Birth, Sex and Bonding

Currawong and I have been talking a lot lately, as we clean and move and open spaces and practice our Wombling arts.  And one of the subjects that has come up quite often, has been the noble art of the fence sitter.  I just want you to suspend all judgement for the purposes of this post, and when you hear the term fence sitter, instead of thinking of someone who can’t make up their mind, think someone sitting on the fence that can see both sides of it with equal clarity.  And respect.  And can choose to hop from one side to the other if they feel the need, but the comfortable space inbetween is where they’re most likely to be found.  And sitting on it means they can take advice and knowledge from both camps, as well as being high enough and empathetic enough, to be able to see even beyond the two camps, to the many other camps stretched along and beyond the fence.  With a doves eye view to compare the two main camps and their similarities and differences.  And with the potential to help people from either side over to each other.  And maybe even get to the point where the fence can be removed all together, and a respectful and honest discussion can take place without any fences or gates or even pergolas in sight. 

I’ve found myself on the fence a lot in my life.  Being able to see both sides of a situation, argument, sexuality, ideology, philosophy or concept.  And being blessed and fortunate to come across many others perching on fences, Currawong in particular, who have always gifted me with the treasures of even more ways of looking at just about everything.  And I’ve got to say I’m firmly on the fence in this whole homebirth/hospital birth scene, and can see many other scenes and perspectives on birth also stretched along the fence and growing out in the fields, for as far as my eye can see.   Many camps on sex and pregnancy and birth and families get a bit hidden by the huge clouds of smoke, that billow around the bitter battle being fought, by the most outspoken heroes and heroines of each side.  With the odd warrioress or warrior coming in from the outlands, to bring tales of other fences and other sides…………and even stories of the wildlands, where no fences dwell at all.

I’ve watched this big battle between hospital and homebirth, with the egos and philosophies attached to them, and the condescension and arrogance that can appear on both sides.  Their reactions against each other have ricocheted into the outside world, and often engage in personal attacks against individuals who seem to exemplify either camp.  One of those individuals has been me, as I’ve been painted as some kind of sex crazed tramp, selfishly putting my birthing ideals above the importance of the safety of my babies, and ‘bat shit crazy’ in my death defying birth choices.  I’ve watched the war from my perspective, go from being between a war between a few personalities on either side, to escalating into a war between personalities and the attendants that flock to support them, and attacking people on a personal level.  And also escalate into South Australia and other places, trying to ban all doula’s and birth attendants from attending hospital births.  And most alarmingly perhaps, to me anyway, I see the fallout from this battle result in scaring the shit out of women on both sides of the fence, about how demonic and deranged the other side can be.  Another sadder side effect is the huge, enormously large amount of women and babies and families and birthing experiences that go largely unheard of or ignored, as they’re not classical examples of the publicly agreed on versions of birth. 

Homebirth seems to be increasingly seen as the choice of radicals or traumatized victims of unnecessary interventions in hospitals.  As a far out choice in birth, that a ‘certain element’ is always going to try and access, so should thereby be made safe, for those of the community who aren’t capable of making safe choices for themselves.  I’ve been the interest of a magazine that wanted to interview me as an anonymous contributor to an article about sex during birth, with a slant on how sex crazed Currawong and I must be, to even entertain the notion of it.  Viewing it as some far out option that people might like to voyeuristically and anonymously poke fun at. 

From my spot on the fence, and with all my experiences and research, as well as all the birthing stories I’ve read and been asked to read………in the overall wash it all seems to come out about even.  Some people have awesome hospital experiences, some people have awesome homebirth experiences, some people have crap times at hospital, some have a crap homebirth.  Some babies die at home, some die at hospital.  Some are safer at home, some are safer in a hospital.  All in all it seems that all we can truly learn from birth is that it’s unpredictable, undomesticatable, mostly ‘successfull’ no matter where it is, and universally unique to each individual person. 

And I feel increasingly that I’d like to jump off my fence and sit in the camp of homebirthing for a moment, to describe some of the aspects of homebirthing that have taught themselves to me along the way, and would like to have their flags flown as potential camps, beyond the warfare waging at the most focused on fence. 

