That Unspeakable Topic

Ok, now that we've all gotten our feet wet with the "Cloth" post.... let's jump right in, head-first, to a big topic: Routine Infant Circumcision. We're just going to call it circumcision for short, but in the interest of defining our terms, what I am talking about here is the routine elective plastic surgery that is still performed on 32% of infant males in the U.S. It is an amputation of the prepuce organ of the male penis. Just so we're clear.

And just to be even clearer, to lay out all my cards on the table from the get-go, I will tell you right now that I am adamantly, completely, and wholeheartedly against this practice. And I feel like I have some street cred here on both sides of this topic. I chose to circumcise my first born. I've made that choice. And at the exact same moment the procedure started, I know without a doubt I'd made a terrible mistake. Unfortunately, it was too late to change my mind. That was an emotional reaction on my part which was a direct result of seeing first hand my child's emotional reaction to this decision I made for him. I realize that emotional reactions are not usually very legitimate reasons for making big decisions. If they were, we would never do anything which upset our child but which was ultimately good for them. We make decisions all the time to inflict discomfort on our kids for their ultimate well-being. That just goes along with parenthood.

I realize that some of you reading this have also chosen to circumcise your sons. You might be totally happy with your choice. You might be offended that I am now speaking of that same action as a terrible mistake. And I want you to know that I am not condemning you for your choice. I am telling you that at one point in my life I also made that choice. I also felt it was a good choice. And now I feel differently and I want to tell you why, if you care to read this. I am not attacking you. You will not find me calling you names here or condemning you. We all make the choices we make because we love our children and we want the best for them. What I want to do is to give you some more information and tell you why I think from here out, you should keep your future sons intact. This post is long, but I truly hope you will read it all.

Ok, back to immediately post-circumcision. By this time I had an instinct that things were pretty stinky in Dodge, and I was so completely traumatized by my child's reaction, that I decided to investigate further. Now, this was in 1993 when the circumcision rate in the US was still very high, though lower where I lived on the West Coast. In fact, the American Academy of Pediatrics had come out with a statement in 1989 claiming that circumcision had "potential benefits" and because of that statement, the circumcision rate was on the rise. source I do actually remember that that was the stance at the time. I remember I questioned this practice inwardly and my husband and I talked about it quite a bit. I think if we'd had the opportunity to talk to an intactivist (someone who is an activist against circumcision) who could really explain things to us, we would have opted out. But we didn't have that available to us and then there was this official statement that there were (ambiguous) "benefits." When we asked our pediatrician about it, she was not committed one way or the other and she said it was up to us, though she didn't feel there were any real benefits. (That was actually a pretty renegade stance at the time.)

So when we'd run out of time (or so we thought) and we had to make the decision (I was actually at the one week appointment; I was questioning right up to the end), I opted for it. I was really shooting in the dark because I didn't feel I had solid reasons for or against, but some family history, in the end, is what swayed me. And a lot of assumptions. Assumptions are no way to make a non-reversible decision, just in case you were wondering. Interestingly, no one suggested to me that I could wait, learn more, and make the decision later. (Seems obvious, I know, but it was my first child and I just didn't think about that. It seemed like a decision one made in the first week at the latest.) And NO ONE suggested that this might be a decision my son might want some say in. For some reason we tend to think of our babies as babies only and we sometimes forget they will grow into men who might have opinions about things like their penises. Do you know any guys who have opinions about their penises? Yeah...I thought so. Me too.

There really isn't any way to discuss this without upsetting someone, so can we please agree to temporarily shelve our own feelings on the matter and just talk about the practice itself and the reasons NOT to do it? Because, there really are no reasons TO do it. There really aren't. There is absolutely no medical reason to justify routine infant circumcision, and plenty of reasons not to do it. If you are a Christ follower (and I am), there are no religious reasons to do it and plenty of religious reasons NOT to do it. And if you are making the decision based on emotional reactions, well, we've already talked about how that is a bad idea.

There is waaaaay more information than I am going to even attempt to cover here. You can get a wealth of information at the Peaceful Parenting blog (this blogger is a Christian, too), so I'm just going to hit the high points.

