A podcast exploring the inner journey of pregnancy, birth, and motherhood.
Before pregnancy and birth were branded as medical events, before doctors and technology took the starring roles in our collective cultural drama, birth was honored as an experience of transformation. Through it, women were transformed into mothers. Couples were transformed into families. Cultures and the cosmos were wholly renewed.
I want to invite you on a journey to reimagine pregnancy, birth, and motherhood.
In our first season, Conversations with Elders, I want to invite you into my inner circle to hear from the elders who most profoundly shaped my experience and ideas about birth. These are the people who walked alongside me in my own childbearing journeys, helping me feel seen, supported and cared for.
I speak with a women's wisdom keeper, a non-denominational minister, a community midwife, a historian, a Diné healer, and my own mom and grandma for some comedic relief.
I hope that you will feel inspired by the rich tradition of community care and feminine wisdom that exists within and between us all, and come to see pregnancy, birth, and motherhood as experiences of revolutionary potential that are essential to our thriving as a human family.
Darryl Slim is a Diné (Navajo) elder and wellness mentor who learned traditional ceremony from his grandparents. In this conversation we talk about birth as awareness of the present moment, tending to yourself and your own experience, the role of partners in pregnancy, and the traditions of blessingway and hozho.
Darryl Slim: www.darrylslim.com
D'Anne Graham is an independent scholar of the social history of medicine focusing on women's health. In this episode we talk about the history of birth in the United States beginning with the rise of male-dominated medicine as a profession. Together, we debunk some popular myths about birth and explore how attitudes and power dynamics of the 19th and 20th century continue to influence our birth landscape today.
Aspen Institute Maternal Mortality Report: https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Maternal-Morality-Report.pdf
Tamara: All right. Um, so I am so pleased, um, to be speaking with my dear friend Deanne Graham. Deanne is an independent scholar of the social history of medicine focusing on women's health. She was an early leader in the grassroots effort to decriminalize midwifery in Virginia. She's a recent Virginia Humanities fellow researching the archives at the Library of Virginia for her forthcoming book, um, which I love the name of D’Anne. Um, the forthcoming book titled A Parcel of Murdering Bitches. Childbirth and women's autonomy from the Virginia Colony to the Me Too movement, which charts the history of birth and midwifery from Colonial Virginia to the current debates on childbirth, consent, bodily autonomy and licensure.
Um, and the Virginia experience [00:01:00] reflects larger themes of American women's childbirth experience, including state control and surveillance of the female body, the usurping of women's authority in the birth chamber by the rise of male dominated medicine as a profession. Um, D’Anne holds a BA in religious studies with a minor in history from Virginia Commonwealth University, and a Master of Arts and Health advocacy from Sarah Lawrence College.
D’Anne, thank you so much for agreeing to be in conversation with me
D’Anne Graham: today. Well, thank you for asking me.
Tamara: Um, so D’Anne and I were introduced when I was pregnant for the second time with my daughter Isla. Um, I had in my first pregnancy, just started learning a little bit about the history of birth, um, and in my second pregnancy was really diving much deeper into the history of birth in the United States.
And my midwife, Sarita, who I interviewed on the previous episode, [00:02:00] said, I have this friend who's a birth historian and if you're really interested in learning about the history of birth, you have to talk to her. So D’Anne, we, we wet in touch, we had a Zoom conversation, and I think you've spoke for like two hours straight, just going through all, all of the details.
Anne Graham: Um, download. I can do that.
Tamara: So you, you hold such a vast berth of information, um, that is part of our history and the US and it's really, um, as I started to learn about. Where we've come from. It was shocking to me that I, that I didn't know most of, most of that history. Um, so I think my intentions for our conversation together today, um, I have three intentions.
The first is just to debunk some popular myths about pregnancy, birth, and the female body. The second is to understand our current birth landscape [00:03:00] through this lens of where we've come from. Um, and then the third intention is just to invite ourselves and whoever might be listening to start to untangle some of these relationship dynamics within themselves, um, so that we can really sit in that question of where do we go from here?
Um, and I wanted to give a little caveat of, um, for me, this history brings up a lot of really strong emotions, including like, Outrage, anger, grief, and so if you are feeling like in a delicate emotional place, this might not be the right episode to listen to. Um, this might be something to come back and revisit at a later time, or, uh, grab a friend and listen together so that you can process, um, some of what you might learn if you're, if you're not familiar with our history.
