Ruth Ehrhardt's Blog, page 5

Martha is almost due

Last week Linde, her daughter Rosie, and I visited Martha at her home on Red Hill for a checkup. Linde is a student midwife and will be attending Martha’s birth with me.

Angie also had a check-up, and a woman called Sara, who came for advice on having a vaginal birth after a previous Caesar was also there. She has since successfully birthed at our local hospital and is very happy.

Lois, who previously attended Jacky Bloemraad de Boer’s postnatal care specialist course also came and Linde and I showed her the steps of an antenatal check up – she is super keen to become a midwife. You can see her big smile and enthusiasm on the pics attached.

Women and children gathered in Martha’s cosy home, the fireplace making it warm. Children sat and crawled on the floor while the women chatted.

Each checkup took place privately in Martha’s bedroom.

Martha is due in a couple of weeks and she feels ready to have her baby now…for now, we wait and see…

Please continue to share and support this project.

We are trying to ensure loving midwifery care for every woman.

The post Martha is almost due appeared first on True Midwifery.

Birth is…

Birth is…

Primitive and primal

Like taking a shit

Everyone does it

What’s the big fucking deal?

 

Birth is…

Beautiful and ecstatic

Like a colourful multi-dimensional orgasm

Opening the petals of a flower

 

Birth is…

Blissful and calm

Like an untouched lake

Glistening in the morning light

 

Birth is…

Painful and powerful

Like the death of a loved one

Ripping open your heart

 

Birth is…

Lifeforce passing through you

Like a bolt of lightning

Cracking open the earth

 

Birth is…

Quiet and ancient

Like the stars on a moonless night

 

Or your breath as you sit in absolute silence

 

Or like the waves on the beach as they roll in an out

 

In and out

 

In and out

 

Birth is…

 

The post Birth is… appeared first on True Midwifery.

Loving Midwifery Care for Every Woman

Access to good, personalised and loving care should be a basic human right for any pregnant woman. Unfortunately, this is not the reality for most.

I offer my services as a home birth midwife to the women in and around my community, who would like to be able to access this service but who cannot afford it. Up to now I have been doing this free of charge but unfortunately, this is not sustainable and I write this to ask for your support.

I have set up a Patreon page so that you can help pledge your monthly support via my Patreon page.

I am offering home birth services to women in my local community of Red Hill Settlement who cannot afford it but who would like to birth at home under the loving care of an independent midwife.

I aim to raise $800 per month through pledges. With this, I will be able to take care of one woman per month, ensuring good pre and postnatal care, attendance during her labour and birth, as well as ensure that her baby is registered with our home affairs and clinic. Costs covered will be for my on-call time, birth equipment, childcare, petrol, and general car maintenance.

You can pledge anything between $1 – $50 per month and each contribution will receive a gift in return.

To see my Patreon page and to pledge your support please see my page here

I live near an informal settlement. It lies on the slopes of Red Hill and is made up of tin shacks that home families that hail from rural Western and Eastern Cape, Malawi and Zimbabwe, amongst others. It is a beautiful, tight-knit community who support each other and I have been honoured to serve many of the women in the community as midwife and friend.

The Shona Zimbabwean community has a strong tradition of home birth and most have given birth before back home with their mother, or aunt, or grandmother in attendance – in other words, most have a traditional midwife as a family member and giving birth at home is the norm. Unfortunately, their birthing experiences once here in South Africa, have been far from positive and they tend to avoid hospitals for this reason. Many have sought out my care and I have attended them in this community – checking on them pre and postnatally, as well as attending them in labour and birth.

Angela has given me permission to share her photo and story:

Angela contacted me in her second trimester because she was concerned that even though she was over twenty weeks pregnant, she could not feel her baby moving yet. She had been for one checkup at her local hospital in the early part of her pregnancy but found it to be too traumatic after she was not allowed to bring her two-year-old son into the consultation and had to leave him outside while he screamed. Needless to say, both she and he were traumatised by the experience and she asked if I could come and do a check up on her. I visited her at home and at first, had to navigate her son’s trauma around my medical equipment (he would scream whenever I pulled out my blood pressure monitor). I introduced him to the equipment, kept him close to his mother and taught him to massage her belly with sweet smelling massage oil. After a couple of visits, he became my ally and bag carrying assistant.

