Midwife as a Portal

A few months ago I started watching Call the Midwife on PBS. I had heard a few people discuss it, but wasn’t sure what to expect. I was instantly hooked. The show begins in the 1950s in Poplar, London and follows midwives who live in a convent with nuns who are also midwives. It traces the Order of Raymond Nonnatus through the years and decades, showing how these women become the backbone of an impoverished community. The babies they deliver. The dying they walk home. All the quiet ways they serve and minister to the people of Poplar. It is based on the memoirs of Jenny Lee.

I love it so much. I didn’t know there were fourteen seasons and counting. I’ve made it my nightly ritual to watch a couple of episodes after my bath. It feels like medicine.

Somewhere along the way, I fell in love with Sister Monica Joan. She is my spirit animal. She is deep in her crone era and does not give a single fuck. She no longer cares about rules, not even the ones she devoted her life to. She follows her own knowing, her intuition. People call her crazy. And she is, a little. But she is also usually right. She loves philosophy and literature and poetry. She speaks in riddles. She follows the moon and the planets. She hoards books. She is mischievous. And she has the most glorious sweet tooth. I adore her. I am her. By the transitive property, I think that means I also must adore myself. A hard-won battle that comes with the spoils of feeling like I am arriving back to myself.

Seeing all of these babies being born makes me nostalgic about my own births. I wish I knew then what I know now. But that isn’t how things work. The western medical complex has removed so much of the spirit and sacredness of birth. Watching women give birth at home with only their midwife by their side feels like witnessing a ceremony. The baby placed directly into its mother’s arms, not whisked away to bright lights and strangers. Just simple, ancient, intimate magic.

My babies were all born in Houston. I had a kind, beautiful Indian woman as my doctor. I liked her. But my first baby decided to arrive on Fourth of July weekend, and she was out of town. The doctor on call had to deliver him. I had never met this man. He was short and arrogant and barely spoke to me. He wasn’t in the room until the last minutes of the process, just long enough to cut me and catch the baby. Then he left. He didn’t fit this moment. He should not have been part of my story.

After Jack was born, Scott shared the first picture taken of the three of us. Our new family. A real camera, real film, which had to be developed. He scanned it and emailed it to everyone we knew along with the usual new baby tidings. Time of birth, weight, length, “mother and baby are doing well.” He was so happy and proud.

But when he showed me, I got upset because I didn’t like how I looked. I had just given birth, and somehow I cared more about how others might perceive me than about the miracle in my arms.

I’ve always been concerned with how I look, how I’m portrayed, protecting my image. I realize now it isn’t vanity. It is fear of judgment. The belief that looking good equals being good. Morality tangled up with appearance and weight and health. It has taken years to unravel that. It is still a work in progress. Allowing myself to be truly seen. Not living in control and perfection. Sharing the in between and messy. Allowing myself to be human.

A few years ago I found that first family photo again and saw it with new eyes. I saw the pure joy and pride in Scott’s face. The tears glistening in his eyes. And I saw a young 24-year-old girl who had no clue she was about to expel a placenta from her vagina. haha!

Because yes. I did not know that after you give birth, you then deliver the placenta. Somehow I missed that memo. Maybe I read it and forgot. All I know is that when the contractions returned and the nurses moved into position like they were expecting something, I genuinely thought another baby was coming. It is wild how disconnected I could be from a body that had just performed a holy act.

Call the Midwife makes it their mission to teach women how their bodies work. Even in the 1950s and 60s when polite society deemed such topics improper. They move through abortion, the birth control pill, women’s anatomy, menstruation, sexuality, dm, post partum depression, stds, mental health, vaccines, hygiene, immigration, racism, adultry, poverty, etc, etc. Subjects that should be common knowledge, but are still whispered today. Instead of being in awe of the miracle of a woman’s body, we hide it.

It hasn’t always been this way. Women once celebrated their bodies and their cycles. They gathered in red tents to rest during their bleeding. Menstruation was an initiation. The blood was returned to the Earth. There was power in these ceremonies, power in understanding the rhythms of one’s own body. Women held the rites of birth and death. They were priestesses. Keepers of wisdom.

Some men were threatened by this power. So they systematically stripped it from women and handed it to principalities and priests who claimed to be gatekeepers to the divine. Women who knew the old ways and were in tune with nature and their bodies were labeled as witches. Hunted. Silenced.

That was a tangent. Back to the placenta.

My placenta. Born from my body. I didn’t get to see it or touch it. I wish someone had offered that to me. Or that I had known to ask. The placenta is magic, y’all. The body grows it, and its branches carry nutrients to the fetus. It looks just like a tree. One of the many organs shaped like the fractals of nature. Like our lungs. Like our brains.

All of our mammal sister animals instinctually eat their placentas. Many human cultures have been doing it for centuries. They know that it combats postpartum depression, boosts energy levels, increases milk supply, balances hormones and replenishes iron. We are seeing it more and more here and now. Mothers eating it raw; dried into powder and placed into capsules; in a smoothie. Some plant it beneath a tree. All of these feel better than tossing it into a medical waste bin. What sacrilege.

I think all placentas should be saved. Wrapped like the sacred gifts they are and given to the mother. Nutrients used as called and then planted in ceremony. Fed back to the Earth as an offering. A sacrifice.

Around 135 million babies are born each year. I have a hypothesis....a working theory. If millions of placentas were returned to the soil each year, I think the Earth would devour them with gratitude. She would use them to heal what is broken. Send the nutrients through roots and mycelium exactly where they are needed most. Sounds like common sense and science to me.

As I like to say these days (inside joke)... it's a no brainer.

The way birth, blood, earth, and wise old women guide us home to ourselves. Just makes sense.