My Top 10 Medical Reasons You Should NOT Circumcise Your Son:

1. If ain't broke, don't fix it. An intact penis is perfectly functional. Just leave it alone. The foreskin is not "extra skin."
2. Circumcision is extremely painful. It is literally like peeling off your fingernail and anesthetics can't adequately numb the pain of the procedure in an infant. Urine burns the exposed glans every time the infant pees and the diaper (and even air) cause discomfort for quite a while as it heals. The pain experienced can cause the child to slip into a shocked state (usually perceived as sleeping), scream uncontrollably, and shake. The stress hormones released during this time and the days that follow have been shown to have long term effects on the infant's brain and overall development. 
3. Circumcision turns what is designed to be an internal organ into an external organ. The tissue of the glans is like vaginal or mouth tissue, it's meant to stay moist and protected. Exposing it to air keratinizes the tissue (which is desensitization and further damage). The foreskin is normal and protective, removing it starts a progression of dysfunction that worsens over the lifetime.
4. No governing medical body or association recommends it. All of the "studies" that have attempted to prove benefits of circumcision have been discredited.
5. More than just the foreskin is removed. There are several functional parts of the intact penis that when lost, significantly impact the function of the penis for that person's lifetime (remember your little baby will spend most of his life as a man, not a baby). Learn more about the ringed band and the frenulum, for starters. These are tissues that once removed, cannot be regenerated.
6. Circumcised men experience less sexual sensation, and more sexual dysfunction. Intact males and their partners experience greater sexual pleasure than circumcised males and their partners. In fact, one study showed that intact men have four times the sexual sensitivity of the penis compared to circumcised men. There are many other benefits that both men and and their partners benefit from later in life.
7. There are no benefits and there are significant risks to the procedure to the infant male including: certain loss of function (risk: 100%), pain and trauma (risk: 100%), problems with breastfeeding, excessive bleeding (only 1 ounce of blood loss in an infant is a hemorrhage and only 2.3 ounces of blood loss leads to death. see here for more information), deformation, loss of the penis, infection, surgical mistake (including loss of the glas or the entire penis), and even death. Yes, babies DIE every year from routine infant circumcision that is COMPLETELY elective.
8. Risks to the adult male who was circumcised as an infant(beyond the certain losses): curvature of the penis, impotence, erectile dysfunction, tight and painful erections, tearing and bleeding at the scar sight, and more (this is not an exhaustive list). 
9. Removing the infant foreskin causes a loss of about 20 thousand nerve endings and up to ONE THIRD of the full length of the adult male penis. Shocking? Yes, it's true, penises grow along with the rest of the baby. A circumcised man's penis is a third shorter than it would be if it had been left intact
10. How would you like to have your clitoris removed at birth? No? Ok then, how about we leave our baby boys' foreskins alone, too. It's not reversible. You can't call a "Mulligan." Female circumcision (in it's various forms) was legal in the U.S. until 1996. 1996! And yet most of us would never ever consider surgically altering our daughter's genitals at birth. We consider them healthy and good as they are. Don't our boys deserve the same? 

If you want more information on the medical reasons to leave your baby intact, you can visit any of the following sites:
NOCIRC
Circumcision Resource Center
Doctors Opposing Circumcision
Circumcision Information and Resource Pages
Peaceful Parenting - Are You Fully Informed?

Ok, let's shift gears. If you are Christ follower, you have undoubtedly heard that Jesus was Jewish and that all Jewish boys are circumcised on the 8th day according the Jewish law. You've been told that circumcision is a sign of the covenant between Abraham and God and that circumcision sets the Jews apart from the Gentiles. Well, this is one area where a little information is a very dangerous thing. While all that is true, would it surprise you to learn that God doesn't like circumcision? That He does not desire for your child to be circumcised? It's true! Circumcising your child does not please God. How can I be so sure? Jesus said so Himself TWICE, and scripture is very clear about this.

First we need to understand covenant and sacrifice. A covenant is a very serious enterprise. It is a promise, but not just any promise, it is a legal and social contract with listed agreements. It involves (among other things) exchanging names (and so taking someone and their reputation into your family), a commitment to defend that person as you would your own family, it is binding until death, and it involves a sacrifice. Ancient covenant ceremonies including dividing a qualifying animal in two, stem to stern, and laying that animal out with a pathway between the halves. You can imagine that this was a very bloody endeavor. A path was created between the halves and the two individuals who were entering into the covenant relationship (marriage is a form of this type of relationship)  would pass between the two halves of the sacrifices animal, sealing their covenant one to the other.

