Kaplan Shanley vs. Weston A. Price vs Me

Whilst washing the breakfast dishes this morning I had a heated debate with Laura Kaplan Shanley and Weston A. Price (whose mate Francis Pottanger also chipped in now and again to back him up). It went a little something like this:

So you think that if a woman truly believes that she is capable, that her body knows exactly how to overcome any birthing obstacle and if this woman is in-tune with herself and child enough, her body will respond accordingly and say, switch positions making birth easier? That a woman needs to totally and utterly believe in the birthing miracle and her own body's ability to see this through and it will indeed happen? During pregnancy you suggest women meditate daily upon the sort of birth they desire, visually see this birth taking place, with all of it's particulars. This is an exercise, along with exploring any birth related fears and past birth experiences to totally overcome fear and set the mind toward a pain-free and pleasurable birthing experience. I love that! This is exactly what I read over and over and followed the exercises and saw myself doing and feeling and responding during my birth/S. Yet. And yet. If a woman has a 'bad' (meaning managed hospital -including c-section- or some other birth related mother-child emotional trauma) birthing experience, ultimately, it is her own 'fault' for not believing enough in her body's capability and ultimate wisdom and ability to birth her child. That maybe, even, she harbored the secret (sub-conscious) belief that she didn't deserve a good birthing experience? This is what I dislike about this theory. Because should a woman not birth her baby in pleasure or with satisfaction it is therefore her own fault! The guilt involved in that! Do women really need more guilt? For not digging deeper into the tangle of her emotions and past thought? For not brain-washing herself well enough? Where is the empowerment (yes I am all about empowerment lately)?

Then along comes the Weston A Price info, offering physiological and anatomical reasons as to why women might currently have a hard time bearing babies. That due to generations of mothers eating non-nutritional food stuff, a diet rich in 'white-man's' modern convenience foods, our very bones have narrowed. He claims we see this in our own faces - teeth that have no space, the overcrowding, the narrowing of our faces, echoed through our bodies. In women, this means our precious baby-bearing pelvis too. The non traditional food consumption causing long labours and birthing difficulties. When Pottanger show those photos of the cats after three generations; the crowded little teeth, the inability to birth their litters, the dead or droopy, ill kittens. I can see how this could be very true. Then I see how I too am that third generation of women eating poor food stuff. The end of the line. The generation which dies out. Yet we don't. Because of the surgical tools which free our babies from our wombs and stitch us back together. (What of this fourth generation then?)

I can put aside my guilt because my mother's diet was unable to give me a wider, traditional body-shape?

But then what? That leads to a dead end does it not? A mother can then feed her children on a diet rich in fat soluble vitamins and traditional foods but can she change her own body? I mean I have read that a traditional diet can shorten labour, but what about the actual narrowing of bones? Can this be changed?

If this notion of Price's is held and believed, then how can one put their faith in the type of faith Shanley offers? Faith of body and self. Impossible! Irreconcilable!

This is where I am at. But there is something else emerging after these years of thought about this troubling subject. Reading zen. Knowing I need to abandon the theories I feel I 'know'. Step aside from the written word and just feel. My mother tells me she thinks the more I read the more expectations I have. I don't know. I am not confusing this with wanting to remain in the mud-bliss of ignorance... That I probably know the answers to my questions. The art of knowing that the me, the true me, is not the waves of emotion that chop and clash on the surface - including the 'stuff' that happens to me. The true me is the great unknowable depths of stillness and ocean below. When I can visualise this then it is empowering to see that I am ultimately more than my birthing experiences. That what happens to me and what I think and feel are mere waves. When I can draw upon that calmness and depth, stillness that goes beyond time and any measuring then suddenly I am not Mother Guilt. Or confusion. Or Mother Narrow Bones. There is a satisfaction in knowing there is a beyond. That my true identity as a woman is not snagged upon the details.

(So, on a lighter note - if you might be pregnant reading this and fear your body shape verges on the narrow - eat good food, and cross your fingers for good measure. If your birth is not one of supreme pleasure then relax in the knowledge that according to zen-like religious thought you could very well be born again as an ocean dwelling dolphin-mermaid-nymph who births orgasmically in her sleep :) )