October 16 - 18, 2007 

Remembering Birth

Lori Clinchard-Sepeda

De Anza College

Cupertino, California

(Estados Unidos)

One of the forgotten realms of knowledge, left behind through the forced change of colonialism, is the mundane yet powerful dynamic of birth. This forgotten knowledge had been developed over the generations through the combined experiences of midwives, birthing women, and the corporeal memory of each individual in a particular society. During the 18th and 19th centuries the colonial process, which motivated certain groups of Europeans to search out new lands, new resources, and new groups of people to serve their perceived needs, was supported by technological developments that allowed for greater control over natural, organic environments. Within this context, the influence of new obstetric tools (the speculum and forceps, in particular) necessitated moving the birth process into hospitals, under physicians’ care. 

Birth has become a highly technological event, during which mothers and babies conform to institutional norms, usually under the influence of medication. This change is normally represented as a positive shift from an unsafe birth environment to the relatively secure setting of the hospital, despite evidence that planned, out-of-hospital births are at least as safe as hospital births. What is more rarely acknowledged is the effect that this change has had on our lived experience of birth – both of being born ourselves, and of giving birth (which is now often called “being delivered”). Do we think that the way we are born and give birth doesn’t matter? An in-depth, interview-based study of seven women having out-of-hospital, midwife-attended births came to the conclusion that their qualitative experience was uniquely valuable. They believed themselves to have been nurtured and respected, even loved, by their caregivers. They perceived themselves to have been encouraged to take on greater personal agency and responsibility by their midwives, giving them a sense of control over their birth experience. They described their caregivers’ actions in ways that demonstrated the caregivers’ trust in the natural process of birth.

 Part of the colonizing process includes a belittling of what is being destroyed: “It’s okay to destroy this culture/people/land/language/species/etc. because in the grand scheme of things, it is unimportant, and was destined to fall, anyway, before the inevitable march of Progress.” Having a birth experience in a loving, caring, respectful, empowering, peaceful environment (controlled in most cases by women, and in many cases by women who work outside of the institutions of power) is not recognized as important. Being born in a humanizing way that encourages and acknowledges relationship is not valued. If we want to remember what we have forgotten in relation to birth, however, we cannot attempt to turn back to past practices. We cannot unknow what we know, and there is no need to forego recent innovations that could be useful. We need to become aware that we have lost something worthwhile—that we have allowed the transformational potential of birth to be dominated by technocratic imperatives--and then open up to future possibilities that will arise out of this awareness.

About Lori Clinchard-Sepeda

Lori Clinchard-Sepeda, Ph.D., now teaches Humanities full-time at De Anza College in Cupertino, California, and spent several years teaching Cultural Anthropology at the University of New Mexico at Taos. Her research thus far has focused on birthing, transformative learning, and alternative research methods (in particular, poetic response). She is currently focusing on the study of reality and consciousness, as manifest in the arts and worldviews of different cultures.

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