as a yardstick to measure a mother's love.
I have given birth twice - one birth was an extremely powerful, spiritual experience that touched me deeply and changed me. The other birth was meh and blah - not especially painful, not powerful, just blah and meh. Nothing to write home about, really.
Funnily enough, I have a deep rapport and understanding with my second child and never had an especially good relationship with my first child. This has nothing to do with their BIRTHS and everything to do with their and my personalities, the phase in my life when they were born, their sex...
I believe births in themselves can be invaluable experiences in a woman's life, but in the mother-child-relationship through all those years the birth is just a blip. We can have an awful birth and a lovely bond with the newborn, a rocky road with the toddler, blissful years with the school child, teenage years that are a nightmare...it's everything to do with the daily toil (and joy and privilege) of caring, cultivating love, earning trust, giving trust and so on.
I mean, this is just indulgent silliness. I have a toddler and am no stranger to pain. Christ died for us - we do not need to recrucify ourselves; his work finished all that for us. We aren't pagans who need sacrificial rites to help us atone!
I had both my babies at home with my husband and American Bull Dog present. Ever since then, I have wondered whether hospital birth is necessary for a society that would rather have women making taxable income than nurturing babies. People telling you what to do, taking your focus off your own body and the coming baby, lights, constricted movement - it all interferes with the ecstasy, painful as it is, of doing it together, but it probably makes it easier to leave them in day care. It would have been torture for me. Each woman must make her own choice, but should have an accurate idea of what she is choosing. My midwife did not make me feel looked at, only encouraged.
I’m glad I got most of those good things with a hospital birth... attended by midwives. And I’m especially grateful because neither of my girls would come out! My first delivery was ultimately a c-section because her heart rate dipped too much. My second needed forceps at the very end.
So I got the good parts of midwives and the heavy hitters of the OBs when I had to.
I have had almost every kind of birth experience possible: hospital, medicated, homebirths with midwife with/without doula, one child I birthed entirely by myself, C-section, and VBAC. Giving birth is definitely one of the most vulnerable things a woman can do, and there are multiple reasons I can see why Jesus likens his Passion to a woman in travail. I personally didn't hit my birth stride until #3 because regardless of how much you witness birth...experiencing it is just something you can't entirely prepare for. Even when you are experienced there can be curveballs that must be fielded.
What I've kind of learned over the years is that regardless of what kind of birth you experience (natural, medicated, surgical, etc...) the kind of support you have AFTER giving birth is just as, or in some ways almost more, important than during birth itself. Obviously every woman is different so there's a lot of different experiences, but I recall reading about post partum care in Colonial times. Other women would come and take turns serving the family for 10 days. Every woman got 10 days even if they didn't need it, because 10 days would give more time to those who needed more time to recover without making them feel burdensome. I think that's the type of ritual that would be beneficial to revive among women as well. Good post partum support can heal even somewhat traumatic birth memories.
In our neighborhood, there's a listserv for Catholic women, and every mom gets a minimum of 10 post-partum meals from the community.
It is nice that taking post-partum meals to others is one support that has continued in many places.
(It helps that often they show you the baby even briefly at the door when you drop off the dish!)
Yes. My sister-in-law, who in many ways has values very different from mine, continued to take meals to moms during COVID. She had her husband video her as she cooked so they would be comfortable with all the precautions she took to avoid giving them any illness she might have had without knowing. I thought that was such a thoughtful thing for her to do.
Meals kept us going when we had our fourth baby in four years, and it's something I continue to do regularly for people after new babies and surgeries and other hospitalizations. It's such a real, tangible way to care for people, especially people with large families like yours. <3
Apart from the direct beneficial effects on mother and child it would forge an intergeneral community and a close comeradeship within the cohort as well. So yes, I'm all for an revival, but it would mean saying yes to a lot more interdependence.
And the prerequisite for interdependence is availability.
That as well.
I've been thinking about the place where I live. There are about 40-50 women relatively close by. I know about half of them by sight, some of them not at all, three are friends, four are acquaintances. Whoever has no children works fulltime, so I rarely see them.
If we had more time and if we those of us who are at child-bearing age were pregnant more often than once or twice and if we cared for each other postpartum, I would know them all quite well - boggles the mind, really.
I've been thinking about the question ever since you asked it. Just had my first kid, and I'm not actually sure that having witnessed births would have made me any more prepared. I've never been present at someone else's birth, so the closest I've gotten were the birth videos from our childbirth-prep class at the hospital. Those mostly just made me dread the process more (and it wasn't a question of medicated/non-medicated -- the videos covered both and both had about the same effect on me). And once I was at the hospital for delivery, listening to the woman next door screaming in pain *definitely* did not help me relax or focus or anything else you're supposed to do in labor. So IDK -- maybe I'd be mentally tougher if I'd been at births when I was younger, before I had to seriously think about being in labor myself, but I'm not sure witnessing them as a young adult would be/would have been helpful.
Also re: what other commenters have mentioned about connections between labor and Jesus' passion -- that was a very comforting and helpful thought for me to hold onto in the weeks before delivery. I'd never thought of there being a connection until a couple months ago, but God showed it to me when I needed it.
