 Correspondence Course in Lay Midwifery & Womancraft View Our Latest Posting Below! Updated 05/08/04 |
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by Jeannine Parvati Baker  Like many of us, I have been praying with my ears, listening to midwives all around the world. How can we (wo)manifest the vision of unity that would serve families? Meditating upon the divisions between birth attendants, a vision came to me. I saw a circle wherein the tribes called to heal the Earth by healing birth sat together. It was a medicine wheel, with all styles of midwifery and obstetrics represented. Across the wheel from me sat a medical doctor. To each of my sides were medwives and CNM’s, seated across from one another. We defined the cardinal points in the wheel, but were not the whole circle. From where I sat, I could see directly what was behind the doctor, and visa versa. To either side I had an oblique angle to view my sister medwives and CNM’s. Then I realized why we needed one another. It is to keep us honest. I can see what is the shadow of obstetrics, as the good doctor can see the shadow freebirth casts. Nurses and medwives add to the bigger picture across the wheel from one another. No one can turn around and see ones own shadow alone. This is how we serve one another. All of us who attend birth are holograms in this circle of life. Each has the whole truth about birth within. When we bring our versions of the truth together, there is a finer resolution and multi-dimensional viewing into the great round of being. In my vision, we are sitting in birth’s circle, representing our various tribes. Not my circle, not yours, but birth’s circle. Each tribe, each perspective, is precious to birth. Together the living oracle will be voiced through all of us. Let it be the voice of what the Earth needs through each of us. Remembering this always: What we do to one, we do to all. Do
not follow where the path may lead.
Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. Ralph Waldo Emerson American Poet and Essayist 1803 - 1882 very at-home a love history, for the mothers who blazed the trail. These just-elder sisters, time of my own ripening, viajeras, no guidebooks heavy with child with hope with optimism of youth promise of a new day pushed back overgrown blackberry and more, braved poison oak and heartache, and acquired, hard-to-shake poverty less a costume or posture with each passing food-stamped season. found their way and even wrote their own guidebooks, gathering bits like milkweed pods pickled hopefully into turtle-island capers gathered from lamaze la leche dick-read from tales told by the first to try it, from the few grandmothers who remembered found faith in one another in yogic breath and practice in the mind-stretching sacraments of the times in other lessons, same body parts taught and learned breathless sometimes on the same bed summoned motherhood's emergence in their men's laps, or grieving the absent lover-father, grieving the past, the child lost to adoption, or joyous, or filled with pain and doubt, surrounded by sisters - breathing chanting praying nourished on brown rice, aduki, umeboshi, steamed greens on frijoles enteros, tortillas handrolled, queso fresco de cabra. on highway-sacrificed venison stewed with carrots and onions on damaged-freight flour baked into digger-bread and other castoffs of too-rich society found their way together: no shelf of bookstore manuals on manifesting ideal birth, no catalog of midwifery schools, no registry of doulas, no phone book listings no pagers, cell phones, often enough no phone no professionals: the sisters trading gentle friendly knowledge traded half a dozen laying hens a pregnant milk goat a partner's carpentry skills an old oak table homemade wine, or cheese, or bacon, and came to the side of the next sister gathered in just-habitable (if that) old sheepshearer's shack converted schoolbus, van, pickup with foam mattress, shelves with jars of grains leaky city apartment or falling-down summerhouse; army tent, or handhewn cabin or adobe, campsite, Quonset hut: gathering of the tribes in my late-teen thirst for the way rediscovered, I ask Claudia was your baby born at home, and she laughs oh very at home; we didn't have running water! young pioneer women I love still always and wildly: Laurie learned how the earth feels making a mountain Janet thanking the Lord and turning out the light just past midnight Raven's honest-talking couples, using words to make our parents blush, hands and knees in the Santa Cruz mountains distended buttholes and all Jeannine her Mystical Beach Experiences pregnant with twins the Caravan women learning to speak the truth in freezing storms. great faith, great doubt, great zeal, as in Zen breathing through fear. foolish, wise, embracing sex and mystery, Something of lasting value. Copyright, Judith Gips, January 2004 Judith is a longtime friend of Hygieia whose twin passions for nonviolent activism and for natural home birth date to her early teen years. She is pleased to be a scribe for the homebirth renaissance's origins, and to help give them a context in the best of what the counterculture has and had to offer. Part of her spiritual training was conceiving and birthing her beautiful daughter at home in 1994 after 17 years of infertility. A few weeks ago I attended a women's gathering held here on Bowen Island at the beautiful Xenia Retreat Centre with Jeannine Parvati and Gloria Lemay. The workshop took place over the weekend and Sunday was my son Yashua's third birthday. I brought him to Xenia to hang out with all the beautiful women, they sang him happy birthday and he was so happy. In curiousity about what Yashua 'remembered' about his birth, I asked him the following questions for the first time. Karen "What happened at your birth" Yashua replied, "I went into Michael (his papa)" K - "Do you remember what else happened?" Y - "Gloria came, then we played." K - "What happened with your cord?" Y - "It fell off." Another day I asked him more questions. Y - "Tell me about your placenta." Y- "She came out of you". K - "How did your cord fall off?" Y- "I squeezed it, then it fell off." K - "What happened after your birth?" Y- "I drank milkies!" It was wonderful to have his good feedback! I am so glad I asked. With Love, Karen Love Bowen Island BC Canada