Um, [00:04:00] so for, for where I'd like to begin, I think, you know, when I, when I first became pregnant, it was really easy to think that the way birth is done in the United States is the way that it's always been done. So we've always given birth in hospitals, we've always given birth with doctors. This is just how it's done.
Um, but that's actually not true. Um, and learning our history, it, it challenged this story that I grew up in that's still really pervasive. And it goes something like this. Birth used to be really dangerous. And then modern medicine came along, doctors technology and saved women and children. Um, and this is, this is used as like justification for our current system.
This is used as a way I think, of keeping people in that place of fear relating to their bodies. Um, Deanne, as a historian, as someone who's dove deep into the history of birth in the [00:05:00] United States, um, can you tell me, is that, is that story true?
Anne Graham: Not even? Um, the history that is prevalently believed, um, starts in the early 19th century.
Uh, so when we believed that birth was so dangerous in the past, What we're basing that off of is the history of what happened to birth after the male practitioner entered the birthing chamber. Birth has historically been very successful. 94% of all births were vertex and spontaneous. Um, baby got born with no issues.
Uh, you had 4% that needed a little bit of help and you had two percent that needed a lot of help. [00:06:00] Um, but you had a, um, occupation that was trying to come into being that of the. Male physician in the colonial era. Uh, doctors had started attending births about a hundred years, bef starting a hundred years before that in England, in the mother country.
Um, and things in America tended to be about a hundred years, um, behind, um, England up until about World War I. Um, so they didn't have the class position that, uh, a doctor or a physician in England had. So they took births and while they didn't pay well, it was a steady income and it got their foot in the door to become the family physician.
Um, in [00:07:00] the, by the early 18 hundreds, you saw women, affluent women using doctors for childbirth in the northern cities and child bed fever, which is what most women died from purple fever, was rare. And it was not until physicians started attending births. Uh, after 1840, you started seeing epidemics of childbirth, uh, bed fever.
And
Tamara: is it, is it true that the, the reason why those levels spiked was, um, we didn't understand germ theory at that point. That often physicians would be working on dead bodies or cadavers and then going to attend women in birth without washing their hands in between. And so rates of infection and disease spread rapidly is right.
Anne Graham: Yes. Yes. And you [00:08:00] saw that a lot in Europe because they already had hospitals. Um, but you also saw it in here, in the States. And, um, the term medicine midwifery was not about midwives, it was about doctors attending births. Uh, they had to distinguish themselves from the midwife who just waited for the birth to happen.
So they started with interventions. Um, And by 18 85, 75% of maternal death was from childbed fever. And it got so bad that by 1894, the doctors were, uh, falsifying cause of death on death certificates, and they would say she died of malaria or liver congestion or pneumonia or something like that. Um,
Tamara: and then I think I heard you say in a previous [00:09:00] talk that the, the thing that helped with this, um, fever was the invention of, uh, antibiotics or the discovery of antibiotics.
Anne Graham: we did not see the death rates, the maternal mortality drop until first the invention of sulfa drugs in the late 1930s. And then it wasn't till after World War II that antibiotics became available to the public. So by 1950, death rates had dropped, uh, because of both blood transfusions, which had been improved during World War ii.
We get some of our best technology through wars, um, and antibiotics. Um, in the 1920s, for example, uh, 250,000 American women died in childbirth with the wealthy, dying at a faster clip because she employed a doctor [00:10:00] than the working class and poor, who were still using midwives. And at that time, a British, uh, physician.
Was quoted as saying that the American obstetrician engages in an orgy of interventions, which really has not changed. And it was the antibiotics and the blood transfusions that just put out the obstetrically lit fires.
Tamara: Yeah, I think it's interesting you have kind of theri as you have the rise of medicine and the professionalization of medicine.
You have doctors, uh, trying out all of these interventions in order to like prove their value or to improve upon the process or save women or whatever that is. And you Exactly. You actually, that hasn't tapered off at all. Just the interventions that we use have changed, the really interesting thing for me is kind of these early, early mindsets or early ways of relating to the birth process [00:11:00] have, they've just changed form or changed face over time.
So can you, can you tell me with. With medicine becoming professionalized, how did that change women's relationships or family relationships to the birthing process?
Anne Graham: Well, there was, there's always fear in childbirth and in the western, uh, societies. Um, a part of that was because of Augustine, an original sin. We got blamed for the fall of the world, and so our difficulties in labor were our punishment. Um, and with that mindset, um, who wouldn't be afraid? Um, but women still did fine for the most part.
