I have an announcement:
I’ve decided to start my own school for homebirth midwives. I’m concerned that birth has strayed far from what nature intended and part of the reason is improperly trained midwives. Dr. Amy’s College of Raw, Orgasmic, Totally Crunchy Homebirth (CROTCH) will train a new generation of homebirth midwives with greater respect for the animal process of birth than even Carla Hartley and her ilk could imagine.
The motto at Dr. Amy’s CROTCH is nothing so mealy mouthed as “trust birth.” Our motto is “Worship Birth … or your baby will get autism” and we do that by faithfully imitating the other members of the animal kingdom.
In the first place, the term “homebirth” merely represents the fact that it takes place outside the hospital. Obviously it does not take place at home. Our animal sisters give birth in dens and under dense foliage; therefore, a CROTCH birth takes place in a burrow excavated from dirt by the mother in the days leading up to the birth.
In addition:
At CROTCH, we teach our midwives that birth is not simply orgasmic; it is multi-orgasmic. Study of the female orgasm demonstrates that it is typically accompanied by uterine contractions. Therefore, it only stands to reason that birth as nature intended involves an orgasm with every contraction. We feel sorry for those women who merely have an orgasm at the moment of birth. If they had truly worshiped birth, they would have had hundreds of orgasms.
Obviously, clothes are not natural. In addition to prohibiting hats or clothing of any kind on babies, we at CROTCH impress upon midwives the need for THEM to be naked at birth. Clothes interfere with the midwife’s healing aura.
Privacy, of course, is critical. That’s why the mother must be unattended in her burrow. The naked midwife and the mother’s naked partner must always remain downwind of the birthing mother to prevent her labor from stalling by interference with birthy smells. They cannot approach any closer than 100 yards, regardless of how much the mother screams and begs.
If the midwife can’t approach the mother, how can she monitor the labor? She can’t, and she shouldn’t. Monitoring and vaginal exams are evil. They are based on the hegemonic, patriarchal medical model of birth that presumes all mothers and babies have a right to live. Any homebirth midwife with even minimal training knows that some babies aren’t meant to live and that mothers die in the hospital, too.
Prenatal care is totally unnecessary. Do animals have prenatal care? No, they don’t, and if prenatal care were necessary, they wouldn’t be here now.
The moments after birth are critical for the mother and baby to imprint upon each other. That’s why at CROTCH we teach midwives that mothers must lick their babies clean, and midwives must lick the mother’s perineum clean (unless, of course, she is a contortionist and she can lick her own perineum).
The cord must not be severed. The placenta must be left attached until the cord starts to shrivel. Then the mother must eat the entire placenta and cord just like the Khaleesi in Game of Thrones ate the horse heart. At CROTCH we recognize that dehydrating and encapsulating the placenta destroys the very hormones that prevent postpartum depression. All those placenta encapsulation specialists are pathologizing the placenta and stealing the money of innocent mothers for doing so.
Immediately after birth, the mother must place the baby at her breast … and leave there for the next 7 years.
At CROTCH, we recognize that the key to an empowering, spiritual birth is the Holy Trinity. No, not the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, silly; the Mother, the Baby, and the Midwife, or as we prefer to call it: the motherbabymidwife triad. The mother’s body nurtures the baby; the baby knows how to be born; and the midwife knows how to hold the space in the mother’s bank account, previously held by multiple thousands of dollars.
So look for Dr. Amy’s CROTCH, coming to a website near you, and prepare for an empowering birth (raw, orgasmic and totally crunchy) just as nature intended!
This piece is satire, but I fully expect its tenets to be adopted by birth lunatics as their own in 3 … 2 … 1 …