I had 6 births, 5 unmedicated (the 1st with demerol), 1 in a birthing center and 4 at home. I am who I am because of those births. I know now why Christ was not given anesthesia in Gethsemane; I now know why Gethsemane was absolutely necessary. There is a mantle of power and wisdom that descends on those who choose to endure necessary bodily suffering for the good of another soul. This most intimate and humbling of bodily experiences produces the most transcendent of emotions. I never really knew love--not really--until my body gave birth. 'The greater the pain, the greater the love for the child.' Be there, in your body, fully in your body, for birth. The gifts you give and the gifts you are given thereby are incalculable. A doula I know wrote the most eloquent of expressions of this: you can find it here--
https://squaretwo.org/Sq2ArticleLeonhardtBirth.html
I think there's a lot of beauty in birth, and real balm in uniting our suffering with Christ. But, just as with martyrdom, we should accept what suffering we receive and not long for something more extreme than what we are offered.
A friend of mine just had her baby girl diagnosed with brain cancer. It's going to be a very hard time for her and her baby, and I know that her love is shaped by suffering alongside her child. But she didn't *need* the agony to love—hard times reveal and prove our love, but it's the patient practice in easy times that prepare us for hard times. We don't need to worry that if we suffer less we cannot love; we don't need to tell people in grave situations that they could *only* learn love this way.
(And if anyone wants to help her with medical bills: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-sofie-with-medical-bills)
Correct. But when the suffering is given to us, we do not shrink but lean in. We will all have our Gethsemane, and that is for a good and wise purpose. We don't have to "like" suffering to acknowledge its good and wise purpose in our lives.
I think what’s notable in the saints is that are so attentive to God’s work in their lives that they can hold onto hope in huge moments, but that every small moment of joy or difficulty recollects them to Christ.
Yes, very well said.
I am glad you had positive experiences with unmedicated births but I think we should be careful not to set idealized standards for birth. Some women feel they have failed at childbirth when they end up with an epidural or C-section and that is just nonsense. I love all of my children equally (and have felt the same about childcare for them) even though some of their births were more painful than others. In my view, a more helpful approach to promoting bonding is to advocate for more tangible societal support for new mothers.
We can walk and chew gum at the same time. We can put forward an ideal, work for it through tangible action to help everyone reach for it, and then we can accept when life is not ideal. Accepting when life is not ideal is also a form of suffering that gives both power and wisdom. But ideals are indispensable.
The infant mortality rate in premodern society is not my "ideal." 1 in 2 children died before puberty. Mothers frequently died in childbirth. There is a lot of "wastage" in human evolution. This is not an ideal, it's a fact. Our great grandmothers would be baffled by this rose glasses idealism.
This is a conflation of two different ideals: the ideal of giving birth safely and the ideal of giving birth powerfully. There is power and wisdom that comes from childbirth that our foremothers would never gainsay, despite the less safe conditions in which they gave birth, for they experienced it personally. In regards to the first ideal, the MMR has dropped by 45% worldwide since 2000, but still remains higher than it could be, so there is more to do. But in terms of the second ideal, none of what our foremothers experienced was wastage in the eternal scheme of things. None. We can love a child enough to bring it forth into the world, knowing we will experience pain and suffering to do so. We can shrink from the bitter cup and still drink it for love. This deep mystery is what underlies the old midwives' saying, 'The greater the pain, the greater the love for the child.'
This old midwives' saying - I don't think we're doing any woman a favour in using it as a yardstick to measure a mother's love.
I have given birth twice - one birth was an extremely powerful, spiritual experience that touched me deeply and changed me. The other birth was meh and blah - not especially painful, not powerful, just blah and meh. Nothing to write home about, really.
Funnily enough, I have a deep rapport and understanding with my second child and never had an especially good relationship with my first child. This has nothing to do with their BIRTHS and everything to do with their and my personalities, the phase in my life when they were born, their sex...
I believe births in themselves can be invaluable experiences in a woman's life, but in the mother-child-relationship through all those years the birth is just a blip. We can have an awful birth and a lovely bond with the newborn, a rocky road with the toddler, blissful years with the school child, teenage years that are a nightmare...it's everything to do with the daily toil (and joy and privilege) of caring, cultivating love, earning trust, giving trust and so on.
You explain it so well!
I mean, this is just indulgent silliness. I have a toddler and am no stranger to pain. Christ died for us - we do not need to recrucify ourselves; his work finished all that for us. We aren't pagans who need sacrificial rites to help us atone!
Whoever has ears to hear, let her hear. Whoever has not, will see only foolishness.
I had both my babies at home with my husband and American Bull Dog present. Ever since then, I have wondered whether hospital birth is necessary for a society that would rather have women making taxable income than nurturing babies. People telling you what to do, taking your focus off your own body and the coming baby, lights, constricted movement - it all interferes with the ecstasy, painful as it is, of doing it together, but it probably makes it easier to leave them in day care. It would have been torture for me. Each woman must make her own choice, but should have an accurate idea of what she is choosing. My midwife did not make me feel looked at, only encouraged.
I’m glad I got most of those good things with a hospital birth... attended by midwives. And I’m especially grateful because neither of my girls would come out! My first delivery was ultimately a c-section because her heart rate dipped too much. My second needed forceps at the very end.
So I got the good parts of midwives and the heavy hitters of the OBs when I had to.