BIRTH CENTERS ARE GOING OUT OF BUSINESS and HOW IT SERVES Have you recently heard that several Birth Centers are closing? I had the same response to this seemingly bad news years ago when obstetricians began to bail out of the childbirth biz as the malpractice insurance rates got too high. Oh dear - less specialized doctors attending childbirth, what a shame.... That response then, as it is now, is a mix of compassion and solace for those who came to rely on doctors, nurse-medwives, and birth centers: As well as a blessed and triumphant rejoicing. This turn of events is indeed worthy of celebration for it serves the vision that ultimately we need not hire an "expert" for something as natural and ecstatic as being pregnant or giving birth. I choose to support FREEBIRTH, plain & simple. Why wait until there is no other choice? If mothers are educated through fertility awareness, we would trust ourselves to conceive and give birth as expressions of LOVE, rather than medical events, needful of management -- or, in the case of a natural birth, even in need of professional support. The way I see it, the more professional services involved with fertility and childbirth that fold, the more opportunity for necessity to be the mother of invention. We need a new vision of conception and birth -- one free of the paid paranoid and an educated population of lovers to enact nature's intention. If we can conceive naturally, we can give birth naturally. It really is simple. How it serves that perinatal professionals are having harder times in the prevailing economic malaise, is, that parents will learn the world's best kept secret -- childbirth is ecstatic, sexy, spiritual, and as natural as breathing. Let us all give a sign of relief that society is working toward this realization -- one way or another! HYGIEIA COLLEGE in Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) In the new May 14, 2003-Vol 289, No. 18, is a review by Dr. Lousie Acheson of Michel Odent's book, The Farmer and the Obstetrician. "This book, aimed at the general public, is the author's rallying cry for "healing the Earth by healing birth." (This is actually the motto of Hygieia College, founded on the premise 'that every mother is a midwife', quoted and endorsed by Odent)." Dr. Odent sent me the review with gratitude for our dialogue as he was writing it. If you haven't read his last book yet, it is highly recommended to all Hygieia students -- as well as anyone who was born (or who eats). I imagine you, Parvati
so differently now than I did when we started this innerview. Back then,
I saw you
as someone
who was succeeding in all the ways that I was
failing. I projected my own self-judgements on to you. I saw you as the embodiment
of my “shoulds” and shouldn’ts”. Now I see you as
loving, gentle and trusting. And what is even better is that I am learning
to see myself that way. You have trusted me to grow and awaken at the only
pace I can, and now I trust myself too. I am learning to accept that I cannot
fulfill
all my aspirations in a moment, and to love the reality that I am what I
am, until I’m not. Mary Pagendam-Turner FLASH!! News Report!! 12.18.02 UTAH Family Gives Birth in Transit to Hospital On network TV, the news report tonight is of a family having a baby in an unusual place – their car. The teasers shown throughout the evening programming that lead up to the new story's debut, had the phrase as uttered by the new mother, “There was no doctor around or anything.” Finally the news report comes – after the local news, after the weather, and even after all of the sport scores. Here it is, almost verbatim. Christmas came early for a Salt Lake City couple. They had hoped to save money for the birth of their baby by choosing a hospital 60 miles away. Beverly Cook however did not make it when it came time to deliver – at mile marker 279, she gave birth to another daughter with baby sister watching the whole thing. The happy couple saved $2000 on hospital bills & will vacation in Hawaii. Here let me quote the good Doctor Mendelsohn, who, when I first met him, told me that I couldn't attend his lecture if I didn't bring my baby. As this was and has always been the policy of Hygieia College, I immediately became his colleague. "An expectant mother should thank Providence for her good fortune if she has her baby in a taxicab on the way to the hospital. The cab driver may not be much help, but at least he will spare her from all of the purposeless, perilous, and unpleasant intervention her obstetrician had planned to inflict on her. If the new mother has her wits about her shell ask the driver to wait, have the cord cut in the hospital emergency room, and get back in the cab and take her baby home. Ideally, she shouldn't have been in the cab in the first place, because the safest place for a healthy mother to have her baby is not in a hospital, but at home. After working in hospitals for most of my life, I can assure you that they are the dirtiest and most deadly places in town." Dr. Robert Mendelsohn, from his book "MALE PRACTICE" HYGIEIA COLLEGE Mystery School Update 2003  As we move into the Spring Season, may each baby be received like another leaf in a forest of grace. May women realize that our only problem is, how much ecstasy can we stand? And let all families be open to the possibilities to bring peace to our homes, our communities and this shared planet. Last, HYGIEIA COLLEGE devotes our collective body to honoring the wisdom of midwives as we free birth from those who fear life at its most primal. The Gatherings held throughout the years have brought many of Hygieia's students together in circles, workshops and at lectures. Now students of Hygieia's Home Study Course can meet on-line through an e-group. Upon enrollment, you will be invited to join the e-list if you send an email to Jeannine with this request. Correspond with students around the world almost instantly in Hygieia's e-group: Dialogue on current topics and discover new perspectives on your journey from students farther along the Course. Meet women who care about healing our Earth by healing birth and are doing something to make the world better for our children's children.
