Want to know more about the Silent Birthkeeper course?
Are you interested in learning more about the Silent Birthkeeper one-year online immersion with Ruth Ehrhardt? The one-year online course is limited to a small group of people, as it is a personal journey we take together. It is an opportunity for you to spend time with yourself, delving into your relationship with birth, what it means to be a guardian of birth and what it means for you to attend births. The course is held within a tightly held container, and we do our best to honour the unique journey that each person undertakes. One of the beauties of the Silent Birthkeeper space is the diversity of the participants, not only from a cultural perspective, but we have people joining us from all corners of the world and so we get to gather in a monthly virtual circle from different seasons, time zones and hemispheres. The course begins on the 14th of November 2024. Early bird pricing closes on 30 September 2024. Bookings close on 4 November 2024. For more information see...
Read MoreTrue Midwifery is a safe space for ALL birth attendants…
True Midwifery is the home of The Silent Birthkeeper One Year online Immersion and a variety of other courses and workshops are offered online and in person in countries around the world. One of the visions of True Midwifery is to offer a safe space for birth attendants around the world. In a similar way that we want to offer safe spaces for mothers, and babies True Midwifery endeavours to be a safe space for those who guard and protect birth. Sadly there is a lot of fractioning, disparity and othering in the birthing world and the True Midwifery learning spaces endeavour to bridge that gap and to honour that no matter in what capacity we are attending births, we hold at the centre of our calling, the guarding and protecting of the mothers and babies. So we welcome anyone who is interested and feels a connection to birth. Part of what we celebrate in the True Midwifery space is the diversity of the community, not only cultural diversity but also the diversity of what the participants bring into the space. To find out more about the Silent Birthkeeper course see...
Read MoreThe First Time I Ever Witnessed a Fetus Ejection Reflex
The first time I ever witnessed a fetus ejection reflex was one summer’s night when I was attending a home birth as a doula. The first time mother was ten days past her estimated due date and there had been some pressure to induce. She had declined this intervention and made it clear that she would wait for her baby to come. She was a very petite woman and had already been warned by both her obstetrician and her midwife that more than likely, she would require a caesarean and that she should prepare herself mentally and emotionally for that eventuality. The baby hadn’t dropped into her pelvis at all, let alone engaged, her hips were tiny she was told, and she was already very much past her due date. Instead of these remarks squashing her plans and her confidence, they fueled her instinct to birth at home even more and she made it quite clear that she would prefer to be left alone until she went into labour. So, ten days after her due date, she let me know that her waters had broken but that she wasn’t yet experiencing any labour pains. She would let me know once things were happening but for now, she was just going to stay at home and wait and see. She would be in touch. Even though we only lived ten minutes from one another, we were separated by the Argus Cycle tour taking place that day, so even if I had wanted to get to her, I couldn’t have, and neither could anyone else, so she really could just be left undisturbed at home. At around 3 pm in the afternoon, once the roads were open and clear again, I made my way to her home at her request. She and her partner were sitting on the sofa when I got there and after greeting them I sat down on the sofa opposite them. I felt on the spot, they were looking expectantly at me, as if they were waiting for me to do something. She was experiencing the occasional contraction but it was definitely still very early labour and there was certainly not much that I could do! I excused myself and went to the loo, and once I was done, I ducked into the garden thinking, What do I do with myself now? I spotted a cat lying lazily in a spot of afternoon sun on the grass and I remembered Michel Odent saying something along the lines of: “If you are unsure of what to do with yourself at a birth, find a cat and copy what they do. Cats are the ideal birth attendants.” So yeah, I went and sat with the cat. She didn’t seem to mind too much that I was infringing on her bit of sunlight. At first, I sat a little stiffly, I felt awkward. But soon, her laziness rubbed off on me and eventually, I too was stretched out enjoying the last rays of afternoon sun. The mother came out into the garden and asked my advice on what she should do. I asked her what it was that she felt like doing. She said that she was tired and felt like resting and sleeping, so I said, “Well, why don’t you go and try to do that.” So off she went. And I stayed with the cat until the sun set. I snuck back inside the house (like a cat) and saw out of the corner of my eye the mother sitting cross-legged on the sofa, propped up by pillows, resting in between surges...
