We went to see my best friend’s new baby girl, Taylor. She is beautiful!

Samira has been a wonderful friend to me, she is a warm, kind, and deeply interesting person. She has a great sense of humor and so dedicated and focused on her goals. We met at college when I went back to school to finish my degree. I don’t think I would have finished without her kindness and encouragement; there were many times I wanted to quit. Since then she has also gotten a Master’s degree! I am so proud of her. Congratulations on your beautiful baby girl Samira!

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trulakids.com!

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It still makes me cry sometimes when I think about it. The first time was right at the very start. He was born prematurely, I actually had him at my college bookstore. We were rushed to the hospital, where he had to stay in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit for over a month. I was out of the hospital in 2 days, but I would go see him often. Some days I wouldn’t go because the pain of leaving him there was just too much. I would have to stop myself from howling as I left.

The second time was when I had severe postpartum depression. I went really crazy, hearing voices and thinking he was an alien baby or a devil baby, totally bizarre stuff like that. Because I have a family history of insanity I was terrified to tell anyone I was going crazy, because then I’d get put in a mental hospital and then who would take care of I-bop and S-bop? So I said nothing and got crazier and crazier. It finally came to a head one day when I almost smothered S-bop. I called the child abuse hot line on myself and begged them to come take him. Do you know, their initial response was one of disbelief, they tried to brush me off. They finally believed the severity of the situation when I started screaming. They sent a social worker, a very nice woman who handled my ‘case’ throughout. My relatives rallied around me and an aunt and uncle agreed to take S-bop for the duration. He was with them for 6 1/2 weeks. He left a baby who couldn’t quite hold up his head steady yet, and returned to me practically ready to sit up. I did have short supervised visits with him a few times but it was like I hadn’t seen him at all.

The third time was when I got evicted from my apartment. The family consensus was that I would go back to live with my aunt I’d originally moved in with I first came to Cleveland. I declined to do this, because though I loved my aunt and cousins dearly, their house was beyond filthy and infested with roaches and rats to boot. I couldn’t make I-bop go back and live in such squalor nor expose S-bop, a preemie who still had weak lungs, to that. Living with the aunt and uncle who took care of him when I had postpartum depression was not an option. I wished it was, because that aunt kept a clean, airy, and beautiful home. So I decided to work 2 jobs, save up enough money and find another apartment on my own. I asked my parents if the kids could come stay with them for the summer; they lived in another city 400 miles away. They said yes and my younger sisters, then in their late teens, agreed to help watch them. I ended up getting just one job, but it was for 12 hour shifts, at a plastics factory. That place ran 24/7…my shift was 8pm-8am (which solved where was I going to be at night) and I would work every single night and sometimes do a partial shift during the day. I had a few friends I could crash on their couch every now and then and take a shower. I saved most of my pay, got an apartment, and got my kids back.

It was so VERY hard being separated like that from my kids, and I especially worried about S-bop because he was a baby, under a year old. I worried being away from me so often during that first year would forever affect not only his bonding with me but his ability to bond with other people. It turned out to be a needless worry. The second and third time he came back to me there was a period of adjustment for us both. He would sit on my lap and hold himself tight and rigid, and look at me from the corner of his eyes. I would cuddle him, and sing to him. After awhile he would relax and lean against me, and hug me back. He would watch me hard, if I was in the room he would not take his eyes off me. He was so heavy I could not carry him around all the time like I did with I-bop when she was a baby, but I would constantly talk to him and hug him. Eventually he began to trust in me again, that I wouldn’t suddenly be gone from him, and relax around me.

Though S-bop knows all about the separations and why they happened he has no conscious memory of any of it…and he and I are as closely bonded as I am with my other two children. So any mothers in this situation please don’t beat yourself up over needing this time. I know this is a very hard time for you. It will work out ok.

Pic December 2006
S-bop is in the middle, with glasses
This is a child who loves me, and who has forgiven me for the times I had to send him away from me. He came back to me, in his heart.

