A mother's love

One of my favorite movie moms is Mrs. Brisby from The Secret of Nyhm(sp.?). There is a scene in that movie where Mrs. Brisby is trying to save her children and her home from sinking into the mud and consuming them. She had enlisted the help of the rats of Nyhm, but at that point, they were unable to help. She had been given an amulet that held a lot of power, but it could only be unlocked by someone who was worthy. As she is watching her children sinking she sees the amulet and grabs for it. It burns her hands, and she lets go, but not before she notices that it had started to rise her home up out of the mud. With her not holding it, though, it goes dark.

Then she makes the decision to grasp a hold of the amulet once more because she saw what it could do with her in control of it. She holds onto it tightly even though it is obviously burning her hands. Using that power and her own will and love for her children she moves the home to safety. At the end of the film, you see her with her children safe, but you also see her daughter wrapping her hands because of the burns from the amulet.

I was impressed that it was only because of her love for her family that she was able to move her home and withstand the burns it caused. As a mother, I have come to understand that there is a lot of pain and heartache involved in this job. From the get go with pregnancy and labor, and throughout your child's life. I think there are times when we feel that burning of our hands and just want to toss it away. But it is with love that we once again pick it back up again and in the end realize the fruit of our labor...even if it is only to feel the sweetness that loving another being so completely can bring into our lives.

Coming up...bringing knowledge into the equation.

The making of mothers

It's not just the making of babies, but the making of mothers that midwives see as the miracle of birth.

-- Barbara Katz Rothman, Sociologist, Author of The Tentative Pregnancy, Genetic Maps and Human Imaginations and other books.

I just had to share this quote because I loved it. Ok, so I tend to be a little more midwife leaning, but I think doctors can add the same thing to a birth. I acknowledge the work and sometimes necessity of having a doctor attend a birth. No matter what you choose, though, I think this quote should be a part of the care of women.


The thought that the making of mothers is part of bringing babies into this world appeals to me. This is the beginning of how motherhood starts. And it is a miracle, just as much as the birth is. Becoming a mother is one of those miracles that are hard to explain.

Fear and the stress response

I was going to write more about how to help with the fear of bad outcomes during labor, but I realized something....this is a very real fear that cannot be downplayed. Bad things can happen and it would be unnatural not to fear that. That said, though, we cannot let that fear control us.

The other night I watched the movie called Wait Until Dark. It's about a blind lady who has to outwit a murderer. Very tense, and I watched it right before I went to bed. Of course as I was falling asleep, I was hearing all the night noises and imagining it was an intruder in our home:) I would carefully get up to go check on the kids. My breath a little labored and my muscles extremely tight. Of course everything was ok, but I mention this because this was a moment when fear was affecting how my body was working. The same kind of thing happens in labor. Fear causes our body to tighten up and a mirad of hormones are d in response to the stress. If you can imagine those tense muscles while you are in labor, it makes sense that this would also slow down that cervix from opening up. Pain is also intesified as our stress response takes over and our sense of control diminishes.

Fear can help us. It helps us recongize danger and get help when we need it. If you listen to your fears, you may be able to catch problems that might not otherwise be caught. But...you must own the fear and not the other way around. You must take possesion of it. As I have said before about pain, you must look it in the face and acknowledge it, but let it pass through you,- use it for what it is worth and move on. As I have talked about love before, I would point in this direction again. Love could have a strong ability to allow you to control that fear. If you focus on that, your fears, though real, may not become overpowering, but you may overpower your fears and allow your body and mind to do the job it needs to do.

Now trying to apply this motherhood does not seem so far stretched to me. We need to work through our fears as a mother also. I would suggest the same thing--own your fears and move forward instead of pulling in and stalling. I really believe we need to teach our children the same thing.