Let’s first address sexuality in birth.  This concept was alien to me for my first three children, and I never even thought about it as a possibility.  But my third baby also came with lessons about bonding.  The importance of it, and more poignantly for me, the impact that a lack of bonding could have on a family unit.  When pregnant with my fourth child, bonding, and how to do it the very best we could, was paramount in all our minds.  And much to my surprise, I stumbled across sexuality during birth for the first time, in my search to do it better.  In books written by fundamentalist Christians about reclaiming birth from doctors AND midwives, and having it sacred for husbands and wives and their children only, and having liberal sex whilst birthing, as babies came out best, the same way they went in. 

Amazonesque, I strode into my fourth birthing experience striving for self acceptance in my midwife and hospital free stance, and also a dose of sex during the birth……which turned out to be a bit shy and new, and all a bit innocent.  Not quite a step towards an orgasmic birth.  And I was awful glad that a magical midwife turned up just in the nick of time to hold my hand and keep us feeling safe. 

Now just as an aside, apart from there being a large amount of truth to the concept that babies come out best often the same way they went in, there is also the matter of picotin.  Or in it’s more pragmatic description….pig sperm.  Which is what you could be given to induce birth in hospitals, as well as a machine that simulates sucking of your nipples to stimulate the same sexual hormones as the pig sperm, to induce your baby to come forth.   It’s an age old suggestion, when a woman wants to bring a baby on, to either have sex, or go for a drive on a bumpy dirt road.  Now call me old fashioned, but when it comes to trying to bring a baby on, I’d far rather have my partners sperm and nipple sucking, than a pigs and a machines.  And folk think I’M the weirdo?

So sex for the first time during a birth of ours, was more curiosity, loving and philosophical, rather than anything sensational or sexy.  Same for the birth of our fifth baby, as a semi-desperate attempt when we realized he wasn’t coming.  For our twins it was the same.  An attempt to co-erce a baby that was taking a long time, and more importantly my body that had kind of just shut down, to wake up and start birthing again.  In my post about the birth of the twins, I said “taking Currawong off into the back room for a quick fix of sex and semen”, when what I really could have said was we went off into the back room and I gave my love a blow job.  As a doula friend once told us, it doesn’t matter how it goes in. My dear little frangers on their hate forum made a good deal about the fact that there was also an umbilical cord present, but that kind of attention to detail says far more about them than about me. 

And as an addendum to sex during birth, our ultimate and climactic sex during the birth of our eighth child, put all our other attempts to shame.  Terrified of birthing out of water, the sexuality and strength and power of birthing on our bed with my lover, after we’d made love and had an intense orgasm not long before alone, and the bellydancer-esque movements I was making as we got closer to birth, was easily and more powerfully as transforming of birth expansions, as any of my experiences in water.  And really did show us both the real power of sex during birth.  Not to mention how incredibly bonding the whole experience can be.  Now I’m not saying that birth should be sexy, and all mamas should orgasm, and I remember being really pissed off at this kinda 'perfect' stereotype that seemed to exist of the organic food eating, homebirthing, orgasmic birthing, blissfull breastfeeding, psychically in-tune, new age earth mother thing, cause I’ve never felt overly in tune with any of my babies internally except for odd sublime moments, and I’ve hardly ever picked the right gender, and I’ve got my expectations wrong so completely, so many times, that I’ve learnt it’s just best to keep my mouth shut.  And I love and honour breastfeeding for the amazing thing it is, but I don’t really LOVE it, like some people seem to. But sometimes there’s moments of pure magic, and like I said before, I’m not saying anyone should do anything, but I just want to let you know that there are other possibilities, because glory be to diversity, and everyone feeling the freedom to check out whatever option appeals, no matter how wacky it might sound at first.

Lotus birthing sounded really wacky to me at first as well, but that kinda grew on me also.  I’m firmly on the fence with this lotus birthing business as well, cause I don’t know about anyone elses experience, but I’ll be damned if my two little lotus babies aren’t the most pernickety, tantrum throwing, WILLFULL creatures that I’ve ever met.  Full of the most surprises as well, but wild in a league all of their own.  I was kinda glad in a way that the twins births and that of number eight meant that lotus birthing was out of the question. 

But back to the main issues for this piece about sex and bonding, I would have to say that my forays into sexuality during birthing, have all been motivated by the desire to further explore bonding, and its importance to me personally, and to the world at large.  And in the process of writing this post, I’ve had my computer go off to the shop to get fixed for a week, and have had a week off all computer and internet action, and spent my time cleaning and reading stories and spinning and loving, but also thinking lots on bonding.  Just yesterday, Currawong and I had an inspired and expansive talk on the impact of bonding in our original families, where we both felt like an almost endless array of lines of dominoes knocked into each other in all directions, making sense of so many hard thought out childhood aches.  And present day problem knots all of a sudden appeared differently and clearly.

