THE HOURS AFTER BIRTH
By Pilar Farnsworth
It is close to three O’clock in the morning.
I am propped up in my
dinning room table,
that has been moved next to
the wall.
An inverted chair draped
with soft pillows
gives me a perfect resting
angle.
I am about to give
birth.
*
Midwife, husband,
children and friends
are all around me.
We are a mass of human
energy focused by love.
The onset of the
“bearing down reflex “is starting.
George
, my
husband, is sweating.
I start to push.
—Timidly at first,
not even remembering how to
hold my legs—
but nature
will teach me once more , soon!
This is my fifth child.
Contractions are spaced
apart now.
All of us in the room
are One Waiting Being.
Time is pulsing towards
birth.
When the first real push
comes,
Tina the midwife monitors me:
push now!
More! Push, push
Gently now.
*
I bear down:
A deep muffled, seismic,
subterranean
Earth-breaking sound
comes out of my body
As I am this
childbearing.
*
In a half glimpse at the
mirror
I see my full woman
body.
And I am not I only.
I am also my mother bearing me,
and the mother before her
and Mother Life.
*
And I am also George
and the children
and the friends.
*
“There is his head” George says.
“Oh! His head” my heart
sings.
*
Tina’s hands receive the
silver head
I breathe:
air-life-light-love
“A boy, no; a girl”
“Oh a girl! A
girl!”
*
She is on my breast now
Her thick, pulsating
cord still attached to the placenta on my womb.
Her skin is like a
petal.
*
She looks at me
and again at his moment
(The same way all my
other babies were):
She is the most beautiful child I have ever seen.
*
Here again
the
cosmic miracle repeated,
in the
birth of this human
Child.
*
I now hold my child over
my chest
*
When the cord stops pulsating
with life giving blood,
George cuts it.
Tina the midwife
examines the placenta.
* * *
I am on my bed now, with
my child over my breast.
She sings a purring
mantra as she breathes.
Our awareness is luminous.
We are a seed of light-life floating in
the cosmic air.
*
And God is watching.
On the birth of May summer Farnsworth
Born at home, February 5th, 1974
*
I belief a serious
reconsideration and change of the ways of birth and death in our society must
take place.
I think this is an
essential consideration if we are working for peace on Earth.
Human nature is governed by intrinsic
biological realities that must be understood, acknowledged and encouraged.
In this paper I am going to focus on the
immediate hours that follow a human birth.
I belief that the treatment of mother and
child after birth is particularly in need of re-examination,
in light of modern understandings from psychology, biology and
physics,
in addition to spiritual and religious realities.
*
When the child emerges
from the womb
the first cry, that incredible roar of life
bursts sublime.
*
The baby learns to
breathe,
a breast will receive her.
Her deep sucking
response awakens.
*
Mother and child rest
together
--a small almost
weightless body
over a large maternal breast—
Inside of that breast the
mother’s heart,
guiding rhythm for the awakening life.
The rhythm is
familiar.
Only the sound in a new
medium has changed.
*
This is the natural way of birth that never took place in
American hospitals when I was having my children.
At that time, a generation ago, mother and child were separated
after birth for an “observation period.”
Can we think of a more perfect foundation for human alienation
from nature and self?
All we need do is witness our modern society. When now we see even guns and murder in
children’s schools.
*
Let me continue describing what the
natural biological reality of the birth process can be when not interfered
with:
Mother and child rest after birth:
Together in rapture enwrapped;
There is a forcefield of binding love between them:
The mother’s eyes are closed
and so are the child’s.
But they are not asleep
They are in another state of consciousness. Their brainwaves are interwoven.
This is the beginning of the mother-child bonding.
This is a “sensitive” and precious moment in the biological
timetables of life,
for
the beginning of the mother-child relationship,
the most enduring and
lasting of all human connections.
Here in the deep silence of a new
conscious state, in the privacy of a mutual link, a miracle is
happening.
The sealing of a sacred bond:
The Mother-child bond:
the very foundation for our
ability to love.
Mother and child belong together at this time.
A deep process is happening in the afterglow of birth.
Psychologically, this is an extremely sensitive period!
a biologically appointed
time for complex bonding mechanisms that govern human nature.
In the immediate hours
that follow birth
Mother and child meet,
commune, sense each other
at the beginning of the
child’s voyage of a lifetime.
There is an ecstatic
stillness in the mind of the mother
that allows her to
understand the person of her child.
The mother needs do
nothing, but simply be:
To allow!
To hold her baby
To become Mother
A state similar to this is experienced by all of us after the
sexual act when performed in love;
and also really, whenever
any true meeting of persons occurs.
It is an after-glow of
deep satisfaction that fills the entire body, enhancing every fiber of life:
physical,
emotional, mental and spiritual.
