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Wednesday, May 8, 2013
The Motherhood Experience by Toni Rakestraw
I worked as a doula for awhile. What’s a doula? The most
frequent description I see today is someone who attends a birth and ‘holds a
woman’s space.’ What this means is they act as a buffer between the birthing
woman and the medical personnel. When I was a doula, what I did was attend the
mother and her partner. But I’m not writing about that. My everyday heroine is
the mother.
A woman in labor must learn to let go of her modesty. Labor
leaves no room for it. You may feel overheated to the point you need to shed
your clothing. You must let go of your manners. Words often leave you during
labor, and when you can form words, every one counts. If you need something,
you may not have the effort to spare for ‘please’ or ‘thank you.’ You may need
to curse, especially during transition when someone touches you and you cannot
bear it. You must let go of what society expects of you. When that baby is
coming out, it isn’t uncommon for baby to clean out your bowels for you at the
same time in front of whoever is there with you. You must let go of any
timidity and howl, moan, or scream if you must to move that baby down and out.
And last of all, you must let go of that baby that has lived inside for nine
months and let him or her out into the world.
So, I honor all those mothers out there that
have gone through labor, been cut open in the operating room, have taken in children
that others have borne, and made room in their hearts for caring for these new
scraps of humanity. It is a Herculean task, yet women do it every day and have
done it since people began.
Toni Rakestraw is an editor by day and a writer by night. She has written another short story, The Longest Night, for Pagan Writers Press. She also co-authored Titanic Deception, a full-length novel, with her husband John.
Giving birth is hard work. Heck, everyday parenting is hard
work… it doesn’t matter how you got there. But back to birth. Like death, birth
is a transition. But unlike death, you’re not doing this one alone. Your mother
is an integral partner in the journey. During birth, the mother and the baby
are working together whether they realize it or not.
Today, giving birth can differ greatly from woman to woman.
One may have surgery, another may have an epidural so she doesn’t feel the
pain, yet another may feel every contraction. Even so, every birth is a journey
that requires courage. From that first tightening in the belly to that final grip
that compels a woman to push with all her might to expel a being the size of a
bowling ball out of a hole the size of a … well, I can’t think of any common
household item exactly that size, but it’s considerably smaller than a bowling
ball. Labor is an exercise in learning to let go.
A woman in labor must learn to let go of her modesty. Labor
leaves no room for it. You may feel overheated to the point you need to shed
your clothing. You must let go of your manners. Words often leave you during
labor, and when you can form words, every one counts. If you need something,
you may not have the effort to spare for ‘please’ or ‘thank you.’ You may need
to curse, especially during transition when someone touches you and you cannot
bear it. You must let go of what society expects of you. When that baby is
coming out, it isn’t uncommon for baby to clean out your bowels for you at the
same time in front of whoever is there with you. You must let go of any
timidity and howl, moan, or scream if you must to move that baby down and out.
And last of all, you must let go of that baby that has lived inside for nine
months and let him or her out into the world.
Of course, some of these are adapted a bit for a surgical
birth, but mothers are still learning to let go in other ways.
Watching a woman turn into a mother is a gift for those with
the eyes to see. It’s an inner transition, one that is born of pain and sweat
and love. Some women reach this moment when the baby is first put into their
exhausted arms and they look into that tiny, scrunched face covered in goo.
Others come into it gradually over the first several weeks of sleep deprivation
and baby cries. While I haven’t had the privilege to see it in adoptive
mothers, I hear it happens there, too, as their hearts answer the squalls of
motherhood. It is this transformation that turns the maiden to the mother, a
nurturing force to be reckoned with.
***
Toni Rakestraw is an editor by day and a writer by night. She has written another short story, The Longest Night, for Pagan Writers Press. She also co-authored Titanic Deception, a full-length novel, with her husband John.
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Wonderful tribute:)
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