The walking numb - birth, abduction, war. The body knows the truth

Another tapestry of a post weaving together recent headlines (baby abductions and Iraq), obstetrics (illogic, poor science and politics) and consciousness (of the human baby and body emotions) to stir and confront the masses. The goal? To be a thoughtful rabblerouser and Edgewalker to nudge consumers, obstetrics, and society towards thinking about the edges, to get unnumbed, feel the truth in their bodies, and to open to awareness of how amazingly aware the human baby is. And, I nudge society to embrace the challenge that "drug prevention", "ending war (peace)", and "saving the family" is about switching our focus from the symptoms to the roots --- to creating harmony, safety, nurturing health, and wellness in the primal period, INCLUDING labor and birth.

Headlines this weekend report that the baby stolen from a Lubbick, TX hospital was found safe in New Mexico and a twenty-one year woman has been arrested. "What an evil women, that poor mother and baby," echoes through the masses. I was answering an email from a woman in the UK earlier and doing some research for resources for her. I was reading the Baby Friendly Initiative site and a few other similar ones. None of these mainstream, highly funded organizations for preventing, treating, and caring for newborns, infants, and children, even acknowledge the sentience of the laboring and birthing baby and so don't acknowledge this period of time in the hospital as critical to the emotional and psychological well-being of the human.

I had a familiar feeling come over me --- wondering how this baby is experiencing this and what is the long term consequences to her and her mother and family? We know logically and scientifically that the mother's body has regulated her baby's body for nearly ten months throughout development and that her body is required to continue to regulate her baby's body and systems in transition to independence. Science can obtain images of the energy from the human heart. You might say science has proven mother and baby are connected with "heart strings". The mother's heart seems to be in such connection with her baby's that it seems to be an unrecognized fact that the mother's heart continues to regulate her baby's during transition in infancy. Isn't the mother's heart probably "breaking" when she was missing her baby, and what about the baby. How does the "mainstream" medical care and psychology approach this? Drugs and talk.

As I wondered about and prayed for this baby and her mama, and how there will be so little real support to heal from the trauma -- frozen in their bodies, I went where I often do --- how can a society believe that a baby that experiences such a trauma can not see that tevery baby experiences everything? What is with this "blackout" of logic during labor and birth so that we believe that a baby separated from her mother for an day, three days, or just thirteen hours, but in a hospital is ok? What makes it ok? The baby's brain is so undeveloped that s/he doesn't remember labor and birth and so whatever medical intervention is needed and however it is delivered is benign? And, being done without warning from a stranger -- harsh and rough handling and painful interventions -- has no effect on the baby? The mother is treated as if there is little impact to her? Or, is the baby able to differentiate that the medical caregiver and the pains, separation, bright lights is "safe"? So, which is it?

On another blog, Lee Passman:

At least with homebirth you don't have to worry about your baby being stolen! I and gave a link to the story of this recent hospital abduction.

What is wrong with humanity that the human baby is treated with such disregard in the hospital that truly is not very different from how the abducted baby is treated? Perhaps, knowing the baby is in the care of the nursing staff and being cared for medically is a factor that buffers the mother's inner craziness at being separated and usually she is drugged. But, what about the baby?? WHERE IS THE LOGIC?? That the baby -- who our society denies as a fully present human --- is NOT harmed by virtually the same experience with nursing staff as it would experience with a woman who abducted her from the hospital? The blob of a human who doesn't remember birth and treatment with obstetric staff is able to differentiate between medical-stranger(S) and a stranger-stranger? So this particular baby WILL be effected by the "abduction" by a stranger, but babies "separated" for days in the hospital are not? Riiiiight. Seriously, so what is the big deal? The abducted baby won't remember being separated from mom for two days and what happened in the care of a stranger (who probably gave her much more loving care than when separated from mother in hospital). Obstetrics tells us so. And the woman is evil and goes to prision.

Why is the human baby not seen as feeling and remembering in every situation? Most people will feel horror at what has happened to this baby this week, AND they BELIEVE that the baby will be affected by it. WHY!?! Because it was extreme and impossible to deny. HOW does a baby "remember" selectively? OR, just what adults are willing to believe because it is extreme? When people, like Amy Tuteur, an obstetrician (and all physicians and nurses) who has spent years with birthing babies, don't get it, don't see it -- that the newborn, is fully present human being, who can? They don't because they are trained, conditioned, and numbed after seeing the traumatic births they create so many times. Consumers can begin to get it -- but how to protect their baby in a system where one is powerless? Isn't this one of the main reasons for birthing at home?