In the Abrahamic covenant, only God passed through the sacrificial animal. This was a one-sided covenant, whereby God made a promise to Abraham and his descendants (Genesis ch 15). The sign of the covenant was to be a cut on the flesh of every male descendant of Abraham. The cut was to be a sacrifice, drawing a drop of blood from the male. The cut was to be on the penis because by that organ come the future generations. It was intended to be a very solemn reminder of the seriousness of the covenant. (Genesis 17) It was meant to be a sort of baby dedication by the parents and a sign to the child (man) of who he was and from whence he came. It was a physical sign. We also, in the Christian Era, have a physical sign of willingly submitting in obedience to God, it's called baptism.

Circumcision was to be done on the 8th day. We now know that the infant's blood changes on that day from infant blood to adult blood with adult clotting factors. There was also a provision that if a child died because of the circumcision, his brothers would be exempt from circumcision. Children have always died from circumcision. Not many, but how many is enough? If it is your child, one is too many.

So circumcision is a sacrifice. What is a sacrifice? It's giving up something of value, to take a loss, or to permit injury for the sake of something else. If it didn't have value, it wouldn't be much of a sacrifice, would it? God did not create male children with a defect that needs to be corrected. No, when God created Adam and Eve, they were declared, along with all of Creation to be "very good." God cannot call what is imperfect "good." And "very good" entails that Creation was whole or complete, and without defect. God didn't create males imperfectly.

Circumcision is sacrifice of what is whole in the flesh to gain spiritual wholeness. Only it doesn't. Circumcision is part of God's law for his people, what we as Christ followers call the "Old Covenant." The Old Covenant was incomplete. It didn't do the job. The purpose of the Old Covenant was not to bring salvation to the people, but to help them recognize their need for salvation. Sacrificing an animal can never compensate God for the sins of man, it only serves as a reminder, and continuing to offer them was an act of obedience.....of obedient sacrifice. For obvious reasons, actual people could not be sacrificed, so the sign was a sacrificial cutting of the most sensitive area of the body, the one that leads to the future generations.

For hundreds of years, circumcision removed much less of the organ than is removed today. It wasn't until the Jewish men were bathing and competing with the Greeks that it was decided more needed to be removed to make the difference between the Jews and Gentiles more readily evident. And it wasn't until post World War II that circumcision became en vogue for non-Jews in the U.S., and the reason? To prevent masturbation. (Aside from whether or not such a thing should be prevented in the first place, this plan did not work)

But I digress...Yes, Jesus was circumcised. (Luke 2:21) He was circumcised to fulfill the law. He was meant to be the last and complete sacrifice, once and for all. Jesus' first sacrifice was that of his circumcision. It was not an honor, it was a sacrifice. And of course, his sacrifice was completed at his death, ending the need of any further sacrifice forever. (Hebrews 10, Matthew 5:17)

God, in fact, desires mercy and not sacrifice. The prophet Hosea tells us this in Hosea 6:6. The Psalmist David tells us this in Psalms 40:6. Jesus, Himself, tells us this in Matthew. In fact, he says it TWICE, in Matthew 9:13, and again in Matthew 12:7. Jesus was our ultimate perfect sacrifice, once and for all. Why would we, as His faithful followers cheapen his sacrifice by continuing to cut our babies?

Paul calls those who circumcise "mutilators of the flesh" in his letters to the Philippians. In chapter 3 Paul is speaking of circumcision directly. He is denouncing the evils of physical circumcision in light of the perfect sacrifice of Jesus the Christ. It's all over the books of Acts, Hebrews, and Philipians. In Romans 2:25 we read that circumcision has value if you keep the whole law but if you break the law you will become as though you had not been circumcised. The whole point of Christ's sacrifice is that no one but God Himself (in Christ) can keep the law! Romans 3:23 reads "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." The law does not bring salvation! It only serves to point us to our need for a Savior! Galatians 5:2 tells us that if we let ourselves be circumcised then Christ is of no value to us!

Circumcising our sons burdens them with the yoke of the law. Jesus came to set us free from the law! It's just that simple. This said by the woman who circumcised her child. Thankfully, our LORD is a God of redemption. He redeems terrible things for His glory. In watching my son's terror at his circumcision, I was awakened. I found resources I didn't know existed previously. I learned. I made different choices the next time. And now I share this with you. I already know of several little boys who have been kept whole because I have shared the story of my mistake. Our LORD is also a God of second chances and third chances, etc... And my second and third sons were kept whole, as God intended.

When my boys got older there were questions. And we answered them. No big deal. And I will tell you this, it is not my intact sons who feel like the odd men out. It is the cut one. My intact boys are so grateful to be left intact. My son who was cut had a lot of questions. I had to apologize to him. And he was gracious to forgive me.

