Twenty-One Years a Mother…
I was twenty-one when I first became a mother and that was twenty-one years ago today. I look back on that day…and I look back on the last twenty-one years and I am grateful. I am grateful for this path of Motherhood that in many ways was hoisted upon me but which, in the end, has cracked my heart open and taught me to love in ways I did not know were possible. Today is San’s 21st birthday but we also bid farewell to him this week as he spreads his wings to fly off to Dubai for work. This is a whole new stretching of the Mother heart and as hard as it is to have him move so far from home, I am grateful for the opportunity to further embrace what it means to love. And today I very simply honour this very precious birth day. I honour the young woman who became a mother today 21 years ago. I honour the little boy who has grown into a beautiful and gentle young man today. And I honour myself today, with the greyer hair, the love I have loved, the expanded heart, the tears that have come with that and the extra laugh lines on my face. Happy birth day ?? My Mother Was The First One To Touch My Baby I Was 21 When I Realised I Had A...
Read MoreHonouring my Mother on this day of her Birth
My mother is an obvious connector to birth for me – she birthed me after all. But the imprint my mother left me with around birth runs deeper than that. And today, 69 years since she was born at home in Athlone, and 12 years since she died in a car accident, I would like to honour her and the deep lessons of birth she imprinted in me. My mothers’ own birth story sounds like something from a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel. She was born at home in Athlone, on a hot windy Cape Town day, the second child to my grandparents. While my grandmother sweated and grunted and birthed the large round baby that was my mother, across the street, a house burnt to the ground, consuming not only the entire house but a woman inside it too. Birth and death in the same street on the same day. Because she was born so close to Christmas, she was named Carol. A huge relief to my mother when she found out that that the alternative had been Julie. The Little Green Statue my mother clutched while she birthed me After generations of birthing their babies at home, my mother was the first in our maternal lineage to birth in a hospital. She wanted to birth at home but she was far from home, a single pregnant woman living in a communal house in Switzerland. She wanted to birth at the communal house but the man whose house it was, stamped his feet and proclaimed that under no circumstances would that African girl squat down and birth in his house. She was too far from the alternative midwife run birth centre she felt would be a good alternative and so some friends chipped in to pay for the nearby and very exclusive Stefanshorn hospital where my mother was induced a week before my/her due date. She was left to labour on her own, on her back with a fetal monitor strapped to her. She held onto the little verdite statue, a bust of an African woman she had been gifted back in South Africa by a grateful woman when she was a rape counsellor. This little statue was her doula, her birth companion, her connector, back to South Africa, as she birthed me far away from home. My sister’s birth 3 years later, was a planned home birth in Bern, the birthing pool set up in the lounge. but my sister decided to trigger her labour early and emerged on Easter Sunday while the midwife was away on holiday. So we drove with my mother’s friend to the hospital and I remember sitting on my haunches, colouring in at a low table, while my mother laboured and birthed in the next room. I was expecting a little brother called Michael. I had been singing to him for months and was surprised when I was introduced to a little sister called Kate. Six years later, we were living back in South Africa, this time on a farm an hour outside of Ceres and we had to do the long three-hour drive to Mowbray Maternity hospital so that my mother could birth my little sister Gypsy. For my sister Jasmin’s birth, I was at school. It was 1991 and what had once been the ‘whites-only’ part of the local Ceres hospital, had recently been opened for all South Africans to use. Jasmin’s claim to fame is being the first coloured child born in that section of the hospital. My mother said she slipped out like a bar of soap. Living rurally,...
Read MoreWhen you sit with a woman in labour, allow yourself to become soft…
Notice yourself. Your own breathing. Allow it to become deep. Allow it to become soft. When you sit with a woman in labour notice yourself. Your body. Your breathing. Sit quietly in a corner. Or lie down. Avert your gaze. Droop your head as though in prayer. Close your eyes as though in meditation or sleep. Or make your eyes soft soft soft and look at nothing on the ground. Allow your breath to become deep and expansive; fill your lungs, your rib cage, your entire being. Allow your breath to become deep and expansive like the waves of the ocean. In and out. In and out. Become so huge that your arms embrace the room, the world, the universe. Hold the woman in labour in an unseen embrace. Become so huge and expansive that you disappear into nothingness. Stay with your breath. Your softness. And the soft sighs and moans of the woman in...