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I knew I wanted a midwife and was lucky enough to find Saras (Vedam, CNM). The first time I meet with her, she was knowledgeable and she seemed concerned about me. She just opened all the doors I wanted opened for me. It wasn’t a five minute appointment, my appointments lasted an hour, an hour and half. However long I felt I needed and Saras felt I needed to be sure I was getting the proper health care that I was taking care of myself, my diet. But also what was going on with me, how were things at work? Was I overstressed? Things I needed to watch out for, exercises I could do. “They even had a lending library,” Yolan Wilburn fondly recalls of her midwife-attend childbirth experience.

Although considered unorthodox midwife-attended births are quite common in the Caucasian community and rapidly growing as a childbirth choice in the African American community, as African American women and women of African descent across the country realize that a normal, healthy pregnancy is not a medical condition or illness.

From the dawn of existence midwives have attended women and their families during childbirth. Today, in the 21st century, the practice of midwifery and midwife-attended birth is the norm throughout Africa and Europe and in rural southern cities in the U.S.

In fact midwife-attended birthing options are more diverse than ever. A woman and her family can choose a traditional home birth or to be attended by midwives in a birthing centers. Many hospitals have midwives on staff who attends births in ‘birthing rooms’ at the hospital.

The term midwife is said to mean ‘with woman’. “Midwifery means all that goes into educating and preparing women so she is completely confident, so that my role becomes secondary at the time of the birth. The woman is in power to do what she needs to listen to her body to be instinctive at the time. I am there in a watchful, expecting role, staying where I make sure that things are safe and within the range of normal,” says Sara Vedam, a certified nurse midwife (CNM) who primarily attends home-births.

The International Center for Traditional Childbearing, (ICTC) was founded in 1991 by Shafia Monroe, a veteran midwife of 20 years. “ICTC is a non-profit African centered organization created to promote the health of women and their families and to train Black women aspiring to become midwives,” notes Shafia.

ICTC states on their website www.blackmidwives.org, “The midwives were revered, loved and depended on by the entire village. The Grand-midwife took on apprentices and passed on their knowledge of labor preparation, birth attending, breastfeeding and post-partum care. Traditional midwifery also instructed its apprentices in the healing arts, which included prayer, and rituals for paying homage to the ancestors.”

“The midwifery movement, especially home birth has seen a disappearance of midwives of African American women and women of African descent. Once in the majority, especially in Southern and rural communities where access to hospitals and clinics was not only racially, but economically prohibitive as well,” says Shafia.

But as midwife-attended childbirth remains a viable childbirth choice in the 21st century, there is a growing movement to train midwives who are committed to getting to know a woman and her family. Midwives who will provide information, guidance, and support to a woman and her families’ in their decision to have a midwife-attended birth. Birth is after all a natural life occurrence that usually requires no medical intervention or drugs for normal healthy mothers.

A midwife-attended birth allows the women and her family to be in control versus having someone else impose their rules and sanctions over the birthing process. A woman in labor with a midwife is encouraged to eat, move/walk about and rest in order to preserve her strength for the pushing phase of labor.

Yolan who recounts her homebirth attended by Saras says, “I felt comfortable being at home. It didn’t bother me; some people said were you worried that anything could go wrong. No. My midwives and I were prepared and we had a back-up plan. As my labor progressed, I was able to eat, take a hot shower and then sleep. When my labor really kicked in, I was able to squat down in order to let gravity assist me in my labor. On the first push, Zurel came out. I was so excited. I got to have a birth on my own terms, which meant a lot to me.”

Saras reveals, “I’m not there to interfere with what is the body’s process. I listen to the baby’s heart rate; make sure the progress is going well. On the other hand I am there to facilitate the family’s ability to bond, to be there for the safest and most pleasant manner possible. As midwives we are also there as a support during post partum for breastfeeding, for new parenting and random questions.”

As midwife-attended birth continues to gain momentum in the African American community, as a common childbirth choice, organizations like ICTC continue to work to develop and preserve the traditional role of the midwife in the Black community by holding an annual conference in Portland, Oregon and in establishing the first National Midwives Mentoring Program in 2002.

ICTC future goals include taking its midwifery training program global via the world wide web. If you are interested in becoming a midwife, are looking for a midwife in your locale or for more information about ICTC, contact them at www.blackmidwives.org or by calling 503-460-9324.

