Many things have happened in these past few months: miraculous encounters, traveling, learning, weddings, surprises, lessons, etc.
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| Adam and I in our Rainbow wedding. |
I would be lying if I denied that since my last post my life has been revolving mostly around my unborn child and the many preparations and learning I have to do for the event that will soon change my and my partner's life.
I didn't and still don't want to turn this blog into a pregnancy blog (nothing against pregnancy blogs, I think they are really inspiring), but all I wanted to write about was pregnancy.
I have been reading Ina May Gaskin, Aviva Romm and some other authors who advocate for natural pregnancy and childbirth. I also have been reading many blogs, birth stories and different opinions about pregnancy and maternity.
And it's not until now, six months into my pregnancy, that I dare to recognize that two big things have been stopping me from continuing this blog project:
1. Fear.
The first few months of pregnancy I was afraid of talking to friends and family about my pregnancy because I feared a miscarriage or some other tragedy.
It's been clear for me since the first moment I found out I was pregnant that I wanted to avoid doctors, hospitals and medicines at all cost. My experiences in those areas have always been quite negative and although I didn't know almost anything about childbirth I was inspired by a couple of stories I have heard in the past.
The first time I ever heard of someone speaking of childbirth as something different than agonizing pain was while talking to the sister of one of my friends from college, who had her babies in water. Although we didn't get too much into detail, she told me about falling asleep between contractions in a comfortable and relaxing jacuzzi and described the contractions not as painful, but simply as powerful sensations. I was very impressed and shocked to hear that, in my mind having a baby had always been placed as probably the most horrible pain that could ever be experienced and I remember asking my mom when I was a little kid "what would hurt more, to have a baby or to get shot with a gun?"
My dear Rainbow brother Sam had also told me about his biological sister experiencing an "orgasmic birth" by herself in some cabin in the woods of Canada, but again, I wasn't as interested in the subject at the time and just placed that story in the back of my head, deciding that if other women could do it, I could also do it when the time came. I honestly didn't expect the time would come so soon.
Soon after we found out we were pregnant, Adam and I decided to travel down to Mexico and by gift of universal synchronicity we met our dear friend Katee in Baton Rouge and ended up hitching down from San Antonio all the way to Mexico City with her. I kept being paranoid about many things related to my body and I was terrified of anything happening to the baby at the point. It was on those first months that I almost decided to go to the doctor, but we didn't have money and we didn't make the time to really look into free options much. In Mexico City we stayed with my friend Ximena and I got the chance go watch the movie "Orgasmic Birth: The Best Kept Secret." That ended up convincing me of not going to the doctor, even if someone offered to pay for it or if we found a free option.
This decision, of course, was subject of many opinions from friends and family. It makes senses that people who love us worry about us and our well-being. It's just too bad that we have been trained to think so narrowly about health and natural processes of the body as gestation is.
"It's not only about you, now it's also about your baby," or "I don't think it's crazy, I think it's irresponsible," were some of the arguments that I heard over and over.
Being as stubborn as I am, and strengthen somehow by the overwhelmingly beautiful energy that Rainbow imprinted in my heart (I learned that woulds actually heal without us doing much! Our bodies work!), I stuck by my decision and kept hitchhiking with Adam through Hidalgo, Tlaxcala, Puebla, Veracruz, Michoacán, Jalisco, Zacatecas, Durango, all the way back to Chihuahua, were I really wanted to visit my mom. The whole time I would be going through an emotional storm. Adam got horribly sick in Mexico, to the point of almost dying, and we both felt quite helpless and inept for the huge task of taking care of each other and our baby. The baby was also a very abstract idea, for as much as we would look online to see how he or she was developing, we still couldn't feel it moving and everything felt like a crazy dream that maybe we were about to wake up from.
When we finally arrived to Chihuahua I was happy to see my mom and always amazed at how really open-minded and adaptable she is. Once I showed her the orgasmic birth movie and we reflected together about her pregnancies, she realized that maybe there was a small chance that I wasn't been as irresponsible as I seemed to be when I first told her I didn't want to have a hospital birth. She still insisted on doing an ultrasound with the equipment of her veterinary clinic, and it was then that we got to see the image of our little baby kicking and turning for the first time.
Adam's eyes got all watery and my mom was full of joy. I rarely see her as happy as that day. It was too soon for the ultrasound to show if the baby was a girl or a boy and we are happy about that. It's not even so much that we want to be surprised, but just that the gender of our child doesn't matter much to us and we want to treat it the same whether it has a penis or a vagina.
My mom also insisted on me getting some blood exams, also in her clinic, just to make sure I didn't have anemia or any glucose complications. Despite my results coming out perfect, I still had to deal with a whole bunch of disagreement from an old friend about my choices for pregnancy. He wanted to gift me folic acid pills and kept on telling me about the things that his friends who were doctors said should be done or not done during gestation and childbirth. "I eat a lot of greens, I don't need folic acid pills, thank you very much."
When he heard about me wanting to go through labor without drugs he even said "Oh, I really want to be there and hear you screaming!" I really tried to stay open and take it with humor, but I found myself accumulating some resentments against all the skepticism I seemed to face. I mean, it's kind of hard not to take it personally. Why would nature be against me? Against all women? I have always been strong and healthy, even when I used to eat junk as a teenager, and particularly now that I'm taking loving care of my nutrition.
I have gone through very scary times during my pregnancy when I fear everyone else being right, shaking their heads in disapproval and sadness while they lament over some catastrophe related to me and my baby: "I told her, but she didn't listen... If only she had been at the doctor..."
