Sovereign Womanhood and the Misappropriation of Reproduction

We DO have so much power in us. So then how do we end up filing into our hospitals with our birth plans and coming out cut or broken, with a baby in our arms?

All over the world, and especially all over North America, women are finding new ways to birth in their own sovereign power. This can be terrifying. It can be fulfilling. It can be both.

I am speaking to old women who are attending birthing mothers as Traditional Birth Companions. I speak with younger women, mothers of young children themselves, who are devoting their time to attending the births of the women in their communities. I am speaking with women who have said "No!" to the maternity care system we have installed in our countries, and who are giving birth alone or with their families. I see sisters helping sisters. I see communities that are thriving, attending each other in birth, as in life.

Here in Canada, we have very strict regulations about what constitutes someone's right to provide care to a woman during her childbearing year. If you perform any of these restricted practices, without an officially regulated midwifery license, and without being employed by and liable to the health services establishment, then you are practising midwifery without a license.

Billie Harrigan is a Traditional Birth Companion in Ontario. She does not perform restricted practices, and she does not call herself a midwife. She says that Vaginal exams are rude, but also that they constitute a very clear message that our reproductive life and our bodies are not our property: they are the property of the state, and only people mandated by the state can invade them. Number 7 of the Ontario Midwifery Act states that vaginal exams are a restricted practice. In other words, you cannot put "an instrument, hand or finger beyond the labia majora or anal verge during pregnancy, labour and the post-partum period."

Ok, don't get me wrong here. I don't actually WANT to do vaginal exams. I also think they're rude. Not only that, my doula students have heard me say for years that the only reason for so many endless vaginal exams is that medical professionals are not taught about how sexual birth is. The sexuality and the mind-blowingness and the all-out intensity of birth is sublimated into rituals such as vaginal exams (actually, it is absolutely amazing to feel a baby's head in someone's vagina. Just saying. But I keep my hands to myself.)

But my point is, that women have been regulated for far too long. Our bodies have been misappropriated by a maternity system that pretends it is doing things to us for our own good, and it is not. Why do you think many a woman going into the hospital wants (or discovers she needs) a doula by her side? Because the doula can try to prevent some of the grosser abuses from taking place. But not all. And certainly not enough. Not enough to make the difference to so many, many women who feel that they have been violated (and they have!) when all they wanted to do was to give birth to their child.

So, what is happening? Just when the pandemic started making our lives more restricted and difficult, women started wanting to birth away from Covid-infested hospitals. We all, as our lives changed, started to take deep breaths and realize that we don't actually want to go back to the old "normal". I am getting weekly calls and emails from women who want to learn about new ways of birthing. I'm connecting with women around the globe who are moving forward to change the face of birth; to change the world, starting with birth.

Want to come on board? Come along!

“Come, come, whoever you are. 

Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving. 

It doesn't matter. 

Ours is not a caravan of despair. 

Come, even if you have broken your vows a thousand times. 

Come, yet again, come, come.” 

Rumi

And, if you are one of us who has indeed experienced trauma, abuse, and despair during your birthing, even more reason for you to move away from that reality, bring your scars and hold your head up high and cry out: "Enough!"

What is to be done?

You can listen to the Baby Magic Podcast for inspiration.

You can join my Traditional Birth Attendant seminar.

You can reach out to me or to any of the fine women on our podcast for community, information, wisdom.

You can reach deep into your womanhood and remember that you are strong! You are magical! I love you!

For those of you who have a legal interest:

Here are the restricted practices in Quebec:
"Any act the purpose of which is to provide the professional care and services required by a woman during normal pregnancy, labour and delivery and to provide a woman and her child with the professional care and services required during the first six weeks of a normal postnatal period constitutes the practice of midwifery. The professional care and services concerned consist in
(1) monitoring and assessing a woman and her child during pregnancy, labour, delivery and the first six weeks of the postnatal period, and include the provision of preventive care and the detection of any abnormal conditions in the woman or child ;
(2) conducting spontaneous deliveries ;
(3) performing an amniotomy, performing and repairing an episiotomy and repairing a first or second degree perineal tear or laceration.


