Birth Through Four Generations

by Kara Spencer, LMT, CD, Maia Healing Arts

100 years ago, my great-grandmother lived on her rural Canadian farm, where she birthed 16 children at home, including three sets of twins, managed the family and the livestock, and was a lay midwife to her family and neighbors. They traveled by horse-drawn sleigh or cart. When my great-grandmother was in labor with the last of her children, she arose at 5 am, went out to the barn, milked 30 cows, and returned to the house to give birth unassisted to twins by 9am. Those twins were a boy and a girl, the girl was my grandmother.

Three generations of the family immigrated to Maine when my grandmother was 5. She still lives there today, over 90 years old, in the same house she has lived in for over 65 years. When she gave birth to my mother in the 1940’s, she was alone at the hospital and anesthetized with 'twilight sleep'. She did not know that she was having twins until my mother and aunt were born. When she returned home with her babes in arms, she experienced severe hemorrhage, and her sisters took the newborn twin girls to different homes for a few weeks, while my grandmother recuperated.

My mother gave birth three times in a hospital in New Hampshire. The hospital’s protocol in the 60’s and 70’s was for every laboring woman to receive an epidural and for the babies to be taken to the nursery after the birth. I am the youngest of my siblings, and by the time my mother gave birth to me, she began to trust her intuition and wanted a more compassionate birth experience.

When my mother was in labor with me, she waited until she was in active labor to travel from her house to the hospital. By the time she arrived at the labor ward, she was pushing. She had a completely natural birth, quite surprising the nurses and doctors. After I was born, my mother held me in her arms and would not let me go to the nursery with the nurse. She lied to the nurse and said that the doctor had given her permission to keep me in her room. Disbelieving, the nurse went to go confirm this information with the doctor, and left me in my mother’s arms.

My mother took advantage of this privacy to nurse me for the first time, until I contentedly fell asleep. When the nurse returned a little bit later to say that the doctor had not confirmed the rooming-in and she had to take me to nursery, my mother handed me to the nurse knowing that I was sated and asleep. 

When I was pregnant with my son in 1999, I was able to make informed decisions regarding my birth choices. My son was born at home, in the dawn of the new millennium, with two licensed homebirth midwives in attendance. He was the first family member to be born at home in 85 years, the first since his great-grandma was born on the farm in Quebec. Giving birth at home was the most wonderful experience: peaceful, ecstatic, and profoundly life-changing.

Comments

[Dylan Emrys, M.A.]

What a beautiful account of your family history. You've brought healing to the births of your mother and grandmother, as your mother did for you...for healing also takes place on the energetic level, and can travel forward and backward in time...

Thank you for sharing your story.

[Birth Ecology Project]

Thanks Dylan! I believe that too, that there is great healing potential through birth, to heal ourselves, and energetically shift the past, present, and future. Birth is an energetic nexus point, and the way that birth energy is facilitated has rippling effects physically, emotional, spiritually, and universally.

Becoming a mother also helped me to understand and have a greater perspective on the women who came before me in my bloodline. I am so grateful for the choices, information, and support that I have today.

-Kara