Kindness and sharing knowledge

Denise was approached by a midwife and asked if she can come to Cambodia to teach the midwives kindness.

This moved my heart.

I feel as though it is an obvious statement to make that women deserve to be treated with kindness and respect during their pregnancy, birth and mothering days.My own experience of having my first born child in a hospital was that the staff were too busy, uncaring and had no compassion to who I was or what my experience was like. This is a huge contrast to the unassisted homebirth of my last two daughters where I had support and kindness from friends and doula's for a month post birth.

The idea of bringing kindness to birthing women reminds me of how it is easy to get caught up in our own world, in our own beliefs, in our own judgements of what a brithing mother should be, act, think, do or say. I sometimes think we are so caught up in our own beliefs that we forget to honour the woman.

The other night we watched some dvd's together. We watched women birthing while in a deep squat, women birthing in the ocean, women birthing with doulas, midwives, at home, hosital, birth centre, lotus birth, twins, women birthing with no one touching her perineum when her baby is coming earthside. It was beautiful. And after watching those dvd's it gave us a quiet sharing space of what we thought, and how we would be, or not be in some of those situations. I loved it, and felt it was so important to have that space with kindness and no judgement so that we could actually share our thoughts and question what we saw without fear of being judged.

The kindness and the sharing that took place made me feel that this is possibly the best way to start to assist these midwives. If we come in with our 'save the world' attitude, we will get no where. We dont actually know how these people work, and what works for them. I think when we come in to their country, into their space, we need to start with kindness and with sharing knowledge. Sharing our stories gives us perspecitve and may give us some common ground in which to work with. When we have this sharing of knowledge, we get mutual respect.  And maybe then we can work alongside each other as we will have a better understanding of where the other is coming from.

A quick story, before I go, relating to this, was when I was speaking to a midwife about lotus birth. I was sharing the reasons why I chose lotus birth for 2 of my children, and one of the reasons was because of the space it holds in the first few days. Visitors respect the space more and there is a certain quiet and observing energy around the baby. We talked about how in western culture, it's the norm for babies to be passed to everyone in the room except mum and that the mumma baby space is often interrupted and intruded. She was very interested and said she sees how people would choose lotus birth. She shared with me that they wouldnt need lotus birth here because everyone always respects the mumma baby space and no one picks up the baby unless it is grandma passing the baby from the hammack to the mothers breast. In the first month the mumma does nothing but recover and restore with her baby and her food is cooked and delivered to her. That space is just naturally honoured. Our conversation  feels like a beautiful example of kindness and sharing, without judgememt or blame, and it give us perspective and respect for one another.