In addition, in an emergency, while awaiting the required medical intervention or in the absence of medical intervention, applying suction, conducting a breech delivery, performing manual placental extraction followed by digital exploration of the uterus or performing resuscitation procedures on the woman or newborn also constitutes the practice of midwifery."
(http://legisquebec.gouv.qc.ca/en/ShowDoc/cs/S-0.1
In Ontario, they are much less vague:


"1. Communicating a diagnosis identifying, as the cause of a woman’s or newborn’s symptoms, a disease or disorder that may be identified from the results of a laboratory or other test or investigation that a member is authorized to order or perform on a woman or a newborn during normal pregnancy, labour and delivery and for up to six weeks post-partum.

2. Managing labour and conducting spontaneous normal vaginal deliveries.

3. Inserting urinary catheters into women.

4. Performing episiotomies and amniotomies and repairing episiotomies and lacerations, not involving the anus, anal sphincter, rectum, urethra and periurethral area.

5. Administering, by injection or inhalation, a substance designated in the regulations.

6. Prescribing drugs designated in the regulations.

7. Putting an instrument, hand or finger beyond the labia majora or anal verge during pregnancy, labour and the post-partum period.

8. Administering suppository drugs designated in the regulations beyond the anal verge during pregnancy, labour and the post-partum period.

9. Taking blood samples from newborns by skin pricking or from persons from veins or by skin pricking.

10. Intubation beyond the larynx of a newborn.

11. Administering a substance by injection or inhalation as provided for in subsection 4.1 (2). 2009, c. 26, s. 16 (1). (https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/91m31)"

Rest, Recovery, Reflection, Renewal?

I am sitting on a hilltop in northern Italy, rather completely on my own. My dog is here. I'm surrounded by insects, animals (deer, wild boars, the odd wolf, badgers, and all that). I planned for a very active summer, running at least 40 k a week, which I love doing - running long distances is literally my happy place. But then some stuff happened and I got Covid and now I just feel cellularly tired. So every day I spend quite a few hours just sitting staring out at the view. 

And what I've been asking myself is that difficult, age old question: Who Am I?

When you spend hours alone, especially in a spot where silence is the overwhelming sound, you get a chance to really "dig deep" and find out what your questions are. I can't really believe that I have been inhabiting this body and mind and soul I guess for nearly 66 years and I still don't really know who or what I am. So, let me start at the beginning, well maybe not that far back but ... 

Names

I guess you all know the story about how Toni Morrison got her name. Toni she decided on herself, after converting to Catholicism at age 12 and naming herself Anthony. Morrison was her husband's name and she was stuck with it because when her first novel was published she was still using it as her legal name even though they were already divorced. There's an quote floating around from 1992 that goes like this: 

"I am really Chloe Anthony Wofford. That’s who I am. I have been writing under this other person’s name. I write some things now as Chloe Wofford, private things. I regret having called myself Toni Morrison when I published my first novel, The Bluest Eye.”

Well, the same kind of thing happened to me. I'd always been Niki, or Nicky when I was very young. Or Nicola when my parents were mad at me. Then in my forties I had a brush with religion - not Catholicism - and I was persuaded to change my name. So I changed it to Rivka, a name I don't even like that much, but who gets to pick their own name. And then my work as a doula, birth companion, teacher, author and my whole birth persona grew wings under the guise of Rivka Cymbalist and there I was, and here I am, just like Toni Morrison (ha!).

So, for now, Niki is reserved for my family and people who knew me before the Great Name Change. But I'm kind of getting tired of inhabiting two separate lives so I may just change my name again.

Bodies

Who knew? Bodies change. I thought the biggest change would be that infamous time when I grew breasts and got my period. Pregnancy was fun. I didn't have such a tough time with it, in fact I enjoyed growing babies. Birthing them was tough, but I really loved having little babies and children around, and breastfeeding, and those body changes didn't really bother me. Some fibroids, a touch of hyperthyroid. Nothing serious. 

