Unitarian Universalist Sermon on Birth Part 4: The Seven Principles of Unitarian Universalism

Unitarian Universalists do not require conformance to a creed, i.e., there is not one set of beliefs about God and spirituality that we recite each Sunday as something we all believe. Instead, each person is encouraged in a life-long search for spiritual truth. However, there are Seven Principles that we affirm and promote (Source: Unitarian Universalist Association, http://www.uua.org/visitors/6798.shtml). I refer to these principles in my sermon. -Amy Polk

* First Principle: The inherent worth and dignity of every person
* Second Principle: Justice, equity and compassion in human relations
* Third Principle: Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations
* Fourth Principle: A free and responsible search for truth and meaning
* Fifth Principle: The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large
* Sixth Principle: The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all
* Seventh Principle: Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part

Unitarian Universalist Sermon on Birth Part 3: The Story of a Birth

Amy's husband John Robinette gives his perspective on the birth of their second child.

On our way through Silver Spring, up Georgia Avenue and to the beltway, I timed the contractions. They were coming quickly, lasting over a minute, and were intense. This was not, repeat, not a drill. We arrived at the Maternity Center.

It was 10:30 p.m.

The Maternity Center was a midwives practice, in Bethesda, for low-risk pregnancies. The mom gives birth in a regular bed; in a regular bed room. Parents typically spend the night together with the new baby. Not only do Dad's and partners get to spend the entire time with the mom, they are active participants in the various birthing methods taught and supported through the center.

Anne Seifert, our midwife, greeted us and showed us to our room. Amy was having steady, very strong contractions. She didn't want to be touched or moved during a contraction which was now most of the time. Amy was in a good deal of pain. It took a couple minutes to get Amy to the bed. Once in bed, Anne checked Amy's vitals and listened to the baby's heart beat with an external monitor. All were normal.

"You're eight centimeters dilated, Amy,” Anne announced, “this baby is coming soon."

She turned to me.

"I paged the on-call assistant but she won't get here in time. You,” she declared with her figure pointing at my chest, “are going to be my assistant."

I don't remember being nervous. But I also don't remember not being nervous.

"Um, should I wash my hands?"

"It's your germs, your baby and your choice," replied Anne.

Lacking any better ideas, I went to the bathroom to wash my hands.

As I finished, Amy let out a rather forceful groan. Her water broke.

It was 10:45 p.m.

There was meconium in the amniotic fluid. Not much but enough that Anne announced we'd have to suction out the baby's lungs for any fluids. Meconium is a combination of the baby's stool and the amniotic fluid. The first stool usually passes after birth, but sometimes before. But what this means for me, Anne explained, is as the assistant I get to work the suction pump. We'll suction the lungs after the head emerges, but before he is completely birthed, before he takes his first breath. She'd feed the tube down his little nose and tell me when to apply suction. She told me all this as she demonstrated the process. Simple enough.

Events unfolded rapidly. With each contraction Amy would push and plant her right foot on my left thigh. Anne, now playing catcher and coaxing us along, kneeled with her right knee up so Amy could plant her other leg on Anne’s thigh. Playing umpire I was able to position myself above and behind Anne, reach over, and let Amy grab my hands. The real pushing started.

With each contraction Amy would bear down; we'd plant ourselves and Anne would guide us. Between contractions, as Amy would try catching her breath, Anne monitored the baby's heart rate with the portable ultrasound heart monitor. Anne would hold the probe end while I'd turn it on and off. Then another contraction; then we'd do it again.

I don't remember how many times Amy pushed. Four, maybe five times? With each successive push a little more of the baby's head would appear. And between each push we’d monitor the baby’s heart rate. The baby's heart rate had dropped from 150 beats per minute down to the 70-80. As stressful as all this is on us, the stress on the baby passing through the birth canal is tremendous. This is critical time.

A baby gets all nutrients, and oxygen, from the placenta through the umbilical cord. During a contraction, oxygen from the mother to the placenta is temporarily cut off. The baby is essentially holding its breath. The baby is designed for this and between contractions the oxygen flow is restored. With long contractions the first indication that the baby is not getting enough oxygen is a drop in heart rate.