I think about this often --- this collective denial of the importance of giving the human newborn the most loving, quiet, peaceful experience of coming into this world. I see the human newborn as a sacred being who is just coming into human form. Birth is a sacred, intimate, profound experience for the soul in this new body -- and sometimes, the soul needs some help and sometimes the body needs some help from medically trained people. I never advocate for eliminating obstetric health care. I advocate for the appropriate and wise us of technology and drugs and to train and support doctors and nurses to stay in their bodies and skins --- so they can deliver heartfelt, aware, and safe care that nonors the sacredness of the soul coming in and respects the intimacy of the mother and mother. And, makes makes birth safe and honors themselves.

I always had these awareness for myself and I believe this why the actual violations of my birth and my son's birth lead me to here in a culture that denies it. I did have four hospital births, and the first one was gruesome. All were disrupted terribly by being in the hospital and having to resist constant requests to take drugs, EXCEPT for the second one. My daughter was born in a Dutch settlement, Pella, Iowa in 1977 and the physician was Dutch. It was in healing my own birth and the births of my children that I began to see and honor the human being as sacred, not just in theory, but in living. I always felt like my children were souls who came through me for their own purposes, and that I never did "own" them. It wasn't much of a leap for me then to see that the human being with a soul deserves the same respect during labor and birth.

Since witnessing births from this new awareness of the human newborn, I have witnessed several births varying from a quiet homebirth to natural birth in the hospital, to cesarean birth. I have been in the surgical suite and witnessed the baby's birth. Witnessing the birth -- for the baby -- is what I do when I support a mother and father in labor and birth.

I am reminded this morning of those truly horrific births, such as the one that made world-wide headlines just over two years ago. It happened in a little town not far from my parent's community in northeast Missouri:

Baby cut from slain mother's womb

This house in Skidmore where Bobbi Jo Stinnett, 23, an eight-months-pregnant woman, was found slain.
US authorities arrested a woman they allege came to the home of an eight-months-pregnant woman - purportedly to buy a dog - then strangled her and cut the baby from her womb.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/dec2004/kill-d21.shtml
___________________________________________________________________

Skidmore, Missouri: woman carves fetus from a mother’s womb
A brutal act in a desperate society
http://www.theage.com.au/news/World/Baby-cut-from-slain-mothers-womb/2004/12/18/1103312767588.html
___________________________________________________________________

Baby cut from womb 'found alive'

Stinnett was pronounced dead at hospital. US police believe they have found alive a baby girl who was taken from her murdered mother's womb. Eight-months pregnant Bobbi Jo Stinnett was found strangled in her Missouri home on Thursday. Her unborn child had been cut from her womb.

___________________________________________________________________

Couple proudly displayed infant cut from mother's womb
December 19, 2004

Foetus stolen from the womb
An American woman charged with killing an expectant mother and cutting the baby from her womb was showing the child off to people at a cafe and to her pastor hours before she was arrested.

Lisa Montgomery, 36, was charged with kidnapping resulting in murder and was expected to appear in court on Monday.

The baby, whose mother had been eight months' pregnant, was in good condition.

Hours before her arrest, Montgomery and her husband showed off a newborn girl at a restaurant, said Kathy Sage, owner of the Whistle Stop Cafe.

Many customers were surprised to hear the infant was only a day old, Sage said. She knew an amber alert had been issued for a baby missing from Missouri but did not realise the connection until hearing from a reporter on Friday.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4106765.stm
___________________________________________________________________
Woman charged over baby cut from womb

US authorities have charged a woman with murder and kidnapping after an infant girl cut from her dead mother's womb was found alive at the woman's home.

"This is a heart-rending case," Mr Graves said.

The baby was found alive in Montgomery's home just 24 hours after the mutilated body of 23-year-old Bobbie Jo Stinnett was found in Stinnett's Missouri home.

The killer had strangled and sliced open Stinnett, who was eight months pregnant, and removed her unborn child.

BABY UNHARMED

The baby girl, later identified as Stinnett's, was found alive and Sheriff Espey said she "appears to be fine".

"We have no indications that the child was hurt in any way," he said. "The child is in the hospital being checked out by pediatricians."

"The girl was in pretty good shape, considering what she had been through," added FBI spokesman Jeff Lanza.
She has since been re-united with her father, Zebulon Stinnett.