To be quite blunt about it, I believe bonding, or rather our collective and monumental mismanagement and ignorance of it in our current society, to be the root and cause of just about every personal and societal pain and evil and seperation and isolation and betrayal in our modern world.  And I have been led to this position by every experience in my life.  From my own conception and birth, to that of all my 8 children, the stories from my closest friends and loved ones, independent study, and a vast collection and memory of stories. 

The first time I really bumped into bonding was after the birth of my first child Jessica.  I was a fairly unremarkable and ‘average’ Australian at the time, having had a bit of a kooky childhood but who hadn’t?  Not too far really from my mormon upbringing at the age of 21, fresh from selling life insurance on the North Shore in Sydney and before that backpacking around Europe.  Birth existed in the slightly scary stories around me and in hospitals and with the ‘people that knew best’.  My sister-in-law had had a homebirth, but she kinda scared me too.  I’d been to pre-natal classes with my mother and got the poor single mother looks from the couples, and my mum had been blown away by the amount of information and alternative approaches on revisiting birth, 20 years down the track from her own experiences.  But I really had no idea.  No real expectations. Vague ideas about maybe looking in a mirror to see the babys head emerging.  And maybe bouncing on a ball. 

And it was a shock.  I was totally unprepared for its intensity, and when it came time to maybe look in a mirror, I was growling for drugs.  It squeezed.  And I fought it.  I didn’t know what to do or expect, and nobody had really told me.  It seemed harsh and endless and like I was abandoned to this foggy world between worlds.  But when she was born, the euphoria and ecstasy and bliss I felt, was also beyond any I’d experienced before.  This was another world altogether, one of purpose and pride.  The enormous sense of attentive protection was almost overwhelming.  I couldn’t stop looking at her and touching her and wondering at this little creature who had emerged from inside me.  The face and skin and delicate little body, that up till now had just been eerie movements and hiccups in my belly.  After a long while, I was prompted to have a quick shower, which I did while my mother went with my new daughter to have her checks.  And then we quickly tucked up in bed together, and that melting bliss continued. 

Some time later a brisk german midwife entered my room, informed me I needed to feed my baby, pulled aside my pyjama top, grabbed my breast, and then held her head to it, forcing us to connect.  I was shocked, but I complied, and then when she’d taken her hands off us, and we could settle into each other again, we got somewhere with breastfeeding, and then I was told that I needed to sleep and my baby would be taken to the nursery.  She took my little person fresh from my womb, and folded her into the plastic cot, and wheeled her out of the room.  I sat there stunned.  And that loving protective feeling I’d been feeling, turned into a fierce animal grunt in my belly that ached for that little part of me, and I felt like a strong rope between us pulled……..and I crept out behind the midwife, hiding behind doors and corners, till I saw her walking away and I swept straight in the nursery, wheeled my baby back in my room and tucked her back in my arms.  And I didn’t let her go till my mother got back to the hospital and took us home, to settle into each other without any observers except her.    And I was really glad that I was on the early release program, and didn’t have to stay the night.  Resultantly, my mother and my firstborn daughter and I, left to our own devices, bonded very strongly as a trinity.   

I was an overly obedient girl till that point.  Followed all the rules and laws and suggestions given me by everyone I saw as superior, which was basically everyone.  A few guilty secrets in my closet, and a few naughtinesses had happened, but I really didn’t feel very different to the norm.  I had no precedence for this kind of going against advice, and feeling a strong instinct of any sort.  I continued on my instinct, to breastfeed her on demand, co-sleep with her in bed, ( much to the differing advice of all the other young mothers and midwives and people around me at the time ), and stayed exclusively breastfeeding till she was 8 months old, against the rather angry advice from the baby check nurse.  I had a tremendously strong instinct to follow her and my instincts, with a focus on hers the most, as they were the freshest and more pure.  And she was totally robust and healthy.  I gave her the vaccinations that everyone else did, I had her checked regularly that she was growing properly, but apart from that, we were attachment parenting.  I had a very dear friend who’d had a baby a year earlier, and she gently broke me in to some alternative parenting methods.  And gave me a copy of ‘The Continuum Concept’ by Jean Leidlehoff, the reading of which left me with a sense of total validation and vindication. 

