again with the anarchist midwifery
Soon after I learned I was pregnant for the second time I started thinking about my "birth plan." The second time around would be so much better, I reasoned. So much calmer, controlled, laid-back and fearless and empowering.
Then, for some reason, I stopped giving a crap. Whether it feels spiritual or painful, whether I feel loved or irritated by the midwives, whether Harvey sleeps or heads off to the playground with dada, either way it's only half a day of my life sometime in May. In the blink of an eye it's gonna be over, and the next moment will start a much more daunting rest-of-my-life when suddenly I have two babies to care for. Seriously, I have to worry about what birth tub to rent? I have to figure out how to be a calm empowered loving mother of two children, amidst (anarchist view) a disgusting wasteland of mindless consumption or (Christian view) a broken world filled with sin and death.
Not that I'm being negative or anything... it's just that the big picture is kind of overwhelmingly big.
I keep thinking of this quote from anarchist Daniel Wilson:
Having children in a safe, comfortable, healthy and natural environment is great, but it isn't all there is. All of us inhabit a massive environmental catastrophe, a shallow and meaningless social desert, a world of box stores and seven-elevens, a massive surveillance apparatus, chemical factories, mines, plantations and sweatshops, and a giant military that rains fire from the sky onto real people. I think that if I were to worry about midwifery suffering in quality because it's being absorbed into medicine I would feel like an asshole.
Oh how I wish I could fit that whole quote in embroidery on a tea cozy. Because seriously, you could just change a couple words and use it for anything. Worried whether it's more important to eat organic or local?
Eating healthy natural produce is great, but it isn't all there is. All of us inhabit a massive environmental catastrophe, a shallow and meaningless social desert, a world of box stores and seven-elevens, a massive surveillance apparatus, chemical factories, mines, plantations and sweatshops, and a giant military that rains fire from the sky onto real people. I think that if I were to worry about my local produce suffering in quality because it's not organic I would feel like an asshole.
Oh man, I could go on like this forever.
But seriously, just two years ago I was all militant homebirth advocate. Now I feel like the whole issue is rather passe. Important, sure, but not more important than who gets to raise your children and with what values.
Anyway, go back and read the article if you want to hear midwifery likened to the re-release of the Volkswagen Beetle: "Midwifery has become a symbolic act of consumption for most people. It is marketed to feel-good eco-yuppies as a piece of the primitive." Makes me feel real non-committal about whether I want to order a birth tub with fishies on it.