___________________________________________________________________

Ok, this is not the point of this post, but I can't let it go by --- here's that statement that really annoys me: "Sheriff Espey said she "appears to be fine."

The community and country was SHOCKED. No one who heard of it was "fine". This tendency to assess babies who have been through an experience that is horrific or just a traumatic one (cesarean in the hospital, for example) is not fine. Hey, maybe it is one of the points. This happens all the time when I sit down to write about a topic -- as I do so, other threads begin to weave into (and so, they are often longer than I plan as well.)
The point I want to make is that our society is one that is numbed (from decades of using drugs in labor and birth and every other painful moment and situation) and, as a society, we are individually and collectively in shock most of the time. We are particularly shocked when we hear of a gruesome, unthinkable act such as the one above -- a stranger, a woman, entering another woman's home, strangling her, and then cutting her open to steal the 8 month old fetus. This baby is not the first to experience her entry into this world that way but she is one of the few to survive it. It tells us of the resiliency of the human being to survive. Osteopathic medicine and craniosacral based on it, is based on the belief that the human being is made to survive, thrive, to heal and restore itself.

Traditional, American obstetric medicine creates humans who lose something in their perspective of what a human baby needs and who this human really is. Obstetrics does not truly consider the human baby as a fully present human being that feels everything. They "teach" us to do the same. I am SO TIRED of seeing adults get in a baby's face, tickle, touch, and poke at them without permission from the baby or parents to touch them. Somehow, I am trying to get to the point of obstetric caregivers --- doctors and nurses --- who day in and day out, see the human baby as a product, an object, but not a fully present, sentient, aware, feeling, remembering emotional being who needs nothing but to be in constant contact with the only God-Source it has known -- mama are not bad people, they are poorly educated people. They are highly educated in medical technology, but not in CONSCIOUSNESS, MINDFULNESS, AWARENESS of the enormity of what they do the human being WHILE SAVING his or her life. They themselves are indoctrinated into being shocked and numb caregivers who no longer see the screams, clenched fists, and writhing away as a human in pain. They deny that this human remembers this treatment. But will at the hands of an "non-medically trained" human. It's crazy making.

Medical caregivers in every discipline get numb and immune to the effects of their actions upon the other human being. Nowhere is this more tragic than in obstetrics and pediatrics. Shock and numb serve a purpose -- sometimes the life-saving technology is gruesome (i.e., cutting through the abdomen to retrieve a baby). I haven't seen enough to not "feel it" myself, but the surgeons and assistants have to get to the point where they don't feel it in order to do it day after day. I went into a degree of shock watching Baghdad ER the other night -- who wouldn't, but especially since my son is in Iraq. I thought of what it must take for these medical caregivers there to care for our mangled and maimed, and bloody soldiers every day. I cried through some of it, but had to "hold it in" as I was in front row and in a group of physicians and therapists at a professional conference. I was there as a military parent. Crying was acceptable. Several times the urge to just release the emotional pain as I know to do --- through sound and movement and touch. After it was over I did begin to shake -- a sign of shock and releasing it. I did some EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques) through the banquet when we were honoring a local soldier who was shot in the head and he has made a miraculous recovery. I taught another woman, wife of a soldier, to do it. It works to settle the emotional feeling but does not block it as talk, interventions, and drugs do. Most of society goes around "holding in" their fear, anger, and joy and peace as well. Shutting down, shuts down the ability to feel and express emotion.

Have you ever had a physician or psychologist recommend, refer, or show you how to deal with the deepest of emotions? Do you EVER see anyone do that --- work on their meridian system or solar plexus or deep breath to get through an emotional situation, let them self shake and shiver while dealing with the trauma??? Hardly ever --- it's not mainstream. It's denied by negatively dismissing it as "alternative" or "new age" or "not scientific" -- all of which mean very little, truly.