Menopause was kind of a relief, no more monumentally Niagara Falls cycles. No more fertility, and I was ready for that, because I was happy with my five children. Did I think I'd overdone it? No.

But then, the thing is, everyone goes on about menopause because it's when a woman is no longer fertile and I guess biologically speaking no longer useful. But the body changes more dramatically and more quickly after the whole menopause thing is history.

I've written about this before, and I have to point out, it's not specific ailments that bother me - thank goodness - I'm healthy. But just like during puberty and adolescence, and I'm imagining anyone with body dysmorphia, I just don't feel right in my skin. Its like my clothes don't fit me right, except they do. My clothes fit, I still take the same size more or less, a medium. But it's my skin that doesn't fit. It feels weird, it's too loose, it's floppy, it doesn't feel like its mine. I look funny in the mirror, who's that old lady? Why is her skin all dry? damn it, why didn't I wear sunscreen for all those years? 

So that's the tunnel I can fall down when I don't remember to center and use moisturizer every morning. Yes, it is my body, yes indeed I am very grateful and proud of it, it's like an old car, just keeps on chugging. But I can't help it, it feels weird.

Profession

Oh goodness, could I just say I'm a witch? I guess not....but this is weird too because I think I studied witchery and magic my whole life, and science too of course. And poetry, and of course I learned all about having kids and all when I went ahead and had five of them. 

But my professional label doesn't exist, because I'm not a registered midwife. I'm a birth companion or whatever. My Impostor Syndrome kicks in frequently; sometimes I think my actual profession is "Impostor".

I've mostly been a mother. 

And the renewal part of this whole exploration? It's a deep, deep sense that change means pain, and from pain comes change. Life just doesn't stop, until it does. So, in a sense, my resting, my recovery, my reflections ... lead to a renewal of sorts which is a kind of an acceptance of the continually changing nature of my life: child, young woman, mother, older woman, mother, older woman, grandmother, mother, birth attendant, peace keeper, rebel, anarchist, runner, crone...

Birth Portals

 Today I am on the second letter ... and that would be B, and B stands for Birth Portals.

This was posted on Instagram by @catearth76 and it is so true! But, and I am so full of "but..." and "wait a minute..." and "sorry what?..." these days, but what about those women who don't use that portal to birth their babies?

No, I'm not talking about how wonderful gentle cesarean is and how it's so great that we can lie on the surgical table and do skin-to-skin. Neither am I talking about women whose babies might have died if they hadn't been intervened with.

I'm talking about women who are pushed, coerced, bullied, lied to, manipulated, scared, threatened into agreeing to surgical birth for their babies when there really wasn't any good medical reason for it. This is a fact, it's real, and it's happening in a hospital near you. Especially now that Covid restrictions have made it impossible for a woman to bring the support she needs into the hospital or birth center, and it's made medical workers much more jumpy and afraid.

What is the actual spiritual damage that is done to that miraculous portal when a baby is yanked out through a surgical cut nowhere near the portal? How can we repair that damage? How can we repair that damage to babies, to women, and to the world? 

This is a question I've been struggling with for decades. I started working as a doula in 1997, and I truly thought that accompanying women to the hospital and providing doula support was a valid option. And, yes, I did have a pretty decently low c-section rate (around 10 %, compared to 25% at the hospitals I attended births at). But watching these births wore me down. Watching intelligent, adult women being lied to and treated like children (actually, since when was it fine to manipulate and bully little children?) hurt my soul.

I quit attending births for a while, for various reasons. And now I've started again, and I'm very clear that I only will accompany women who want to KNOW that they hold a sacred portal between their legs, and they WILL NOT be bullied into messing with it. This is my own bias speaking, partly because I wasn't strong enough to do that - I let every Tom, Dick and Harry and their female counterparts bully their obstetric, know-it-all, fear-mongering way into my obstetric activities. And the reasons behind that are many and unsolvable and complex. But I believe that the way I work now is the way to open up that sacred power, so that women can come back to the recognition of their own selves and their own bodies.