If you are pregnant now, please know that with a 68% intact rate nationwide in the U.S. (and rising) , the intact male is in the vast majority. In the rest of the world, he is definitely in the majority. On the West Coast, there is an even higher percentage of intact boys than in the rest of the U.S.

God doesn't want us to harm our children. We can explain to them why the look different. Heck, even all cut or all intact penises will look different! And if they are upset by this (or if you even think they might be) this is not a problem that necessitates amputation of a functional, beneficial part of their body! No, this is a problem to be solved through education and compassion. "I desire mercy and not sacrifice." Ah yes, mercy. Choose mercy. Please keep your boys intact.

Ok. Comment away....but keep it civil.
****************************
If you would like to order more information, there is an organization called Saving Penises which has put together very nice information packets which they will send to you for the cost of production and postage. For the low low price of $13 you can order your own. I happen to have one so if you live by me, you can borrow mine (as long as you promise to bring it back). :)

Seven Years Ago Today

Seven years ago today my life changed completely. The change happened slowly and all at once. It was expected and it was a complete surprise.

John and I started our family early. I was only 22 and he was 28 when our first son was born. We enjoyed every part of the pregnancy. We went to childbirth classes. In the 41st week the doctor told us that our baby was ready and she was going to be on call at the hospital on Sunday anyway and that would be a convenient time to induce, we packed our bags and set them by the door.

I arrived at the hospital on Sunday morning, was hooked up to the external monitor, and discovered I was having regular "strong" contractions that I was not feeling at all. The doctor was pleased, but wanted to "help things along" so she broke my water. That was the end of blissfully laboring with no pain. My baby boy was born just 5 hours later, but not before I was scared into some pain medication I didn't need, yelled at for pushing "wrong," and cut after only 45 minutes of pushing (on my back, of course) without permission. And I went home and told everyone how wonderful my "natural birth" was.

That was so much fun, and my baby was getting "so grown up" (at age 10 months) that we were ready to do the whole thing again. I had some wonderful women in my life who were studying midwifery. I thought that sounded intriguing but knew I didn't feel ready for a home birth (what if something happened?!?!) so that time I chose to see a Certified Nurse Midwife (CNM) and to plan to have my baby at the hospital with the midwife. That was a truly beautiful labor and birth. It is completely possible, with the support of your care provider, to have a beautiful natural birth in a hospital, with privacy, low lights, and the loving care of a midwife. The birth was amazing. And then the midwife went home and we were left at the hospital and that's when things got crazy. I'll save all the gory details for another day but suffice it to say that we became acutely aware that it was irrelevant to the hospital staff that we were the baby's parents. They had policies and procedures and protocols to adhere to and it didn't really matter if we understood what was happening when they took him away to the NICU for 13 hours with no explanation.

We were honestly so traumatized not by what they thought was wrong with our child (partly because they didn't actually tell us for 13 hours) but by the lack of information and the guilt tactics they employed to get us to agree to do things they felt were important and we were questioning. I remember we called John's parents in Montana to come immediately and they did. They drove all day and night to come to our aid. And we were so thankful. Of course, he was fine, a totally healthy roly-poly bouncing baby boy.

So when we were expecting baby #3 we were convinced we weren't going to the hospital unless someone was in imminent danger of dying. We again chose to use the CNMs and we planned to birth our baby at the birth center. That really was a lovely plan......but that's now what happened. Apparently all the athletic ability the Good Lord gave me went directly to my uterus. We got in the car about 10 minutes after my first contraction and my sweet baby boy was born in the car, into my mother's hands, about 7 blocks from the birth center. That, also, is a story for another day. My total labor, first contraction to birth, was about 35 minutes.

Soooooo.......not wishing to repeat that experience, I finally bit the birthing bullet and decided that maybe home birth wasn't so bad after all! I mean by this time I was pretty confident in my body's ability to birth my baby (seriously, they should have an Olympic event for birthing!) and I sure didn't want to repeat the car birth experience. Despite the fact that I live in Home Birth Central and this town is swarming with lovely and capable midwives, there was really only one choice for me. This midwife had trained two of my friends, caught their babies, and every one raved about how great she was and how much they loved her. I knew she was my gal before I ever met her.

I remember she came to the house and were supposed to interview her. Only I didn't really need to interview her. She could have had two heads and I still would have hired her. She's that awesome. I remember at first for my appointments I wasn't sure about these prenatal checkups in my HOME. (?) I was really paranoid that they might think my house was too dirty so I deep cleaned before they came and made cookies. I envisioned us all sitting around drinking tea, eating cookies, and talking about .......I had no idea. What do you do for an hour? I was used to 10 minutes appointments.

