Birthing Motherlode
I began with a feeling of rage. Pure, burning, righteous rage.
My first birth had been frightening; my partner and I were alone for much of it, and I was such a stranger to birth and what it entailed that I, an otherwise conscious and confident woman, felt this odd sense of waiting for permission to birth my daughter.
Later, I spent a year leading communications for the peak body for Australian midwives. A year of reading evidence; citing studies and immersion into academic rigour to combat this increasingly pervasive belief amongst women that they now always need medical intervention to do what women and babies have been doing for as long as there have been women and babies.
That what was natural is now critical; what was a process as unhurried as the changing seasons is now an emergency.
When it was time to carry and birth my son, I was informed. I knew the data and the studies and the protocols and the codes of conduct: I was the best-read maternity consumer possible. And it meant nothing; I was pushed to take action I’d explicitly refused. I cited peer-reviewed research, best practice, statistics, but still felt pressured, coerced and pushed and touched against my will. I received care, but not on my terms, not care that placed me, as an individual, at the centre of that care; it was care that was conditional on my submission to a system that cannot, by its very nature, let women be.
A healthy baby is not the only thing that matters. A healthy baby is not the minimum viable product of a birth. Mothers matter too.
My second pregnancy and birth felt like a battle between what I knew to be true and felt to be right, and a vast machine. A conflict between a tiny insignificant voice and a giant overbearing system. We both wanted the same outcome – a healthy baby and living mother – but we were fundamentally opposed in our beliefs about what the acceptable cost of that outcome was. I thought respect, individual needs and bodily autonomy could be preserved. The machine thought my needs were irrelevant. I won skirmishes throughout my pregnancy, but I lost the battle.
I failed.
I felt that I had failed.
Motherlode rose like a phoenix from those ashes; the knowledge that I had to share, that every birthing woman I knew had to share, the feeling that arises when women come together, the wisdom and the collective strength we possess to hold space for each other and to hold back the dark and the fear.
Informed wasn’t enough.
I needed to be empowered.
There was a moment, just before my baby came roaring into the world, when I went inwards and I drew on the work I’d done, the knowledge I’d gained and the power and wonder of myself, a woman in an infinite unbroken line of women. I gathered myself, I trusted myself and I brought that child forth in a movement I can only describe as triumphant.
It was wild and free, a space where bleeping machines and clinicians fell away, and wildness bloomed, an ancient anarchistic primitive miracle of womanhood. It was magnificent.
In the days and weeks that followed I returned often to thoughts of that space.
This is my wish for birthing women. When we talk about our births I want to hear words like “triumphant”.
Words like magnificent.
Words that speak of our choice, our bodies, our incredible strength.
A glorious birth. A shining, awe-inspiring birth.
Whether that birth was a planned C-section in a private hospital, or a home birth.
Without shame, without judgment. With love. With pride.
Expansive, big, proud words. Stories we tell not in hushed whispers, but in ringing tones of exultation, so that our sisters and daughters can hear, and learn what they too are capable of.
Not “risk management”. Not pain, not what drugs, “did they let you?” and suffering.
That is what this book, and the community we build around it is going to offer women.
It’s going to change the world, one human at a time.
Dig deep. You’ve reached the motherlode.
Motherlode
connecting women with
evidence + experience + each other
Motherlode 