I was introduced to the concept of the human as a mammal, with the indigenous peoples parenting practices being represented as a bit closer to our evolutionary path, than the rather jagged and mechanical western civilization and it’s approach to modern birth and bonding. 

My first birthing experience, combined with what I discovered afterwards, was strongly with me 9 years later when we birthed Griffyn in a hospital spa bath.  I’d done a bit of growing and learning since that first time, and had also grown more experienced at breaking the rules, following alternative paths, and searching out rarified knowledges and concepts and approaches to life.  And I had a partner in love to whom I was sexually bonded, an equally strong yet different bond to that I have with my children.  And he was fresh from being an anarchistic punk rocker, with a special skill in exploding any beliefs I had left about the benevolence of those in power, and the world being overseered by good and godly people.  When Griffyn was born by surprise in the spa bath, while the midwife was off getting the machine that went ‘bing’, (I was only dilated 8 centimeters!), she got back to me in the bath with Griffyns head out, and she panicked and pulled the plug.  So in transition, and just about to push, I put my hand over the plug hole, gathered my energy, and then pushed him out.  After blissing in the bath for a bit, I got up, tucked him under my arm, said ‘That was so easy!’ (which it had been compared to my first birth), strode off to our room after pushing the proffered wheelchair out of the way, then pushed the hospital bed on its wheels to the wall, and showed Currawong where he could lay out the futon that I’d directed him to bring.  He’d been really embarrassed about the whole concept before Griffyn was born, but I’d insisted.  And when we all three of us lay on the futon, with Griffyn inbetween us, and Currawong and him sleeping, I thought my heart would burst with love, as I looked at my dearly loved man and little firstborn son, laying so beautifully asleep in front of me.  I cried with how amazing they were, and high on those bonding birthing hormones, I couldn’t sleep for how hungry my gaze was to feast on their perfection. 

We also went home that day, and didn’t have to spend the night in hospital, and we bedded in for two weeks altogether.  On the first day after the first night at home, we both sat in the bed together, with Griffyn as a newborn  on our kneeling up legs, crying about how much we loved him, how perfect he was, and how much we loved each other.  We had gentle friends coming peacefully to welcome him, and those present at his birth as our supporters came to visit us every day, to retell the story of his birth, and how beautiful it was.  We all bonded together, our inner circle of family, and two close friends, and it was like they were drawn back every day for two weeks to revisit the bond, and the smells, and the love, and the brand new life that had brought us so lovingly together. 

Lilly, as my third born child and first homebirth experience, was totally different.  And taught me perhaps the most about the power of bonding, especially in its absence.  Between three midwives, the bonding between Currawong and Griffyn and I, and the bonding between my mother and my firstborn and I, as we were birthing in my mothers house……..circumstances ensued that I’m not really at liberty to talk about freely in order to be sensitive to the feelings of people I love, and absolutely no bonding happened at all except for between Lilly and me.  We experienced anti-bonding.  Nothing violent or terrible happened, but tragic miscommunications and age old patterns and unseen situations collided in a way that left the beautiful home and water birth of Lilly as an almost unnoticed event.  That quickly moved to the background in the light of inconveniences that intruded on the babymoon before it even started.  The first two weeks of Lillys life were spent in such lonely isolation, that I plummeted to a depth of depression that I’d not often been.  Her magical birth was overshadowed by the sadness that followed.  To such a degree that Lilly refused to be held by anybody but me for the first year of her life.  Nobody.  Not my mother, or Currawong, or close friends, or anyone.  Not even remotely would she abide the mere suggestion.  She’s very firm our Lilly.  So I just got used to my little friend that came with me everywhere, and there was more than ample room on my lap and in my arms for my little Lilly.  And our bonding grew stronger. 

