The Mule

In September I had two wonderful and life enhancing experiences, firstly I began my Doula training, and attended an excellent week-long course with Kate Woods of Conscious Birthing , and secondly, I took a rare evening off nursing my daughter to sleep and went to a screening of Freedom for Birth . Both - coincidentally - took place in Glastonbury, a Somerset town dominated by the mystical Tor and filled with a sense of creativity and transformation that never fails to inspire. For a long time on this blog I have tried to cover the subject of a woman's right to a positive birth. One of my first ever posts was an attempt to address the politics of power in the birth room: "They Let Me" Go Overdue.  Later, I wrote about how Every Woman Deserves a Positive Birth , the impact of what I called The Wallpaper of Fear on the birthing woman, the importance of giving our daughters positive messages about birth , and most recently, the global Birth Revolution and the Freedom ...

Today's post for the week long Birth Special comes from Awen Clement, a mother and trainee midwife, whose love of the book The Red Tent was one of the many reasons she felt called to become involved in this wonderful project. If you feel equally inspired, they would be thrilled to hear from you! The Red Tent Project "We have been lost to each other for so long. My name means nothing to you. My memory is dust. This is not your fault, or mine. The chain connecting mother to daughter was broken and the word passed to the keeping of men, who had no way of knowing... ..And now you come to me...you come hungry for the story that was lost. You crave words to fill the great silence that swallowed me, and my mothers, and my grandmothers before them." ( Prologue, 'The Red Tent', Anita Diamant) Have you read Anita’s book? Did it speak to you? Did you feel a tugging of your soul, a tingle of ancestral memory that you couldn’t quite place? Even if you ha...

This week I'm running a Birth Special. On Monday Michelle told her moving tale of achieving the VBAC of her dreams, and yesterday, Anna shared a wonderful story with a truly unexpected twist about her experience of adoption. Today’s guest post comes from Doula Maddie McMahon. She writes with passion of the wonderful power of mothers and motherhood, and calls for a better world for those who bear and raise children. Maddie writes posts about birth and motherhood at www.maddiemcmahon.com , and offers Doula services and training in Cambridge UK . You can also follow her on facebook . Mothers Matter… Mothers nurture a growing child in their wombs, fiercely protecting that future human despite having perhaps been rejected by the child’s father, despite rape, poverty, despite extreme emotional and physical suffering. Mothers give birth. Some hunker down and roar their babies out; lioness mamas ecstatic with earth-shattering power. Some dream their babies into the worl...

Today is Halloween, and it's also Samhain, the Celtic equivalent of New Year's Eve. This ancient festival looks towards nature for its symbolism, and celebrates endings and beginnings; taking seeds of hope for the future, spiralling deep into the dark of winter, facing our fears, waiting and enduring, and emerging anew when spring finally returns. What better time to bring you the first of a week long series of posts on the subject of birth! Back in July I ran another Birth Special, and the most popular post by far was Michelle's story of how her planned home birth ended in an emergency c-section. Perhaps one of the reasons it spoke to so many people is because the tale is, sadly, all too familiar; of a birth in which hopes and dreams of a natural and positive experience slip slowly and painfully away and are replaced with trauma and disappointment.  I'm delighted to say that for Michelle, healing has come in the form of an incredibly empowering second birth, and her...

This week I'm running a Birth Story Special via this blog. So far I hope you've enjoyed the wonderful stories shared: Michelle's tale of her emergency section, my own first birth by reluctant induction, Sarah's freebirth , and yesterday's moving account of a hospital birth in which intervention was not only helpful but necessary to save a life. There are many thoughts, feelings and questions raised by these stories, which I hope to address in a final post over the weekend. Do feel free to discuss your reactions via the comments at the bottom of each post, or on the facebook page for this blog . I will do my best to consider and address all of the points that you make. In the meantime I'd like to introduce tonight's story, written by a trainee Doula about her first experience of witnessing birth. One of the big questions about birth in the UK today for me is - how can we maximise our chances of a natural, positive and empowering experience within t...