Sasha, Lucy and happy mama Winston

Welcome!

This blog is MCC's newest adventure:  a way for us to share, connect and inform women and families about birth.  MCC is a group of birth workers (doulas, yoga teachers, birth educators, hypnotherapists, chiropractors and others) based in southwest Montana (Bozeman, Livingston and Belgrade) who joined to support one another and help the birthing women in our communities.

This first post is a welcome and an invitation to participate in discussions and share your thoughts.  I'm Sasha, one of the founding members of our group, a birth doula and birth educator, and passionate birth junkie.  You'll meet other members in future posts!

Jen, Sasha and Laura at a birth and baby fair.

As a birth doula I've been blessed in so many ways, and connecting with other women as mothers is at the top of my list.  There are few opportunities in our busy world to truly connect hearts with another human in a deep way.  We have so many layers covering our inner spirits, so many ways we hide ourselves from the outside world, so many faces we put on to be socially acceptable.

The emotional challenges and physical hardships of labor and birth are like a razor blade that cuts through those layers, sometimes brutally.  I don't think most of us would choose to show our deep, unprotected, unembellished selves to those around us, although that part of us is always seeking to be heard and accepted.  We protect it with distance.  Labor erases that distance and like the layers of onion peel, one by one labor removes the protective barriers.  What is left is raw, but beautiful, the true person.  

When I am with a women in labor most often I witness this process, often culminating with transition.  What appeared to be a very controlled, reserved woman may now be a bit like a wild animal, crying, needing reassurance, needing acceptance.  It's a bit scary.  It's the thing women hear about and worry about happening to them in labor.  "I don't want to lose control," I've heard from pregnant women over and over again.  But truly, it's an opportunity.  An opportunity for those around this woman to show her love, compassion and ultimate acceptance.  Loving her (and sticking with her, and believing in her abilities) when she's a sweaty, smelly, vomiting, crying and screaming mess is an act of unconditional love.  Or sometimes she is so quiet and calm, but there will be a moment when she peeks out from her meditation and needs her caregivers to acknowledge her beauty and humanity, her hard work, her love for her child.  These are gifts she will carry forever, and hopefully share with her child.  

This is my favorite blessing of doula-hood - seeing the truth of a woman, in her power, in her most vulnerable state, seeing who she really is.  I've never been disappointed.  I stand in awe of her.  And I often leave feeling very in love with someone I hardly know, but know so deeply I feel like I have seen her soul.

I leave you with my favorite blessing, one which conveys everything I've tried to say, so much more beautifully.  

Namaste

~Sasha