by Leanne Daharja Veitch

It's been six months since Dragon was born, and I feel the need in me to revisit his birth. I look back with absolute clarity over the whole experience, and I know that I need to pass on what I learned.

Childbirth is a gateway through which many women pass at some stage of our lives. Our society has confused attitudes about the birthing experience; much of these attitudes come from a masculine perspective that views all pain as something to be avoided, views all aspects of our sexuality as dirty and polluted, and all aspects of our very physical nature as somehow base and unimportant. We try to cover up the fact that we are animals - we extend in our minds the difference between the human 'us' and the non-human 'them'.

The trouble with birth is that it becomes perfectly clear, through the experience, just how animal and physical we are.

Birth is not clean. It is not a time or place where women are delicate, perfumed or powdered. It is not a place where the illusion of femininity - of delicacy - can be maintained. It is in childbirth that we see women in all our real strength, in our real glory, as the life-giving Goddess who welcomes us into the world and who, eventually, we will embrace again when we die.

Birth has remained hidden because it doesn't fit with the psychology of what we believe modern womanhood to be. It has remained hidden, because women aren't supposed to scream. We're not supposed to touch our bodies 'down there'. We're not supposed to expose our breasts or our vaginas in public. Birth takes all of these unmentionables and opens wide the reality of who and what we are. That is why birth is powerful - because it celebrates the physicality of who we are, and is a focus on the interconnectedness of all life.

With the hiding of birth behind closed doors has come the fear, and by using the fear our patriarchal medical system has seized control. Young women are not taught about birth; we don't discuss it with our mothers or our grandmothers. We don't know what to expect, and with that naivety it is increasingly easy for the medical professional to mould us under their control. The poorly educated have always been held under the power of the educated, and childbirth is no exception.

Birth has been hospitalised, medicalised and brutalised. It has become clinical, unfeeling. Women are pumped full of drugs at the first opportunity so that we won't feel our bodies. When caesareans occur - as they do at an alarming rate - the birth takes place behind a blue curtain to prevent the mother from being distressed at the sight of blood. In hospital birth, everything takes place according to the clock - there are set times for dilation, set times that dictate 'failure to progress', and set times for surgical removal of a baby when stressed mothers unsurprisingly fail to keep to the hospital's routine and concept of what is normal.

Birth doesn't have to be this way. Think about it - every woman on this planet who is pregnant and about to give birth is the last in a long line - millennia long, and many thousands of generations - of women who gave birth successfully, without the need for modern medical 'assistance'. Every one of us is living, breathing testament to the fact that the vast majority of women can give birth naturally, without drugs, without the knife, without the stitches and staples that cut into our flesh and our souls.

Dragon's birth was natural. We didn't use drugs, and didn't need any. And I will say, without reservation, that it was not the most painful experience of my life. I will say that it was the hardest physical work I have ever done in my life, but it was also the most rewarding experience I have ever had. Pushing a baby out of your body is an experience that cannot be explained properly. The strength I felt - the connection between myself and the Divine - was incredible. As a birthing woman I caught a glimpse of my mother, and her mother, and her mother, all the way back through generation after generation. I became aware that birth creates a link between myself and those who have passed before, and to give birth is a privilege and an honour.

The contractions of childbirth are waves that push a woman towards the inevitable. You can't fight them - you must surrender to them. Feel the power within you and embrace it. Feel the physicality of who you are - connect with your animal nature. You cannot be delicate. You cannot hide who and what you are. You cannot pretend to be anything other than a living, breathing, powerful birthing goddess. The masks we wear every day must be thrown aside.

There is nothing to fear in birth but the fact that, for perhaps the first time, we see ourselves as we really are. Birth is a personal, wonderful, private experience - one to be shared only with our loved ones and those we trust absolutely. It is not an experience to be administered by a doctor. It is not an experience that can be controlled, no matter how much patriarchal medicine may try. Birth is something outside of male experience, just as it is outside of the experience of women who have not birthed.

The pain of birth can be sweet and rich, or it can be empty and devoid of joy if we let the fear overpower us and fail to acknowledge our own, physical truth.

Birth will be an empty experience if we let the drugs take our feelings, and the scalpel take our bodies, and the doctors take our right to privacy and time. Doctors and those who choose to birth medically will never understand the power of natural birth. For them, the gateway will remain forever closed. They look on as naive spectators on a force they cannot begin to understand.

So now, six months on, I stand at the other side of the gateway.

If I am to pass on any knowledge to women who will one day give birth but have not yet crossed the threshold, it is this:

- Do not be afraid.
- Trust in your body, not in medical science.
- Welcome contractions, as each pain is a step into the gateway.
- Find a supportive non-hospital midwife who will honour and respect your body and your wishes.
- Birth at home, or at the very least, labour at home until the contractions are very close together and a natural birth is assured.
- Do not trust modern medicine - it will strip away your rights and your individuality. It will not respect your body or your wishes.
- A pain-free birth with the use of drugs strips away your strength as a woman. It does not empower you.

Above all, as you labour think on the women who have gone before you, and say a prayer to give them thanks.

Without the birthing they did, you would not be able to birth now. We are links in a chain that stretches back beyond history. Honour the chain, meditate on it, and ask that you be allowed to continue the chain in their name.

Read more by Daharja here: http://www.daharja.net