Women contact me at various places in their pregnancy journeys. Since I have been back in the practice, I have spoken with women who want me to walk with them throughout their pregnancies, and others who have called me during pregnancy, during labour, or after giving birth. 

When I walk with a woman through pregnancy, we meet online every week and speak for an hour. Sometimes we could talk about books, or what seeds they're planting. Other times we talk about how the pregnancy is progressing, or where they've decided to give birth, and whom they want around them when they're birthing. We talk about their fears, dreams, desires. We try to plan the kinds of support they will have after the baby is born, and they try to imagine what life will be like when they're responsible for feeding and providing for their new baby.

Sometimes we talk about stuff that's happening in their lives, either in the present or in the past, and how that will affect their birthing. Serious abuse in the past affects how we live in the present, and it can definitely affect our ability to reach deep within to find the power it takes to open that sacred portal. Fighting and anger in the present can sometimes mean that a woman no longer has a home where she can feel safe to give birth in, so that is another hurdle for her to jump over. Physical challenges and illness can also affect our body's ability to give birth, but these are rare. Often women worry too much about the physical aspects of pregnancy and birth, and they don't consider the emotional and spiritual weight of their pregnancy, birth, and parenting.

So, I try to walk with a woman and her family through this important time in their lives while maintaining an open spirit and an open heart. My open heart reflects with theirs and together we can find a place where that shy but powerful portal will open. Women are being cut open for no reason. Placentas are being pulled out with no reason. Women are not listened to when they say they have a pain, for no reason. Women are being ignored when they say they are scared, for no reason.

Or, wait, is there a reason? Who could want to keep that portal scarred and closed? Who could want to stop that power from being unleashed in the world? Who could want a world where we all remembered that we are all birthed through a sacred, fiery, spiritual, creative, awe-inspiring portal? Who might be afraid of a world that was held together by witch power and magic? 

Oh, so I forgot - this is a gratitude note! So I am grateful for Birth Portals. I'm grateful for witches, for womanhood, for love. I'm grateful for the circle of women who surround me and protect me. I'm grateful for the moon and the stars.

Five Reasons to JUST SAY NO

Yes, it is possible to JUST SAY NO. But why would you want to?

Here are five good reasons why we, as humans who want to achieve and maintain sanity, should learn the delicate art of saying no. I'm not talking here about those times when, obviously, you're not going to say "Oh, yes, for sure, that sounds like a great idea!" Like when someone suggests you have another drink when you've had enough, or when someone in anger suggests you go jump off a cliff.

No, I'm talking about those occasions when it is in your best interest to say no. When, yes, you could say yes, if you juggle around your schedule, self-esteem, people in your life, your alone time, work, sleep, or just plain your own moral compass. Yeah, you could say yes.

But here are my favourite five reasons to JUST SAY NO:

1. If you don't want to do something. It might be fun, but you just don't want to do it. You might feel that the person who wants you to do it will be hurt, or angry, or lonely. Then your squirrel mind starts suggesting other options: really angry, or suicidal, or depressed for three months. But anyway, don't do it. Just say no. One of my friends has been wanting me to visit forever. It's just too complicated to make it work. I'm sorry but ... no. Just no.

2. If you need to spend time by yourself. It is important that we recognize how alone we are. Like, I mean existentially alone. You were born alone (unless you were one half of a Siamese twin) and you will die alone. That's just the way it is. And it is really important to make sure that you have time to spend alone. So, sometimes, you have to say no. No, I am fine just doing my long run on my own this week. I need the two, three or four hours to sort out my shit. Ya, we can run together next week.