I did my Visceral Manipulation (releasing emotional tension and memory from the organs) the week after September 9/11. I had flown to Phoenix (on a very empty plane). As the practitioner working on a partner, I was not finding what the teacher was describing. I called her over and said so. She stopped the practicum and said that she was finding this with all of us. She then skipped ahead in the curriculum agenda to a technique of releasing the sphincter in our solar plexus, where the diaphragm is. Or in lay terms, the "gut". This sphincter connects the heart and stomach. She said that whenever we take in shocking information it first comes in through the diaphragm. This is why people, especially women, cross their arms over this area when they are upset, scared, shocked, being confronted, etc. They are protecting themselves. Tension and emotions held in the heart and stomach are related to the sphincter and diaphragm. She was theorizing that because we had all just experienced this horrific event in our country that our visceral systems in this classroom were all off because of this. She taught us the cardiac sphincter release. I volunteered to be the demo for her. And, it was a huge release. It helped our entire visceral systems to be able to reorganize and after that, we were all able to proceed with learning the structural and emotional releasing of the other organs.

In stressful and emotional situations we have a tendency to freeze and "hold our breath". Our visceral organs where I believe is where our emotions are held or stored. Our language reflects this. Our feelings and emotions are not in our head or brain. The brain processes feelings and tries to assign words to express what the body is feeling. It is often very inadequate and takes us on long, windy rationalizations and denials that focus on others and being done to. Our feelings are expressed in visceral language when we are FEELING a pure emotion without the interference of words and constructs and social context.

"It broke my heart."
"The gall of him."
"I was so pissed off."
"He's got balls."
"She makes me sick to my stomach."
"He's such a dick."
"It knocked the wind out of me."
"She took my breath away."
"I hate her."
"I love you."

Traditional talk therapy takes one OUT of the EMOTIONAL STATE IN THE BODY and back into the head to TRY to process the emotion and make sense of it. Once one goes to the head for explanation, we are getting into defenses, rationalizations, justifications, and indoctrinations from our childhood and social conditioning. It is a travesty really. This is done to children all the time. A toddler is crying, using their body to communicate and the adult's reaction is to stop the behavior and ask questions, "Do you this?" and "Do you want that?" and, way often, the adult assigns what THEIR head thinks to the child's behavior. And, so often it is incorrect. Adults do that to their partners and peers a lot too. This communication begins with the newborn baby.

Therapists , social workers, and psychologists ask their clients ad naseum, "And, how do you feel about that?" We learn the art of "open-ended" questions to elicit more talk, more descriptions, more narrative --- all cognitive. Words will sometimes touch an emotional place and where is it felt? IN THE BODY. The client's response, "I am pissed" or "I am heartbroken" is not enough for the professional. Psychology requires word and thinking -- they use words to elicit more words that usually takes the person away from the rawness, especially if the therapist is not comfortable with emotions at that level. What people need in that moment is the time and space to just feel that feeling in the body, not to have to explain it, find the cause, or solve it so it goes away. They need to EXPERIENCE it, not talk about it.

CranioSacral therapy and Peter Levine's, Waking the Tiger, and his sensory trauma healing work are integral parts of the prenatal and birth healing work that allow access to the earliest memories that are pre-verbal, when we were very sensory learning beings, learning language to put to the emotions as we grew. Our preverbal, sensory, emotional experiences are stored in the body. It's why you yourself do this and why others do this in relationship with you, whether child or adult --- we/you/they over-react to something and do not have the ability to put words to it to make sense -- feelings of fear, abandonment, loss more often. No matter how much we learn in psycho-babble terms to change a troublesome pattern or behavior, the situation keeps coming up. Talk therapy takes one to a point but can not address these really deep and painful patterns we can't seem to break. It's because they are from the preverbal, sensory period of life and not recognizing them fuels them and strengthens them. They are our defenses and survival mechanisms. This is the reason that ANYONE --- doctors, nurses, midwives, doulas in particular -- who has anything to do with caring for gestating, laboring and birthing women needs to heal their own prenatal and birth experiences.

Soooooo, when one's wife, daughter, sister, best friend, neighbor, or fellow human is murdered and her baby is cut from her and stolen, we "get it." We feel it. We don't have words for the emotions. Wow, I bet the baby remembers that, eh? How ever will she be ok? Why do we "get it" only in extreme experiences of human living but deny the very similar experiences that happen in obstetric birth? "Of course he is violent, don't you know he was conceived when his mother was raped?" "He is a little weird -- I wonder if it has to do with being born two months premature when his town was being bombed and his mother's milk dried up and he was nursed by another woman." Yet, very few people think, "wow, I wonder if his terror of baths has to do with the nurse holding him under running water within the first minutes of his life?" Well, that's different and not violent. That was done in the hospital with a qualified and highly trained Registered Nurse. "My baby was separated from me to taken to a NICU in another city after the cord prolapsed when they ruptured the membranes and we lost his heart tones and had an emergency cesarean." What f---king craziness in this society that the baby DOES NOT remember this and so none of us should be alarmed or concerned for this mother and baby, and no systemized protocal of care is provided for her? And, she shall be denigrated and called melodramatic if she has emotional issues about it. But when a baby is abducted by a stranger for two or three days that is clearly violating to the baby and mother.