And when she was coming up to two years old, and screaming louder and longer than any kid I’d ever heard, and I found out I was pregnant with another, I started unpeeling and unpacking what had happened in her birth, trying to work out what her caterwauling was about.  On her second birthday we were held strong in the arms of a loving market that we’d co-created, and a big surprise birthday was held for Lilly.  All her favourite people who she’d finally allowed to hold her after she turned one were there, and a whole market full of people stood around her as she sat on my lap, singing her happy birthday, and I felt her get it.  She looked around her at all these near and loved faces, and she knew they were there for her, and that they loved her, and I do believe that for the first time in her life she finally felt WELCOMED by the world and her family.  And it was good.  And she sat back comfy in my lap and I felt her world shift a bit.  And do you know what?  She never screamed as loud or as long ever again after that day.  And she finally allowed Currawong to give her a kiss at night without him receiving her elbow……

And I read the books that I mentioned above from the fundamentalist Christians, and they echoed in me.  The fuss made about midwives and doctors and all these other folk, when it’s a man and woman that make a baby most often, in the warm and sultry sweetness of a love soaked bed, and what nicer way for that baby to be welcomed into the world, than in the same way that it was conceived?  With two loving parents who know exactly who you are, and when you started, and are looking forward to what their love looks like clothed in the skin of a brand new life.  I started to think I wanted to try freebirthing.  Just Currawong and Griffyn and Jess and mum around.  With maybe a friend as a support person.  And I kept unpacking and unpeeling the sores on our hearts after Lillys unbonding, and it took me on the path that I told you about above, but one last little story is about her and Griffyn.

Who never really bonded.  And never really got on.  Lilly was an intrusion on a rather splendid life for Griff, and when she was born, all these strange things had happened, and his life had been forever changed.  Around the time of Lillys second birthday, and reading these books, and healing the aches from her birthing experience, I was reading some of the first information I’d consciously really taken on about bonding.  And it’s importance.  And it started to make sense to me what had really gone on.  And I tried to repair what I could.  And one day, as Griff at nearly five was sitting on a couch, it occurred to me to really tell him the story of Lillys birth, and what had happened, and how it went askew, and how none of it had anything to do with him and the sort of boy he was, or Lilly, and the sort of birth she had.  And it was one of my better moments, where I was fairly impassioned, and all sorts of puzzle pieces were coming together in my head, and Currawong and Jess and my mum and Lilly were all around, and they all heard what I was saying, and I saw him get it.  Saw the realizations hit him, and watched him making sense of it.  And their relationship changed from that day forward.  He was clear about the story, and how it wasn’t his fault, and him and Lilly remain to this day the best of friends.  Compadres who give each other as good as they get, have each others backs, and laugh, giggle and talk more than any other siblings I know.  Her relationships with everyone started to heal at that point.  Which was greatly assisted by the birth and bonding of Spiral-Moon. 

And my interest in bonding has gone on to grow and develop through all the other births of Balthazar, which is a story of an attempted homebirth that ended up as an emergency caesarean, and had disrupted bonding due to Post Natal Depression, and the births of Maxamillion and Merlin, which bonded us closely in our immediate family in the face of extreme adversity and total fallout with community and close family, but highlighted so many areas of bonding with other people throughout my life, and how bonding was an evolutionary imperative.  I wrote a post about bonding and evolution after the twins were born, trying hard to get across the enormity of what I was starting to connect between our society and bonding in particular. 

And most recently, the birth of Zarrathustra would have to be the penultimate in my experience of a spiritual, sexual, bonding homebirth,  that has transformed all our lives in a tremendously positive way.

To put it very simply, I believe that bonding is one of the most important things we do as humans, and it’s so integral to me and my family and our connected experiences, that we will do just about anything we can, to be able to hold a new baby as soon as it’s born, and sit around in the comfort of our home while we all meet each other, and sleep near each other as we soak in the new smells, and not separate anyone from each other in those fragile early weeks of the magical bond of birth.

To be able to treat birth with the sacredness it deserves, being the only time that this baby will ever be born into this body.  To feed and sleep when our instincts dictate, instead of to a schedule.  To be unobserved and protected in a love bubble of babymoon.

And now I’ve shone the light pretty well on my personal experience in regards to bonding……..I want to turn that light around to the rest of the world.

