Safer in a barn

Our deeper understandings of birth can come to us from the most unexpected sources and at the most unanticipated times. One of my most visceral “light- bulb” experiences came in New Mexico in the early 1990s when I was taking a break from midwifery and selling health insurance to self-employed individuals. One day I drove several hours to meet with the general manager of an immense horse farm, hoping to sell a large policy to cover his many farm hands. I ended up wandering through some of the buildings, searching for my appointment. I mentally noted as I passed that one of the stalls exuded energy that felt like birth. Peeking in, I found a swollen mare pacing restlessly in the afternoon quiet, deeply breathing and blowing.....

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Zwichen: The last days of pregnancy

She’s curled up on the couch, waiting, a ball of baby and emotions. A scrambled pile of books on pregnancy, labor, baby names, breastfeeding … not one more word can be absorbed. The birth supplies are loaded in a laundry basket, ready for action. The freezer is filled with meals, the car seat installed, the camera charged. It’s time to hurry up and wait. Not a comfortable place to be, but wholly necessary. The last days of pregnancy — sometimes stretching to agonising weeks — are a distinct place, time, event, stage. It is a time of in between. Neither here nor there. Your old self and your new self, balanced on the edge of a pregnancy. One foot in your old world, one foot in a new world. Shouldn’t there be a word for this state of being, describing the time and place where mothers linger, waiting to be called forward?.....

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Fathers Article

The day my wife gave birth to our firstborn was the end and the beginning of something beautiful. The culmination of nine months of physical, emotional and spiritual preparation for the birth of our baby, it was also the beginning of our life with children. The birth itself was a transition from one stage of our life together to another. I saw my wife in a whole new way that day.There was never any doubt that I would attend our births, we just did not know the details of how. Lois and I have always done everything together. After attending childbirth classes I felt more prepared, but I was still scared at the thought of holding a new baby. Then came "the day.”.....

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