Um, of course things happen, they still do. My midwife used to tell me that every pregnancy doesn't [00:12:00] go to term and every baby born does not necessarily grow up.
Tamara: think that's such a, an interesting point to bring into the conversation that we don't often think about is that like in matters of life and death, we are not in full control. And we, I think it's easy to have the illusion that because of medicine, because of technology, we are now in, in control or like playing God in some ways of being able manage right.
Everything. And there I think many women or birthing people that have gone through this process, that have experienced loss or miscarriage or grief or, or whatever. You, you are brought into the realization that. Despite any medical advancements or technology that we have, we st We still don't get to control life.
Anne Graham: Um, [00:13:00] no we don't. And despite the Western Cartesian split, our mind and our bodies are not disconnected. And feeling like your body is broken does affect you. Body, mind, and spirit
Tamara: Can you, can you tell me more about how a power [00:14:00] dynamic got embedded into our current birth system of how, like racism, classism, sexism are actually embedded in the current medical model of care that we have?
Anne Graham: I'll try to hit all of those, starting in the 19th century and with the rise of the middle class, uh, you saw women who, um, were staying home and that was a sign of affluence And with, uh, the rise of science being the answer to everything and a buzzword, um, Women avail themselves to doctors for scientific birth.
And that still go, that goes well into the 20th century and still today, the belief that [00:15:00] everything is scientific. And, um, why would an affluent, mostly white woman not avail herself to that? Uh, even when the outcomes are not very good. Uh, being able to give birth under your own steam was seen to be the things of savages and primitives.
Uh, you showed your class by having complicated births and needing attention. and eventually more and more working class women. I mean, I think of my own grandmother. She had her first three children at home with a country doctor who didn't necessarily know what he was doing. Um, and then she went in 1945 and had my uncle, her [00:16:00] last child, and she said it was wonderful. She didn't remember anything.
Everything was, you know, white sheets and, and nice. Uh, and she came from, she grew up in the time of eugenics. The hygiene movement was very much wedded with eugenics. So to her, that was a sign that she was arriving in a higher class than when she had had her babies at home. And we see this also within the black community with the great migration up to.
Pittsburgh, I think it was, um, in the 1920s and thirties, the Urban League made arrangements for the pregnant women to not use midwives, but to give birth in the hospitals. it is, it's how medicine did and still does use class and race to control our options or lack of.
Tamara: I, it's, it's really interesting In different communities, how there's social pressures. in birth. I'm thinking of my husband's grandmother who didn't breastfeed because breastfeeding also at that time was seen as something that was lower class. And so if you are from a well-to-do yes, you didn't breastfeed, I'm just so fascinated by your linking of, um, this idea that like, that fragility in a woman is, is a sign of valor or is a sign of class that if you're, if you're a high, higher status woman, that you're somehow not in possession of your body.
Um, do you know where that comes from or how that, how that got embedded in this?
Anne Graham: um, Well, they had the, the what's known as the cult of true womanhood or the Cult of Domesticity. Um, which came about once again with the rise of the, um, market economy, where you saw the rise of the middle class. And, um, women were to stay home with tight corsets and paint China.
Um, Adrian Wilson, the British historian, talks about in the 17 hundreds how the lady of the manor in, in one period was doing the laundry with the pres, the peasants, but with the rise of, [00:19:00] um, market economy, middle class, she became a lady of leisure and also literacy. Because even wealthy women did not, or middle class to wealthy women were not necessarily, uh, literate at that time.
And as a terrible twist, being able to read, availed them to magazines that were written by men. And we see this in the 20th century here in America, where like Ladies Home Journal would write about some of the terrible things of hospital birth while still promoting it as being modern. And women should do that.
And I think we, we we're still seeing that where the sources [00:20:00] are, um, keeping us from questioning and. Today's feminist still thinks that her choices are within a menu of what doctors offer instead of what is it that I really wanna do? And this is for a variety of, um, things having to do with our bodies, not just childbirth.
Instead of bodily autonomy, I should be able to say what happens to my body, whether or not a medical group agrees with me.
But we're still seeing that, um, that affluent white [00:21:00] window that says, I can only. Have this, if a doctor says it's okay, and I'll just throw out there, Roe v. Wade did not give us bodily autonomy. It gave doctors the right to perform a procedure without being arrested, which was also something they took away from the midwives in the mid 19th century.
That was the first shot across the bow of breaking up that historical, um, relationship between women and their healers, their midwives.