At Angela’s first visit at her home, we were able to detect the sweet little heartbeat of her daughter…she was hiding behind the ‘whoosh-whoosh’ of the placenta, which was embedded in the front of the uterus. The little girl was active and moving but her mother could not detect her movements because the baby’s kicks and punches were muffled by the placenta. Angela was very relieved and grateful.

We did all our check-ups at Angela’s house. I would navigate my way over the rocks and through the labyrinth of tin shacks to her home where she would always greet me with a smile, a cup of tea and either freshly baked bread or popcorn. We would usually sit and chat a bit. The TV was usually on, a dramatic Nigerian soap opera playing in the background (I became quite knowledgeable about these over Angela’s pregnancy). Other Shona women would pop by, knowing I was there, and ask advice and questions regarding their reproductive health and babies. Some, pregnant themselves, also requested to have me do check-ups and attend them in labour. Eventually, we ran a small clinic from Angela’s home – we called it Angela’s clinic and it lasted for the duration of her pregnancy until she gave birth. The clinic moved to the next woman’s house, and so forth.

In my next post, I will share with you about Angela’s birth and how I learned about the role of darkness and melatonin and its effect on the mother’s labour.

The post Loving Midwifery Care for Every Woman appeared first on True Midwifery.

The Little Green Statue

As a midwife and a mother, I cannot help but contemplate my own birth when the Earth circumnavigates the sun and reaches the 22nd of July each year.

The little green statue is a little object which has always been a part of my life and has always stood either next to my mother’s bed, or balanced on her bed’s headboard, or stood on her dressing table, or was hidden in her cupboard. No matter where we lived, the little green bust of the African woman made of Verdite, was there, watching over our family.  Ever present and always there.

When I was 15, I travelled to Switzerland, the land of my birth, as an exchange student. As a parting gift, my mother pressed the little green statue into my hands.

She told me that it had been presented to her by a woman she had counselled in the late 70s. My mother was volunteering as a rape counsellor in Cape Town at the time and the woman showed her gratitude by presenting my mother with this gift.

My mother also told me that when she was pregnant with me in July of 1980 in Switzerland and was due to give birth, she took the little green statue with her as her birth companion. She was a single mother and had been booked for an induction at the fancy private hospital at Stefanshorn. In essence, the little green statue was her doula.

My mother had wanted and planned a home birth. She had been born at home, as had her mother and her grandmother before her. But the man of the house where she was renting a room banged his fist on the dining room table and made it quite clear that there was absolutely no way this African girl was going to squat down and give birth in his house.

The nearest birth centre was in the next Kanton and so a compromise was reached that she would birth at the private hospital at Stefanshorn.

‘My’ due date was the 29th of July but the doctor was going away on holiday during that time and so my mother was booked in a week earlier to be induced. Coincidentally, she was booked in on my father’s wife’s birthday, something his wife insisted was done on purpose to upset her (It wasn’t. Long story. Read here if you want more background info on this).

She was driven to the hospital by the sister of a friend and induced in the early hours of the following morning.

She laboured on her own, a monitor strapped to her, using the breathing techniques she had learned and practised from her natural birthing books. My father snuck calls from his family home in the UK, shouting breathing instructions at her. He probably considered himself to be a bit of an expert, being the father of three children already.

(Fucking mansplaining childbirth to a woman in labour! No wonder she hung up on him!)

In the end, my mother huffed and puffed and sweated and heaved whilst clutching the cool stone statue in her hands. She held it against her burning cheeks and sweaty forehead and it reminded her of home.

She said that in that cold and sterile hospital, the little green statue was her connection back to South Africa.

My mother birthed me fairly easily it seems. She never made a fuss of it when she told me about it. I do know that she did not tear and that I weighed 5kg (11lbs).

I was loved and breastfed and carried on her back and thanks to the Swiss maternity care system, even as a single income mother, she was able to take a year off work and devote her time to being with me. And once she returned to work, I attended a creche on the property where she worked and she was able to walk down to the creche and breastfeed me every 3 hours.