We may speak about endorphins or enzymes or experiments or
whatever jargon we choose for
“explaining ” this.
(and
I will do lots of that in this article),
but
we all know that what we are talking about is beyond explanations.
It is spiritual, intrinsic, and ineffable.
. It is the breath of God onto our human clay:The
Ruach or Spirit!
We are not only body and
blood.
Isn’t it absurd to reduce Love’s mystery to scientific facts?
T he immediate hours after birth are
the biological moment, the assigned time for a deep miracle to happen between
mother and child.
Let us all as a society respect the glory of that encounter.
We make a great mistake when we place a spotlight of great
importance in unnecessary
and sometimes damaging
modern techno-medical procedures,
disregarding
psychological and spiritual priorities.
The human being is flesh
and blood, but we also are much more.
The flesh and blood realities have their nurturance in higher realities.
We are
Spirit.
We must become
very aware and respectful of the inherent sacredness of the afterbirth-encounter
of mother and child
for
it cements the lifetime relationship of primary importance.
That primary
relationship of our life affects all others.
How we will later relate to life
as a whole, and to every aspect of it,
starts here.
Besides being physical we humans are also psychological.
This first encounter of Mother and Child needs to be experienced
in its fullness,
for
in my opinion how it is experienced, I repeat, will condition the biological and
psychological realities of mother and child forever.
I am now referring to”
the mother-child bond” in particular, a sacred biological mystery.
During the hours after birth deep somatic patters for the
imprinting mechanisms are at work.
Experiments on the
instinctual imprinting of mammals and birds substantiate this.
After birth the mother
needs to hold her child.
She looks at the baby
She checks the full body
Fingers, toes.
Then eye to eye
Soul to soul
She communes with her
child.
Hush, let us witness some more:
Ever so gently the
mother now
strokes the petal-like cheeks
of her child.
She is rubbing the tiny
head,
as if to erase pain left
there
from the enormous precious
previous work of birth.
Soundlessly her lips
start to “talk” to the child.
Is it a smile, or kisses
she is sending?
She is rocking the
cuddled bundle,
making endearing sounds.
And now, she offers her
nipple
to that incredible
creature, her child.
*
The child if finished
with the initial act
of meeting the mother, may
suck.
If not, she/he will continue
gazing into the mother’s eyes,
the tiny lips kissing the
nipple.
How magical that in this
totally new world
the child already knows how
to find the mother’s eyes!
When this crucial need of contact between mother and child after
birth is impaired, rejection mechanisms start to operate.
At a very elementary
level this has been demonstrated by studies of how mothers tend to hold their
babies.
When no prolonged
separation after birth has taken place the mother’s tendency is to hold the
child very close to her own heart.
When prolonged
separations have taken place, mothers and babies are less responsive to each
other.
(Experiments by Lee
Salks: The Role of the Heartbeat in
the Relations Between Mother and Infant, Scientific American, May 1973)
When the contact between mother and child after birth is not
interfered with,
as the events of that first
meeting unfold, the mother’s body starts to secrete an enzyme that inundates
her being:
The
enzyme of maternal love. This is
a physiological reality of the act of birth, done in love.
I am not going to present detailed descriptions of scientific
experiments that “prove” these obvious facts.
I will simply recount
some findings that specifically relate to the mother-child bond,
since
it is the fashion of our times that we “prove” things scientifically.
The modern brain research laboratories have looked into the
infant’s brain
and
found an exorbitant amount of REM periods (rapid eye movement) during the first
48 hours of life,
which
later start to mellow out.
These REM periods address
the infant’s needs for the assimilation of the extraordinary somatic learning
he is mastering.
(It is therefore better,
much better of course if he has not been “doped” during birth!)
Connection between maternal and infant brainwaves has also been
found,
e.g.
the simultaneous occurrence of alpha rhythms among mothers and their nursed
babies.
These experiments point
to subtle, so called extrasensory connections between mother and child.
I definitely have
experienced them.
The role and importance of touch, kinetic stimulation and
motion, have been amply studied
in experiments that cover
the whole gamut of the animal kingdom.
Among the most
significant experiments are the ones done on the instinctual imprinting of
birds and mammals
starting
with Conrad Lorenz’s Geese. Remember?
The baby geese followed him, as if he was the mother.
I’ll mention a few more significant experiments that provide
rungs on a firm chain:
Carpenter in 1934 with
howler monkeys; Hess in l959 with Mallard ducks;
H. Harlow in 1959; and
Harlow and Harlow in 1962 with primates; I will describe these ones more
completely later.
Seymour Levine in 1960 worked with infant rats. Scott and Fuller in l965 with dogs. He did a fascinating
mapping of “critical periods.”
All these experiments teach us two things:
First, that there are specific times in the development of
creatures for crucial instinctual learning,
more
accurately termed: instinctual imprinting .
