The Power of Love

My husband suddenly said to me the other night, "Remember when you were in labor and you asked the midwife if she thought you could birth vaginally"?
I though back to that afternoon. I was working hard at a VBAC. I was in the birth pool, and fast approaching a milestone in my labor.
"No, I don't remember that. What did she say?"
My husband looked at me. "She said, "No." Just like that. No."

"Well", I said, "that's where I learned midwifery. That's where I learned what NOT to say. That birth and many, many other births where I have been the witness of what NOT to do or say to or with a birthing woman."

Last week we went for a run together. He had a heart attack two months ago and you could not imagine a less likely person to have one ... fit, energetic, athletic, and all that ... anyway it happened, so he is slowly getting back into his exercise routine. He was wearing a heart rate monitor. I was running next to him and he couldn't get his heart beat lower than 140, unless he slowed to a walk. I ran ahead. His heart rate slowed down. I ran back to be next to him. His heart rate speeded up.

I ran a few blocks ahead of him the whole way and he kept his heart rate level. That means ... like the Kinks song - "you make my heart sing..." which is nice, after thirty years.




But it also means, as described so beautifully in the Secret Teachings of Plants, that the heart itself produces messages and hormones that we still do not understand.


And that's where the presence of a doula makes such a difference to the birthing woman. Because she understands that there are reasons for and reasons why that we cannot understand. She sees that most of the time - not all, but most - the body, mind and soul work perfectly well together - or as perfectly as we are used to, which ends up being that raggle-taggle, patched together, immensely beautiful way we call being alive. She sees that a woman who is left alone, within a bubble of her own labor, surrounded by people who love her - and this does not exclude the attending physician, if that is what she desires - will bring forth a child in her own sweet time, using whatever means we understand or do not understand.


And that is also why we have to be so careful when we are attending a birthing woman. Careful with our words, with our bodies, with our thoughts and emotions. Because who knows how sensitive she is to the slightest nuance? And who know how your own heart is acting? What are you communicating to the birthing woman under the surface of your public presence?

Winter Blues, Spring Fever

As I write this I can hear a bird from the back yard, through my open window. I suddenly came alive again about two weeks ago, when the sun came out and my blood started moving. I realized that I'd been in hibernation for most of the past six months, my body was sleeping and that affected my mind. Oh, yes, I know I was at those meetings, I attended births, I wrote stuff. But I was moving through a sludge of hormones that were not letting me wake up.

How much of what we do and feel is just about chemicals? We are synapses, elements, neurons, electrons, and those little neutrinos and prions are part of us as well. Where's the "me" that feels happy when the sun finally shines?

I watched the hockey game last night. Oh, what testosterone! What violent ballet! What ballerina skill those large men have, and how I love to watch them jostle and spin their way across the frozen water. I am happy when my team wins, sad when they lose.

When I am accompanying a woman giving birth, I remember that we are all part of a net of atoms, molecules and love and I enter into that shimmering net with an open heart. Her hormones pass to me and we make the journey together. Even if it is in the dead of winter, when I take my son to school and pick him up from school in the cold and dark, the hormones of birth are warm and bright. Small punches of light in a darkened window. Just like the cardinal in my back yard in the winter whiteness, when the snow covers everything and he is a patch of crimson and a sharp song in the darkening day.

Serotonin

Much has been made of the hormonal basis for everything we humans achieve (or don't). In the Time magazine I just read, a total of eight pages were devoted to anti-depressant medication, which is understood to target deficiencies in various chemicals in our brains.

A wonderful antidote to the winter blues is a good dose of good food. And I don't mean a huge dose of sweet and sticky feed, I mean a modest portion of excellent food, a glass of wine, and good company. Because these few things will get your hormones rising, and will produce that lovely sense of fullness, satisfaction, and general contentment with the world that you feel after a meal with friends.

Those friends can also be a good book, don't get me wrong. I'm not limiting a happy meal to those of us with constant companionship.

But the meal my husband made on Sunday night was magnificent, and the hormones were definitely flowing.

Fettucine ai Fungi; Chicken Schnitzel; Tossed Salad; Fruit Salad ... and Irish Coffee to top it all off.