Tamara: I've listened to you before, talk about, um, bodily autonomy in, in the political context of the United States today, um, and, and highlighting the fact that on the left you have.
people who are pro-choice and yet not pro I can birth with who I want and birth where I want. And then on the right you often have people who are against choice in, in abortion or family planning, um, and yet believe strongly that I should be able to birth with who I want and, and where I want.
And so kind of on both sides, you have these caveats to bodily autonomy, the other, the other thing I didn't realize until, um, becoming pregnant, starting to [00:23:00] research birth and deciding, um, I ended up working with midwives outside of, uh, of a hospital system for a number of reasons, but mostly data and evidence driven, um, of, of, of being really afraid that if I went into the traditional system, I wouldn't have sovereignty and authority to, um, to not have interventions that I didn't want to have.
Um, and yet insurance wouldn't, wouldn't cover my midwifery care even though it was. Much less expensive than it would've been for, for a hospital, um, birth. I think most hospital births, and it runs the gamut, but most hospital births will be around 20 to $25,000. Midwifery care for your entire, um, pregnancy from, you know, conception to six weeks postpartum is usually, usually around $5,000.
But since insurance companies refuse to pay for it, it's basically [00:24:00] on the family to, to be able to pay that out of pocket, which a lot of people can't do. Um, and the other thing that I didn't know was that, Midwifery still in, I think it's 13 states and you'll probably know better than I do.
it's not illegal to practice midwifery, but they, the state will not issue a license to be a midwife. And, and it's illegal to practice without a license. So it's basically saying like, you can't practice midwifery midwives are put in jail, um, for helping women and attending women to give birth.
And this is still happening today. So we don't actually, um, have access to, to choosing the kind of, uh, birth setting and, and people that we want to be attended by in, in birth. Um, can you say any more about that or does that spark anything for you? [00:25:00]
Anne Graham: Yeah. Uh, a few things and, and it might go in a direction you weren't expecting, but, um, I, I wanna point out that birth is an expression of female sexuality, and it's kind of gross that the state and, and the state, um, chosen profession can tell us what to do with our sexuality.
Um, there are two states that midwifery that come to mind. There's probably more, but two that come to mind where midwifery is not legal, but the state is, is, um, not invested in going after the midwives, and that's West Virginia and Pennsylvania. Uh, it works well in Pennsylvania because the Amish are there and the Amish don't wanna be part of the state.
Um, and it's actually easier to, uh, Practice [00:26:00] traditional midwifery in those states because they are not required to get the NARM certification, which over the last 30, 40 years has medicalized midwifery to the point where I used to say, get a midwife, stay home and get a midwife. And now I have to say, ask her what her practice style is.
Is she medical model or is she truly traditional midwifery where she believes in physiological birth and she doesn't believe she's there to save you? Which I have heard more and more of the young midwives today say, I'm there to save you and your baby. And that's not midwifery.
[00:27:00] Women had more bodily autonomy in colonial America than they do now. And that was with midwives being agents of the states, uh, in, um, cases of adultery, fornication, and bastardy. Um, but they still got to choose who was their midwife, and if the birth did not have the outcome that was desired, nobody arrested them.
Tamara: So with our, with our current maternal health statistics, Which are the worst of any industrialized, well-resourced country on earth? Um, you know, we're one of the only countries with no paid maternity or parental leave, um, mandated federally. Um, and we've got 34% rate of C-section. When the World Health Organization [00:28:00] estimates, or in a healthy population, that number should be around 10%.
And anything after that, you're causing more harm than good. Um, the Aspen Institute in 2020 did a review of maternal health in the United States. That's worth looking at if anyone is interested in, in going even deeper into, um, the current landscape of birth in America. Um, but their policy recommendations were.
Um, or, or conclusions. The first, that it's the overmedicalization of birth in the United States that is causing poor outcomes. And that the way we solve for this is to take resources out of hospitals, out of doctors, and put them back in the community, um, to promote community midwifery and more choice and autonomy.
I think it was really easy in previous generations to write off, um, to write off women, to write off, [00:29:00] um, midwives who were saying these same exact things, um, and say, you know what? That's a, a fringe movement. That's a fringe voice, that that's not a serious scientific voice that's bringing this forth.
But now we're at a place where the evidence is pointing to. Um, these practices not working and not supporting the health of women and babies, um, and obstetrics. Um, a ACOG came out with a report saying obstetrics is 30% evidence-based. Um, so only thir, only 30% of it is based on science and scientific, um, practices that, that yield good results.
