Two Books that Led Me to Birthwork

My grandmother gifted me this book sometime in highschool, knowing that I would love it for our shared passion for biblical historical fiction & reimagining of womens stories. Anita Diamants The Red Tent (1997) follows the life of Dinah - a minor character in the biblical canon - from her conception to her death, through marriages and heartbreaks and migrations. The title comes from the menstruation tent that Dinah and her aunts share every month, a place of intimate familial connection, spiritual ritual, and sharing of encoded knowledge. It is from these aunts that Dinah first witnesses, and is later brought into, the practices of birthwork as a midwifery - a skill that she will continue to hone throughout her life, a skill which would earn her a glowing reputation across the land.

This books magical, ritualistic depiction of birth giving and birthwork struck me heavily as a teenager because beneath the gods and herbs I’d never heard of was something far more in reach; I was struck by the communal, familial, intimate nature of these scenes. Births were attended by mothers, mothers-in-law, sisters; attendees who were not just present but active participants in the birth. Growing up in our modern America, the concept of a normal birth is made clear, represented endlessly in media and nearly enforced by the medical field: a sterile and bright hospital room, someone on their back screaming in pain, a solitary visitor hovering nearby, a brusque doctor telling you to push, nurses whisking away a baby to be washed. This book was one of the first times I ever saw a clear vision of just how different it had once been, and possibly ways that it could still be. I felt the glow of moments where, while the midwife worked, loved ones would feed the one in labor, comb their hair, sing them songs, massage their muscles, and even support their birthing squat on their own legs. There is so much that goes into a healthy birth that cannot be covered by one overworked doctor; the spirit, the heart, the person, the rest of the body, all must be tended to too, and that takes a communal effort. It takes a doula. While it is a blessing for everyone that our medical knowledge has advanced as far as it has since the time of the old testament, I can’t help but to think that we may have overshot it, that some wisdoms were the proverbial baby in the bathwater, that should not have been discarded with everything else. 

The other aspect of this book that truly laid the first seed in me of a desire to become a doula, is simply Dinahs search for knowledge. Throughout the course of her life, she is constantly honing her skills as a midwife; learning from practitioners from different countries to incorporate their knowledge into her own, improvising on the fly to adapt to new complications, building her kit of tools and herbs. The hunger for knowledge is a beautiful thing, and I felt myself sharing Dinahs hunger. It was a desire for a skill, not just any skill but one as old as humanity itself, one that will be needed as long as we all still breathe, something as important as literal life and death. It seemed so vital, so practical, something grounded in the human body and the world around us. The moment it clicked was magical. I wanted to learn to do what Dinah did.

It was a few years later, in college, that I would be handed another book about a sisterhood of midwives shepherding births in much a similar way. This time, not in 1800BC Canaan and Egypt, but in Mali, 1989. Could you imagine the chill that ran up my spine when I picked this book up from my college bookstore, just another required reading to check off the list for a class, and there on the top right corner of the cover: a quote review from Anita Diamant, author of The Red Tent? Before I even cracked the spine I knew, this book was going to revive a passion that had been set aside.

Monique and The Mango Rains: Two Years with a Midwife in Mali (2006) is Kris Holloways autobiographical account of assisting the titular Monique. She is the sole midwife - and only healthcare worker - of a rural town called Nampossela. Kris at the time is a 21 year old American Peace Corp worker, assigned to build new healthcare infrastructure, and provide medical education and resources to the people of the town. Kris and Monique become close friends, and Kris becomes Moniques second set of hands, helping with the births of the village among many other things. Again, just as I saw in The Red Tent, was a far different kind of birth, supported by loved ones and rituals. I saw my own thoughts mirrored on the page in Kris’s reflections on what she saw; one quote by far has a lasting place in my mind.

“From what I was reading, it seemed that this age old wisdom had been forgotten in hospitals in the U.S., where technology and interventions were the norm. I was astounded at the rate of Cesarean sections (around one quarter of all births) in such a healthy, rich country (could they all really be necessary?), and at the control that the medical establishment had assumed over the birthing process. In contrast, birth in Nampossela was a family and community event and lacked almost all modern medical interventions. [...] But I hoped that giving birth didn’t have to happen at one extreme or the other - that a happy medium existed between the two.” (pg. 89)

My first time reading this line was a sense of urgency, a realization that there might actually be something very wrong and harmful about the American standard for birthgiving. An awareness that there are so many other options than what we are railroaded into. I felt my call to action to do something about it, in a small way, to be the one combing their hair and feeding them sweets, to be an ally and a support in that most vulnerable moment. This feeling was reinforced years later when I finally began my education as a doula, and was shown the statistics on how the presence of a doula improves the health of baby and birthgiver, and reduces the amount of medical interventions needed. 

These are the two books that eventually led me to birthwork. Seeing a different possibility, seeing a human need calling to be met, having the desire for knowledge sparked within me for a meaningful skill. It took me maybe 10 years between first reading about Dinah the midwife, to becoming Nell the doula. But I still remember the moment it clicked in my mind, that this was something I could do. That’s what brought me here, to this chapter of my life.