This article was written by Nicole C. Kearney Cooper

This blog entry is by Trula Breckenridge. Thanks for visiting Mama Specific Productions!

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Human biology has not caught up with societal expectations.

While I don’t feel that most teens in the United States can handle parenthood (given that this culture has a delayed childhood that extends into the early 20s) I do feel that teens who do become parents should be given full support and encouragement. I also feel that women need to be told about their reproductive fertility, so that they can make informed decisions about when to have kids. There is nothing wrong with women in their early 20s having children. That is when we are supposed to have them, biologically speaking. What is wrong is the disconnect between the mothers and fathers of these children, which is one of the factors causing the single mother issue in particular to black Americans. What is wrong is the way our education and employment system works against young people and mothers. So if you are both young and a mother you are going to be messed up financially, usually. But the system being wrong doesn’t change biology. It doesn’t change the fact that women of any race or ethnic group are most fertile between the ages of 15-25.

Currently most black children in the United States are born to single mothers, most of whom will never marry. I think this needs to change. I am not sure about why as a community we began to devalue marriage, but the marriage rate among black Americans began a steady decline starting in the late 1960s. It is still declining.

I also feel that children are not valued enough in the black community. The way most college educated and ‘upwardly-mobile’ black people that I have come across act about kids, if it wasn’t for the teenagers and the 20s-something unwed mothers having babies, our birth rate would be shockingly low. As it is, the black population in the United States has not achieved significant population growth in nearly 20 years. This is scary and depressing enough. The birth rate for black women now is like 1.8 children, according to some stats I read in Standard Rate & Data. That is what it averages out to, less than 2 kids per black woman. That is not even a replacement birth rate! Which means we are not even having enough children to replace ourselves. (replacement birth rate is when a couple has 2 kids, replaces mom and dad. Growth birth rate is at least 3 kids) For every black woman in the United States you see with 3 or 4 kids, there are 3 or 4 black woman who don’t have kids…and will probably never have kids.

I’m 35 and I am a mother of 3 and very proud of it

For a visual understanding of this post, go to any major airport in the United States or any other place where there is a large gathering and cross-section of people to see who is having scads of children. It’s white women, they are the ones you will see with a double stroller full of 2 or 3 kids and/or 3 or 4 other little kids hanging off both arms. And their people don’t look at them with shame and disgust or even annoyance. Yes, they might get irritated stares or even mean comments if the kids are loud but rarely do white folks look disgusted at the fact that they are mothers with multiple kids. They value and respect mothers in a way that I don’t see reflected in most black communities. I have often seen other black people look at black mothers with disgust, simply for being mothers.

Now I’m not saying all sisters should run out and have 10 kids as a revolutionary act but I definitely feel we should value our fertility and our children and be very PROUD!!! of being mothers, married or single. Black men and women who choose not to have children should be proud of us and give us props for bearing and nurturing the next generation.

I do understand folks wanting to wait until they are married and get some savings together before having kids. But if the current marriage rate for black Americans is so low, how realistic is it to expect young girls to ‘wait until they are married’ before having kids? I had the expectation that I would get married someday because my parents are married, but I had girlfriends in high school who did not have that expectation…their mothers never married, their grandmothers weren’t married, their aunties weren’t married…when I talk to teen moms now and talk about waiting for marriage until they have another child some act like I am crazy. I have been told that marriage is a ‘fantasy’ and not something they think will ever happen for them.

I just wish more folks were conscious about our population numbers as an ethnic group. I am between both worlds, I’m a former teen unwed poverty stricken mother who lived in nasty broken down apartments in the hood and I’m now an older married college graduate mother who lives in a house in a suburb. The disconnect between the two is alarming and the children issue really gets to me. Older, educated, and self-sufficient black folks (and by self-sufficient I mean you pay your own rent or mortgage and can feed yourself; not on food stamps, have a decent job, car etc.) seem so smug and act all superior to the poor folks in the hood on welfare with kids…but by and large it is the poor folks who are actually having and bearing the next generation of black people in this country. That is real and should be respected, not dissed.

This blog entry written by Trula Breckenridge. Thanks for visiting Mama Specific Productions!

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