The other 70% is physician preference and precedent. Um, and so I think we need to understand this as women and birthing people going into a system where I think, you know, 97% of births still happen in hospitals and with doctors, and it's, it's not to demonize individual doctors, but [00:30:00] it is to, to say this system that is set up is not set up to yield the best outcomes for the individual going, going through this system.
Um, Where, where do we go from here? And why is it so difficult to, to change this system and do, do you have hope for the future of birth in America?
Anne Graham: Well, I hope my book makes a difference cuz this is a lot of where I'm going, um, with, you know, after telling the historical stories, um, women, not practitioners, not midwives, but women have to want their bodily autonomy.
And I know it's hard because there's this voice, you know, we're walking around with imposter syndrome and everything else going on in our heads and there's this [00:31:00] voice that says, what if I'm wrong? And, um, With my, I had three children in the hospital and my fourth one was born at home with a midwife cuz I said I'd squat in a ditch before I went back to a hospital.
And, uh, I was in transition and I'd never had an epidural before, but at that point I was like, oh, if I wanted one now, I couldn't have it. What if she's not really a midwife? You know, all these. And um, and then I was like, and, and I wonder where I am, but she did not do internal exams. Thank you very much.
They're unnecessary. Uh uh, so I asked her, where do you think I am? And she did what she always did. Uh, not that we always liked it. She said, where do you think you are? And nobody had ever asked [00:32:00] me what I thought. And I fudged it. I wanted to say nine, but I said eight. Like that was gonna make a difference.
And she said yes. And my son was born 15 minutes later and my, my midwife taught me that our, our hormones for the first three months after giving birth are just primed for growth, um, in mind and spirit. And I was headed toward that three month deadline. And I'm like, where's my lesson? And early one morning, I was nursing my baby.
And it just popped in my head that moment of asking her, where am I? Where do you think you are? And it hit me. I could know my body. I didn't have to ask someone else. How I [00:33:00] was doing, where I was, was I gonna make it? I could know. And of course it's taken years to walk out that expression, but it began in that moment.
And so much of the west is from the neck up. And we try to think our way through these things. And when we actually have to drop down in our bodies, we're afraid we don't know how. And
women, it's gotta come from women. There has to be a movement. We marched our feet off for access to abortion. When are we gonna do it for just access to our own bodies?
And yes, [00:34:00] the question, what if I'm wrong? And I'm like, but what if you're right because you probably are.
Tamara: Thank you so much for sharing that story. I feel like what you're presentencing me too is the opportunity of birth for each person who goes through it. There is some big transformative personal lesson that is waiting for you, that is available for you. And I hold this vision that we can create an integrated model of care that really supports people in coming into touch with their own wisdom, with their own body, with their own power, um, instead of taking it away from them.
Even, even if that's what they're asking for or that's what they want. Yes. I
Anne Graham: remember also being,
Tamara: um, you know, halfway through my birth with Francis and [00:35:00] thinking like, my God, if the people around me were saying like, just take an epidural, like this pain can go away. Like, and, and probably doing it from a loving, caring place of not wanting to see you go through pain, a hundred percent I would've taken it.
But because the women around me believed in my ability to give birth and were so calm, even when I was completely naked on my hands and knees throwing up, singing, screaming, like all of this thing that I would like previously have been so embarrassed to, to have anyone see me in that kind of state, um, afterward it, they, their confidence in me allowed me to come to a place of confidence in myself.
And I, I feel like for each person going through that experience, You have the opportunity to find new reserves within yourself, um, regardless of what the experience looks like. This, this doesn't have to say you have to be naked [00:36:00] on your hands and these at home giving birth too. Each person's birth is gonna look its own way.
There's gonna be different limitations, different desires, different um, Expectations, but
Tamara: It really is on offer for each of us to come more fully into our bodies, more fully into ourselves, to claim that autonomy and sovereignty. And I just, I have this, this vision of like when we as women, as, as people really start waking up to that in ourselves of how powerful we already are, how amazing and wise our bodies already are, that they're not faulty, something is not wrong with them.
They're working in a really highly intelligent way that transcends our ability to understand them most of the time that we're not gonna put up with the way that we've been treated in the past and. You know, for me it was interesting giving, giving birth at [00:37:00] home with midwives, feeling very supported, very invited into that place, and then going into a really traditional pediatric model with my kids, where I was like, back in the room, the pediatrician comes in for five minutes.