You know what else I was used to? Putting my legs up in the stirrups, medical tests, and weight checks. So imagine my surprise when she never asked to "examine" me, didn't ask my weight, or push a bunch of tests at each visit. Now the CNMs did much less of this than the OB did, and there are times when each of these things are indicated, but I was healthy, with good weight, and a healthy diet and a normal pregnancy. Everything was offered and I was informed but I got to choose! But she did listen to my baby at each visit, feel the baby's position, and talk to me about what I might be experiencing and any concerns I might have had.

By this time you might be wondering about the title of this post (or maybe that was several paragraphs ago). Toward the end of this pregnancy, at about 32 weeks, we discovered my baby was breech. Uh oh. But don't worry, there's still plenty of time for the baby to turn, especially since this is baby number 4.

Week 36. Still breech. Huh. Well, maybe we should start thinking about helping this baby turn. So I got in a  knees and chest position, where I was on my knees but my head was on a pillow on the floor, trying to tick the baby into thinking "uh oh, I'm upside down! I better turn around!"

Week 38. Still breech. Yikes! Time to employ the chiropractic Webster Technique, moxibustion, manual version (also called External Cephalic Version)..... And when all of this failed to coax my baby to turn, I began reading everything I could find on breech birth. I was NOT excited about having a c-section. I have a tendency to have difficulty clotting, and I was worried about bleeding and recovery. And, I just didn't want to get cut.

It took longer to find materials to read than it took to actually read them, there were so few books. There were exactly TWO. One was written by a midwife in the UK and the other by a midwife in New Zealand. Both of them imported, and both of them exceedingly difficult to acquire, especially in a short matter of time.

And here is where the faith factor enters into this story. Backtracking just a bit.....you remember I have three sons. We loved having three sons....but we also really wanted to have a daughter. And we really thought we were done having babies. Still, I wanted a daughter to share in the line of amazing women in my family, since we are all very close. I wanted a daughter for John, because he is such a loving daddy, and I knew he would be such a wonderful daddy to a little girl. And maybe because I always wanted a sister, I sort of wanted some other feminine energy in the house. But after wishing for so long, and after the boys were diagnosed, and after all the researching and therapies and doctors visits, we just thought we *should* be done. Other people told us we should be done. And it did seem logical. So we tucked that little dream away and moved on.

And then one day...I was sitting in church one day and all of a sudden, I happened to meet eyes with a sweet little girl (whom I have never seen before or since) as she looked over her daddy's shoulder and right into my eyes. And at that very moment I felt very strongly these words, "I will give you the desire of your heart." And I just knew down deep in my soul that God wanted to give us a daughter.

We read books on how to increase our chances, we waited and contemplated what it would mean to have a 4th child for about 18 months, we prayed and thought through all the ethics of desiring and seeking to attempt to choose the sex of a child. We searched our hearts for our motives. And what I was told over and over again was that He wanted to give us the desire of our hearts and that He would give us a healthy baby.

This is hard to talk about because there are no guarantees in this life. My two oldest boys were both diagnosed with some difficult neurological conditions and we truly would have accepted and loved a child with any exceptionality. I didn't not ask for a perfect child, but I did pray for a healthy child.

So when my daughter was persistently breech, and after all attempts to turn her had failed, and after trusting for a whole pregnancy that this baby would be healthy, we were faced with a faith crisis of sorts. Not the kind where you question God, but the kind where you know you have faith and yet you question what you thought you knew in the face of some high stakes. You wonder if you are being told to stay the course or divert to a different course. So we talked and we read and we talked some more. And in my particular case, John, the midwife, and I all agreed that continuing with the planned home birth was the most logical choice for various reasons. I do not believe all women who find themselves with a breech presenting baby late in pregnancy should have their baby vaginally at home, but I do believe that this is an option that needs to be kept available to the women who would choose this option with their skilled care provider.

Of course, for some people, homebirth is scary enough (I used to be one of those people). So when people found out I was planning the birth my breech baby at home (!) I heard about it. I heard about everyone's fears. I heard about horror stories that happened to friends-of-friends-of-friends. And being an empathetic person, I began absorbing those fears.

