In Your Voice

Submitted by Laura Vladimirova

Some awakenings happen in the midst of serious conflict, when ideas crash up against the walls of your mind. Sometimes they happen in the least expected of moments, like when a thought sort of just bumps around. It can stew there for some time and eventually set off a cascade of new ideas that transform our whole philosophies. My most recent realization, or thought bump, happened at an art opening in downtown Manhattan, and it’s changed my thinking about womanhood ever since.

I had just come from the final day of my doula training with Debra Pascali Bonaro at Birth Day Presence. I was filled with inspiration about caretakers, babies and birth. The art gallery was getting crowded, friends were walking in and drinks were everywhere. The vibe was warm, though I admit, I was only somewhat present at the event — my mind was truly elsewhere.

Cut to twenty minutes later and in walks a stunningly glowing woman with a chunky baby in her arms and her bearded partner in tow. Baby was totally cool as a cucumber, even when he was passed around from friend to cooing friend. He was happily entertained by the colors of the art, lights and laughter surrounding him. When he reached my arms, holding the sweet 5-month-old was a treat after having spent days talking about happy, healthy moms and babies. When mom came to check on her son, I asked if this was her first. She proudly nodded yes. She also mentioned that this was the first baby she had ever held.

That’s the moment when my thoughts bumped.

I wondered how old I was when I held my first newborn. I recalled I was in my late 20s, after a  dear friend had given birth to her first son. I was graciously invited to the hospital to meet him, and as soon as I got there, she put him in my arms. I remember that he felt heavier than I’d expected a newborn to feel and that was surprising to me at the time.

After I left the gallery, I questioned how common it was for women in our society to have only held a few, or even no newborns before they had their own children. In societies where caretakers live closer together and depend more on each other, babies are passed around like the baby at the gallery. Young women (and men) become accustomed to being babysitters. They learn how to change a baby, entertain a baby, and provide support for mom early on.

I asked myself if experience like this was something that was missing from our modern world. For example, does not spending time with nursing mothers and not getting peed on when changing a baby (until we have our own) affect us psychologically or emotionally?

I began to ask around. I asked friends with kids, I asked friends without kids and I asked older women about their first time seeing, holding and interacting with a newborn.

So many women responded in the same way that I had. If they had older siblings or cousins, they had babies to play with. But many women did not hold a newborn until their late 20s or older. And mostly, it was their firstborn child.

I felt like I had missed out on opportunities as a young girl to better understand what it means to be a mama and create a bond with the miracles that surround pregnancy. All of the women I had interviewed had felt this way too. One woman said that not having had any experience with babies gave her parenting anxiety when she found out she was pregnant. Later, after she delivered a healthy baby girl, she felt relieved when she began to trust her instincts as a new mother.

Am I suggesting we as women just go up to strangers in the street and ask them to hold their babies? Well, that probably wouldn’t fly in NYC. Yet, there may be things we can do. Perhaps, if we open up our circle of sisters, we can consider this a a slow, but helpful thought bump for ourselves and any young women around us, like a neighbor or distant family member. We can help plant seeds of experience and confidence, seeds that say ‘holding a baby is a beautiful, empowering moment.’

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Laura Vladimirova is a DONA-trained doula currently working towards becoming a certified nurse midwife. She aims to provide emotional, physical and spiritual support during pregnancy, labor, delivery and postpartum. She’s passionate about her role as a member of the birthing team and focuses on giving families space to make empowered choices, be it clinical or holistic. In between helping families achieve powerful and fulfilling birth experiences, she’s a maternity photographer and communications specialist living in Brooklyn, NY. She can be reached at NaturalBirthBebe@gmail.com.

Submitted by Marcy Sauter

Have you ever been moved to tears while watching someone do exactly what they were put on this planet to do? I have, and I think it’s one of the most beautiful scenes to behold. Perhaps it’s a musician that plays beautiful music, or a gardener that has a gift to keep a bounty of fruits and vegetables growing, the ballet dancer that pliés his way across the stage, the cook that pours her heart and soul into the fresh cookies she bakes and the jam she lovingly makes for her friends, the attorney that fights for justice with passion, the mama that raises her children with love and kindness, the math teacher that shares his knowledge through carefully designed lessons, or the surgeon that gives hope to the dying, or the midwife that lovingly catches babies.

I often wonder what gift or talent we’re missing out on because someone is not heeding the call of their desire. It makes me sad to think that I haven’t heard the song that’s hiding beneath that seed of doubt within someone’s heart. It’s heartbreaking that a poem wasn’t shared with others due to a fear of sounding imperfect, and tragic to think of the athlete who won’t train because they were told they wouldn’t achieve success by pursuing the potential that their body held.

