homebirth archives

Birthphotolog - Completed… from Dark Daughta @ One Tenacious Baby Mama 16 May 2007 7:28 pm

[Queer] [ Black] [ radical parenting] [ birth photos] [ midwives] [ homebirth] [ birth pictures] [ birth story] [ feminist] [ birth pics] [ labour]
So, this is a loose container for my last birth...
An experience so layered I will never be fully able to reckon with its complete significance for me as a human being,
as a collection of voices and personas occupying the flesh of a physically grown adult, hoping to resolve enough childhood baggage to mature fully into adult one day,
as a binary gendered being,
as an Black, dark(er) African child of the Diaspora whose people made the choice to settle too far from "home",
as a fatty girl with two pregancy's worth of panniculus (thanks Navelgazer),
as a lonely yet willfully alone being,
as a mostly unparented adult daughter,
as an immigrant raised (starving no food in the cupboards) famine and (junk food) feast,
as a greying almost forty (seven plus months and counting) inbetweener (too old to be a youth, too young to be a crone),
as a queer woman living and parenting outside queer communities partnered with a hetero and questioning man,
as a matriarch ,
as a counselling (psychotherapy, not psychiatry) consumer,
as a cussing woman,
as a radical, anti-authoritarian, body-positive parenting human being so tired of oppressive social conventions, the power of corporations including the medicorp....

I was going to write some more. But, let me just say: I've rearranged the posts so that earliest labour comes first and so on.

The Birth Story of Olamina Formidable-Power Akintunde Azania
sibling to
Tigana Phenomenal-Gift Sankofa Azania

My birthplan...

I picked the name for a girl...

The universe sent a boy...

Tha phreakin' ultrasound office scrap...

My birth story...

My labour started six days before the Shmolian entered...

Papi care...

Doula care...

The morning of the birth around 7:30 before the midwives came...

The midwives arrive...

All the gang's here...

Bring it so it's brought...

Not quite a cotillion, but definitely the beginnings of a debut...

Emergence...

Immediate afterbirth...

The actual afterbirth...

Cutting the umbilical cord...

There are a few other photos I want to add like Shmolee meeting Nana Ophelia and him breastfeeding for the first time. Papi also pointed out that we haven't put up any recent photos. But this will do for now.

posted 7:28 pm at One Tenacious Baby Mama

Birthphotolog - through the Middle Passage… from Dark Daughta @ One Tenacious Baby Mama 09 Apr 2007 12:01 pm

[radical parenting] [ Diasporic African] [ Middle Passage] [ birth photos] [ midwives] [ homebirth]
































































































































































I've been watching birth stories on TLC for years. I've watched these mostly heterosexual, soft spoken, wide eyed, gently smiling, well made up future moms give birth sometimes in full make-up, hair styled, nails done...they were going to be on tv don'tcha know?

When I look at my birth photos I remember a comment someone made a while back about me not being conscious of the camera.

Oh, I'm very conscious of the camera. Like most other people I've been raised with the invitation to see myself through the gaze of others. How will I look? What will people think when they see?

As a politicized woman, the whole - Never let them see you sweat...never let them see you loose composure...never let that smile slip from your face...always be ready with a reasonable facsimile of contentment - it's a bit much.

I don't know how many birth stories I've seen where the wimmin managed to maintain composed containment. Where their faces did not reflect the crucible they were labouring inside.

As for me? Well, I try not to pose...but even this is a pose...a calculated response to the intrusion of the lens and the fear of being discovered with the "wrong" set of emotions playing across my visage.

I mostly tried to not look. I tried not to process the implications of different people being present or not present. But, in truth, my brain never stops working, comparing and contrasting, multitasking, flying back only to come forward again and again and again. I'm hardwired like that.

Nonetheless, I made myself not be contained in a room surrounded by bodies, smells and sights. By sheer force of will I shut out everything I could and turned inward traversing sensation and synaptic brain wave instead of worrying about who was seeing me do what.

I made myself not care enough to perform or respond to outside stimuli.

I set it up so that I'd have the space, the practitioner, the birthing assistance, the surroundings to allow me to not have to focus outward. Did I tell you I literally kept my psyche calm and cervix clamped shut by sheer will until the midwife I vibed with who I wanted to attend my birth came onto her rotation? (I really struggled with writing this because I want to go back to the same practice and don't want to worry about anyone's upset when this birth was supposed to be about me and what I wanted.) Nonetheless, the moment I got the call saying she had switched on call, I breathed, loosened, opened and began the descent...I only had a week to accomplish the birth before she went off rotation again.

Alone.
My ideal for this birth would have been everybody in the next room...across the hall...only entering when I wanted them for some specific reason...only entering with rattlings, clatterings, plastic crinkling, whisperings when I chose...and leaving soon afterwards. The camera would have been mounted on a remote controlled robot hand with no flash.
I won't say I wanted to catch the baby myself. Because I didn't. But I will say that I wanted more Papster catching, less student or midwife catching.

Obviously, this is not what happened. But I got what was possible and it worked out within acceptable parameters...my extrapolations, measurements and calculations being the ones that count.

I got silence.
People whispered and tip toed so that I would not have to be dragged back out of myself.

When you see the movie Papi and I are making through our production house Lovely Ballz, you'll get a sense of how quiet it was for much of the labour. I didn't make any noise for a long while. And then, when I finally started letting loose (line up the lovely grimaces with sound effects), there were howls, grunts, roars, screeches aplenty. I decided fairly early on in the labour that if I started making sounds to match up with (what I understood of) the pain, by the time it got worse I would have nowhere to go but insane, panicked and to the hospital. Not an option.
I got hands off.

No vaginals during the labour and only a few dopplers when I permitted it. When the Shmolian's head finally started to emerge, my midwife suggested that I might want to make more room for him by getting people in the room to help me open wider. I consented. The Shmolian slid out as i pushed.

I've got to find the afterbirth photos...I'm not sure if there are some. But if there are, they'll show up here.

Also, in a few hours or a day or so, you'll be able to find the whole birth in sequence via a link placed here. So, stay tuned, there's more...

posted 12:01 pm at One Tenacious Baby Mama