I just want you to sit for a minute, and think really deeply about all the advice and folk knowledge you’ve heard in your life about other animals and bonding.  The fragility and importance of it.  Did you ever get told that you couldn’t touch the brand new baby kittens, because their mother might smell you on them and reject them?  Did you watch news stories about all the incredible lengths they go to in Zoos, to help parents conceive for a start, which is an equally instinctual and hormonally fragile and important connection as bonding, and then to not reject the babies?  About how birds and their eggs and nests should never be disturbed? Did you ever see that amazing film/documentary called ‘The Weeping Camel’??  Where a camel had a traumatic birth and rejected her baby, and a local musician shaman, was called over to perform the ancient ceremony of singing the baby and mother back together again, with the rest of the family.  And the mother camel cried, and then the disrupted bonding was healed, as she welcomed her baby back.  When you really sit and think about all the stories you’ve heard about animals and their bonding, and if you’ve had a lot to do with animals, have you had experiences of bonding between animals, even interspecially??  Those stories about baby lambs whos mothers died, and they bonded with the first creature they saw, be it human, goat or dog? And what happens when that bond is broken, or disrupted, or betrayed??  And does it ever make you wonder if the same seemingly immutable laws of nature and mammals and bonding apply to us?

I think they do. 

And I don’t think us humans messing with bonding is a new thing either. The Spartans used to throw a baby to the ground after it was born to produce warriors, and the Mayans used to bury the placenta on battlegrounds and separate boy babies from their mothers early, to induce the same results.  In fact, with the acquisition of land needed by early agriculturalists and settlers, a militia was needed to conquer and maintain control over lands acquired, and in our earlier times, it may have seemed that the creation of warriors was an important thing.  And maybe we got so caught up in disrupting that bond, that we forgot why we started doing it, and the horse has run away from the cart.  It's worth asking the question of what kind of an impact this disrupted bonding is having with all our relationships.

It wouldn’t be hard to look at the birthing practices of western civilization, and conclude that we bond our babies to machines and children of their own age group, with families as a poor second or third to the importance of their primary bonding.  Most other mammals and primates mother their children in groups until sexual maturity, and then sometimes the boys will go off, but the girls often stay within the clan for their lives, and share all the care and nurturance of their young. 

Bonding in the other animals of nature, creates a connection between family groups, that both teaches the young how to survive by instruction and example, but also creates enough love in the group, that they’ll have each others backs,  nurture the bonded young into adulthood, and help to share all the necessary chores with other family, hunt and gather for each other, and ensure the family groups survival.   The relatively new science of Ethnopediatrics shows how when we human animals changed our bodies design, by going from 4 legs to 2 and growing our brains, we also changed our birthing process, which ended up in babies having to be born prematurely, in order for their heads to be able to get out.  And then adaptation had to do its magic, so that mothers would be induced to keep their babies close for the 9 months or so outside the womb, that they needed to survive. 

And because of my dedication to bonding, and to doing it the best we can, or healing the impact of disrupted bonding, we’ve become a fully bonded family that many of us aren’t used to anymore, and I know this from the reactions and triggers we set off in nearly everyone we come across.  Who either don’t have such a close relationship with their partner, or their children, or altogether, or a pain and ache in their relationships with their family of birth, and either love us to bits and pieces as a possible way to run relationships…..or have a strong reaction against us, thinking us abnormal or just too confronting. 

I think we’ve forgotten how to have deep and loyal friendships and bonds, that last for a lifetime, regardless of where an individuals journey takes them.  I think we’ve forgotten what it feels like to experience unconditional love.  Just like we’ve forgotten what it feels like to wear clothes grown in the sun and turned into clothing by loving hands, and foods that are grown in our gardens and by those we love, and how incredible they taste, and homeing in living houses built by family hands, and the immense satisfaction and fulfillment in sharing in rich and connected bonded relationships, with the people and environment around us.  For those of you who have actually read Lord Of The Rings…….our recent cultural bonds are mirrored by how we turned the deep love and loyalty of the family bonds present in the book, to the fluffy and anecdotal relationship between the hobbits in the movie, who are portrayed as fools and not overly loyal, and leaving out the deep connection to the land of Tom Bombadill, for the flashy wars and fight scenes, which were fairly sparse in the book.  Relationships are dispensable in our throw away society.

And now to bring it all round in a circle, I’ll jump back on my fence between homebirthing and hospital birthing and suggest that maybe we could chuck this war and this fence and all the egos away, and put all the things we know about birth and its permutations into a far reaching and diversity supporting and interconnected meadow, and acknowledge that hospitals and midwives and women and men and children and psychologists and healers and body workers all need to get together, as essential parts of the same whole, and totally redress the way we do birth altogether in our culture.  And bonding.  And sexuality throughout it all.  And families, be they of blood or heart. 

Surely we can find ways that absolutely everyone, can create the space that they need, with the support that they want, to honour the importance and generational continuation, of the stories around birth and bonding and family and community that we create……..