Embodying the Sacred: A Spiritual Preparation for Birth

By Peg Conway

Peg Conway's Embodying the Sacred connects the physiological processes of pregnancy and birth to Catholic-inspired practices in an intelligent, empowering way. Prayers and rituals are organized around the three trimesters of pregnancy, inviting women to assemble a "spiritual birth bag" to go along with the physical birth bag found in other forms of birth preparation. Writing and drawing prompts are included to encourage reflection during this miraculous time. Creative and introspective activities such as bread baking, knitting, swimming, and walking a labyrinth allow women to truly inhabit and celebrate their bodies during their own nine-month journeys. All of the reflections, prayers, and activities are easily adaptable for busy or not-so-busy lives, so that each person can do what makes the most sense to her each step of the way. A postpartum ritual for telling birth stories is also included. The book concludes with a brief overview of the ways that attitudes and practices regarding birth have changed over time in America.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Peg Conway
• Release date: Sep 16, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301960668

Peg Conway

Peg Conway earned a master’s in journalism and worked in corporate communication before focusing on raising her family. Now she writes and practices energy healing in Cincinnati, OH, where she also volunteers at a children’s grief center. Her essays about early mother loss and long-term grieving have appeared at The Manifest-Station, the Cincinnati Enquirer, and The Mighty. Peg and her husband have three grown children and one grandchild.

Book preview

Embodying the Sacred:

A Spiritual Preparation for Birth

By Peg Conway

Copyright 2012 Margaret M. Conway

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, please contact Peg Conway at http://pegconway.com/.

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This book is also available in print at most online retailers.

Cover art by Klocke Design

Scripture excerpts taken from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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Table of Contents

Introduction

Landscape of Birth

How to Use this Book

Materials Needed

Responding to Prompts

Chapter 1 – Your Spiritual Birth Bag

Intuition

Body Theology

The Maternal Cycle

Prayer

Symbols

Mothers, Sisters and Saints

Creative Expression

Chapter 2 – First Trimester

Order of Prayer

Image of God – Creator and Creation

Activities

Darkness and Light

Containers, Bowls and Vessels

Personal Altar

Mothers, Sisters and Saints

Labyrinth Walk

Chapter 3 – Second Trimester

Order of Prayer

Image of God – Companion

Activities

Bread Baking

Textile Arts – Knitting

Singing

Mothers, Sisters and Saints

Labyrinth Walk

Chapter 4 – Third Trimester

Order of Prayer

Image of God – Spirit

Activities

Gardens and Growing

Textile Arts – Birth Garment

Swimming

Mothers, Sisters and Saints

Labyrinth Walk

Chapter 5 – Labor

Blessings

Psalm for Labor

Psalm for Birth Companions

Chapter 6 – After-Words: Telling Your Birth Story

Holiness of Birth

Composing Your Story

Ritual of Return

Chapter 7 – A Broader Landscape

Midwifery and Medicine

Witch Hunts

Early American Birth Customs

Man-Midwives and Obstetricians

Childbed Fever

Drugs for Pain Relief

Modern Midwifery

Hospital Birth

20th Century and Beyond

Bibliography

Endnotes

Acknowledgments

Author Biography

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Introduction

Whether you are expecting your first child or your fourth, each pregnancy is a journey to a new place and requires travel through a varied landscape. Childbirth has many facets – physical, emotional, financial, medical, and spiritual – that may compete for your attention and effort. While a wealth of information is available to you about preparing for birth, this book offers a different focus. It invites you to a more integrated approach to birth by drawing on the resources of the Catholic tradition as part of your preparation.

First, you will find an introduction to the book and how to use it along with a description of materials you will need. Next, in the second chapter, you will discover a new paradigm for the custom of packing items for the hospital or other birth setting through suggested contents for a spiritual birth bag. In the following three chapters, each trimester gets its own focus, developing more concretely the assortment of concepts and practices that comprise the spiritual birth bag and including activities for you. You will also consider an approach to labor itself and learn a framework for telling birth stories. The book concludes with a narrative on the history of birth in America which invites further reflection on the intersection of birth and faith.

