Ruth Ehrhardt's Blog, page 5

Ho’oponopono

Ho’oponopono

I’m sorry

Please Forgive Me

I thank you

I love you

Me singing Ho’oponopono on guitar

She was 18 years old and recently married.

Newly pregnant, she had jumped the fence between Zimbabwe and South Africa with her husband and settled in the Red Hill informal settlement near where I live.

Traditionally in her family, women give birth at home with the local Anamboya in attendance. (Anamboya literally translates as granny midwife – and many of the attending Anamboya are the labouring woman’s grandmother. Or her mother. Or aunt. Or sister.) There is a deep trust in this community of nature and the birthing process. And a great faith in God and a very supportive church community. There is also quite a mistrust of the medical world and medicines in general – healing is often left to herbs and prayer and God’s will.

This young woman wanted to birth at home and when her sister in law told her about me her husband made contact.

I visited her for regular check ups at her home. Her sister in law would translate for us. Her English was not very good.

When she was 41 weeks pregnant, she went for a check-up at our back up hospital, as they had suggested an ultrasound if she went post her due date. She was afraid to go as she had heard of many women being coerced into unnecessary cesareans. But I reassured her that all was well with her baby and that it would just be a standard check-up. That she could call me from the hospital if she had any questions or did not understand something. That she would soon be home, her mind at rest that all was well and that we could then wait for her baby boy who would trigger his labour soon.

She went. Trusting me.

At the visit she was told she needed to be induced. She had gone alone. Not her husband nor her sister in law were with her to help her understand and translate. Her phone’s battery had died and no one allowed her to recharge it to call one of us. She was induced on her own with no one familiar with her. They did not even know.

After a failed induction she was given a caesarean and greeted her baby boy on her own. Her husband and I only found out after the fact.

This is not a story to point fingers at our public health system. I am fully aware that not every pregnant woman walking into a public health facility is treated this way. Personally, I feel that our health system is very good here in the Western Cape of South Africa and I trust the hospitals we access in a medical emergency. There are many dedicated and passionate people working South Africa’s health system. I truly honour the service you provide and the work that you do.

But I do feel that the fact that this woman was young, a refugee, alone, did not speak English, counted against her and made it all to easy to manipulate and coerce her.

I write this because I feel her story needs to be told and because I am sorry.

I suppose I am asking for forgiveness.

Ho’oponopono

I’m sorry

Please Forgive Me

I thank you

I love you

(Ho’oponopono is a Hawaiian prayer for forgiveness, healing and taking full responsibility for one’s actions.)

Me singing Ho’oponopono on guitar

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Circle of Elephants Midwifery Care

When a female elephant gives birth she is surrounded by a group of female elephants who form a protective circle around her. They face outwards, guarding her and leaving her to birth protected and yet unobserved…sometimes she is joined by one elderly female elephant, ‘the midwife’ elephant, who sits with her as she births her calf, protected and guarded by her circle of elephants.

I am proud to announce that as of the 1st of February I have been officially merging my midwifery care practice with my dear friend Caitlyn Collins of Into Essence.

Caitlyn and I have been friends since she was 9 years old and I was 11. In fact, she is the best friend of my younger sister Kate and godmother to my daughter Sai. We have shared many things in life together and never imagined when driving home in my grandmother‘s car after school that one day we would be catching babies together.  I am proud to share care with this fine midwife, friend and sister – someone who truly honours the basic needs of the mothers and families we serve.

 

Caitlyn and I teaching a Helping Babies Breathe course together

We have decided to call ourselves The Circle of Elephants – as that is what we feel and hope this merger brings to each woman in our care during her childbearing year – that feeling of safety and security that only a circle of elephants could bring!

To contact us about our midwifery care please write to us at circleofelephants@gmail.com

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The Healing Ripple Effect of a Beautiful Birth…

Sometimes being a birth attendant can be disheartening…

It can feel as though one is working against a great big machine…birthing factories which seem to extract babies and eject traumatised women back into a system which does not acknowledge their experience and expects them to ‘get on with things.’ 

She has a healthy baby after all…

Sometimes it can feel like what is the fucking point?

What difference do I feel I can make?

Attending one birth at a time…sitting vigil…a guardian of a process…what difference can little old me make against the machine, the tide…just a little drop in the churning ocean?

Sometimes it feels like it is too late…women are broken…they feel broken and that the system is just too strong…too set in its ways…

But then…

I feel the tangible ripple healing effect of a beautiful birth.

Wow!

When a woman births in her own power it is as though that drop in the insurmountable ocean becomes a source of rippling, healing, underground, light that bursts through her family, friends, community, and heals on a subtle palpable level. 

It is truly transformative.

The power and oxytocin and love that she releases are beyond magic.

And yet again, my faith and trust are restored in this work.

I feel truly honoured and blessed and humbled to be able, in my own small way, be part of this great healing.

Thank you.

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On Children

I remember hearing this poem by Kahlil Gibran as a young child being performed as a song at one of the Re-evaluation counselling weekends my mother used to run. Two women performed the song,  ‘Your children are not your children…’ The song frightened me and I clung to my mother’s skirt. I did not want anyone telling me that I did not belong to my mother. I wanted to belong to her forever…

But now as a mother with children in their teens and coming into their teens, this poem resonates with me more and more:

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts, 

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, 

which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, 

but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children

as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, 

and He bends you with His might 

that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;

For even as He loves the arrow that flies, 

so He loves also the bow that is stable.

I remember being a young mother of 21 and my firstborn on day 3 lying on my chest, milk drunk and fast asleep. It felt as though a shooting white light of love connected us at that moment…my beating heart connected to his. It was the most blissful moment of deep deep love and I knew at that moment that would be connected in this way forever.

So as he grows older and his voice deepens that true deep connection never changes…it is always there…it is a trust and a love of the deepest knowing.

From the moment they are born our children are moving away from us…and it is trusting that and them that is the key…

 

 

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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.

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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…

 

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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.

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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

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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.

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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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