The meaning of birth

What is birth? On one level, you can explain it in terms of circulation, dilation, bones and fluids, and this is the plane on which the medical model operates. However, there is something about childbearing which invites us to go deeper, to search for a spiritual meaning. The discovery that we are in the process of bringing new life into the world is often a time of inner growth, even for those people who did not previously consider themselves particularly ‘spiritual.’

In a way this is not a great surprise. After all, birth is not just reproduction, a physical event, but the appearance of a new child of God. Each person is a mini-Incarnation, an intricate tapestry of body and soul. "He whom the entire universe could not contain was contained within your womb," says one ancient Christian hymn addressed to Mary the Theotokos (“God-birther”) – and there is a flavour of this great mystery in our own childbearing, too. That I can cradle in my own body something as infinitely precious as a human being is literally almost too much to bear.


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And the child being knitted in the womb is not the only astonishing new creation. The woman carrying that child is in the course of being made anew, as well. She gives birth to her own new identity as a mother painfully, through greatly humbling experiences. Physical comfort; restful sleep; the way she perceives herself and others perceive her; supposedly routine activities like tying her shoes; the sense of independence; eating habits; her previous shape and size… all must give way to make room for the needs of the new little person. What Saint John the Forerunner said about Christ, she can say about the child in her womb: “He must increase, but I must decrease” (though it’s an odd sort of ‘decreasing’ that makes you feel the size of a hippopotamus!).

The true struggle here is not so much with physical pain but with the spiritual discomforts it occasions. These might be called inner growing pains. Growing in humility is never fun on the ego. It is what the Scriptures call dying to ourselves. Yet here is the crux. This is exactly the way in which we become fully alive. Giving ourselves is the only way we can find ourselves. Only when our lives are projected outward in an open and giving stance, rather than inward in a self-serving and defensive posture, is true relationship, true life possible. “Humility is the greatest power because it moves the axis of life away from [ourselves] into God. It is no longer [we] who make the universe revolve around [our] ego; but it is [we] who place [ourselves] within the sacred proximity to God, and thus find [ourselves] precisely in [our] place.” (Evdokimov 1994:88)


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 The shape of self-giving love is thus a widening circle. Like a fractal, this shape looks the same viewed from afar as it does zoomed in: an expanding universe, a growing uterus, a yawning cervix, a mother’s arms, an empty tomb. To birth a child is to participate in the same divine energies which created the world. This is true whether we labor unmedicated at home or have a Caesarean in hospital before labor starts.

I believe this is the truth behind the meaning of what Ina May Gaskin writes: “Every birth is Holy. I think that a midwife must be religious, because the energy she is dealing with is Holy. She needs to know that other people's energy is sacred. Spiritual midwifery recognize that each and every birth is the birth of the Christ child. The midwife's job is to do her best to bring both the mother and child through their passage alive and well and to see that the sacrament of birth is kept Holy.” (2002:270)

Viewing life this way, parenthood has not just a deeper meaning, but a transformative meaning. It becomes a metaphor for the rest of life, a sacramental lens through which we understand and experience everything.

 

References:

Gaskin, I.M (2002) Spiritual Midwifery 4th ed. Summertown, Book Publishing Company.

Evdokimov, P. (1994) Woman and the Salvation of the World. New York, St. Vladimir's Press.

 

Note for applying this to the role of a doula:

In labor like at no other time in life, women are simultaneously at their strongest (most creative) and their weakest (most self-giving). The work of a doula is thus twofold. First, we protect the laboring woman in her vulnerability – this is the most visible part of the job involving ice chips, back rubs and communicating with medical caregivers. Second, we honor the nobility of the holy task she is undertaking – this is generally invisible, but it may be felt in the atmosphere of respectful admiration a good doula creates around her.