The little green statue accompanied me to Switzerland as a teen and stood next to my bed and cooled my tears when I was homesick for the dry and windy Cape Town summer whilst in the dark and cold of the Swiss winter months. She was my connection back home, back to South Africa.

When I returned home after six months away, I thanked my mother and the little green statue was returned to her rightful place in my mother’s bedroom. She returned to her post and watched over the family once more.

Ten years ago, in 2007, my mother, my stepfather and my 17-year-old sister Gypsy were all killed in a freak accident involving a truck whose badly packed load of Lucky Star Pilchards came crashing down on them as they passed by one another on windy Michell’s Pass, not far from our farm.

Nothing can ever describe the feeling of having three lives ripped from yours in an instant.

A week after they died, we buried them on the farm. In the field below the farmhouse.

It is a strange coincidence that it is also the field that my mother and stepfather first slept on when on the night they had signed the paperwork and owned the farm. There was nowhere to sleep as the farmhouse at the time was a crumbling ruin. So they huddled under the milky way and Gypsy was conceived that night too. A strange coincidence that the three of them are buried on that same field. Or possibly, quite simply, it is the cycle of life.

I like to imagine their eyes as the oh-so-bright stars of the milky way looking down on that field, and I like to think their souls are dancing in the wind of that isolated valley.

Five hundred or so people travelled the bumpy dirt road to bid their farewells. We all took turns digging into the clay coloured soil with spades and scattering them on the graves whilst a girl cousin played a lonely tune on a penny whistle.

 

Then we sang:

Assie Verlossers Huis Toe Gaan

Assie Verlossers Huis Toe Gaan

Ooh Here Help My Dat Ek Kan Samm Gaan

Assie Verlossers Huis Toe Gaan*

 

And as the wind picked up and people began to withdraw to the farmhouse to eat biryani and eat melktert **and sip coffee and tea, a few of us stayed behind absorbing this new loneliness.

And as we stood there, my youngest sister Jasmin, only 16 at the time, approached me from behind and pressed something small and cool into my hand.

It was the little green statue.

______________________________________________________________

So today, she stands, a little worse for wear but still very much present, watching over me, and my family.

_______________________________________________________________

*When the Redeemers Return Home

When the Redeemers Return Home

Oh Lord Help Me That I May May Go With Them

When the Redeemers Return Home

 

** Milk tart

The post The Little Green Statue appeared first on True Midwifery.

I’ve Come Home

Today is my mother’s birthday and on her birthday, I usually like to share this story of her first catch as an accidental midwife.

I thought of sharing her birth story, as I know she was born at home, in Athlone, as was the case with most Cape Coloured births at the time. I know that when she was born, the house across the road burnt to the ground and that a woman was trapped inside it and died.

Birth and death in the same road on the same day.

Recently I held a ceremony of healing for myself , a circle of strong women who held me emotionally and spiritually while I let go of old shit and allowed the new to be birthed. 

And there I read this story to everyone.

It is a story about my mother, a story she told me a long time ago. It is the story of when she, after twenty years of living in Switzerland, living a very Swiss and white existence, was led by a friend on an inner guide meditation which hauntingly reminded her of where she had come from. 

Her roots.

A story which very much altered and shaped our lives.

As births do.

So today, on this day when she would have been 66, I share the story of her rebirth.

“Close your eyes, Carol,” Matthias said.

Matthias was a tall skeletal gay man. A Buddhist psychologist friend who worked with Carol at the psychiatric hospital in Bern on floor D2.

Carol was lying on her back in Matthias’s sitting room. She lay, surrounded by a pile of Indian silk cushions, one under her head. The sun streamed in through the window and onto her, making her feel comfortable and sleepy. Her children were with their father, he was down from London on one of visits. Single parenting was hard, but it was also what she had chosen. She was enjoying this much needed and uninterrupted break.

“Relax, just breathe. Let everything go. Forget about everything. Just be…”

She felt the air move in and out of her nostrils. She felt her body relax and she felt her breath becoming more regular and prolonged.

I could stay like this forever, she thought, her tired body tingling. And with each out breath, she felt the weight of her body sink into the floor.

