Notes on giving birth…
On the ferry, the mothers with their babies strapped to their stomachs make arrangements for the transferral of prams; folded up, carried onto the ferry. A woman in earth coloured cloth says goodbye to her friends. They try to get a smile out of the baby. Its head wrapped in a green woollen beanie. The mother’s eyes are beautiful and almond shaped, her lips pink and pretty, her teeth crooked.
The ferry pulls away from the wharf. We begin talking, this mother and I. She is from the mountains. We talk about dancing: ferry drivers, public transport, moving house, giving birth, smiling babies. We catch the train together. I help her with her pram. We say goodbye. I never learnt her name.
We talked of giving birth. The way it is mis-represented in film. After she had her baby she was angry with all the films she had even seen with a birth scene. All we get, she said, is the image of the screaming woman panting on the bed, and the man standing by, fists clenched not knowing what to do. The room is all white and clean, and full of doctors – it’s not like that, there’s blood all over everything. Her partner said it was horrific. And it was, she said, it was bloody and gross but what she felt in her heart was beautiful. Nothing could feel more natural.
“Adrienne Rich writes about motherhood.” I said; “About how our ideas of mothering, birth, and babies are controlled by masculine modes of knowledge.”
“As far as I’m concerned,” she said. “It’s women’s business. It’s got nothing to do with men. So why are most obstetricians men?”
“Women have been both mothers and daughters,” writes Adrienne Rich. “But have written little on the subject; the vast majority of literary and visual images of motherhood comes to us filtered through a collective or individual male consciousness. As soon as a woman knows that a child is growing in her body, she falls under the power of theories, ideals, archetypes, descriptions of her new existence, almost none of which have come from other women (though other women may transmit them) and all of which have floated invisibly about her since she first perceived herself to be female and therefore potentially a mother.” (1976, Of Woman Born, NY; WW Norton & Co., p. 61-2)
