Halloween Horrors: The Midwife-Witch

Birthing Options: Staying Home

Crone, noun
A wizened elderly woman. Feminine version of sage.

It’s Halloween, and since I happen to be a certifiable crone, I’ll begin this last chapter of the series on birthing options with some tales of witchcraft and bloody deeds of persecution that at one time threatened to eradicate the very existence of the ‘Medicine Women’ who traditionally attended the birth of new generations. The wise crones and grandmothers who tended the health, love lives and fertility of mothers, daughters and sisters back when the patriarchs of shamanism believed women to be chattel property like horses or goats, untouchable in their fertile ‘curse’ and dutifully banished from the household entirely for the duration of their menses.

It’s not a pretty history. From Witches, Midwives, and Nurses by Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English:

“Women have always been healers. They were the unlicensed doctors and anatomists of western history. They were abortionists, nurses and counsellors. They were pharmacists, cultivating healing herbs and exchanging the secrets of their uses. They were midwives, traveling from home to home and village to village. For centuries women were doctors without degrees, barred from books and lectures, learning from each other and passing on experience from neighbor to neighbor and mother to daughter. They were called “wise women” by the people, witches or charlatans by the authorities. Medicine is part of our heritage as women, our history, our birthright.”

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Birthing Options: The Birthing Center

I talked a little bit about hospital birth in the last installment, so now it’s time to discuss another option - giving birth at an efficient, home-style “Birthing Center” attended by licensed midwives and with a physician or two as partners on call.

Again, it’s vitally important for a mother-to-be to receive frequent and committed prenatal care from a doctor or midwife trained to spot potential problems before they get too far along. It’s also important for expectant parents to commit themselves to a proven birth educational program, and I have recommended the one I am most familiar with - The Bradley System.

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Birthing Options: Weighing Alternatives

Option 1: Hospital Birth

In this and my next few posts I’ll be taking a look at some of the birthing options open to parents these days, along with statistical analysis of pros and cons for both mothers and infants. The first option is hospital birth.

To grandmothers (like me), it might seem odd to talk about hospital birth as an ‘option’, since back in ancient history when we were having our children, hospital births were the norm. Unless something strange happened - like giving birth in a taxi stuck in traffic, or in an elevator stuck between floors - almost everyone was born in a hospital.

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Budget-Busters: Maternity Clothes

As my younger daughter goes forward in her pregnancy, she’s soon going to grow right out of her wardrobe. It’s inevitable, of course. In this age of anorexia, how can a woman look beautiful or capable or womanly while sporting a watermelon-size belly?

She has always been fashion conscious, won’t enjoy muu-muus or tent dresses, or any of those ridiculously ‘cutesy’ outfits with the lace or Peter Pan collars, big belly-pointing arrows, or such. And since she and her hubby are young and not rich (the way of things, I think), they don’t have much money to purchase $100 outfits that serve for three months or so and then are never worn again.

So I’m going to go shopping here with my elder daughter the Professionally Creative Thrifter and Fashion Icon, ship her a maternity “Care Package.”

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It’s a Girl! …or maybe not

That’s pure Sunshine!

For all you guys out there who liked the name GuitarGreg, and for those who really, really loved CoolAssMojo, tough luck. It’s a girl, per the ultrasound, which isn’t 100% but is more reliable than dowsing or casting lots.

Our younger daughter seemed pretty convinced it would be a girl when she was here and the boys were only thinking up boy names. I thought she looked like she was pregnant with a girl too, so we’re happy with the confirmation. Another friend anxiously expecting their first baby wanted to know how you can guess the sex of a baby before having that semi-definitive ultrasound. Fact is, I don’t really know. Women’s intuition? I guessed correctly with both of mine, and now with both daughters. Maybe I’m just a good guesser.

There was no ultrasound when I was having babies. You juggled your lacy pink desires with the tons of boring blue stuff other people always buy for baby showers, then when they hand you the baby and tell you whether it’s a boy or girl, you start planning who you’re going to give away all the no longer apropos stuff to at their baby showers. It generally works out in the end for both parents and baby stuff manufacturers - while slightly more boy babies are born than girl babies, things even out in the first year or two by attrition. Just statistics, nothing against boys.

Since there haven’t always been ultrasounds that tell you a baby’s sex months before they’re born - and not everyone trusts the technology to be as harmless as it’s claimed to be - I thought I’d go looking to see what’s out there as folklore or old wives’ tales about knowing the sex of your baby well before he or she is born.

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