That, you know, here's, here's all the things we're gonna do of, of, I noticed how still it was so uncomfortable and hard for me to ask questions. It was so hard for me to like, figure out how to get this person to slow down enough to really see me, to be able to process like all of the information they were throwing at me, while also trying to wrangle two kids in the room and like make these decisions for my family.
And it wasn't because my pediatrician is not great. I've had a couple different ones since we've moved around, but in general, I've liked the people. Um, but the model that they're operating in, it didn't, it didn't give time, um, for me to really show up and, and to ask questions and to feel like I was a [00:38:00] partner in the care that I was receiving.
you have such a, a beautiful quote, um, uh, about even how we're, we're training, um, midwives nowadays. Um, so this is not to say midwives are perfect in any way, but that a lot of our education, um, is frontloaded.
So here's, here's a quote from Deanne, which is just amazing. Um, it's frontloaded with a fear-based ob obstetrics model of a mechanistic body. Thus separating women from their mind, soul, spirit and community, and turning women's life experiences into numbers to be collected. Um, like that, that's what we have to get away from I this mechanization of [00:39:00] humanity.
Um, and, and like actually allow ourselves to be human beings who, who don't work in a, in a linear way most of the time, who have rich, complicated histories and imagination and emotion and like all of these things that make us act and behave in ways that are really hard for science to predict and understand because we're, we're human.
Exactly. And there's, um, you know, through relationship you can really get to understand that in a way that like scientific Yes, scientific observation can't really get at.
Anne Graham: And that's the hallmark of traditional midwifery is relationship and continuity of care. And the medical model, like you described with your pediatrician is, um, practitioner centered care, of which there's been talk for about 30, 40 years to get away from that.
And it's only gotten worse. Um, we [00:40:00] see in the past and also with the traditional midwives that I know, including my own, that, um, issues that, that obstetrics say are emergencies and midwives didn't have trouble. Martha Ballard, the um, Massachusetts now, part of Maine midwife in the late 17 hundreds who kept a diary when she wrote, wrote about a breach birth.
She didn't go, oh my God, it was breach. And we were so afraid she probably didn't talk without southern accent or whatever I just said there, but, but it was just another birth on another day. My midwife, um, was possibly the most talented midwife in North America. And she said to me, but Deanne, do you know how seldom I have to use my skills? Because women are powerful.
Tamara: Yeah. Yeah. Such a, such a different way of relating, of, of not having that hero, like heroic complex, which I think is oftentimes pressure too, that we put on doctors and physicians to say, you are solely responsible for saving me from myself or for, for making sure that this goes a certain way. it reminds me of.
In the crumbling or disillusion of so many institutions at this current time that we, I think we've seen like the dissolution of like politics as this, like ultimate authority, the dissolution of [00:42:00] religion as an ultimate authority. Um, I, I think you're seeing the dissolution also of, of medicine and medical authority of people starting to question, well, why actually, am I giving my authority and autonomy over to you?
Do you deserve that? And does, does anybody deserve that ex except for me? Rather than giving that away, how can I invite people to support me through my own process that's reinforcing my own power and sovereignty. And
Anne Graham: autonomy. Yeah. And, and to talk more about how things, uh, switched, it was, um, in the early nine, uh, 19 hundreds during the progressive era as, um, doctors organized.
More and if people wanna look up the Flexner report and they approached the state for, um, licensing the patient-doctor [00:43:00] relationship, which previously doctors were beholding to patients to come back to them. It changed into, um, one source called it a master slave relationship. And that's where we got, especially in the first half.
Um, and sometimes still the belief that you don't question a doctor, he has full authority and you just do what he says.
And that's, you know, it's really bad in my mother's, uh, generation, but we're still seeing it. I think, you
Tamara: know, with, with the rise of medicine and, um, the concentration of. Institutions that are now granting authority to who is gonna be the medical professional. Um, in the, in the early 19 hundreds, that's when you saw, in order to get admitted [00:44:00] to one of these institutes of higher education, you have to be white, you have to be a man, you have to be of a certain social class.
So, right. So automatically, instead of having it be, um, the community calls upon the person in the c their own community that they trust, that has observed births, that ha you know, has seen you from childhood to adulthood, um, someone from within your own community. You have this dynamic now of where the medical authority is a white man of privilege.
