When women start out on the path of birth work, they fear they won’t know what to say to the birthing woman. Quiet is more important than talking. A few words spoken at the right time can renew a woman’s sense of safety and resolve. Practicing saying soothing things out loud will make the words come easy when the time is right. Some things that might be appropriate to encourage a birthing mother:

“It’s safe to let go”
“You only have to do this one”
“Breathe right down into it, it’s safe to go there”
“Breathe oxygen down to your thighs, that’s it. . . breathe in oxygen and breathe out with loose lips.”
“What you’re doing is ancient. . . your mother, your grandmother and your great grandmothers all the way back have done this. They’re all proud of you tonight.”
“If you’re doing this well now, I know you’ll make it through. Each sensation brings you closer to holding your baby in your arms”.
“I’m so proud of you. You’re doing beautifully”.
“Let’s begin this birth anew. Just let your breath wash away the past 5 hours and let’s begin now at the beginning.”
“Breathe some good oxygen breaths for your baby.”
“There’s lots of room for the baby to come through”.
“You’re stretching beautifully. . there’s more space than you know”
“Just let the baby get itself born, you get out of the way”

Gloria Lemay, Vancouver BC Canada

Canadian midwife with client

Every once in a long while, I get a letter like this that re-inspires me to keep going on my heart’s desired goal of equal rights for baby boys. Protection from mutilating surgery. I’m posting this to inspire others to keep on talking and trusting that the parents of today will eventually find the way to setting aside genital cutting. Love Gloria

Dear Gloria,

I decided I needed to write to you to let you know that all of your efforts towards ending circumcision are not in vain. I’m sure you already know that, but perhaps a story of victory will be of encouragement. When we met, I had honestly never heard anyone stand against the concept of male circumcision. I had never considered it anything like female circumcision. I grew up in a Christian home, where we leaned pretty Jewish in our theology and circumcision was considered incredibly important. When my brother was born my parents had a Christian doctor who was terribly against circumcision and they heeded his advice and left my brother intact. My mom especially has always regretted that decision, and felt that she wronged my brother by being persuaded by the doctor. My brother has had many obstacles in his life and somehow these obstacles were all directed back to the “lack of blessing”.

When you explained your stance I began a rigorous examination of what I had always held to be the only way. At first glance my stance was only fortified because the scripture that refers to circumcision is so clear. Through this act you will receive the blessings bestowed upon Abraham and his generations and without it you will be cut off from any blessings and considered outside of the family. It wasn’t until I started to research what circumcision really looked like at that time that I realized the problem. You may already know this, but in antiquity circumcision was a cut at the base of the foreskin with a heated knife and then a partial pulling away, with the fingernails, which left the foreskin attached at the top. When the battles began between the Greeks and the Jews over circumcision (Jewish women and children slaughtered by the Greeks over circumcision, therefore Jews hiding it or not circumcising, and Jewish zealots forcing circumcision on any Jew found in tact) the Jewish zealots began to enforce the full removal of the foreskin in order to prevent Jews from “hiding” by pulling the foreskin down over the tip.

I also learned that this full removal in North America was used as a form of physiological control over the population, doctors suggesting to use no pain relief in order to associate pain with that region and “curb sexual desires”. Pretty messed up.

The part that really got me was that the original concept of circumcision was a blood covenant. I knew it was a covenant but I had missed this crucial point. You see the Rabbis would suck a drop of blood from the site of the wound and spit it out as a sign of now belonging to the same blood covenant as Abraham.

Mohel sucking boy’s penis after cutting foreskin.

The problem with this today is that currently Jewish culture does no blood rituals. They stopped when the temple was destroyed, and let’s be honest if the temple was rebuilt they would have a big challenge on their hands because culture has changed and this is no longer acceptable. What this blood covenant means to me as a Christian is that I cannot partake in this ritual because I am under the blood covenant of Jesus and what He did on the cross. I would be choosing a lesser covenant, with Abraham, for my child.

Now that all sounds pretty fanatical and religious and obviously there would be other factors in my decision making process but these concepts were still lurking there in my mind. I was over the moon excited to have a baby girl, partly because I REALLY wanted another daughter, and partly because I still didn’t know what to do by the time she was born. I finally feel completely freed from this concept. I actually strongly believe most of what the Jewish culture followed in antiquity was based on the atrocities that already occurred around them in neighboring cultures. I believe the regulations God gave them prevented them from doing terrible things that were considered normal and that over the years as they were drawn away from those cultures and into the culture of Heaven they were released more and more from these old regulations. I believe God is about compassion, love, justice, kindness and protecting the weak; and the darkness of our culture is a remnant from choosing to walk away from God in the garden.
It therefore does not make sense for this tradition to continue, a tradition that seems to tie itself with the darkness of a past age we have thankfully walked away from. However, it is imperative that people really walk out the process of making that decision for themselves so they do not end up, like my mom was for a season, blaming their choice on someone else’s coercion. The reason I wanted to share all of this with you is because the arguments you were using to explain why circumcision needed to stop were not completely shifting my viewpoint. You see growing up a Christian in a non-Christian culture there were a lot of things I had to choose to do that no one else understood, like waiting until I got married to have sex. Friends scoffed at me that I could never “make it” but I did. I have a pretty determined personality and I am capable of holding strong to a conviction without making a lot of noise about it. It is similar to my convictions against vaccines and on limiting medical interference in life, I have wonderful family members who are so passionately against me in this area that it can feel normal to go against someone else’s convictions. I wondered if knowing a tipping point for someone like me, might give you better tools to help someone in the future to rethink their position.

