I’ll be 83 this year – an 11 year (8 + 3 = 11) and a number that represents the transformation of the physical to the Divine. I have already outlived the actuarial tables so the Life Purpose I have been working toward is speaking louder and louder to me.
A quick review of the major events of my life and how they led me to this point is probably necessary if you haven’t read my first book (first books are often autobiographical). I was an only child born during the Second World War to a nervous mother and a stern father. We moved a lot – I attended ten different schools between the ages of eight and ten. Nonetheless, school was a place I could feel good about myself and until adolescence earned high marks.
I was a “good” girl until I was 16 when I sassed my dad and he grabbed me and threw me across the living room. I vowed I’d be out of there as soon as I could manage it. This was a subconscious desire, but it is interesting how the Universe orchestrates our deepest desires. I fell in love with a college boy, almost three years older than I. The inevitable happened, so in 1960 I got pregnant, married and left home—in that order. This was not done in 1960. Unwed pregnancies were frowned upon, and homes for unwed mothers were actually an option. Like most head strong teenagers (still a Junior in High School), I thought I could handle the world. And I managed pretty well. I was determined to have this baby, which I did shortly after I turned 17.
My young, and immature, husband joined the Air Force but had extraordinary good fortune by being accepted into the Air Force’s Education and Commissioning Program. I finished high school attending regular classes and still graduated at 18! I let a scholarship to ASU go so I could support my husband in earning his bachelor’s degree and had a second child instead.
We moved several times, all the while our marriage deteriorating, and we finally divorced in 1969. I immediately remarried a man who has become my partner for 57 years. He supported my growth and development, particularly educationally. He ultimately adopted my two children and when we ended up in Arizona, he groused a bit at the fact that earning an Associates Degree, a BA and an MA took so much of my time and perseverance. Much to my amazement, my old scholarship, awarded by the Board of Regents 30 years before, came around again and waived my tuition and fees for the two years it took to get a Masters in Counseling and Guidance at the University of Arizona. I got a contract with the Veterans Administration which filled eight years with wonderful experiences counseling such a diverse population.
In 2001, my husband retired for the second time and I let go of my VA contract. I was 58 when I discovered Santa Barbara Graduate Institute (SBGI) and got my Doctorate at age 62! I studied Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and accomplished two things: I realized my lifelong dream to earn a PhD, and I was able to reflect on—and make sense of—the events of my life that brought me to grad school at such a late and unconventional age.
I had started a spiritual search in my 40s as I had had little religious exposure while growing up. My teacher was both a psychologist and spiritual guide. I wanted to do what she did, so I got a Doctorate of Divinity through a correspondence course and just kept dreaming that an academic PhD was in my future somewhere. Dr. Gates had impressed upon me the understanding that our deepest beliefs are instilled in early childhood and that these beliefs can lead us to some challenging life lessons. My life certainly showed me that.
What Awakened in Me about Mommies and Babies
I learned in grad school about bonding, attachment, fetal development, and more. I broadened my studies to look closely at consciousness, states of mind, and levels of awareness. All this added up to my desire to write books for mothers to read to their unborn babies while pregnant. Everything seems to start from the moment of conception, continue through gestation and be especially impacted by our births. Much of these ideas contradicted society’s views that babies in utero are not conscious, children can’t remember their births (or prenatal periods), and pregnant women are “mothers-to-be” until a baby is actually in their arms.
My psychological research and my spiritual knowing could not accept these perceptions as truth. As I learned more about the benefits of reading (relaxation, brain stimulation, growth of neurons), the consciousness of babies in the womb, and the oneness of pregnant women and their fetuses, I began to realize my Purpose: to change the paradigm of childbirth.
Childbirth is primarily medicalized in our culture. Doctors are not likely to change what they do; they can schedule births to fit into a Monday through Friday workweek and make lots of money while leaving weekends free. Did you know that “research shows that most births occur between 9 am and 5 pm on weekdays.” Most spontaneous births, those not scheduled or induced, “happen between 1 am and 7 am, peaking at 4 am.” Unfortunately, scheduling and inducing childbirth devalues women and their natural ability to “give birth” easily or leave them, with their little ones, in control of the timing of the birth itself.
We have adopted a “delivery” language in our culture, one that labels women as “failures” when contractions slow down in a hospital. Women are placed on their backs (lithotomy position), strapped to electronic fetal monitors that provide questionable but frightening data, administered artificial oxytocin (Pitocin) which speeds up and intensifies contractions then counteracted with epidurals which slow contractions and numb pain creating a see-saw effect that is frequently counterproductive so surgical delivery, a C-section, is mandated.