Aaaah…

“Now, imagine yourself in a landscape…”

She saw herself standing in a grassy meadow. She was high up, high above sea level, with the most marvellous view, rolling hills and snow-capped mountains. Blue skies. Blooming flowers. Bright green, dotted with buttercup yellows and pinks and whites. The air felt warm and she wanted to lie in the grass. She listened; the air was busy with the work of insects.

A stereotypical Swiss summer scene.

How positively blissful, she thought.

She felt herself drift off.

“Imagine an animal walking towards you from a distance. It is heading straight for you. Looking very determined.”

She found this disconcerting. There was no animal and she felt that the presence of one would be irritating. How dare Matthias bring up something so silly and disconcerting?

Then unexpectedly, a great big elephant’s head arose from behind a hill and its body crashed through the tranquil scene she had created in her consciousness. She panicked and wanted to run but her legs wouldn’t move.

Where the fuck did that come from?

It headed straight for her and yet seemed oblivious of her presence.

Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck!

Just as she thought she was going to be trampled, it stopped and for the first time seemed to notice her. She realised that this was a tame creature. He was adorned with red and gold. Tassels hung from him. He was old and wise and looked her in the eyes. He held his trunk out to her and seemed to indicate for her to take it. She took it tentatively. It was soft and warm to her touch. Like a large grey flaccid penis. Gently he turned and began to walk back the way he had come, guiding her.

They walked back over the hill he had come. The scene changed. Gone were the green fields of Switzerland. Before her lay a barren landscape. A forgotten place. Dry cracked earth. Flat ground. Small dry grey bushes. Thorn trees. Small flat hills in the distance. Great vastness. Dry hot air. No life. Silence.

They walked. She felt stunned by the silence. The space. She had forgotten that places like this existed. Could her mind have hidden this place so well from her until now?

They walked. The elephant lead. She followed.

“This animal is going to give you a key. Take the key and bid farewell to the animal. Walk alone. You will find the door only your key can unlock.”

The elephant stopped. She let go of his trunk as tentatively as when she had first reached out to touch it. He pressed a heavy antique key into her hand. It was brass and incredibly embellished.

It was beautiful.

She turned to bid her animal friend goodbye but he had already left and was a distance away, his back to her. She felt alone and abandoned by this creature she had grown to trust and love. She wanted to shout out for him to stop, to wait for her. But she didn’t. She watched him go for a long time and only when he was only a speck on the horizon, did she turn back in the direction they had been going. She took a deep breath. She looked back over her shoulder once more but her friend, the elephant, was gone. Then she looked down at the key in her hand.

She began to walk.

Where she was going, she did not know. She followed her instincts…

She walked, fumbling with the heavy key as she went., its weight reassuring her as she went.

A door appeared in the distance. And as she walked towards it, she realised that it was old and heavy and stood alone in this vast space.

When she stood in front of it, she looked at it, taking in the detail of the door, the knots in the dark wood. It had brass detail, a heavy doorknob and a lock that matched the key. She put the key into the lock and turned it. She turned the doorknob and the door opened away from her. It was night-time on the other side. The moon was full and the world was blue and silver and crisp and cold.

In the distance, a small figure, naked, except for a leather loincloth, crouched over a small fire. He held a bow to his lips and was hitting it gently with a small stick. The most beautiful sounds; whistles, harmonies and rhythms filled the vast emptiness of his world.

She stepped over the ornate wooden threshold and walked as slowly and carefully as she could towards the little man…he was facing her but seemed oblivious to her existence. The little flames danced and shone upon his face making its broad flatness glow orange. His eyes were closed and his face was screwed up in concentration.

When she came to the fire, he looked up and smiled at her. He stood up. He held out his hand and she took it. It was rough and hard and warm.

I’ve come home.

I never want to leave here.

The post I’ve Come Home appeared first on True Midwifery.

Her Father’s Song

Beneath the hustle and bustle of the busy theatre there is a soft hum.

It is her father’s song. It is a song and voice she recognises. She stops to listen.

It has been a busy night and day. She and her mother have worked hard and now she has been cut from her mother’s womb. Her cord severed. A pipe stuck in her mouth and nose.