"Amy you are doing great and you need to push that baby out now," Anne firmly but calmly directed. I don't know if the heart rate was getting too low at 70 beats per minute, but clearly no one was interested in prolonging this.

The next contraction came. We were in position. Amy bore down hard and groaned loudly with the push. This was going to have to be it. Bryan's head, coaxed by Anne, slipped through. Now we had to pause quickly to suction the lungs before the next contraction. Had this been my first child, I imagine I'd have been quite distressed. When the baby's head comes out, he isn't breathing yet and the skin color isn't pink. It's gray. It doesn't look so good. But the placenta is still running the show, so no need to panic, but events are moving quickly. I turned on the pump and Anne fed the thin hose through each nostril and instructed me when to apply suction. It all went as Anne described. Then with one final push, Bryan Joseph Robinette was born.

As miraculous and awesome as Adam's birth was, our first child, in some ways Bryan's was more so. I had already seen how Adam had grown in the three years prior and the total joy he brought to our lives. Having this precognition for Bryan's birth elevated the experience to a profound level. In the moment I was overcome. Amy and I held each other, now with a new little creature on her belly, and wept. What an incredible experience.

The time was 11:12 p.m.

-John Robinette

Unitarian Universalist Sermon on Birth Part 2: Meditation in Words

From Spiritual Midwifery by Ina May Gaskin

Every birth is holy. I think that a midwife must be religious because the energy she’s dealing with is holy. She needs to know that other people’s energy is sacred.

Spiritual midwifery recognizes that each and every birth is the birth of the Christ child...

By religious, I mean that compassion must be a way of life for her. Her religion has to come forth in her practice, in the way she makes her day-to-day, her moment-to-moment decisions. It cannot be just theory. Truly caring for other people cannot be a part-time job.

During a birthing, there may be fantastic physical changes that you can’t call anything but miraculous. This daily acquaintance with miracles – not in the sense that it would be devalued by its commonness, but that its sacredness be recognized – has to be a part of the tools of the midwife’s trade. Great changes can be brought about with the passing of a few words between people or by a midwife’s touching a woman or the baby in such a way that great physical changes can happen.

For this touch to carry power that it must, the midwife must keep herself in a state of grace. She has to take spiritual vows just the same as a yogi or a monk or a nun takes inner vows that deal with how they carry out every aspect of their life. A person who lives by a code that is congruent with life in compassion and truth actually keys in and agrees with the millions-of-years-old biological process of childbirth.

Unitarian Universalist Sermon on Birth Part 1: Opening Words

Our Mother’s Body Is the Earth by Mary McAnally
From the anthology The Book of Birth Poetry edited by Charlotte Otten

Our mother’s body is the earth,
her aura is the air, her spirit
is in the middle, round like an egg,
and she contains all good things in herself,
like a honeycomb.
She squats and the rivers flow;
her breasts are the hills,
her nipples the trees.
Her breath scatters leaves
on the shifting sands of her belly,
and her knees roll out caverns and canyons below.
Her menses make the ocean floor shift,
and tidal waves proclaim her pain.
When we, her children, return to her,
in ash or in dust,
her flesh is scarred with accepting us back,
and her intestines growl at our death.
Mountains erupt with her agony
and pour us back into the sea
to hiss and spume her convulsions.

Note: The final word of the poem is actually "orgasm", but I couldn't bring myself to say the word "orgasm" in a church service, even a Unitarian Universalist one. -Amy Polk

APHA Annual Meeting Recap

Seasons of Life Women's Health and Birth Center board member Kandra Strauss Riggs attended the American Public Health Association (APHA) Annual Meeting November 7-11 in Philadelphia and offers her observations.

The American Public Health Association annual meeting is always an uplifting experience for me. Rooms are packed with public health advocates, nurses, students, doctors, educators – all of us with a passion to improve the health and well being of others. At APHA, I feel that I am surrounded by, “my people.” I proudly wore my “Listen to Women” blue button distributed by the American College of Nurse Midwives and had an opportunity to tell many public health advocates about our plans for Seasons of Life – everyone I met was very impressed. Some highlights that can inform our work in establishing Seasons of Life include:

* Meeting Dr. Miriam Labbok who leads the Carolina Breastfeeding Institute at the University of North Carolina – the nation’s only academic institute dedicated to the promotion and research of breastfeeding. They are hosting a conference entitled Breastfeeding and Feminism in March, 2010.

