Growing Rose: Modern Babies Made Naturally

In Costa Rica, around 15 weeks pregnant, day after Christmas During my retreat in Costa Rica in December, I had the pleasure of meeting another pregnant mama of 27 weeks, who also happened to be my yoga instructor for a class or two during my stay. I loved watching her teach yoga with her pregnant belly because she helped calm my nerves about performing stretches while pregnant, and I could tangibly see how I could modify my movements to accommodate the growing body. She helped me so much by demonstrating. After our first class, we connected and chatted animatedly and then I even got to hang out with her and her partner for a while.  We talked about Ina May’s work, and she let me know that it was actually very hard to find or order Ina May’s books in her town. So I promised to send her some literature when I got back. Back in Chicago, I sent her two of Ina May’s books, and in return, she sent me a wonderful pair of Guatemalan sandals. From there, we stayed in touch, and after she

When I read that I would need to be screened for something called gestational diabetes at the beginning of my pregnancy, I didn’t give it much thought. It did not seem like something that deserved a wealth of my attention. My thinking pattern was, “Well, I don’t have diabetes now, so this must just be some sort of routine test that I’ll pass with flying colors.” So, imagine my surprise, when I found out that I was considered at-risk when I was 3 mg of sugar over the standard of 140mg of sugar per 100 milli-liters of blood on my one-hour screening exam. This is how it goes generally: Around 28 weeks of your pregnancy you will be instructed to drink about 60g of sugar in the form of a glucose beverage, grape juice, or a bunch of Twizzlers an hour before your blood test. Then you’ll get a sample of blood drawn at your lab, midwife, or obgyn visit. You’ll get the results back within a day or so and if the number is over 140mg (depending on where you live and who you see) then you may be i

“…women’s bodies contain the knowledge and the fortitude to bring children into this world”  Cindy Crawford in foreword of Gurmukh’s book  Bountiful, Beautiful, Blissful If you haven’t yet met Ina May Gaskin, you really must. This woman is one of our nation’s most inspirational and impactful midwives. From her experiences with naturally-birthing mothers on the Farm in Tennessee, traveling the world to host dialogues and give lectures, and her consistent statistical data and advocate work to lower maternal death rates, I believe Ina May has developed an extra-sensory perception to women’s bodies and their birthing capacities. Or perhaps she always possessed this natural propensity and followed her life’s calling with surrender. Either way, she has greatly compelled me in my own journey to recognize my body’s strengths and trust in its natural birthing capacity. While reading her literature (I include a list of those books of hers that I have read and duly r

As an undergraduate at DePaul University, in let’s say 2009, I had a science requirement to meet and therefore took the much-sough-after Women’s Health course. I somehow had the good karmic luck of having a Certified Midwife as my instructor. When it came to the time to discuss childbirth, this professor did something very smart: she had us watch the documentary, The Business of Being Born (watch this! Lake & Epstein, 2008 ). This documentary exposed a lot of taboo facts about modern childbirth and its switch from natural methods to overmedicalized approaches, approaches that I think most women of my generation may find to be the standard, such as epidurals, elective C-sections, and pitocin-induced contractions. In other words, these are the births that make well-known hospitals brag about the amount of pregnancies they can manage in any given time span. But this documentary also showed that birth belongs to us, and it is something that bodies with uteri have been doing