I think it's interesting how. That dynamic just got so embedded from the very beginnings of medicine and how it still plays out in the system today. Um, I was watching a, a talk that you gave and someone, um, brought up the point that well actually, [00:45:00] um, obstetricians now are 82% female and shouldn't that have helped the problem?
And I thought it was so interesting you brought up obstetricians may now be the majority female, but actually the problem has only gotten worse. And women obs are actually more inclined to use interventions and to have worse health outcomes. So this is not a, a demonizing of, you know, men in general or of of white people in general, but it's to show how these.
Power dynamics and these beliefs get ingrained in each of us. And so even if we don't fit the traditional category of power, we're still exercising that same problematic system in a, in deep and unconscious ways.
Anne Graham: Yeah, I mean, if you're trained regardless of your, um, gender, [00:46:00] race, religion, politics, if you were trained that the female body is imperfect and gonna blow up on you at any moment, you're gonna practice that way.
And so the arrival of women as obstetrician and even women of color is not changing the dynamic.
Anne Graham: And their training is abusive and so they are just trying to get through and with their own, um, hormones of cortisol as they're learning this [00:47:00] stuff, um, to control. And, um, not to trust the female body. It, it, it embeds it into a cellular level when they go out to practice.
Tamara: I used to conflate, um, doctors and modern medicine with healing and like the ability to heal. And I've since separated those two things in my mind because, just the way that, that the, the medical system is set up seems like it, it prevents healing.
Like it's not set up to value relationship. It's not set up to value time. Um, it's not set up to value the wisdom of each person's body. Technology and medicine can be important. Like if I, if I'm in a car accident, I am, I want to be able to go to a hospital and thank God for the surgeon that that might work on me.
Um, but when it comes to something like childbirth, you know, this is the other thing we don't think about. We, we see it now as necessarily a medical event. But this is, this is like a natural human bodily function actually, and it's a healthy bodily function. Uh, unless there's some, you know, big complication that you're aware of.
But for the majority of people, this is a healthy, natural functioning of the body. And so to create an environment in which that can unfold in the best possible way requires creating an environment of safety. It, it includes, Creating a relationship where you feel seen and supported by the people around you.
Um, like the, [00:49:00] the way that we attend to that just becomes very different rather than seeing it as this medical event that we need to do all the things too, you
Anne Graham: know? Yeah. You can't, um, build an industry and make money off of normal. And, um, I think ACOG is, uh, overshooting when they say only 30% is, uh, science-based. Uh, medicine in general is only 10%. Practice medicine is only 10% science based. Uh, and I would put obstetrics pretty close to that. Um, and that's one of the reasons they have to put forward authority. Um, it's kind of a. An early establishment of medicine in the 19 hundreds when there was talk about, uh, writing down the outcomes to [00:50:00] see if what they were doing would work or not that we're told.
You kind of gotta fake it till you make it. Cuz it really was not until the 1930s with the advent of the sulfa drug that going to a doctor for an illness that they could change the course of that. And people mostly died because of industrialization. Um, but if you were out in the countryside and didn't have those industrial poisons and stuff, your body healed food relationship sunshine.
Tamara: I'm thinking now of like someone who might be listening to this podcast, um, that is going to give birth in a traditional hospital system. Um, do you have any like
tips or practices for, how do you, how can you create an experience for yourself even within this medical industrial model of care that we currently have?
Anne Graham: One of the things you want to make sure is that your partner is on board and you have a doula.
And with that doula you need to make sure that she will run interference for you, that she will help advocate. That is, uh, a contention in the doula community. Do you just offer suggestions and do pain measures? Um, or do you help advocate. And, um, I believe a doula should help advocate in order to give birth.
We have to get into our reptilian brain and just go into other places and coming out of that to tell somebody, no, don't touch me. Don't do this, don't it Interferes with birth. So make sure your doula is there for you and your partner in all aspects and that she has experience with that. Cuz obviously you don't wanna doula that is contentious right out of the gate.
Um, can't say enough about having your own music and, you know, all those things that put you into that place, trying to get those endorphins up so you can get into your reptilian brain and go into, um, and Google that.
We won't go into what the Reptil your brain is, I'm still remembering my first home birth when I just knew that I was in a, in another place that was not that pink 1950s bathtub I was laying in, you know, and it was like, wow, I read about this. This is cool. Um, and put your [00:54:00] boundaries up and if you don't like the nurse you were given, ask for another one.
This is about you. You are not there to take care of any person in that room, but yourself and your baby. And also remember the baby is telling you a whole lot about themselves as they're being born. My, my fifth and final baby that I named after my midwife, um, she was a pound bigger than any of her siblings.