* Learning about a pre-conceptional health promotion program that is helping to improve the infant mortality rates in central Pennsylvania and could be replicated in a more urban setting.

* Hearing about the Text4Baby initiative which is launching in 2010. It is a free texting service that sends pregnant women and new mothers a weekly text health message.

* Amazingly, Georgetown University has a maternal and child health library: http://www.mchlibrary.info/ where we can find all kinds of data to support our work.

I was very proud and happy to distribute information about Seasons of Life at this year’s APHA meeting. Many thanks for the opportunity.

- Kandra Strauss-Riggs, MPH

Perinatal Symposium Recap

On Wednesday, October 7, I attended the Perinatal Symposium (http://www.birthsymposium.com/) at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA. The event is the brainchild of GMU graduate student Jessica Clements and offered an incredible opportunity to engage with nationally known speakers… all for free.

I was privileged to be on a panel with Karen Brody, author of Birth in a discussion moderated by Sheryl Rivett, founder of the birth consumer advocacy group Birth Matters Virginia, which represented consumers in the successful effort to license certified professional midwives (CPMs) in that state. I talked about my journey from a clueless consumer to birth activist, with both my feminist upbringing and my deep fear of needles being contributing factors. I was also fortunate enough to have my mother attend the session, so I could thank her publicly for making sure that I had the most current copy of Our Bodies, Ourselves on my bookshelf when I first got pregnant in 2001. When I read in the Our Bodies, Ourselves Pregnancy and Birth chapter about the cascade of interventions with conventional birth settings and providers, I realized I wanted nothing to do with any of these interventions, if at all possible. That’s what got my husband and me looking at alternatives such as a birth center, the first step on my long journey of birth activism that continues today. My presentation is on the symposium website at http://www.birthsymposium.com/assets/polk.pdf.

During the Q&A session following Karen’s and my presentations, someone in the audience lamented that all too often expectant parents, both men and women, who seek alternative birth settings and providers are shunned as pariahs in their own communities. They cannot go to family, neighbors, co-workers or friends for support of their birth choices. That’s when I mentioned how proud I was of the great work that Birth Options Alliance (http://www.birthoptionsalliance.org/) is doing through its active Yahoo e-mail discussion group and monthly meetings in Takoma Park. When people find their way to BOA, its more than 600 members provide the informative answers, advice when asked, and loving support that expectant parents crave.

Following Karen’s and my session, there was an audience-lead reading of the one-act version of Birth (http://www.boldaction.org/theplay/play.html). I had seen the two-act version of the play in 2006 and knew that it was an extremely powerful work. Following the performance, I chatted with Karen Brody and local director Angela Lauriam about the possibility of staging the two-act version of the play as a fundraiser for the birth center in 2010.

Following the audience-lead reading, there was one great keynote and panel discussion after another. Shel Lyons, president of the Mother’s Rights Network, discussed how birth rights can be seen as a subset of women’s rights and consequently human rights, as enumerated in the United Nations’ Declaration on Human Rights. Anthropologist Robbie Davis-Floyd gave a fascinating keynote presentation on successful midwifery practices that she had observed around the world. Shafia Monroe, founder of the International Center for Traditional Childbearing, talked about the importance of diversity in midwifery providers. J.D. candidate Lisa Pratt gave a history lesson in vaginal birth after caesarian (VBAC) and how a high rate of primary c-sections and restrictive VBAC policies in many hospitals is causing some women to choose “birth on the black market”.

Henci Goer, author of one of the first birth-related books I read during my first pregnancy – The Thinking Women’s Guide to a Better Birth published in 1999 – gave an update on how far we have come since then. When I first read The Thinking Woman’s Guide, I remember that it made me depressed and then angry that so many birth practices not only are non-beneficial and some ever harmful when used routinely, but continue to be widespread despite medical evidence to the contrary. Sadly, Henci Goer’s keynote presentation at the symposium revealed that, not only has progress not been made on many fronts – such as episiotomies (still used in 33% of births as of 2006) – but that things have actually gotten worse on others – such as the ever-rising caesarian sections (used in 31% of births as of 2006).

