Wild Embers

“We are the descendants
of the wild women you forgot
We are the stories you thought
would never be taught.

They should have checked the ashes
of the women they burned alive.
Because it takes a single wild ember
to bring a whole wildfire to life.”

― Nikita Gill

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The ability to birth calmly and confidently is instinctively within us, birth is both primal and intuitive; it is something our body is designed to do and if we just allow it to do what it needs to do, it actually does it really well.

 

Sadly maternity care has become very heavily medicalised over the last 50 or so years and everyone seems to be having additional scans or tests during their pregnancy which makes it really hard to trust our body to do what it's so very capable of.

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Neither of my pregnancies have been very straight forward, I grow smaller babies than the computer thinks I should which sends the Dr's in to a spin and leads to a shit load of (unnescessary) monitoring, threats of induction, episodes of raised blood pressure all so that the consultants can tick their "healthy baby" box - but it's so important to remember there's so much more to pregnancy and birth than just a healthy baby. We need birthers and birth partners who trust in their bodies, their babies and feel empowered to confidently grow and birth their baby in their own time - not to a certain gestation as suggested by the RCOG's or NICE guidelines and not within a certain time frame as dictated by the Dr on shift. So that the birth experience results in happy, healthy and confident families.

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My dream is that we reach a point in my lifetime where people don't need to pay for antenatal classes to learn what their bodies are capable of - that we ignite those embers of the wild women who birthed in communities, led only by experienced women who regularly attended births. We are the wildfire. We need to bring calm, confident and empowered birthing back to life.