Guardian Angels

NPR just posted a story on Afghanistan's midwives. The training of midwives in a country with the second highest maternal mortality rate in the world (approximately 1600 women for every 100,000 women who deliver die) is proving to beneficial, not only for the women who deliver at these midwives hands, but for the midwives themselves. It is an occupation accepted in a society with deeply entrenched customs concerning women and work. With midwifery, everybody wins. The head of woman's affairs in the province of Badakshan, recently declared that the midwives are like, "...guardian angels for infants and mothers."

A world away, here in America, a world where woman's rights are supposedly sacrosanct, we are also struggling to make midwifery safe and legal. Illinois is currently debating the role of midwives in their state, a state with a large rural population, who sometimes end up delivering with no licensed practitioner attending them. Rural areas could grealty benefit from legal midwifery. It allows access to qualified health care providers, something all women should have the right to, during pregnancy and childbirth. Time magazine recently detailed the lengths some women have to go to in order to have a licensed midwife at their birth. It is reminiscent of the what some women used to go through in this country in order to obtain an abortion.

It astounds me how similar the struggles of a woman in rural Afghanistan and a woman on the 'El' train in Chicago truly are. Both are entitled to safe, smart, professional care during their childbearing years. Why then, can we laud such care for Afghan women, but fear or deny it for ourselves? It's time America realize all of the benefits of midwifery care, and it's time we stick up for woman's rights on our very own soil too. For as the head of woman's affairs summarized, midwives really are guardian angels for mothers and infants. Don't all mothers and infants deserve such a watchful, tender eye?

Labor Popsicles and Lactation Cookies

Eid Mubarak! Maybe because the past few days have been all about food, I've decided to bring you a food post, replete with recipes! Let's start with the labor pops. This is a simple way to stay both hydrated, and nourished throughout labor. Many women experience nausea with contractions, and these labor pops are a great way to head that off. The coolness is also refreshing and easy to take in.

You'll need:

1-2 oz of dried red raspberry leaf
1 quart of water
Quart size jar with lid
Honey and lemon to taste
2-3 1mg calcium tablets
ice tray

To make the labor pops, steep 1-2 ounces of red raspberry leaf in a quart of water for at least 20 minutes up to four hours. Strain and sweeten with lots of honey and lemon, these will add much needed calories and lemon can help ease the nausea (as well as the red raspberry leaf). Crush the calcium tablets and add to the tea. Calcium is a muscle relaxant and can help with some aches and pains during labor. Pour the mixture into the ice tray. When labor commences, eat throughout the labor. They really are easy to eat when nothing else sounds to good!


Lactation cookies purportedly can increase and/or maintain milk supply. I find them more of an excuse to eat cookies, but, oh what a great excuse! They are also nice to just have around to snack on, or take with you while on the go; an easy way to up your calorie intake while nursing. And they happen to taste really, really good. Here is a recipe that I like and that makes enough to feed everyone in your house. Just don't tell them they are 'lactation cookies'!

• 1 cup butter
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
• 4 tablespoons water
• 2 tablespoons flax seed meal
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 2 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3 cups oats
• 1 cup chocolate chips
• 2 -4 tablespoons brewer's yeast

1. Preheat oven to 350°.
2. Mix the flaxseed meal and water and let sit for 3-5 minutes.
3. Beat butter, sugar, and brown sugar well.
4. Add eggs and mix well.
5. Add flaxseed mix and vanilla, beat well.
6. Sift together flour, brewers yeast, baking soda, and salt.
7. Add dry ingredients to butter mix.
8. Stir in oats and chips.
9. Scoop onto baking sheet.
10. Bake for 12 minutes.
11. Let set for a couple minutes then remove from tray.

I hope you enjoy these recipes as much as I have! Finally, here's a beautifully portrayed home birth of one Leo Hart. Scroll down to see the video, it's well worth it. Have a great weekend!
















photo: watermelon and cucumber popsicles by rakka and cookies by ilmungo

Mother Roasting

Please check out my article entitled, "Mother Roasting" at Rhythm of the Home's fabulous and inspiring online parenting/craft magazine. My article contains a how-to on preparing a nurturing postpartum gift basket, or experience for you or a friend. It also speaks a bit about postpartum practices worldwide, where warmth and nourishing of new mothers and babies is an art form.

There are some intriguing articles and craft tutorials from this season's edition that I can't wait to dive into. If you've been directed here from Rhythm of the Home, welcome and thanks for visiting!

The Womb and Mercy

Some of my Ramadan reading has entailed the above, The Tao of Islam by Sachiko Murata. It is only through the materially deprived yet,spiritual uplifting state of fasting, that I can even hope to make sense of most of this book. She uses the Taoist formulation of yin and yang as a lens to look at Islam's theology around gender relations. It's fascinating. She has a most amazing chapter entitled, "The Womb." One of Allah's 99 names, ar-Rahman, or the Most Merciful one is closely related to the word for 'womb' in Arabic. There is so much depth and reflection on that alone, but for one more qualified than I! I wish to leave you with a few quotes relating ,of course to pregnancy, birth and mothers, all of which can be a wide opening into understanding the nature of the One who created.




There are four main sayings by the Prophet Muhammad, called hadith in Arabic, regarding the womb, which Murata uses towards the end of the chapter to exemplify the relationship between the nature of women, and Allah's Mercy. One of these that I particularly like is:

"God said, 'I am God and I am the All-merciful. I created the womb and gave it a name derived from My own name. Hence, if someone cuts off the womb, I will cut him off, but if someone joins the womb, I will join him to Me'"

The following passage on the station of mothers, was aid by Ali ibn al-Husayn, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad.

"The right of your mother is that you know that she carried you where no one carries anyone, she gave to you of the fruit of her heart that which no one gives to anyone, and she protected you with all of her organs. She did not care if she went hungry as along as you ate, if she was thirsty as long as you drank, if she was naked as long as you were clothed, if she was in the sun as long as you were in the shade. She gave up sleep for your sake, she protected you from heat and cold, in order that you might belong to her. You will not be able to show her gratitude, unless through God's help and giving success." (pg 213)

In reflecting on gestation and birth and how it relates to the grave and death, and the life after this, Sachiko Murata writes:

"Human beings develop in the womb in a manner that parallels the order followed by God in creating the macrocosm. In the womb the infant grows to completion and reaches deliverance by dying to the womb in order to be born into the world. In the world the human being grows to spiritual perfection and reaches deliverance through death to this world and birth into the next."

In keeping in this vein of reflecting on birth in this life with birth in the next, Murata quotes a Rumi poem. Here, he is comparing pregnancy and birth to a death, and encouraging us to live by the quote of Ali to "Die before you die", this of course, referring to the death of the ego. Like labor, this is an incredible challenge on all levels.

"Although the mother suffers the pain of childbirth, the embryo breaks out of prison.

The woman weeps at the birth: "Where is the refuge?" The child laughs: "Deliverance has come!"

Until mothers feel the pain of childbirth, the child finds no way to be born.

The Trust is within the heart and the heart is pregnant: all the exhortations of the saints act as a midwife.

The midwife says, "The woman has no pain. Pain is necessary, for it will open a way for the child."

I hope these quotes inspire you in these waning days of Ramadan. Please remember me and my family in your prayers!

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!!