The daytime portion of the symposium concluded with a roundtable discussion that further explored the ideas raised by Shel Lyons earlier that day: Are women’s rights in birth human rights? And, if so, what can we do to address the threats to these rights? The discussion ended with names being taken and a new effort being formed to work on this important issue.

But the symposium wasn’t all talk, talk, talk. There were showings of the films Laboring under an Illusion and Orgasmic Birth, an exhibition of paintings of birth scenes by symposium organizer Jessica Clements, as well as a performance by my own belly dance troupe Triple Goddess Tribal (http://www.triplegoddesstribal.com/). In our performance, members of Triple Goddess Tribal showed the celestial, silly and sacred sides of birth. In our finale piece, my teacher Maya Taahira and I played the role of midwives as a birthing mother (played by DC area midwife Karen Klauss in her belly dancing debut) undulated through contractions to the tune of “Bascha” by the band Domba from the album Evocation. Earlier, I had given the audience a quick lesson on how to undulate their bellies and encouraged them to stand up and undulate to commiserate with the birthing mother and foil the Evil Eye. The sight of everyone in the theater moving their bellies during our performance moved my teacher Maya to tears. It was a great ending to a great day for me, and hopefully an event that will move birth forward in the DC area.

-Amy Polk

AABC Annual Meeting Recap

I just returned from the American Association of Birth Centers (AABC) Annual Meeting in Savannah, Georgia. It was quite an investment but well worth every penny, as I came home with ideas, connections and inspirations for how to make the birth center a reality. Some highlights:

• I attended the Commission for the Accreditation of Birth Centers’ (CABC) “Preparation for Accreditation” workshop , learning how to apply for CABC’s provisional accreditation so that the Seasons of Life Women’s Health and Birth Center can be accredited from Day 1 of its operation.



• During the opening ceremonies, each of the 150 or so attendees introduced themselves. When I stood up and said I was not a midwife, but “just a mom” who will open a birth center in Takoma Park, MD in 2014, the whole room applauded. I was inspired by these supporters of birth centers who were cheering me on. I was also reminded by many that a mother is never “just a mom”, no matter what her passion or profession.



• I got a great suggestion on how to obtain recent safety data on birth centers, in absence of an updated National Birth Center Study. (The most recent national study was conducted 20 years ago!) Ann Sober of Special Beginnings in Arnold, Maryland said that I could obtain data on infant mortality, maternal mortality and birth location from the Maryland Vital Records Office and crunch the numbers myself. It took a journey of 600 miles to get this great suggestion from Ann, who is only 30 miles away near Annapolis. Go figure.



• I talked with a representative from the Centering Healthcare Institute and learned that the company is developing a Centering Menopause program. This could be the way to “do for menopause what we did for birth” by offering humanistic care of this natural life transition, supplemented by medical intervention when warranted.



• I talked with Farah Diaz-Tello from the National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW) about an issue that is near and dear to my heart: birth options as a women’s rights issue. The NAPW has achieved the seemingly impossible: getting conservative pro-life activists to join forces with pro-choice feminists to advocate for birth options.



• I talked with Susan Hodges, president of Citizens for Midwifery, the only other “just a mom” in this sea of midwives and other birth professionals. Susan gave me a lot of useful advice about how to identify and join forces with other birth consumer advocacy groups, such as regional Birth Networks.



• I toured the Family Health and Birth Center in Savannah, Georgia’s only birth center. Business is booming there, with people driving from up to two hours away just to give birth at the center. There were even two clients in labor while we were taking our tour.



• I watched two great DVDs on the train ride home: Laboring under an Illusion and Orgasmic Birth, making interesting viewing for the people in the seats behind me who could see my laptop. This lead to some interesting discussions with people from very different walks of life.



• The personal highlight of the trip may have been when I ordered a beer at a Savannah restaurant and was asked for my ID! The thought that I could be mistaken for a 20-year-old trying to scam a beer made this 41-year-old “just a mom” very happy.

-Amy Polk