You are free to love!

My last post was about leaving social media, and since I did that I have been reflecting on some quiet questions about birth outcomes and my relationship with my doula training provider. This post is where I explore what it means to be “detached” from things, people, ‘success’, and how this principle influences me as a birth doula.

Freedom as ‘detachment’

Certain wise people walk the face of the earth in each generation who shed the light of understanding on our jumbled human lives. Some of these people are held in tradition as saints and heroes and their words have a long echo down the centuries. One of my core beliefs, informed by these visionary sorts, is that when we live under the influence of Divine Inspiration we can discover a certain freedom from our own ego and - with it - the illusion of being in control of our existence.

In that sense, freedom is often described as ‘detachment’ from the concerns and preoccupations that bog us down and prevent us from milking the joy out of life, especially in our most trying circumstances. When hard times come, the true test of detachment arrives with them. Do we evaluate our lives by our material possessions and physical health? Or do we rest in the knowledge that we were loved into being for our own sake and are worthy of every last breath in our body even in the rock bottom pit of our situation?

In essence, true freedom is knowing that you and all those individuals you encounter are “very good”, just because you are. When you know this deep down, you don’t have to prove it by fretting incessantly over the consequences of this or that choice you are facing or some or other action that is taken against you or for you. Rather, you weigh your options, make the best decision you can with what you have, and live in the knowledge that whatever happens next you are held and loved by One Greater Than You.

What does this view of freedom have to offer for pregnant and postpartum women?

Freedom and birth

There’s a lot of talk about freedom as autonomy in birth ideologies. What are we free from when it comes to pregnancy, birth, postpartum…? For some it is freedom from the tyranny of medical institutions, or even any influence other than their own intuition. For others it is freedom from the responsibility of making their own decisions at all, freely turning themselves and their baby over to the discernment of others. These are different ways a pregnant woman may deploy her free will as her journey of motherhood materialises.

But what are the constraints on our will? What are we not free from?

To start with, we’re not free from birth itself.

To be pregnant is to go through childbirth at some point. Miscarriage is birth. Live birth is birth. It’s important to understand that even abortion is birth. There is no avoiding birth once you have conceived a child. That means most of us will be affected by birth at some point whether as a mother or father. Birth is a natural phenomenon and therefore has its own path for each mother to traverse. It is not predictable nor can it be mastered by anyone - including the “experts”. Birth is free to be what it is. Our task in pregnancy is to prepare to enter unknown territory. This means being free from the expectation that we know and control everything.

We also are not free from the human bonds that make us social creatures.

Our babies are born desperate for connection just like we were and, like them, we continue to seek out nourishment in the gaze of our loved ones. This is good. It is what makes us so special. In childbirth, we are free from needing everyone we love to be happy about our decisions or outcomes, but we are not free from our bond with them, most especially the partner/spouse/parent most invested in the wellbeing of ourselves and our babies.

We are not free from our bodies.

We can make efforts to disconnect and welcome an out-of-body experience during childbirth, but most women do not experience labour that way and are more helped by fostering deeper connections to their physical selves rather than trying to cleave from their embodied nature. Birth is very physical because so is nature. We serve ourselves and our babies by exploring and understanding how our bodies work and aligning with the body’s physiological processes rather than trying to override them - unless truly necessary.

What are we free for?

We are free to discover ourselves and our children through childbearing and parenthood. To accept the idiosyncratic nature of each birth and each person involved in it - esp. mum and baby. To experience the joy of giving ourselves totally for the good of another - our son or daughter. Fundamentally, our freedom from unhealthy ‘attachments’ serves the same purpose as the intense physical labour that we exert in childbirth: it is all for the sake of “the joy set before us”.

If we fix our eyes on what we are free for - the gift of new life - then we are lifted out of the ego and taken to a place of wisdom from which we make decisions about pregnancy, birth, and family life. We consider and choose (or don’t choose) testing, monitoring, interventions, birth team members, and more in light of the good of ourselves as whare tangata - person-bearers - which automatically orders us toward the very person resting peacefully in our womb.

As human beings, our freedom isn’t for its own sake, but for the sake of LOVE. As mothers, through the privilege of pregnancy, we already received the call to love another unconditionally. Autonomy, rightly oriented toward that other (the child) aids us in doling out love as liberally as we would like to receive it.

Have you thought today about the love for which your unborn baby depends on you? What are the freedoms you are giving away for that child right now? That is your act of love for him/her. Where in your body do you feel uncomfortable, even sore? Give that as an act of maternal love.

Freedom and the ‘birth community’

If love is blind, then love of money is blinding. We live in a world of commercialism where capable adults are quickly being priced out of parenthood. I want to take a moment here to express my concern at the growing tendency in birth-y social media to capitalise on the insecurities of parents and those who work with birth in any way. Birth work (doula support, midwifery, etc) is not an appropriate context for money-earners to prioritise their “voice”, “message”, whatever, at the literal expense of others. It is true that birth work is essentially priceless and must be monetised in a way that doesn’t undersell the services offered and the personal burden that birth workers take on. This does not mean, however, that we need to always look out for ways to increase the financial burden on clients in order to ‘manifest’ our own material success.

Unfortunately, I have seen this gradually happen over the last year since I completed my course with Indie Birth. Their doula academy programme, coaching, and midwifery school have become financially unattainable for many women and predictable lines about the invaluable and unique nature of the content or long term gains of becoming great earners ourselves are all undermined by bold boasting in law-of-attraction style millionaire results by the course directors. Alongside this, an increasingly open fixation with manifestation magic in their course material has exposed to me the priorities at the heart of that enterprise - namely, material success (which is not just financial but also comes to bear on reputation and influence).

My firm belief that personal success bears little correlation to true freedom of the soul makes me recoil from businesses and influencers in the birth sphere that are brutally, or even subtly, predicated upon maximum earning potential.

There is also blindness in ideologies that lock themselves into a particular vision of maternal ‘autonomy’ that might seem like freedom from a political point of view but does not necessarily account for the mother’s interior life. In other words, her eyes might be fixed on freedom for its own sake, rather than on LOVE which is the gift of oneself to another. I have noticed a severe distraction in the birth community from the rights or freedoms of babies, apart from certain issues such as induction (e.g. the right for the baby not to be born before they’re ready).

What’s the rub?

Ladies, when we make of ourselves goddesses rather than humble, yet good, creatures we cannot but give the love our children demand of us with a reluctance they have not deserved. I speak from experience as a mother still learning to set aside my ego in the pursuit of daily joy: the constant and complex needs of our little ones will not go away, but our anguish at our own imperfection in meeting those needs can be soothed by letting go of being the It’s-All-In-Me Goddess who pits her will as a competitor in the arena of family life.

Similarly, a doula or midwife that is inordinately concerned about money per minutes may find that her support is given through gritted teeth rather than gift of self. Remember that to give is more blessed than to receive, and in that kind of love is deepest joy. Birth support has the most potential for joy when we are intentional about giving more than we get, rather than avoidant of it. The latter way is the path of burnout and disillusion.

Mama, you are free to love!

Inspiration:

• The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything, by James Martin SJ

• The Fulfillment of All Desire, by Ralph Martin

• Saint Catherine of Siena — Mystic of Fire, Preacher of Freedom, by Paul Murray OP