2011 - Talk Birth

francoise freedman (2011-04-28 16:13:54)
Just to say thank you for your beautiful four generations picture, it is great to see such warmth flowing through
the (indeed similar) smiles. At Birthlight we give importance to the mother-daughter relationship in pregnancy in
preparation for birth and also for healing past relationships. It’s not so common that grandmas are around but when
they are, it’s a delight to access this female lineage through them. Thank you for sharing your lineage Francoise.
The ”Almost Died...” Remark (2011-04-29 06:58)
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Anyone who has planned a homebirth has probably heard the, ”If I’d had my baby at home, I would
have died” remark more times than they can count. It seems to be almost a default response to mentions of
homebirth. I used to have a pet peeve about this, because I was almost certain that most of time the people
saying it had been nowhere close to death! It seemed like an overly dramatic, overreaction to a normal life
process, etc., etc. And, also that we’ve been so brainwashed by the media into thinking birth is this life or
death emergency that that filter then artificially colors our perceptions of events and dramatically affects
our social lexicon of birth. (However, I also have the companion thought that in many countries, birth does
remain a life or death experience for women and babies. Maternal and infant mortality are significant issues
and are not subjects to be taken lightly. And, mothers and babies in the U.S. do, in fact, die sometimes. It
isn’t just a third-world country thing!) Another statement that used to confuse me was when birth writers
say things about giving birth bringing you to the, ”edge between life and death.” This didn’t match my own
to-that-date birth experiences, which had not ever involved feeling like dying.
So, these things said, it has been very, very difficult for me to write about my own feelings of being close to
death following the miscarriage-birth of my third son in November 2009. I really, truly felt like I might be
going to die after he was born. I have never felt that close before, but I reached that ”edge” after him, and I
had the visceral experience of the veil between life and death being very, very thin. And, the feeling did not
occur in a scary way, but in a resigned, ”oh, so this is how it is going to end, too bad I still had so much I
want to do with my life!” kind of way. I felt okay with it actually. A type of acceptance that my time was
over. Since everything turned out okay in the end, I haven’t had much reason to process that feeling, but it
was very, very intense. And, actually it was also life-changing in several areas of my life, including in terms
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