Landscape of Birth

A faith-based perspective on birth preparation encompasses the spiritual and emotional aspects of giving birth that have been diminished in importance over the past two centuries. For many generations, Americans have understood childbirth almost exclusively as a medical event, and 99 percent of U.S. births take place in a hospital. Prior to the 19th century, birth was exclusively a home-based women's communal event. The laboring woman was attended to at home by the local midwife and neighbors, and their support extended to household tasks and care of older children for a period of weeks. As the role of medical doctors emerged, women were drawn to this form of practice and later to hospital birth by its perceived greater safety and reduced pain, which led to a more narrow focus of care. Personal support gave way to clinical protocol.

The divided roles of midwife and physician that emerged in the 1800s continue in the 21st century and create tensions around what is appropriate care at birth, who should provide this care and where birth should take place. Although safety concerns have been a consistent theme of birth history, how to achieve safe birth has been a subject for much debate even as new procedures and medications were adopted out of belief in their positive effects. Today, research demonstrates that typical hospital practices contribute to unfavorable outcomes, but the legal system upholds those who follow the standard, even if it's not supported by evidence.¹ These dynamics only add complexity to women's lives as we approach this powerful rite of passage to motherhood. A more holistic appreciation of birth has grown in recent decades, but like a limb that atrophies from lack of use, our ability to truly articulate the spirituality of birth remains undeveloped.

Ironically on my own journey, I began trying to connect childbirth with my Catholic faith after visiting a hospice for the first time. My husband, Joe, and I had gone to see his aunt, who was dying of cancer. We felt a bit apprehensive on the way over, but the warmth and kindness of the nurse at the reception desk calmed our anxieties. When we named the person we wished to see, her face lit with recognition; then, in an affectionate voice and with a knowing smile, she said, I've got her out here where I can keep an eye on her. She's got this idea that she wants to get up and walk around.

Sure enough, though extremely thin and frail, Aunt Jeanne sat smiling nearby in a vinyl recliner. We followed as the nurse wheeled her back to her room, which was full of family photos and drawings and nearly devoid of medical paraphernalia. Departing, the nurse winked and said, She might be a little out of it. She's just had her pain medication and her martini. We marveled that personal preferences like a daily cocktail could be part of her last days! In spite of our sadness at Aunt Jeanne's death three days later, a blessed feeling remained from that hospice visit.

Later I commented to Joe how the hospice reminded me of the midwives who attended us for the births of our children. The two rather opposite settings actually share several characteristics. Both offer individualized care to the patient and provide support to family members. The life process underway is perceived as normal, and the emotional and spiritual aspects of the experience are recognized. With this analogy in mind, I began to wonder why death and dying are deeply probed theologically, but giving birth is rarely explored from that perspective.

For me, giving birth was transformative at a profound level, and I continue to appreciate the power of those experiences even though all three of our children are now young adults. Like a stream running alongside my journey of motherhood, active participation in the Catholic Church represents another defining influence in my adult life. But the only real link between giving birth and my practice of the Catholic faith was having our babies baptized. Looking back over a lifetime of Catholic education, including four years at a girls' high school and twelve credit hours of theology at a Jesuit university, I don't recall ever considering childbirth at all.

The Christian tradition in general offers few obvious resources for a body-centered spirituality for birth, perhaps because it has not given theological significance to female body processes and often seems to value the spiritual over the physical. Probably the best-known view of labor and birth from our religious heritage is found in chapter three of the book of Genesis: To the woman he said, 'I will greatly increase your pangs in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children.' (NRSV Gen. 3:16) Birth pain becomes God's punishment for all women because of Eve's actions.

Of course the New Testament does include a birth story, or at least the occurrence of a very important birth with few actual details. Was it a long labor? Did anyone besides Joseph assist Mary? Did she birth in an upright posture or lying down? How did she react to seeing her son for the first time? We don't know, and my own Catholic tradition tends to fill these gaps in ways that repress the religious significance of birth's physicality. For example, the belief in Mary's perpetual virginity, which teaches that the momentous power of childbirth had no impact on her body, may make it harder to view her as a role model for the act of birthing. And typical Nativity sets, which show Mary and Joseph kneeling beside the manger, present a stylized, unrealistic scene. Immediately after giving birth, women are tired, bleeding, and likely to be lying down with the baby, perhaps nursing. The spiritual significance of the pain and effort Mary and all women go through in birth has yet to be fully recognized.

My hospice awakening occurred more than fifteen years ago. In that time, I've been a childbirth educator, occasionally accompanied other women at birth as a supportive companion (called a doula), and continued as