I hope this does not make you think less of me. You made it clear (when we first met) how against it you were, and I took that to heart. I felt that this was not something to be ignored when you so passionately battle to see it eradicated. I can now confidently say I agree with you wholeheartedly. From a Christian perspective I can say I believe it is wrong, and thought I do not know exactly how to work out the details I am pretty confident it is also no longer necessary for those of Jewish decent. I believe this concept of Bris Shalom would more than adequately cover the need for covenant and adhering to the bestowing of generational blessings. But, that is not my path to walk out.
Even before I completely agreed with you I was so impressed by your stance. I am honoured to know someone like you who is willing to protect these little lives no matter what the personal cost might be. I have so much respect for you. Thank you for what you do, -in birth and in protecting little boys. Shifting mind sets is no easy task. You are a true history maker. Love, Lydia

For more information on a naming ceremony that doesn’t involve any cutting or bleeding see: http://www.beyondthebris.com/2011/07/brit-shalom-alternative-naming-ceremony.html

Hypoxic

= below normal levels of oxygen

Eschemic

= restriction in blood supply to tissues, causing a shortage of oxygen and glucose needed for cellular metabolism (to keep tissue alive)

Encephalopathy

= a disease in which the functioning of the brain is affected by some agent or condition

HIE Help Center
Mar 7, 2017
Dear Ms. Lemay,

My name is Genevieve and I’m writing to you as a fan of Wise Woman Way of Birth and a contributor to a new website devoted to childhood disability. Our website specializes in helping parents care for their children with HIE. We know that your posts approach a number of different topics surrounding birth, and we found the post “$70 Million Birth Injury Case” to be quite similar to our website’s platform and goals.

We understand that many parents may be going to your site and reading about birth injuries, perhaps after facing a diagnosis they aren’t sure about themselves. We would thus be so grateful if you considered adding a link to our page, which discusses HIE, a neonatal brain injury that causes disability throughout childhood and adulthood. I help run www.HIEHelpCenter.org, an informational website for parents of kids that were recently diagnosed with hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HIE). Our website is one of the only sites devoted to HIE on the Internet, and in order to raise awareness of this particular disability, we wanted to ask you if you would consider including us as a link on your blog in a blog post.

Thank you for your time!
Sincerely,
Genevieve Kotasek
HIE Help Center Community Outreach Coordinator

From: Gloria Lemay
June 10, 2017
To: HIE
Hi Genevieve, you wrote to me some time ago and I have just now been able to go and see your site. I looked over the “prevention” section and was surprised to NOT see two of the prevention things that I think are most crucial to making sure that infants get all the oxygen to their brains that they need.
1. leaving the umbilical cord alone (not cutting) until it has fully stopped pulsing. (Resuscitation can be done, if necessary, right on the mother’s abdomen and the cord is the baby’s life line)
2. avoiding the use of pain meds in birth. The mother has been so careful to not drink alcohol, take drugs unnecessarily, and eat well. Then, on the day of the birth, she is medicated for many hours with an epidural which freezes her from her breasts to her thighs. This is right where the baby is located. That baby is getting all that numbing medication, too. Moral support and less systemic meds would be a better way to go. Any woman who knows that her baby might be brain injured by an epidural would say “no” to it. Better to have a day of pain than a lifetime of suffering for the child. Most women don’t know about that and the doctors don’t realize it because they don’t see the problems that the child faces.

I think this is the type of information that could really give your readers power in the face of HIE. Gloria Lemay, Vancouver BC Canada
“$70 Million Birth Injury Case”

These photos are a great demonstration of how the placenta, cord and baby keep working together after the birth when left intact. They were donated by a family to their midwives and I share them here with permission. If you’d like to see them on the original website, the link is http://www.nurturingheartsbirthservices.com/blog/?p=1542

The first picture was taken within the first minute or so of the birth….and then, pictures were taken “every so often” about every 3-5 minutes when the cord had changed a little more. The last picture was taken about 15-20 minutes after the birth.

Please credit or link to the original website if you share any of these photos. Thanks, Gloria.

One minute after birth

cord begins to thin a little and not so tightly coiled

Blood still travelling back and forth through the vessels

Flow of blood stopping—-around 10 mins after birth

Pulsing stopped and the jelly in the cord is collapsing.

Cord is thin after 15 to 20 minutes of being intact.

Quote

“Adaptation to life outside the womb is the major physiological task for the baby in third stage. In utero, the wondrous placenta fulfills the functions of lungs, kidney, gut and liver for our babies. Blood flow to these organs is minimal until the baby takes a first breath, at which time huge changes begin in the organisation of the circulatory system.

Within the baby’s body, blood becomes, over several minutes, diverted away from the umbilical cord and placenta and, as the lungs fill with air, blood is sucked into the pulmonary (lung) circulation. Mother Nature ensures a reservoir of blood in the cord and placenta that provides the additional blood necessary for these newly-perfused pulmonary and organ systems.”

Sarah Buckley, M.D.
Source: http://sarahbuckley.com/leaving-well-alone-a-natural-approach-to-the-third-stage-of-labour

You’ll have to view this little two minute video of a mother deer giving birth to twins on FB by going to the date link below. Here’s a photo as a sneak peek. Gloria

Debbie captures birth of twin deer

Be sure to click on the highlighted DATE, not Debbie’s name.