We think that these procedures will not affect the babies—but they do! They constitute trauma! And we live our lives wondering why we have fears that we have no idea were spawned at our births.
A Story Never Told
Let me put on my Divinity hat for a moment and describe a birth that is possible for most women since we all have the same design built into our anatomy and physiology. Here is a story that most of us have never considered although the child birthed in this story has influenced many lives for more than two thousand years.
Joseph and Mary have traveled to Bethlehem to participate in a government ordered census. The town is crowded and there is “no room at the Inn.” Someone suggests they find shelter in a stable designed for cows and sheep. Mary is in labor so they really can’t search any further. Joseph, an older man and protector of his dear wife, takes Mary into this open shed, spreading fresh straw on the earthen floor and hanging blankets from rafters to keep out the winter cold. Mary, about 15 years old, has been schooled by her mother Anna and her cousin Elizabeth (mother of John the Baptist). She is calm and knows that Joseph is keeping her safe. She does not lie down, she squats and senses her baby already moving down through her body. She has Joseph place a shallow receptacle under her to receive the placenta. She feels surges of oxytocin and her baby moves from her uterus, through her cervix and into her vaginal canal. She breaths deeply as she has relaxed into an altered state of consciousness that reduces and eliminates pain. She and the baby are in perfect harmony, as they bonded throughout the pregnancy, communing telepathically in love and devotion. As the baby’s head presses against a special spot designed by Nature to ease birth, Mary experiences ecstasy. More gentle contractions ease the baby into her waiting arms. She then reclines on blankets padded by fresh straw from the manger, the trough that held the hay to feed the domestic animals. The placenta passes into the receptacle and the umbilical cord is left intact, providing rich, oxygenated blood for this newborn. Now the baby, in the one hour that the reflex is functioning, crawls in jerky movements to Mary’s breast and latches on. He nurses immediately, receiving the colostrum that precedes the flow of his mother’s milk. Mary’s body regulates her baby’s body temperature and he feels safe and warm embraced by his mother whom he has only known in darkness for the last ten months. They are not separated—they remain united according to the design Nature intended for eons of time.
Holding the Vision for Every Birth to Be the Best for Every Baby
My first book, The Renaissance of Birth (2014), foreshadowed what I’d be studying and writing about more than a decade later. I’m distilling my research, experience and spiritual understanding into this line of thought: Childbirth practices are not gentle for babies and those policies and practices won’t change from the top down. They will change when a grass roots effort arises from women themselves demanding their rights to have natural, physiological births, and when women turn down interventions and reject unnecessary procedures. Doctors will listen to women when women start listening to their babies.
Pregnant women TODAY can choose to birth at home or in Birth Centers with the support of qualified experienced midwives and doulas. And they can, with no help, listen to their Little Ones in utero, who will communicate in ways that surprise and delight. Babies suggest the name they would like to have; they respond to suggestions to turn when in breech positions; they tap back when daddy taps on Mommie’s belly bump.
Babies in the womb are conscious. They are developing in ways that we cannot orchestrate, but we can influence by having mothers feel safe during pregnancy; by encouraging mothers to talk, sing, hum and read to their babies in utero; by having a reawakening of the beauty, privilege and responsibility of bringing a new soul into this world.
How can the change to honoring a natural and Divinely designed childbirth come about? My research and my knowing tell me that the easiest, least confrontational way for this change to occur is to recognize the consciousness of babies from the beginning, and have mothers joining in consciousness by reading to them from the moment they even think about getting pregnant. Reading is more relaxing that drinking a cup of tea or taking a bath. It vibrationally conveys mother’s voice to the baby in her womb. It promotes aspects of fetal development that are usually considered unable to be influenced this early. Fetuses are influenced by everything in their environment—which is mother and her world. To be read to honors the infant’s consciousness. The Little One can sense the love reading conveys. Mothers can feel contentment, the easing of concerns, the Presence of a Soul who has chosen her to nurture a body for it to dwell in while it makes its journey on Earth.
Reading to babies in the womb is the magic that each and every mother can gift to her child. Each child has the possibility of entering the world feeling more loved, acknowledged and treasured. The harmony of the bond between each baby and mother will generate the conditions that provide the strength to give birth according to the Divine Design. Technology is available if needed, but it is not in control.
Mother and child are!