She had a tight, tight cord wrap around her neck and nucle arm giving me the largest diameter she could. And at 28, she's still doing that.
Tamara: I've spoken with so many women who are now other children or adults themselves that, that tell me, you know, the energy and the dynamic of how this child came into the world has played out throughout the course of their whole life.
My, my children are still very young, but I oftentimes think back on my experience giving birth to each of them, how, how different those two experiences were, and then like starting to track that over the course of their life and see like how, what it, what, what my pregnancy, um, experience.
Taught me about each of them, but also like the birth experience, how it taught me to relate to each of them in, in a different way. And you know, my daughter Isla came really fast, so, and she like, continues to keep me on her toes without intense
Anne Graham: sometimes. Yeah. Uh,
Tamara: anything else that you want to mention or want to say that we, that we haven't touched on?
Anne Graham:
Thing that comes to mind is some, another thing my midwife said to me is we talked about how are we gonna change things and, um, the midwives are busy being midwives and the new mothers are being busy, being new mothers. And there's, there's a tendency that once your children get of a certain age, you leave things birthy.
Um, she said it's up to the grandmothers, and that's where [00:57:00] I am now and I'm one of the few that has stayed on for the long haul. Um, I chose not to become a doula or a midwife, although I've done both of those roles. Um,
things in this country have gotten to the point where young mothers need to start showing up and there's, there's some of us grandmothers that will be there to help you do that. I see a, a woman with young children and I'm just naturally going over and helping. And so far I haven't gotten slapped or anything I've gotten.
Oh, thank you. Thank you. Um, we need to. Stop backbiting each other that you didn't choose what I chose. And that's not to say that I see [00:58:00] women choosing things that internally make me cringe, but that is her journey. And I will be here and be an ear when and if she wants to take that journey apart and talk about it.
Um, the institutionalization of midwifery, we used to, we used to go, oh, to be in the uk they have midwives and they're in the hospital system. That's not going well because they have to practice obstetrics. So it's not enough just to get midwives into the system. Um, and because American midwives are late getting into the system, uh, doctors are still, um, Harassing them even as they are licensed.
So kind of went in many, many different directions in that to say that, [00:59:00] um, we gotta start working together. And um, I know when we were lobbying to decriminalize Virginia midwives in the nineties, we had pro-life and pro-choice people working together because we decided to put that to the side because childbirth and women and families autonomy was more important than, um, fighting over an issue that was not before us.
And when we start making community like that where we don't try to figure out why we dislike somebody, instead find out how we can work with somebody. The other issues we'll start folding in because we've built community and we'll figure it out. Yeah. [01:00:00] But we gotta start. Yeah.
Tamara: I think community is the answer to so much of what ails us right now.
Um, D’Anne, thank you so much for being an elder in my life and in our world for having walked the journey that you've walked through birth, um, for holding the story of birth in our country. Not only the story of where we've come from, but also where we're at and where we might go. Um, it's always so fascinating and intriguing and infuriating to listen to you speak.
Um, and I'm so grateful to, to know you and so grateful to have you, um, as an, as an elder in my life. So thank you so much for this conversation today and for all the work that you have done and continue to do in
Anne Graham: this world Old. Well, thank you for choosing to let me be part of you and your family's life.
Um, appreciate it. Beyond words.
Sarita Bennett is a midwife and family practice physician with over 40 years of experience attending births. She was also my midwife for my second birth! In this episode we talk about birth as a sacred experience, overcoming dysfunctional coping mechanisms, listening to our bodies to create a foundation of health, and evolving out of a management model of care towards a birth culture that centers the physiology and autonomy of birthing people.
Connect with Sarita at: https://www.foundationalconcepts4mws.com/
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Ashley Gates Jansen is a non-denominational minister and theatre teacher. In this episode, we talk about grief as a portal into aliveness and connection, what is lost when we exile grief, and the gold at the heart of the grief experience.
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Therese Jornlin is a teacher, healer, and ancient wisdom keeper. In this episode, we talk about birth as an initiation that is meaningful for the entire community, how feeling dissonance is actually a powerful guide into our own power, and how by gathering in community and ceremony we can birth ourselves out of old paradigms into a place of connection and remembrance.
Therese Jornlin: https://www.theresejornlin.org/
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Join me as I introduce myself and share the birth story of this podcast as well as what you can expect from our first season, Conversations with Elders.
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