Voices. Smells.

Strange hands. Bright lights.

Cold.

And then placed on her mother’s chest and a towel placed over her. Her mother’s sweet smelling chest.

Soft. Warm. Comforting.

Soft touch. Gentle, loving voices.

And then the song.

A soft hum.

It softly penetrates the clatter. The chatter. The competitive banter. The jovial joking. The hustle. The bustle.

Green fabric. Beeping machines that seem to breathe. Bright lights. Fast, efficient movements. Talking. Instructions.

Splatters of blood?

Shiny instruments.Flashing. Pipes. Sucking.

She is placed on her mother’s chest and the rhythm of her mother’s heartbeat is so familiar. And the smell so sweet and delicious.

She looks around. She sniffs. She smells. She drools. She nuzzles.

She is protected by her father’s song. A soft hum which seems to weave a protective spell around the mother, father and child.

Even the doctor performing the surgery notices the magic of the father’s song and stops his chatter to listen.

 

 

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After the Birth…

“Your feet must not touch the ground for 40 days…”

I remember my grandmother’s voice crackling over the phone the day after giving birth to my first baby.

“And no visitors, unless they are coming to help.”

Words of wisdom which carried me through four babies and which I treasure still and pass on to new mothers.

I have Greek and Indian family and both these cultures, amongst others around the world, afford this time of healing, protection and bonding time to new mother and baby.

While my grandmother did not mean that my feet were literally not allowed to touch the floor, she was giving me permission to take my time in finding my way as a new mother. She was reminding me that I was a new mother.

A new mother with a new baby, finding a new way.

And that I was allowed protection.

Because I was wide open. My heart, my body, my mind and my soul had been opened in ways I had not known were possible. And I had been given the honour of cradling a perfect, innocent being in my arms.

Outside influence may or may not be beneficial but in the same way that pregnancy and birth need calm and sense of safety, so do mother and baby need this after birth.

Dr Silvana Montanaro, who wrote Maria Montessori’s conception to age 3 programme and who is the author of Understanding the Human Being, eloquently stated that the first six weeks outside the womb should mimic those within.

The arms of the mother should be as the womb and the breasts like the umbilical cord.

It is a sleepy, dreamy, other-worldly time.

It think it helped that I lived rurally when I first gave birth, this helped to keep visitors at bay.

But more than anything, it gave me the time and space to find my way as a new mother. And despite sore nipples, aching breasts, and bruised body, I found my way…

We found our way.

This confidence carried me into me being able to trust myself as a mother, and to understand the needs of my babies. It also helped me to know, that that time with my babies was too precious to give away to visitors. It is such a special time and gone so quickly.

Watch this video of Jacqui Roche sharing her thoughts on the woman’s needs after the birth. I was honoured to be at her birth for her second baby. I think she summarises those needs very well here.

And then, as I finish writing this, I read this article by midwife Mary Cronk “The First Time the Iron Entered My Soul,” and it resonates so strongly.

Protect mothers so they can be strong mothers.

 

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A Story I Wrote as a Young Mother

Today I walked through the entire length of Plumstead subway and didn’t even notice. What I was thinking about when I walked through it, I cannot recall. I arrived at Checkers and realised that I had suddenly arrived. I must have gone through the subway but have absolutely no recollection of having done so.

Last week I walked through the subway, telling myself that this was the reality I had created for myself. I had created the hardness of the cement steps, the starkness of the walls. I began to imagine that they were soft, that their atoms gave way from my foot. I put my right foot down. Whoosh! The step beneath my foot was like water, and pinkish. It made a sound like a water drum. I panicked and reality returned. I tried to play the game again but my mind was either too scared or too convinced of the hard greyness of the steps and walls. I laughed and continued on my way to Checkers.

Sometimes I feel ‘grrrr’ with the world and on those days the subway is the stinkiest and most ugly of places. I’ll be pushing the pram and Sai will be screaming as we roughly go bump bump bump down the stairs. There’s vomit and piss on the steps and green sludgy water has flooded the bottom. The bottoms of my jeans drag through it. Yuk. Broken glass. Bergies (homeless people) are sitting on the steps, suiping (boozing). They say, “hey girl!” but they don’t offer to help with the pram. Bump bump bumping angrily up the other side. 

