Blessed Births and Beginnings

Motherhood by bagath makka

My Ramadan post has taken a back seat to, well, my Ramadan! Next year God willing, I will post something! In the meantime, I have found a lecture, again by Shaykh Abdul Hakim Murad, on motherhood. He talks about many of the mothers mentioned in the Quran, the mother of Moses, Mary, and others, and mentions the significance of this. That each time we speak about greatness, we mention the mother, and that this in turn deserves an immense amount of respect. He mentions that starting with birth, a mother is given blessings; that with each contraction she is given the reward of freeing a slave. Each contraction! One reason to be grateful for a long labor! If you are celebrating Ramadan this year, I pray that it is one of enormous benefit to you and your family. Look for more frequent posting in a couple of weeks!

Born into Ramadan

"Metabolically and internally, Ramadan knocks the stuffing out of us. Like all the basic practices of our religion, it is an idea as simple as it is shattering. The body and spirit respond at their deepest level. The ego squeals with pain. To the extent that we are still babies, we cry and cry.

There are some elemental human experiences where the body, detecting its limits, transforms the spirit. Making love, famously, is one example. But there are others. Once, walking in the Alps, I passed a lake as blue as cobalt, formed from the meltwater of a glacier which towered over it. No-one was in sight, so I stripped off and ran straight in. The shock of that freezing water around me was staggering, and I could feel my heart straining. Coming out, shivering uncontrollably, I felt like a king. All of life seemed to be shivering around me, and the world seemed to have become strangely sharp and bright.

The experience of being born must be similar. From a comfort zone we experience the pain of delivery, and the outrage of new existence in an external world of bright lights and strange sounds. The baby screams, but its pain is its first experience of true life. Spiritually, it has begun its career.

The fast blasts us, and exhausts us. We feel the laughable flab melting away, and start to remember the important fact that we are alive. Life is a symbiosis between our bodies and the world. We are alive when we feel that interaction and dependency at work."

-RAMADAN TRAVELOGUE No. 1

By Sh. Abdal-Hakim Murad

Please consider donating to the Cambridge Mosque, the first fully eco-friendly mosque in Europe, of which Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad is a part of.

Photo by The Alpine by kern.justin

Home Birth Videos

I bring you two home birth videos. The first is a first time couple, birthing at home on their Oregon farm. It is a mini-documentary and one of the most modest home birth films I have seen, yet very real and moving. The second is from a documentary I have blogged about before, The Doula Film. It is a second time mom birthing at home in the UK. She is incredibly calm and composed throughout the birth, particularly whilst pushing. Enjoy.

I hope to post on Ramadan for pregnant and nursing moms in the next day or two. Ramadan begins here tomorrow so we are making goodies and preparing today. There is a sister conducting a study on whether or not fasting in Ramadan while nursing impacts baby weight gain, and/or milk supply. She is hoping to get more participants. If you are interested please email her at RamadanNursingStudy@gmail.com - until then enjoy the videos and Ramadan Kareem!!

Birthing With Reverence

img_2798 by eyeliam



I found the following passage, about birthing with reverence from midwife Carolina Wise, to be eloquent and thoughtful. She does a wonderful job of extrapolating our current state of our highly technological maternity care system to our understanding of the meaning of sacred in society. May we all be more reverent. Birth is a litmus test for a society's treatment of women and for it's application of the sacred. A rising 32.8% Cesarean rate (and rising) leaves much to be said for America's view of women.

Birthing with Reverence

Midwives can create a spirit of beauty at a birth or they can desecrate it. They can create a sacred space around a birthing woman that drives out fear and inspires the mother’s belief in herself, which ultimately determines the outcome of the birth. Midwives can be a channel of Grace in ways they never imagined and in doing so they create a spirit of reverence. Reverence in these days and times is not a common thing.

As a midwife there were times after births that I was overcome with awe, which is another term for reverence. It seemed appropriate for the sun to stand still in the sky, and the traffic to stop, and the whole universe to pause for a minute of awe in acknowledgement [sic] that something astonishing had just happened. It just seemed appropriate that all of creation should have taken notice. Perhaps, in the unseen world, it did.