Fear is a nasty thing. It seeps in quietly and slowly and taints all your thought processes. And it's exhausting. When I realized that I was internalizing the fears of others but that what I felt I had been told by God had not changed (in fact He was continuing to breathe that promise to me over and over again), and that not only was the decision to go ahead with the home birth an honoring of what I faithfully believed about my God and my body, but was also quite a logical decision based on my particular situation, I decided to stop letting others feed me fear. I had to put up some protective walls and hunker down. And that's what I did.

Until early in the morning of April 13th, 2004. At 1:30 a.m. I was awakened by the spontaneous rupturing of my membranes (and I was glad I'd been sleeping with a towel between my legs for a week!). I woke John up and we made some last minute preparations, then I called my midwife. She came right away and the contractions started at about 1:45 a.m. By 2:00 a.m. the contractions were very strong. And my darling baby was born at 2:46 a.m. I believe I pushed twice and out came a very healthy and gorgeous little girl!

God is SO GOOD! And He's not good because we have a daughter, and He's not good because we were able to have a homebirth, and he's not good because there were no complications or because she's healthy. He's good because He's faithful. He's Good because when he says he will do something, He does it! We aren't all told the same things. There is suffering in this world, for sure. And if things had ended differently, God would be no less Good. But I will praise Him for the journey which he brought us through. I will praise Him for his Good gifts. I will praise him for his gift to his servant when I had come to peace about not realizing a dream. When I was done dreaming my dream, He dreamed it into reality for me.

He is Good because he is generous. When I had become content with what I'd been given, that is when he gave me more. When I faced trials that called my choices into question and caused me to make new, difficult choices, He never left me. When fear was all around me, He gave me His Peace. And at the hour of my delivery, He was there.

So happy Birthday little Quinn. You are seven years old. And today I celebrate the dual gifts of your birth from my womb and the strengthening of my faith. May we both continue to grow in our faith under His Good care.

"We have a daughter!"

Daddy and his new baby girl.

The LORD is Faithful! Welcome Quinn Arwen.

Happy Birthday sweet baby girl!

Introducing.....me!

I have no idea if anyone will read this. I really don't consider myself much of a blogger....I just have some thoughts now and again and it's nice to have some place to write them down. And if they help someone....well, that's just a bonus.

It seems like introducing myself is the logical place to start. My name is Amy. I live in rural Oregon (on the liberal side of the mountains) with my sweet husband and four children. I have three sons and a daughter ages 17, 16, 12, and almost 7 (in three days!). We have a little chunk of earth in a rural area and we like to fancy ourselves homesteaders but that's pushing it. I really enjoy learning to live "off the grid" as much as possible but I also like some conveniences (like actually flushing toilets, electricity, satellite tv, you get the gist). 

I have two kids with neurological differences so I've had to learn about IEPs, advocacy, and therapy. They are my oldest kids so that means I don't have any built in babysitters. 

I work as an assistant to a wonderful homebirth midwife, whom I love very much. She's amazing and so patient with me. I often feel like a bumbling idiot but she tells me I'm making progress. 

Birth work is a calling, especially out-of-hospital birth work. It's hard work. It's renegade work. It's risky work (in more ways than you might think). And it's deeply rewarding work. But it's definitely NOT easy work. We are on call most of the time. We pack up and go at the drop of a hat, even if that means missing birthday parties or family holidays. The birthing mama always comes first. It's a sacrifice we make because we believe that nothing is more important that a gentle, peaceful birth. We serve and we are so deeply honored by the families who choose us to provide their care

As traditional birth attendants, we realize that birth is a deeply spiritual event. As a Christ follower, I believe that childbirth is sacred. We women are uniquely blessed with the honor of carrying a precious new soul in our own bodies and we are responsible for giving that new being the best start possible. During pregnancy we are more spiritually open and emotionally vulnerable than at any other time in our lives. We are partners with Divine Creator God in the creation of a brand new eternal soul. For this reason, it is imperative that we thoughtfully and purposely approach pregnancy and birth with reverence.

For me, attending a birth is an act of worship. I am lovingly choosing to serve the motherbaby dyad, at the moment they need me, at the expense of my own freedom. I am supporting, loving, witnessing, and waiting. I get dirty. I get tired. And I get up and do it again. I love it.

So these are the things I will write about. I am a verbal processor so it helps me to talk or write thoughts out and then consider them again. I won't promise to be eloquent or thorough. My goal is not so much to teach you as it is to process what I am learning. If you find that interesting, then welcome. If you wish to challenge a thought or give a different perspective, I welcome you.

Blessings, Amy