Sai screams. 

‘Grrrr.’

Sometimes I walk ever so mindfully through the subway, slowly and smiling at the world. Before I enter the subway I smile and look at the world. A cool breeze blows and lifts my spirits higher. I breathe deeply feeling my lungs expand. I push the pram carefully and slowly down the stairs. I notice the starkness of the walls, but I also notice the soft light of the sun on them. I notice the plants growing in the cracks. The small coloured gardener who cuts the grass across the road appears and helps to carry the pram through to the other side. I thank him wholeheartedly before he runs back to work again. Again, I stop and smile at the world. I notice the honeysuckles beginning to bloom. I look up at the block of flats across the road.  I notice an old woman looking at Plumstead from her balcony on the third story. She has long grey hair, clipped back at the sides and is wearing a bright pink jersey. I watch her for a while, smiling at her, hoping she will notice me. She doesn’t, although I stand there watching her for quite some time. 

As I walk away though, I feel connected to her.

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Big Baby

I have a tendency towards giving birth to large babies. It seems to run in the family. I was 5 kg (11lbs) at birth and my three younger sisters were between 4-4,5 kg (8,8 – 10 lbs) at birth.

Growing up I was always tall for my age (my nickname was High Tower at school) – I am 1,83 cm (6ft) tall as an adult and I have been this height since I was twelve years old. I inherited long legs from my father who had to duck his head to walk through doorways and my paternal grandfather’s nickname was Giraffe.

So when I gave birth at 38 weeks pregnant to a 5kg (11 lbs) baby boy (over an intact perineum) with my mother in attendance as my midwife, no one in my family blinked an eye at his weight. Life went on. It was only during my second pregnancy when I met with my new midwife and she nearly fell off her chair at the mention of my first baby’s birth weight, that I realised that perhaps my story was slightly unusual.

My second baby, a girl, was born 9 days past her ‘due date’ and was ‘only’ 4kg at birth. Even though she was a whole kg lighter than her brother, she was much harder to birth because she had decided to emerge facing sunny side up.

Ouch!

(But she too was birthed over an intact perineum).

My third baby decided that he quite liked it in there and decided to incubate more than two weeks past his due date. Ten years ago today, I was heavily pregnant with him, waiting for him to trigger his labour. His head sat low and I waddled my way very slowly through my day. There were many false starts  and false labour alarms and by the time the twinges began, I and everyone else in my circle of friends and in family, had decided that I was going to be pregnant forever. Ten years ago today, I would still have to wait another five days before labour began.

It was a sunny Sunday morning, during my morning yoga session, that the sharp twinges in my cervix began. These twinges propelled me into a mad nesting frenzy – I hung curtains (I remember hammering nails furiously into the window frame) and I scrubbed floors on all fours until the wood gleamed. I washed, hung, folded, and packed away laundry. I even cooked a massive pot of vegetable stew – enough to feed roughly 15 people!

And in-between doing all of this, intense surges would slam into my cervix, opening me up to the bliss of heaven and agony of hell simultaneously.

I remember rocking my hips in the sun whilst hanging the fluttering laundry, and as the contractions grew, so did my strength. I had to channel that strength somewhere or else the pain of it would overwhelm me. So I pushed against a wall with all my strength, willing, believing, that I could push it over. That is how strong I felt.

And yet, I was an ant trying with all its might to push over a brick.

At some point, children were fetched.

The midwives arrived.

Counter pressure on my hips eased the intensity for a while.

The birth pool was filled. I remember stepping into it and feeling as though I was stepping into the warmth and privacy and comfort of the womb.

What bliss!

What calm!

What peace!

Then I was overwhelmed again, drowning in surges of unbelievable pain. And with each surge the pain was ten times stronger than the one before. I had never experienced labour so intense before…with seemingly no respite, no chance to get the hang of the next wave…each wave more powerful that the one before. In previous labours, I had learned to navigate, but in this labour, I just had to let go and hope I would not drown.

I can’t do this! I shouted, No! No! No!