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| Perry, Lauren (holding baby Clementine) and Kaleb. On the way to Montana. Lauren and Kaleb had their baby all by themselves in their house. They were both 18 and a big inspiration for us. |
That fear was a big reason why I didn't want to write on this blog. I fear to advocate for unassisted pregnancy and natural-drug-free home birth and then end up having an emergency c-section or something much worse.
The second reason for my silence is a little bit harder to explain, but I will try...
2. The feminist dilemma: Shame?
While I was in high school and college I used to think having a baby would totally ruin my life. I remember the feeling of relief after I graduated without having gone through any unwanted pregnancies and thinking: "Okay, even though it would be really difficult and kind of inconvenient for me to get pregnant now, it really wouldn't ruin my life anymore."
It's been more than three years since then. I moved to Mexico City, worked in the film industry, met a bunch of my ex-heroes, traveled to Europe, traveled without money, rode freight, hitchhiked by myself through Central America, Mexico and the States. I'm 26 years old! And I was shocked to realized many of my friends and acquaintances still reacted to my pregnancy (or maybe pregnancy in general) as if I were a teenager who would now very unlikely finish high school. My grandmother said: "of course, traveling by herself like that... it was bound to happen."
For many different reasons, a lot of people still act as if having a child were the biggest tragedy of the world.
I mean, there are so many sides and layers to this... I went to school in New York City, where the average age for having your first baby seems to be 35, but I grew up in a town where many girls' life goals could be summarized as getting married and having children.
I have always considered myself a feminist, ever since I was a kid, and I went through a stage where I really didn't want to ever have kids because they "take too much."
I read Simone de Beauvoir in college and I don't think I really understood then and maybe I still don't understand... But I have a vague memory of interpreting her writing with the conclusion of "denying our femininity for the sake of equality is self-mutilation."
And maybe this is me trying to blame it on something or someone, but I do have to recognize I dealt with a very weird feeling of embarrassment when talking or writing about pregnancy.
One of my really, really dear friends in Rainbow confessed she felt uncomfortable with the subject because all women who she met who got pregnant all of the sudden couldn't talk about anything else.
I guess is very natural to fear the loss of personal identity when you have children to look after and for people that care about "success" and careers (not that I know many) it's even worse.
Even when it comes to labor itself the feminist movement seemed to have a deep impact. After being told their whole lives that the ultimate difference between the female and male body (the capacity to bear and birth life) was to be manifested by agonizing pain, many women accepted drugs during labor as a huge symbol of emancipation, equality and freedom.
Instead of learning to experience the sensations unique to labor as an incredibly life force and therefore embrace them, we have learned to understand them as a punishment, and therefore reject them and shush the voices of our bodies.
I just finished reading Aviva Romm's Natural Pregnancy Book and do have to say I found a lot of force and inspiration on it to get out of the weird feeling of embarrassment that I was experiencing. It took me a little while, but I can now see pregnancy as an empowering, enriching and beautiful process that make me discover and appreciate more my femininity.
There are some undeniable differences between men and women. The bodies we are born in are part of our facticity. Only a person born in a female body can experience pregnancy and the process is a mysterious, magical and I would even say psychedelic one.
I came to acknowledge more than ever how we are all truly one, because by carrying this baby I'm carrying a bit of myself, and of Adam, and of both our families and ancestors, but at the same time this being is it's own person, unique and with their own destiny and life to live. I remember one day I was sitting next to Adam in our tent in some deserted lot somewhere on our way to Nevada and I looked at him from the corner of my eye and I got a crazy vision thinking our baby was probably someday going to be a grown-up, doing his or her own traveling, and there was a sense of synchronicity, as if I were looking into the future, and I have heard so many times of time being cyclical instead of linear and the full force of my body being an interdimensional portal that connected those two points in time seemed at that moment evident.
Ok, maybe I'm getting a little too trippy now, but the point is... It's been a strange process, but pregnancy has definitely help me feel empowered and stronger and completely ready to celebrate my body and my self as a woman. I feel like before this, I tried to find my feminist force a bit more on stereotypical male characteristics.
And of course I'm not saying that women who can't have babies or choose not to have babies are any less feminine, any less women, but I definitely learned to appreciate and embrace a different way of creativity that had before been a little banned and even look down upon by me probably because of my personal history, but also because of the black and white way society tends paint pictures for us.
So... I guess all I'm trying to say is, hey, I have had so much on my mind, heart and body that I didn't know how to express it, but it does feel really good to write all this now. And as always, I'm not married to any of my ideas and I just let them change, change, change, like everything else around me does.
As a last thought... When I was in San Francisco a month ago I found the Bhagavad Gita in a free books box in the street and I took it with me. I was kind of reading it before I got all my pregnancy books in the mail. Adam and I went to see our friend Perry in LA after. We talked a little bit about the Gita and he took out his copy to show me this image:
I was at the time, like I keep on doing from time to time, fearing that something could happen to either my baby or me during this pregnancy and delivery, and I was deeply moved by this picture. It was beautiful to be humbled by the recognition that my body was created by a force bigger than me, and that the universe knows how to create and sustain life, we just have to trust nature. I'm not consciously thinking of how to to put together the cells that will make my baby's eyelids, and neither did my mom have to think about any of this. I can just nourish my body and my spirit and know that whatever happens it's just part of a cycle bigger than you or me.
