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.
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)
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.