How different would our world be if each and every person did what they were created to do? How would your life be if you didn’t live within the expectations of culture, gender, family, tradition, or worse, self-doubt? If you shed every label that was placed upon you, what would you be capable of? How would you be living your life differently than you are now?

Our society is really good at labeling us from birth.

Good baby, bad baby
Good sleeper, bad sleeper
Big baby, little baby
Happy baby, fussy baby, and the list goes on.

Beyond infancy, these labels continue to weigh us down, and sometimes they define us. They threaten to convert us into what we aren’t meant to be.

When I was a kid, well-meaning people told me things that made me ashamed to be the way I was, making me feel like a weirdo. As I shed the labels that were put upon me, the passion for life began to burn in me again. The realization that I am different is now comforting. There is no one on this planet who is just like I am! How cool is that? There’s no one just like you, either.

We are amazing!

The women with whom I work, and my new understanding of this concept of living, have inspired me to write this poem. My hope is that you’ll start shedding the layer of labels which prevent you from doing what you were meant to do in this life. The world waits for you to wake up and share your gift.

Wake up, woman! Have you gone to sleep?

Have you lost yourself in culture? Are you in deep?

Have you been put upon a shelf?

And lost your soul, your voice, yourself?

It’s time! The time is now!

You may think twice, you don’t know how!

You’ve been reduced to few roles

Your heart, your mind, it’s taken its toll

So now it’s time, you must not sleep

Your life awaits, don’t live as sheep

There’s so much more that’s in that box

The key is there, unlock the lock

Wake up, woman! Don’t you forget

Don’t slumber on, or you’ll regret

Waste not the days, or months, or years

Lest you grow old, and drown in tears

Awaken!

Edited by M.L.

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I had the honor and the pleasure to bear witness to Ina May’s induction into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, a charming small town in Upstate New York that has long been a hotbed for the women’s liberation movement—the first Convention for Women’s Rights was held there in 1848, followed by many subsequent events during our sister-ancestors’ long battle for equal rights. The National Women’s Hall of Fame is physically located there, right across the street from the Elizabeth Cady Stanton Park.

It was a grand event with hundreds of attendees. The festivities began with a Tea Party (a deliberate and not-so-subtle comment on our present political logjam!) that offered plenty of opportunities for meeting, greeting, and networking. The New York midwives turned out in force for Ina May—they planned their annual NYSALM (New York State Association of Licensed Midwives) meeting to take place in Seneca Falls so that they could all be there to support Ina May. MANA’s representative to the event, Vicki Hedley, current MANA Board member and Treasurer, kindly drove me through the gorgeous countryside on a bright sunny day that enabled us to fully appreciate the lovely vistas of mountains, valleys, and fall foliage that filled our senses with delight.  I came from Texas, Juliana van Olphen Fehr (Director of the Nurse-Midwifery Program at Shenandoah University) came from Virginia, as did many others to be there for Ina May, and wow did she get a lot of cheering when she stepped forward to have that huge medal hung around her neck!

She gave a brilliant talk. She began by noting that even though she could not legally practice in New York State as a CPM, she had actually and legally attended a birth in New York, on a Native American reservation there that is not officially part of NY. “Balance” was her theme—the balance the Six Nations achieved by having men as chiefs, with a committee of women as the voters who decided what the male leaders could and could not do, such as when they could and could not go to war. She moved on to honor Mary Breckinridge, a former inductee, describing the Frontier Nursing Service that Breckenridge created, the difficult conditions under which they practiced, fording swollen streams to attend home births, and the excellent outcomes they achieved because of their courage, skills, and commitment. They achieved a remarkable sort of balance between the needs of the population and the services the FNS midwives could provide. I managed to film most of her talk on my iPhone—Debra Pascali Bonaro will be posting it on YouTube, so watch for it!

