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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