Once a year or so, we hold a WILD WOMAN VISION CAMP Gathering and are planning one for 2004. This also can count as Lesson #10 of Hygieia's Home Study Course. Are you currently enrolled (or soon to be) and interested in sponsoring this event in your community? If so, please write to Jeannine directly -- freestone@freestone.org -- and we'll begin dreaming together soon! These are intimate if wild gatherings as we keep the enrollment to approximately 30 women, related children and nursing babies. Students can attend the gathering no matter what Lesson Number you are presently working on and children are especially invited to come. As always, we will circle in some natural setting for about 4 days and explore those inward skills that cannot be experienced through correspondence. 
The first gathering was a rare event in 2003 for the invitation to the Wild Woman Vision Camp/Hygieia College Reunion was for the whole family. Yes, our men-folk also shared the vision with us. In addition to Halley and I, Rico was with us for the Gathering at Eden Hot Springs near Stafford, AZ this March 6-9th. Please see our EVENT/ Tour web
page (Archives) for more information. During my pregnancy I did so much research because I knew that I wanted to have the baby on my own and that I'd feel stronger and more capable if I knew everything there was to know. When it came time all that knowledge was there in the back of my mind but never came into play. I was able to relax fully and birth my son instinctively because I had no fear, I was at peace with the process. I fully accepted responsiblility for the end results which I realized included the very real possibility of death for one or both of us. Accepting that and not having fear about that transformation was very helpful for me, I surrendered myself and made friends with death. Becoming a portal to another plane of being in order to bring a baby through, that's where the "pain" comes into play. You need it in whatever manifestation it presents itself to you. It anchors you here and now in your body at the moment when you are open at your fullest, bringing that child in from another realm. Otherwise you could both slip off into who knows where. The experience was definitely intense for me, I mean I felt it like I've never felt anything else before. It just wasn't "pain" like any pain I'd experienced before, it fell into it's very own catagory. It was opening wide, wider, the widest I'd ever been, stretched out thin, wailing and bleeding, a vessel, a gateway, an entry point, angels of mercy, make it stop! At the moment when I could take no more, he was born underwater into my hands, he moved, he breathed, he looked at me. I was in heaven. Tisha and Kai Joy Dear Jeannine! I love to check in on your website from time to time - thanks for all the beautiful inspiration and many congrats on that big award. You are so awesome! Anyway, this is "Lisa from Germany" - Hygieia College enrollee who got to meet you personally in Heidelberg in 1996 at a workshop sponsored by Herr Ludwig Janus). Six years, five changes of location and two children later, I may be ready to continue again soon if you'll have me back! There have been so many incredible changes in our lives and we are still on a kind of roller coaster - LIFE! - that I feel will probably whoosh us on sometime from this, our latest spot, New Jersey. We try to stay open to spirit and keep up with it all, but I must admit, it gets tiring. A few years ago you did a beautiful chart and taped reading for our daughter Joni Jay. Our second daughter, Inanna Rose, will be two years old on December 8 and we would love to have the same done for her. Reconnecting with you even via Website reminds me to breathe deeper... Thanks, Lisa Meinert Collingwood, NJ USA I have been inspired not only by my life's experiences, but by your work, JP, and the work I did with you. It is an honor to be your student, which I am whether I am enrolled in Hygieia College or not. Just the life you have lead is such an nspiration and a source of strength for those of us with young kids. Again, thank you! Thank you also for your words on the freestone website regarding the sept 11 tragedy. Indeed our country is guilty of terrorism as well. I have been praying that we ALL act upon a change of heart. "United we stand", as so many red, white, and blue bumper stickers say, could stand for us as a WORLD.
ANTS - Update June 12 2002 Read the posting Table of Contents: Hygieia Home & Latest Updates Wild Woman Vision Camp Home Study Course The HERSTORY of HYGIEIA COLLEGE Additional Postings and Updates |