Read MoreI was 21 When I Realised I had a Superpower…
I remember a surge piercing through me. I was a lion, crouched at the top of a cliff, impaled with spears, roaring, in immense pain. But also in that moment, the most incredible strength coursed through me. I arched my back and roared. I felt my body opening up. Immeasurable pain. Immeasurable ecstasy. Unbelievable strength. And exultation. Two weeks before my estimated due date, the first surges tickled me awake by urging my bowels to empty themselves. I was 21 and labouring for the first time. I was naive and innocent going into my first labour. I had no clue what to expect and Mistress Labour slapped me in the face. I had to quickly put my big girl panties on. The first few hours of early labour, gentle surges swaying my hips as I breathed them down, I thought, “I’ve got this…this is easy…you just breathe through them.” Yeah right…. When that first active surge slammed into my cervix I thought: “FUUUUCK!” I felt like a cowboy who’d lost control of his horse. But somehow I was able to grab the reins and somehow with each surge, I stayed atop that bucking bronco called labour. Yeeha! And after 12 hours I pushed out a 5kg baby boy. Giving birth to my first child, and birthing myself as a mother, changed and saved my life. I was 21 when I realised how strong I was. I was 21 when I held my warm and slippery baby against my chest for the first time and I realised how much love I had to give. The seeds of love strength had always been in me but it was being given the space and time to navigate my way that watered those seeds and allowed them to sprout into the woman, mother and midwife I am today. And for that, I am truly grateful. And those seeds continue to grow… I look forward to being a gnarled old tree one day. To protect the seedlings still to...
Read MoreHo’oponopono
Ho’oponopono I’m sorry Please Forgive Me I thank you I love you Me singing Ho’oponopono on guitar She was 18 years old and recently married. Newly pregnant, she had jumped the fence between Zimbabwe and South Africa with her husband and settled in the Red Hill informal settlement near where I live. Traditionally in her family, women give birth at home with the local Anamboya in attendance. (Anamboya literally translates as granny midwife – and many of the attending Anamboya are the labouring woman’s grandmother. Or her mother. Or aunt. Or sister.) There is a deep trust in this community of nature and the birthing process. And a great faith in God and a very supportive church community. There is also quite a mistrust of the medical world and medicines in general – healing is often left to herbs and prayer and God’s will. This young woman wanted to birth at home and when her sister in law told her about me her husband made contact. I visited her for regular check ups at her home. Her sister in law would translate for us. Her English was not very good. When she was 41 weeks pregnant, she went for a check-up at our back up hospital, as they had suggested an ultrasound if she went post her due date. She was afraid to go as she had heard of many women being coerced into unnecessary cesareans. But I reassured her that all was well with her baby and that it would just be a standard check-up. That she could call me from the hospital if she had any questions or did not understand something. That she would soon be home, her mind at rest that all was well and that we could then wait for her baby boy who would trigger his labour soon. She went. Trusting me. At the visit she was told she needed to be induced. She had gone alone. Not her husband nor her sister in law were with her to help her understand and translate. Her phone’s battery had died and no one allowed her to recharge it to call one of us. She was induced on her own with no one familiar with her. They did not even know. After a failed induction she was given a caesarean and greeted her baby boy on her own. Her husband and I only found out after the fact. This is not a story to point fingers at our public health system. I am fully aware that not every pregnant woman walking into a public health facility is treated this way. Personally, I feel that our health system is very good here in the Western Cape of South Africa and I trust the hospitals we access in a medical emergency. There are many dedicated and passionate people working South Africa’s health system. I truly honour the service you provide and the work that you do. But I do feel that the fact that this woman was young, a refugee, alone, did not speak English, counted against her and made it all to easy to manipulate and coerce her. I write this because I feel her story needs to be told and because I am sorry. I suppose I am asking for forgiveness. Ho’oponopono I’m sorry Please Forgive Me I thank you I love you (Ho’oponopono is a Hawaiian prayer for forgiveness, healing and taking full responsibility for one’s actions.) Me singing Ho’oponopono on...
Read MoreThe Healing Ripple Effect of a Beautiful Birth…
Sometimes being a birth attendant can be disheartening… It can feel as though one is working against a great big machine…birthing factories which seem to extract babies and eject traumatised women back into a system which does not acknowledge their experience and expects them to ‘get on with things.’ She has a healthy baby after all… Sometimes it can feel like what is the fucking point? What difference do I feel I can make? Attending one birth at a time…sitting vigil…a guardian of a process…what difference can little old me make against the machine, the tide…just a little drop in the churning ocean? Sometimes it feels like it is too late…women are broken…they feel broken and that the system is just too strong…too set in its ways… But then… I feel the tangible ripple healing effect of a beautiful birth. Wow! When a woman births in her own power it is as though that drop in the insurmountable ocean becomes a source of rippling, healing, underground, light that bursts through her family, friends, community, and heals on a subtle palpable level. It is truly transformative. The power and oxytocin and love that she releases are beyond magic. And yet again, my faith and trust are restored in this work. I feel truly honoured and blessed and humbled to be able, in my own small way, be part of this great healing. Thank...
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