3. If you are trying to beat an addiction. Obviously. The only way to do that is to JUST SAY NO. Frankie knew that.

4. If you need healing. You have to stop the bombardment of everything so you can have some time to sort stuff out for yourself, every once in a while. Otherwise you will become a spinning plate amongst many other spinning plates. Nope, I do not want to be part of your women's circle. No, I don't want to bare my deepest secrets to y'all. Nope, I am not doing volunteer work any more, sadly. Sorry guys, this event is cancelled.

5. If you have to avoid something because, even if you want to do it, it will hurt you. Damn, this is the hardest one!! You have an injury? You can't race your half marathon! You're a great midwife but you're not allowed to work? Hey, sorry, you can't go to births! You want to eat chocolate but it's bad for you? Sucks to be you!

And when should you JUST SAY YES?

1. When you want to.


2. Anything to do with love.


3. When your heart tells you to.


4. If the choice is something a little scary but extremely rewarding.


5. If you're already doing something, like running a marathon, and every part of you is trying to say no, but you need to JUST SAY YES so that you can complete it.

Nike and Fearlessness

Fearlessness, Nike, and victory are just names, and what's in a name? I have a couple of names, as did Toni Morrison, and my story is as accidental but full of emotion as hers. Actually, I named myself a few times over my 62 years but one name that has stuck has been Niki, short for Nicola, based on the word Nike, which as everyone knows is a popular running shoe with some odd political opinions.

According to Greekmythology.com (and most Classics scholars), Nike was the goddess of victory in Greek mythology, depicted as having wings, hence her alternative name "Winged Goddess". She would fly above the battlefields and champion the winners. She may be the daughter of Ares, who was the god of war. A tough chick. Being a Goddess, she didn't worry too much about getting old.

Getting Old

Turning sixty can be a big deal for people. In our society, we can feel like our lives are over. Younger people don't respect us. Our jobs may have become useless or boring. We can gaze upon a flat future full of medication, mediation, monotony. Our dogs die. Our kids leave town, and come back hardly ever.

Ya, well, that wasn't me. I turned 62 this past summer and I still have some kick in me. I'm channeling when I was fourteen and hiking in the Rockies on my own. If all else fails, I can always go back to being a doula and charging an exorbitant amount to provide people with the kind of compassion their mums or their aunties would've given them in a better day and age. I can head up to my mountain hideaway and live off mushrooms and wild strawberries. Or I could move to Rome and do private prenatal classes in English. Then again, I could just stay here in the 'burbs and live off my pension. Either way, one has to capture that fearlessness in life that gives you a charge, that element of surprise that can light a fire under your butt.

My Great Aunt Tillie lost her fiance in the Great War, and never married. She and her brother lived out their lives in Hackney, in a small flat. She was an armchair revolutionary. "To the barricades!" she would yell with her fist in the air.

Can you be a fearless charioteer in your own life? What is something you've done this week that makes you proud, that lights that fire? I'd love to hear from y'all! #fearless #Nike

V for Victory!

I got lazy with my gratefulness alphabet.

But I am super thank full that V stands for Victory, and now I want to talk a little bit about victory:

Victory means winning against yourself. It means means overcoming obstacles. It means admitting you're wrong. It means staying up all night with a birthing mother even though you're tired. It means getting up in the morning and going for a run even though you don't want to. It means feeling good about yourself when you know you could have done better.

It means being content with your bumpy old body, even when you feel like you're still 23. It means taking risks and laughing through them. It means holding out a hand for someone you think you don't like. It means doing what you believe in, even if its dangerous and difficult.

It means keeping your damn mouth shut sometimes. It means speaking up for what you believe. It means moving forward. It means sitting on your hands and not doing anything. It means being true to who you are.

It means having babies, any old way, or not having them, raising your children or not, living with someone your whole life or not, being alone, being an enemy, being a friend. Being a sister, or a brother, being a mother.

Hasta la vittoria siempre

International Women's Day

This International Women's day, I would like to hand a mimosa branch to each and every one of the people I love.

This day is about women, about peace, strength, the power of love. 