The formal induction ceremony opened with a video of Hillary Clinton welcoming us all to Seneca Falls, honoring the early feminists, and celebrating today’s induction.  The other eight inductees included Betty Ford (1918-2011), Julie Krone (1963- ), Kate Millett (1934-  ), Mother Mary Joseph Rogers (1882-1955), Bernice Resnick Sandler (1928- ), Anna Jacobson Schwartz (1915-2012), Emma Hart Willard (1787-1870), and Nancy Pelosi (1940-  ). Betty Ford’s daughter spoke movingly of her bravery in choosing to share her diagnosis of breast cancer and her struggles with alcoholism with the world, in order to move these heretofore almost unspeakable issues into public awareness and consciousness. Julie Krone—you may not know her name, but she was one of the first female jockeys in the U.S and eventually became the leading female Thoroughbred horse racing jockey of all time. Her speech was inspirational. She described her early marginalization as a woman, being given the worst horses to ride and then learning them so well that she began to ride them to victory, over and over, against all odds, until her skills were finally fully acknowledged, at which point she began to ride back-to-back races, sometimes winning five or six races a day, and going on to become the first woman to win a Triple Crown and many other awards. Nancy Pelosi told the story of being asked to run for the House of Representatives, her concern about what that might mean for her last remaining child at home, a daughter. She told her daughter about the opportunity, said that she was willing to let that go in order to stay home and support her through her senior year of high school. Her daughter’s response: “Mom, GET A LIFE!”

The Gala Celebration after the Induction Ceremonies was a marvelous party in the Hotel Clarence in Seneca Falls—I was thrilled to be able to speak a bit with Nancy Pelosi, to shake Lilly Ledbetter’s hand and thank her for her service to women, and to observe Ina May in animated conversation with so very many people who seemed to really understand the depth and breadth of her contributions to women, midwives, and birth. I found a moment to ask Ina May, my friend of over 20 years, if she had kept a careful record on her CV of all her talks and all her publications—she said, regretfully, that she had not. I urged her to create that record so that it will not be lost! Is anybody out there up for writing the full biography that she so richly deserves?

The following day, Sunday, Vicki and I attended a lovely brunch held in Ina May’s honor by NYSALM. Invited to the mike, Ina May began with a question: “If I were younger and wanted to come and practice in New York State, what would I have to do to do so legally and how much would it cost?” She is a CPM and has a Master’s in English—the Master’s degree is now a requirement for any midwife who wants to become licensed in New York. So the answer, given most clearly by Kate Finn CPM, CM, was two years at either program for CMs—the one at SUNY downstate in NY or the one in Philly, at a cost of $50,00 to $60,000. A young aspiring midwife, already a CPM, stood up to speak of the hoops she had jumped through to become eligible for the CM SUNY downstate program, taking all the necessary prerequisite courses, only to find her application rejected. And she asked, “Why is it so hard to become a Licensed Midwife in New York, when I am already a midwife?” A fascinating discussion ensued that indicated clearly that the members of NYSALM are very open to considering alternate routes, including looking at ways to legitimate CPMs in NY. It came up in the discussion that the ICM (International Confederation of Midwives) global standards for midwifery education might be used—yet CNMs and CMs in New York operate far beyond those standards because they are trained not only in maternity care but also in lifetime well-woman care. And, as some of them said, they simply love not having to say goodbye to their clients after birth because they can offer them ongoing, lifetime care. Yet no one there seemed to want “tiered midwifery”—meaning that there would be various hierarchical classifications of midwives (as there are for nurses)—so the dilemma of how to incorporate the CPM in New York remains. They are going to work on that!

After the brunch, Vicki and I found time to visit the National Women’s Hall of Fame. It was incredibly inspiring to find so many of my personal culture heroes honored there. Too many to mention here, but I will just say that in a glass display case, there was a scarf that had belonged to Amelia Earhart (a posthumous inductee). Sally Ride, another inductee, had taken that scarf into outer space as a tribute to her personal culture hero Amelia, and then had returned it to the museum. Women honoring women. I was moved beyond words to hear that story, to see Sally’s uniform also displayed there, and to move around the museum gasping at the stories on the plaques of the women honored there, with tears flowing as I honored their individual and collective achievements. And walking into that Hall of Fame, the first thing I saw was Ina May’s plaque complete with photo right next to Betty Ford’s, on the display panels in the middle of the room of the new inductees.

We have a lot further to go, but we have come a very, very long way in our collective efforts to guarantee equal rights for women, and now for the next cause—human rights in childbirth—a cause that our marvelous Ina May has long championed. She has been a spearhead for that movement in many countries around the world. Let’s pause a moment to celebrate her recognition as a champion of normal birth and women’s rights, then take a deep breath and go on to do the work of making physiologic birth and respectful treatment of laboring mothers the global norm! So many brave women have paved the way—let us follow in their footsteps and make new paths of our own.

Robbie E. Davis-Floyd, Ph.D. is an International Speaker, Accomplished Author, Medical/Cultural Anthropologist, Expert on Childbirth and Midwifery, Editor and Reviewer, and Consultant and Senior Research Fellow, Dept. of Anthropology, University of Texas Austin.

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How has Ina May shone the spotlight for you?