Second,
that when the biological needs and timetables for these learnings
are not satisfied the organism suffers,
and seemingly unrelated
aspects of the animal’s life become impaired.
Thus, animals raised with maternal deprivation during critical
stages of instinctual unfolding
turn into weak, less
alert individuals and exhibit problems and inabilities in mating and
socializing patterns later in life.
Their final development and lifespan is curtailed.
They might even become altogether alien to their specie, as in
the case of birds that fail to learn their proper song
and
to develop other essential patterns for survival.
The most widely published and fully convincing research is the
one done by the
Baby chimpanzees were raced in cages without mothers, but with
“mother substitutes”.
Some of the
mother-substitutes were fixed wire structures, with a bottle and nipple
attached to the structure.
Some other
mother-substitutes were padded and covered by terry-clothe.
Still other
mother-substitutes had movement: They were hung from the roof, like a swing;
so that when the
chimpanzees climbed on them they were carried on the air.
The results of these
experiments are fascinating:
Although all chimpanzees showed damage because of the
deprivation of a real mother,
the ones more damaged were
the ones with stable wire mothers (no kinetic stimulation).
The animals raised with
stationary terry-cloth mothers had some of their tactile needs met,
but
were very deficient in their motor coordination, visual perception, etc.
and developed very sad
stereotyped compensatory movements of rocking, as often seen in disturbed
children.
The chimpanzees that
were in addition to food and kinetic stimuli, swung in the air (movement)
were unquestionable
better of than all other chimpanzees in
the experiments,
but
or course could not hold a candle to a jungle raised mother nurtured creature.
So, yes, rocking chairs are good; the old-fashioned cradle was a
wise thing;
carrying
the baby a lot as the mother walks about, as is done in primitive cultures, is
fantastic.
Therefore premature babies deprived of longer ambulatory
movement in the womb need more postnatal movement.
For this reason
scientists have designed incubators with a swaying motion.
Imprinting brings in the idea of time as a catalyst for the
unfolding of instinct.
I feel it is absolutely
absurd to think we humans are above instinct.
---Yes, we are rational
animals …
but underneath the endowment of mind ,
we also have an instinctual
nature, like all other living creatures.
Back to the idea of time:
As in the evolution of
life as a whole there are specific times for specific events to happen;
so
it is in the development of a specific organism.
Some sensitive periods in
the psychological development of human beings, have been amply chartered.
In his extraordinary book
THE EMPTY FORTRESS, Infant Autism and the Birth of the Self,
Bruno Bethlehem calls particular attention to two sensitive
periods of development in the life of the infant human:
a) The first three months of life.
b) The second half of the second year, when the rudiments of
speech and bowel control appear.
For a clear understanding of these important concepts I refer
you to his book,
which
was the most influential work for childrearing I ever came across.
The experiments of Seymour Levine (1960) with infant rats were
concerned with the role that stimulation plays
in
the formation of adaptative responses to stress.
Since this research
represents advanced findings concerning internal systems
such
as the adrenal and cerebro-cortical complexes, it deserves special mention.
Addressing himself to the
question of critical periods, Levine says:
“Another important question is whether there is a critical
infantile
period (or periods)
during which stimulation is more effective.
The evidence so far points to a period following
immediately after birth.”
Levine also cautions us so we will not oversimplify his
findings:
“This should not be taken to mean, however, that stimulation has
no effect after the critical period is past
or
that one critical period sets all responses.”
That is sobering.
As far as human beings are concerned, sound evidence bearing
upon the needs of reform of the present ways of birth practiced in maternity
wards can be found in the writings of Ashley Montague and the pioneer workers
of the natural childbirth movement,
Grantly Dick-Read, Ferdinand Lamaze and Pierre Valley.
Then there is the incontrovertible poetry of Le Voyer’s findings
in his book Birth Without Violence.
And now there is mounting psychological evidence from the
Re-birthing movement.
At the beginning of this article I described the moments after
birth from the perspective of natural, conscious birthing,
as
they would sequentially happen:
The child’s first cry
(that does not have to be in dying pain or fright, but simply a roar imbued by
the strength of life;)
then
the mother’s loving conscious response.
In my child-bearing
years, three decades ago, children in America were placed in lonely glass cribs
under bright lights away from the mother for a period of six, twelve or twenty
four hours following birth. This
hospital practice even had a name “the observation period”
Iit is still happening in many American hospitals.
BIRTH IS A PULIC CONCERN, A HUMAN ISSUE.
DEEP BIOLOGICAL SECRETS LIE BURRIED
INSIDE THE BIRTH PROCESS ITSELF.
HUMAN BEINGS NEED TO BE BORN THE
JOIN THE BIRTH MOVEMENT: Send this
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E-mail me to request more articles on Birth:
Pilardelaluz@Mindspring.com