I Feel It In My Fingers I Feel It In My Toes

I feel it in my fingers, I feel it in my toes. Well love is all around me, and so the feeling grows. It's written on the wind, it's everywhere I go...
These are words to a super old song, one of the first I learned to play on my guitar. 'Feeling' is the topic of the day. It is good to FEEL.

I want to feel when I have sex, eat, laugh, cry, listen to music. I want to feel my legs, lungs and feet ache after a good hike! So why would I want to feel numb when I give birth? Whether I want it or not, sometimes numbness comes. Numbness comes when I'm overwhelmed and divvies out bite size pieces of feeling as my mind and body can handle. Some women who don't plan to take numbing drugs at birth end up numb (epidural). Some accept this turn of events happily, greedily. Others grieve and pain over it for a long time. Some laboring women rush to the numbness before even knowing what their missing. Most women have strong FEELINGS about this topic! So I'll move on...I'd like to share some good news.

Christine Northrup recently wrote an article titled; A Woman's Nation: Reclaim Your Right To Birth Right. "it was noted that the times have truly changed...women now make up half the work force for the first time in written history! This means that our voices and skills are impacting all areas of society more than ever before." I say, Let's begin at the beginning - learn to use our voices in birth; learn to impact the world with safer, healthier, birth practices. There are good encouraging teaching videos out there (for free) so women don't have to go into the unknown territory of birth, the secret veiled Red Tent of labor never having heard birth sounds, never witnessing birth. Bellies and Babies recent blog, Lessons From Your Tube, includes two very good birth videos! Watch and Learn. Maybe you've only watched birth on TLC The Baby Story. Warning: these videos may bring up strong emotions & feelings, ranging from terror and fear to extreme relief and joy.

Feelings are good. Why, you ask, would feeling fear or terror be good! Why would someone have those feelings, I ask? Are they reliving their own birth, that may have taken place in a non-gentle way? Has society's "weaker sex" label been a part of your upbringing? Have the women in your life taken away your power? Or not shared theirs with you? It is good to know that 'those fearful feelings' are in you. deal with them before that powerful day when you yourself labor & give birth to yourself as a mother, your own precious new baby and your own powerful self - again.

Women are often anxious to blame 'men' for their lack of power...and with some good reason, but let's take a good look at our sex and let's take our power into our hands - beginning with our power to birth. We are stronger than we know.

Funny thing is, I didn't need to watch sex videos before I naturally fell into the act of sex. Birth could be the same. Many years ago it was. When societies accepted that birth was an everyday, normal event. Knowing, or maybe not knowing, but accepting, that our bodies were born with a uterus and our bodies had everything necessary to grow and birth a human being. They accepted the babies that came along and accepted the bodies urges that expelled the baby. They didn't need to go out to the drugstore during pregnancy and they didn't need to go anywhere special to birth a baby. Society just accepted birth. Today we are such drama queens. Okay I said it!

Time marches on -times change. We invented everything from the wheel to sliced bread to text messaging and facebook. Throughout this age of invention and mechanical conquest there are things that did not change; the sunrise, the sunset, the tides, the seasons, and birth! Birth hasn't changed. Oh we've messed it up (introduced infection), and fixed it (discovered antibiotics), messed it up, fixed it...thousands of times. But birth hasn't changed. I believe we've evolved enough to accept that fact in 2009. People used to want to be 'civilized' and 'proper' and 'not primitive' but now I believe we know that we all have a primal core. In our bones our ancient ancestors have left their mark. The knowledge of how to birth lives there.

Truely birthing women are amazing! What?! You did this?! You gave birth!? Wow, you are amazing!!!! Then and now, today and tomorrow!

Why don't I always FEEL and LIVE like I'm amazing? I want to. I pray to. ...oh I just lifted up my head a little higher, stood up straighter, smiled, and then my eyes opened from a squint and I feel more myself, my amazing self! I breathe in the day and I breathe in my past successes and future victories and I feel fearless, loveable. I am.

That's God's name too, the Great I Am! I'm his daughter, he's my father. I'm a kings kid. I'm an heir to the throne of the Most High. He's a good father, God. I didn't have a perfect earthly father so it's been a long process getting to know my heavely father. He gave man his creation power. The sweet mothering nature of God gave woman the gift of and the power to birth - co-creating with the God of the universe! Oh yeah, that's what I'm talkin 'bout!

Watch and learn about healthy normal awesome birth - the way God intended - where we become one moment strong and the next vulnerable - where I submit to a power that seems greater than me and then realize that this power IS ME. Then the euphoria spreads like sunshine throughout the room, the home, the neighborhood. Babies bring us all that. Maybe that's why I have always had a special connection with and love for babies. Their breath still smells like heaven.

I will be PRESENT to FEEL it in my fingers and toes as often as I can. -Rosie

I like this particular video for many reasons, just one being the song, Welcome To This World.....
Charlotte Jean