Try saying ‘Yes,’ The assistant midwife whispered to me.

What the Fuck?! I thought and flashed her the evil eye.

Just try it, she whispered.

Yes…I said begrudgingly, through clenched teeth.

But as the next surge came, the word Yes transformed my feelings of hopelessness and drowning, to feeling like I was a cowboy astride a bucking bronco. I was no more in control of the labour than before, but instead of feeling like I was being trampled underfoot, I could wave my Stetson triumphantly in the air.

Yeeha!

Then everything shifted and my body began to bear down. That confusing feeling where a coconut seems to try to force itself out of your vagina and anus simultaneously.

Oh my God, I need the toilet!

No…the midwives said, It is the baby coming. There is not need to get out of the pool.

No! I need the toilet!

I clambered out of the bath.

Wet. Heaving. Primal. Powerful. Roaring. Mad.

I lumbered down the corridor to the loo. There, as I sat on my cold porcelain throne, I was stretched and pulled further apart as I opened wider.

I reached down.

A slimy head was beginning to stretch my perineum. Bloody snot covered my hand. I roared as another surge hit me and I threw the blood stained mucous across the room.

Where is it? a midwife asked. I ignored her as I heaved myself off the loo and tried to escape this monumental experience.

(the mucous plug I had thrown across the room was later found on a bar of soap resting on the edge of the basin)

His head emerged as I trundled down the corridor and was crossing the threshold of my bedroom door. blue.

My legs stiffened with the next contraction but the rest of his body did not emerge as his face began to turn blue.

Get on the bed, my midwife commanded firmly.

I can’t! I wailed pathetically, My legs are stuck!

They were stiff and cramping.

But my baby was stuck, one of his shoulders were impacted against my pubic bone. I needed to change position.

Get on the bed, she repeated firmly, looking me in the eyes. I don’t know how it is that I moved. Perhaps it was her voice or the look in her eyes, but something propelled me onto my bed where I found myself on my back with the assistant midwife applying suprapubic pressure and my midwife urging me to pull back my legs as she manoeuvred my son out. He suddenly shot out as his shoulder dislodged and he was immediately placed on my chest, where despite being a little blue in the face, he spluttered and cried.

Later he was weighed and he clocked in at 5, 47 kg (12lbs) the largest of his siblings.

(and yes, even though he needed some assistance with getting his shoulders past my pubic bone, he was still born over an intact perineum).

He also got to be in the newspaper for that one…his little claim to fame.

We named him Ayo, which means ‘happy’ in Ghanian.

Happy birthday Ayo for this coming Saturday.

Love you…

The post Big Baby appeared first on True Midwifery.

When you Strike a Woman, You Strike a Rock!

Sixty years ago, 20 000 brave South African women marched on the Union Buildings in Pretoria to protest the pass laws. The pass laws insisted that all black South African men under the country’s Population Registration Act had to carry these ‘passports’ when outside their designated areas. Up to this point, black women had been excluded from carrying the ‘dompas’ (literally dumb pass), but the change in this law is what triggered this protest march.

Wathint’Abafazi Wathint’imbokodo!

(When you strike a woman, You strike a rock!)

Was the song that the women chanted after standing in silence for thirty minutes and leaving bundles of 100 000 signatures in the doorways for the then Prime Minister.

(He apparently never saw the petition, he was away and the papers were very quickly removed before he could see them).

Wathint’Abafazi Wathint’imbokodo!

(When you strike a woman, You strike a rock!)

These words, first chanted in 1956, have come to symbolise women’s resilience and courage in South Africa.

This march and these words made a big impression on me when I first heard about them as a girl and these words often float through my mind when attending a labour and birth and seeing a woman ‘s strength and resilience surface.

Women will put up with a lot in life. See them go without, for their families, for their children,  for their husbands. But push a woman too far and she will push back with a previously unseen inner strength .

There is that point in labour; when a woman has reached that place where she seems to give in and the act of giving birth seems insurmountable. But then it is as if something inside her pushes her to stare Death defiantly in the face with a strength not even she knew she had.

And that is why women are scary.

Because we all have it.

Wathint’Abafazi Wathint’imbokodo!

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