Unfortunately in America there appears to be little reverence for much, especially not women or birth. This is not surprising given the history of the oppression of midwives, the rise of the medical model and the objectification of women’s bodies. The sacred has not just been drowned out at births but in our lives as a whole. In fact, reverence is not part of our public vocabulary at all. Yet, there are a few things that Americans do revere. Reverence for money comes to mind.

If you follow where the money goes it will reveal the short list of things that Americans do have reverence for. Large amounts of money are funneled into the pornography industry. Women are not revered in that industry. In fact, they are desecrated as an object of fantasy, not to be loved, cherished and honored, but simply to be used and discarded. Therefore, lust is revered, and as a result we have become a pornographic culture in which women are routinely desecrated.

Desecration involves an act in which a sacred thing is pillaged, or dishonored. The opposite of desecration is reverence. Reverence acknowledges and honors the sacred. Women and that which has to do with them, namely birth, are sacred. But they are not sacred at this place and this time. In fact, who among all the industrialized nations are reverent about women and what they do when they give birth?

Midwives have been given a sacred trust and a great honor to stand by as a witness to a miracle. Birth is not a small miracle. It is an extraordinary miracle. We are created for reverence and our work demands it. But when birth became a medical procedure our culture became so far removed from the beauty of it that it became commonplace and unimportant to the larger community. In the process of our irreverence we lost sight of our beauty as human beings.

— Caroline Wise
Excerpted from "Birthing with Reverence," Midwifery Today, Issue 82

World Breastfeeding Week

Piknikas by c r z

Happy World Breastfeeding Week! Every year, the first week in August is World Breastfeeding Week. Among other things, the purpose of this week is to highlight the ten steps to successful breastfeeding, which are part of the Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative. The World Health Organization and UNICEF started this initiative in 1991 to encourage hospitals to engage in birth and immediate postpartum practices which encourage exclusive breastfeeding. Of the 19,000 facilities worldwide, the US has a mere 63.

If a hospital birth is in your future, I strongly encourage you to consult this list of the US Baby Friendly hospitals and deliver there. At the birth center, we take our transfers to one of two Baby Friendly hospitals in the Bay Area. It is a display of excellence in maternity care. Women and babies are treated as they should be, an inseparable dyad (unless, of course, medically indicated). Because un-medicated, natural, vaginal births have higher rates of success in regards to initiating breastfeeding, these hospitals tend to support natural births, and offer less interventions. Here are the 10 steps to successful breastfeeding:

1. Have a written breastfeeding policy that is routinely communicated to all healthcare staff.

2. Train all healthcare staff in skills necessary to implement this policy.

3. Inform all pregnant women about the benefits and management of breastfeeding.

4. Help mothers initiate breastfeeding within an hour of birth.

5. Show mothers how to breastfeed, and how to maintain lactation even if they should be separated from their infants.

6. Give newborn infants no food or drink other than breast milk, unless medically indicated.

7. Practice rooming-in - allow mothers and infants to remain together 24 hours a day.

8. Encourage breastfeeding on demand.

9. Give no artificial teats or pacifiers (also called dummies or soothers) to breastfeeding infants.

10. Foster the establishment of breastfeeding support groups and refer mothers to them on discharge from the hospital or clinic.


Sounds an awful lot like what we do at a home birth!! Maybe that's why our exclusive breastfeeding rates this past year were 99% at 'discharge' and 85% at six months, well above the national average. Enjoy the rest of the week and pat yourself on the back if you're breastfeeding. Way to go mom!!

The Midwife's Apprentice

One thing I have managed to squeeze in over the past few weeks is some easy reading. The young adult novel, The Midwife's Apprentice by Karen Cushman, a 1996 Newberry Medal winner, tells the story of a homeless girl, Alyce, in an old English village, who is recruited by the local midwife to do the drudgery of birth work under the guise of an apprentice. She collects herbs, boils water, and is ordered to stay out of the room at the actual time of the birth, so as not to be divulged of the midwife's secrets! In the beginning the girl is grateful for a warm place to sleep and two square meals a day in exchange for her help, but eventually she succumbs to the magic of birth. Oddly enough, the first time she realizes that she has a knack for birth is at the delivery of twin calves. The mama cow is frightened and so Alyce starts to pet her and whisper to her, and soon the miracle of birth occurs. She is smitten.