We are not there yet, but I dream of a world where women can give birth with respect and honor; where we can all walk wherever we want whenever we want, a world where there is no hate, no war, no hunger.

"Se non ora, quando?"

If not now, when?

Please go out today and do one thing that will help bring peace.

Birth and Political Theory?

One of my students has generously agreed to let me post her paper on classical feminism, patriarchy and birth. Read on!

Women as well as men have been discussing the various ramifications of patriarchy and sexism for quite awhile now. A lot of thought has gone into strategy on how to best fight it. However, the root cause often goes unquestioned by those discussing the effects. Some prominent thinkers have attempted to discover the root. Simone de Beauvoir, for example, states that the fundamental reason for women's oppression is her enslavement to the reproductive function. I agree. The female identity is formed not only in a reproductive body but in largely unexamined preconceived notions about that body. As Mary O’Brien, a political theorist and midwife, clearly puts it: the unexamined reproductive process  is the sturdiest plank in the platform of male supremacy.

So where did these preconceived notions come from? Both Beauvoir and O’Brien believe that there was a historical moment that catalyzed patriarchy.They explain that in realizing the reality of paternity and the male contribution to the reproductive process, men created systems in which they could control the process of reproduction. In patriarchy, female reproductive processes are defined by men.These processes, including menstruation, gestation and birth,  have been deemed not only scientifically uninteresting, but have also been mystified as the unknown, the strange, and even the grotesque.

This patriarchal view has clearly permeated the female view of her own body’s function. Even Simone de Beauvoir writes that the mother “is the prey of the species, which imposes its mysterious laws upon her, and as a rule this subjection to strange outer forces frightens her, her fright being manifested in morning sickness and nausea” .To Beauvoir, nursing is “the species gnawing at their vitals.”

Beauvoir, despite her great strides for feminism at her time, does not rethink the significance of the motherhood holistically and outside of male formed systems. Therefore, she, like the rest of patriarchal thinkers, denies the possibility of motherhood as a meaningful and authentic factor of a woman’s identity.  Once we acknowledge that commonly held views on motherhood are not universal truths, we can begin to accept the idea that the female reproductive process gives women a unique connection to the body, cyclic nature, and continuity.

The concept of being pregnant, and experiencing the evolution of having another identity within your body can be an enlightening experience, in which the concept of inner and outer, self and other, become blurred and questioned. In gestation and birth, women engage with the mind-body dualism in a way that is uniquely female.

The poet Adrienne Rich asserts that “patriarchal thought has limited female biology to its own narrow specifications.... in order to live a fully human life we require not only control of our bodies; we must touch the unity and resonance of our physicality, our bond with the natural order, the corporeal ground of our intelligence.” The intelligence and transcendence experienced by mothers that Beauvoir calls an illusion, Rich believes to be a consciousness outside of the narrow specifications of patriarchal thought.

Beauvoir along with other intellectual 20th century feminists are quick to acknowledge the disempowering, enslaving, and unpleasant elements of motherhood in contrast to the stereotypically male roles. Motherhood can be boring. It can be tedious and exhausting. Enslavement to any one role without choice or agency should be fought against, but motherhood is not intrinsically this, despite how patriarchal norms have defined it. There is the real possibility for a powerful female identity that has gone overlooked.

 If the process of reproduction from conception to gestation to birth  is understood, women can form for themselves an identity that experiences authentic creation in reproduction. The identity is formed by accepting the lack of control and the inevitability of repetition in life, by connecting to and understanding the body, and by engaging in the complex history of female subjugation by men, rooted in reproduction.

 It is time to open our eyes to the norms we accept in our hospitals regarding birth. We must open our ears to the patriarchal stories we tell each other that put fear and disgust in the birth process. Most importantly, all people, men and women, must open their arms to all the strong women who both struggle within and celebrate the experience of living in a menstruating, ovulating, pregnant, birthing, nursing, or menopausal female body. Whether it be ignored, mystified, worshipped, or objectified, it is woman’s to dwell within and create.

Hannah McCormick