I gave birth to my third child a week ago today. She is now nestled in the warmth of my bed, our postpartum cocoon, wrapped in woolen things I knit to meditatively manage anxiety when she was in utero. Seeing her plump face, her rounding cheeks, body all milky tired, in these garments makes me breathe out all the held in breaths, the tears too, of the last many months.
This babe is a rainbow baby, a child born after pregnancy loss. And as much as I thought I could shake the fear of losing this child too after the first 12 weeks, and then maybe after 20 weeks, then maybe after the first ultrasound.. No..? Then maybe after the second ultrasound. Or maybe it’s a sign, that since there’s nothing wrong, that there must be something very wrong, something that won’t be detected until later. But maybe the anxieties will quieten when this babe is term, maybe then.
They didn’t.
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I gave birth at the end of a long snowy night that stretched on into day, in a birthing centre, with my partner, a doula friend, and surrounded by women. When I came to some, after my baby had made her earthside arrival, after some eight hours or so of labouring, and as I was being helped into bed, with my slippery wet newborn, I noticed all of the women. A roomful of calm, caring women. Women who exuded confidence and care. Women who had trusted in my body’s ability to give birth (even and especially when I didn’t) and who supported and respected my process and its rhythms. There were the women who were tasked with caring for me, making sure the placenta came in its entirety, making sure I got the stitches I needed, the pain killers, the nourishment, the care. And the ones tasked with caring for my baby, making sure she sounded and looked like the transition to breathing on her own and being on the outside was going okay, keeping her with her placenta and its pulsating umbilical cord, wrapped in warmth and naked with me. Mostly these women were quiet, they moved gently and with purpose. And their priority, once they knew we were both well, was to leave us to get acquainted.
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Few things give me as much hope, and bring tears to my eyes as readily, as midwifery care.
Thinking of the generations of women who fought for it. Who passed on knowledge about birth, about feeding and caring for infants, about abortion and the range of reproductive care that humans with uteruses may need. The quality and seamlessness of care, and the profound humanity of the care undoes me. For anyone with sexual trauma in their histories, midwifery care, with its deep respect for the birthing person’s body sovereignty, can be such a powerful, empowering reset. It is a gift. I can think of nothing more anti-capitalist, more feminist, more revolutionary than midwifery care—to be cared for and supported by midwives, midwifery students, doulas, birth attendants in this most vulnerable yet raw and powerful time.

And I can’t think of a better way to birth a girl child, for her journey to begin with that affirming, revolutionary respect for women’s strength and bodies.
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Keeping mum about the pregnancy throughout, save for a few kindred souls, made it lonelier, no doubt. And pandemic lonelier at that. But at least it makes this current outpouring of words and cards, parcels and books, dropped off foodstuffs and offers of help, so so devastatingly heartwarming. Merci friends.