Read MoreBirth : A Poem
Birth: What is birth? Birth is the emergence of a new individual from the body of it’s mother. The emergence of that new individual, is the emergence of a new life. Birth is completely normal yet unbelievably profound. As that baby emerges, everyone holds their breath….. Where do we give birth? We choose to have our babies in various settings: At home In hospital In a theatre And sometimes these are not choices but necessities. Sometimes we plan to give birth in one way but then something completely different may happen. Sometimes babies are born in trees, or on trains or by the roadside. Sometimes babies choose for themselves where they want to be born. Where and how we give birth affects who we are. It affects how we are as parents. We need to feel safe. We need to feel confident. And we need to feel in control, so that later we can lose control. If a woman feels cared for and nurtured, she is more likely to love and care for her baby. When we feel safe where we give birth, we give birth more easily. If we feel frightened or vulnerable, we may feel traumatised and incapable of loving our babies. If we are made to believe that we are incapable, we may hand over the power to someone else. There is a hidden secret in our culture: ‘It is not that birth is painful It is that women are...
Read MoreCarol Catches Twins
My mother, Carol, was a ‘lay’ midwife (ie she never received any formal training as a midwife) but accidentally ‘fell’ into the catching of the babies on our farm Droëland. This is the story of the birth of the first set of twins she attended. They were undiagnosed twins (i.e unexpected): Willie and Sannie had been on Droëland for about a month when Sannie went into labour. They arrived one Sunday morning on foot with their two children, a boy and a girl, and settled into the labourer’s cottage next door to Dappie and Marie up at the Barracks (this was what the labourer’s cottages were unofficially called). Sannie was heavily pregnant at the time and my mother joked that Sannie was carrying a rugbyspan (a rugby team). Two weeks after Sannie and Willie’s arrival, the farm labourers were being driven into Ceres for their bi-weekly shopping trip on nat naweek. (Literal translation of ‘nat naweek’: ‘wet weekend.’ This refers to the weekends when the farm labourers were paid. They were paid every other Saturday. Unpaid weekends were referred to as ‘droë naweek’, ie. ‘dry weekend.’ ‘Nat naweek’ also refers to the fact that most of the farm labourer’s wages were spent on wine.) Two vehicles, the truck and the bakkie (pick up truck), drove the 60km dirt road in convoy into town. It was about eight in the morning on a beautiful spring day in October. At the turn at Witklippies (one of the neighbouring farms), the truck overtook the bakkie. Willie was sitting in the back of the bakkie and eager to get to the bottle store before anyone else, decided to jump from the bakkie on to the back of the truck. He missed and landed on his head. He was never quite the same again after that. Smell the freshness of the air. The farm only smells like this in spring. Fresh and warm. My mother was in the kitchen with my younger sister Gypsy. “Mami! Mami!” Jasmin (my younger sister)’s voice called from outside. Jasmin had been up at the Barracks and had heard Sannie screaming from the labourer’s cottage. Jasmin had nervously poked her head around the corner of Sannie’s bedroom and seen Sannie crouched on a thin sponge mattress on the cold cement floor in strong labour; the usually shy and quiet woman behaving like an enraged wild animal. Births on the farm had by now become routine for our mother. She now had a well stocked birthing kit. Our mother took her time in getting ready (much to the irritation of my two youngest sisters). She chopped some wood and washed the dishes and put some food on to cook on the wood burning cast iron Defy Dover stove, before heading up to the young woman in labour. Our mother walked up to the Barracks with Gypsy and Jasmin, who rushed ahead burning with curiosity. My sisters ran up and down, rushing our mother along but our mother refused to be rushed and ambled slowly up to the Barracks. Our mother was ushered into the bedroom by An’ Ragel and An’ Christine. Gypsy and Jasmin joined the other curious bystanders in the kitchen (mostly children). Jasmin had been instructed to boil a pot of water with some cotton yarn (to tie off the umbilical cord) and a pair of little scissors. Jasmin did this, feeling useful and proud at having been given this job. The labour went quickly and smoothly and soon a little boy slid out of his mother. Our mother wrapped him in a towel she had brought with her (there was absolutely nothing in the house for a baby). The new mother pressed her breast to the baby’s little face and he began to eagerly suckle it....
Read More