How's come we only see the worst of these traumatic situations that the birthing baby experiences -- ONLY OUTSIDE of HOSPITALS -- as effecting the gestating, laboring, and birthing baby? Being cut out of the mother's belly, a mother who did not want any drugs or interventions, whose membranes were ruptured without her permssion or against her will (because of the doctor's schedule) and the cord prolapses and fetal heart tones go done and so she is whisked away to have an emergency cesarean against her deepest wishes, how does not effect the baby? Oh, sure, of course, the tragedy I share here is not the same degree. Of course. But, when we are talking about the research that shows that interventions lead to surgical birth, AND so women who prepare for natural birth and wish to avoid surgerical birth must go to the hospital for their birth because there is no legal alternative. THERE IS NO MIDDLE GROUND between obstetric-litigation driven care and midwifery care/homebirth. Women have been forced into the protocols of the hospital that lead to surgical birth and they are cared for by medical caregivers who, 1) are not educated in normal, natural birth; 2) must do what preserves the policies, procedures, and protocols of the hospital and individual attendings; and 3) they must shut down what they see and feel in order to do it day after day. It is so systemized and legitimized that doctors and women now belief it is normal and women are seduced into believing that they have "maternal choices" in the system.

And, my biggest question with this story of the murdered mother and abducted newborn and the body-mind connection, is when we KNOW that the negative, painful, stressful, invasive situations AFFECST every human being and we know that the little girl who experienced this will likely have life long issues, WHY, as a society do we not consider that the opposite is true as well. Why does society continue support the collective, numb belief that birth is a "medical crisis waiting to happen" and that because a small number of women and babies actually do need medical intervention, that it justifies a system that insists that ALL WOMEN AND BABIES be cared for in this way. Loving, gentle, quiet, empowered birth, with no strangers, with only parents handling the baby will create the same sort of person. Loving, gentle, harmonious, empowered. Why is obstetrics so opposed to that concept?

Why is obstetrics ALLOWED by society --- consumser, women, insurance companies, psychologists, legislators, state government --- to assume the "worst case scenario" for the healthy birthing woman and baby AND MEDICALLY treat them as such, knowingly causing far more damage? I am FEELING this -- in my gut and heart. Everyday I have less respect for those who work in and perpetuate the obstetric medical system and yet I know that they do not know how to resolve their shock and trauma in order to be present with a pregnant woman and to trust physiology, to trust HER physiology. Nor do they know how support her so they keep doing the same thing over and over again. It pays off the student loans.

If orthopedics worked like obstetrics my GI Joe wouldn't even be in Iraq. His arm would have been amputated rather than doing surgery to fix his compound humerus fracture at age six. Amputation was unthinkable at the time. And, here he is, in a place and time and at higher risk even for that very thing. Part of his tricep is missing and his arm is mis-shappened and I always secretly hoped it would prevent him from passing the military physical (he morphed from a shy boy to adding GI to his name in kindergarten). What we thought was a tragedy to prevent then (amputation) could have prevented what is now my biggest tragedy as a mother. The orthepedic surgeon told us that bicycles keep him and neurosurgeons in business. Sadly, pregnancy is moving towards keeping obstetricians (surgeons) in business. Why is midwifery legally banned but bicycles, motorcyles, and skateboards are not? If birth is so dangerous why is it so freely allowed? If birth and bicycles are that dangerous to humans, we should prohibit both. See, if I'd never given birth to him he would never have ridden a bicycle, and I would not have spent last night grieving yet one more bucket of tears. Seriously, the point is, that I have been working on all week, is that THOUGHTLESS, UNAWARE, DISRUPTIVE, DISREGARDING, MIUSED obstetric medical care HARMS women and babies, AND, this IS the SOURCE of MOTHER'S GUILT and SHAME. How women are treated in birth (whether perpetrated by a professional, layperson, or stranger) affects them for life. We now are experiencing the result of generations of violating women and babies under the influence of numbing drugs. Medical technology is a miracle and saves lives but is dangerous when misused, as in birth.