"One morning as they sat under the old oak tree eating their breakfast bread, Alyce told the cat again about the birth of Tansy's twins. 'All shiny they were and sticky to touch. I did not even know them, but I loved them so much."

I'm sure most women who attend births experience this instantaneous affection for the baby as well. I often feel as if the baby's otherworldly secret lingers with me for days after the birth. Alyce thereafter was hooked. At the next birth (of a human this time) that she attends, the midwife gets called away to another (better paying) birth. She is left alone with a thrashing, miserable, laboring woman. Her success with calming the laboring cow resurface and so she:

"...took another deep breath and returned to Joan's side. She gave her mugwort in warm ale to drink and spoke soothingly, calling her Sweetheart and Good Old Girl. She warmed oil over the fire and rubbed her head and belly, as she had the cow's. She did not know the spells or the magic, so gave Joan all she had of care and courtesy and hard work."


And that is the essence of being with women in labor, coaxing babies through the darkened portal into light, bringing a woman 'round the bend to motherhood just takes a little courtesy, care, and hard work. It makes such a difference to have a hand to hold, a soft smile, and someone to laugh with when it's all said and done. These are the midwives, the ones who sit with women on the threshold of pain, and walk with them over it to joy, who bring them through this rite of passage again and again with dignity, wisdom and grace. I hope that there are midwife apprentices forever.

Give this book to the young women in your life that they might be inspired. And when you do, consider that there is a global Call to Action to strengthen midwifery around the world. Maybe like Alyce, more young women will look inside themselves and feel the call to serve women with that ancient, gentle midwife's touch. Far too many women in this world never know respect and compassion when they need it most, when bringing a new life into gravity's pull. We deserve better.

The Frog Leg Position

Sling Baby by N.R.


Dear readers, I'm so sorry for my absence these days! I am in the midst of studying for a big exam, not to mention being mama to my new babe! I hope you are enjoying the hot summer. My exam is over at the end of the month, so in the meantime, a little tidbit on baby wearing. Enjoy!

Soon after my daughter was born I received this sling as a gift. Besides being a phenomenal (and pretty!) way to carry your baby, it comes with a slew of information on the benefits and justifications for baby wearing. One of the most fascinating arguments for why babies should be carried is simply physical. They title it, The Frog Leg Position. The idea is that babies physical bodies are a sign to us that they should be carried, rather than bumped around in their car seat all day. And, that their frog legs are developmentally geared towards being carried. Their rounded backs, frog legs, and palmar grasp reflex, are cues to us clueless parents, "Carry me!"

To quote from the Didymos booklet, "....infants are especially adapted to being carried on and against our body. Thus, it is possible to make a statement about the carrying position: with widespread flexed legs, slightly rounded back and oriented towards the carrying adult." This is a good proof to me that babies were created to be carried. Ever try stuffing a baby in their car seat, they don't fit so well. And they don't like it!

Recently, there have been a spate of sling recalls. Mothering magazine addressed the issue in an hour long podcast found here. Slings are becoming increasingly popular in America and with that popularity, there has been an increase in sling manufacturers. Most of the slings recalled are the slings newer to the baby wearing market, the slings that have not withstood the test of time.

There are so many benefits to wearing your baby. I recall being in Senegal, where women wear their babies on their backs constantly, starting from the day they leave the birthing clinic until they are about two, and not being able to hear a baby cry at all. In the middle of the rural Senegalese street, you couldn't hear a pin drop, much less a baby cry. I would attribute much of this to the ubiquitous baby wearing. Strollers and car seats would be greeted with riotous laughter there. Here are some more great benefits that result from baby wearing. This is a picture of my son as a babe, being carried by one of the midwives, Khadija, in Senegal. See how much he liked it!! I hope you and your babies enjoy lots of baby wearing, those days go so fast. Here's a good website with lots of different types of slings, and the pros and cons of each. I'll be back regularly in a couple of weeks. Thanks!!