This post has been swimming around my head for about two months now. Each time I started to write it I became a blubbering ball of emotion, and I quit. I think sometimes what we need to do when our emotions try to shut us down is press forward, and write that shit out anyway.
I hope that everyone reading my blog knows that I have respect for all women, and value everyone’s differences. I have a vast span of women in my life. Some the crunchiest that they come, and others are modern, medicine minded. I love them all. They each play a part of who I am today, and I wouldn’t WANT them to change. At all.
With that being said, from my experience there are two types of women in this world. Both of the women I am going to talk about are wonderful Mothers. Friends, wives. But they experience and embrace life in a different light from their neighbor.
It is their differences that make me love them. Their opinions and lifestyles that I respect, so much that I have had a hard time putting this blog into words.
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Imagine that you are an Artist. You’ve had this canvas in mind for months, let’s say 9 months. You’ve been creating this masterpiece, and each day you marvel at it. It’s something you take pride in and you’ve worked towards. It’s beauty fills your soul and gives you a sense of wonderment.
You’ve envisioned what the final product will look like, so much so that that is what has made your painting so special to you. You get emotional thinking about presenting it to it’s new owner, or maybe hanging it on your mantle in your own home.
This little piece is something that you’ve imagined yourself creating since childhood. It’s that important to you.
Now imagine someone steals it. Right out from under you. In broad daylight. Just comes into your own studio and takes it. Without warning. It’s gone. The vision and the dream, done for.
As an artist that is devastating, but perhaps looking in as a Real Estate agent you cannot grasp the grief that this painter is going through. You can try, but still you cannot fully understand why this painter cannot simply paint another gorgeous picture.
This is what it is like for a woman that plans a natural childbirth, whether this be at home or in a hospital, and her birth is shattered by intervention or trauma.
This is what it was like for me four years ago when my homebirth plans were stolen from me.
Just like a painter, the woman that values and longs for a birth experience to empower her and heal her, she envisions her birth as being that painting. The process of painting it is what makes the end result so sweet.
Unless you are a painter, you cannot understand.
If you are not a painter, that doesn’t make you any less of whatever you are meant to be.
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I never thought I would be here again. Faced with the longing in my heart to birth at home, and the fear in my head telling me that my painting would be stolen again. But I’m here, at the mercy of my own body to do as I wish.
It’s been done for thousands of years, the way I desire to bring life into the world. Yet still, I have women in my life that think it’s insane. Dangerous. Crazy. Irresponsible.
Why would I want to give birth in my own home where I feel the most comfortable?
I don’t know why my heart is designed to have this deep longing, but I do know that it is for a purpose.
If that purpose is only for me to tell you tonight that your hearts desires are valid, and they are respected by me, then so be it.
I’ve suffered once , and I could do it again.
I understand that I live in a fallen world where sin is rampant. But I also have a heavenly Father that made me just the way that I am. My heart strings are pulled at the thought of birth of any sort, but especially when women feel valid in their wishes and desires.
I’m convinced that birth is apart of who women are. How we view ourselves.
Some women don’t mind intervention, and anything that comes along with modern day medicine. But some women leave the hospital scarred for life. A healthy baby in tow, but a wound so deep it will take years to heal.
A woman’s body is a vessel of life, why shouldn’t we have a say so in how we bring forth life?
A healthy baby in the end is important, but the mental health of the mother is a close second. I know this because I’ve been the mother that was traumatized for years after a birth that wrecked me to my core.
For a painter, their painting is personal. It’s a personal , touchy thing for them to give up. Just as it is for the Mother that wants to birth in her own bed.
When that is taken from her she feels violated, and betrayed by her own body.
It’s a nerve wracking thing, being at the mercy of your own flesh, and feeling a child you created moving inside you.
This child was created in love, and I want to birth him in a place I feel the most loved.
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Each woman is different, and lovely in her own way. Our roles in this life are vital. Without new life, life ends.
Lets respect how life is birthed, regardless of whether you are a painter or not. It’s a personal choice that is carefully thought out by each woman.
That’s what makes it so unique. All birth is beautiful.
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Until the day I die I will desire to have the birth I’ve always dreamed of, and to see women empowered in the way they choose to birth. I refuse to give up.
