Birth Poem

Blessings From the Heart

Excerpts from Frederick Leboyer's Birth without Violence
by Bethany Striker, Charis Midwifery Student

Darkness, or almost, and … silence.

A profound peace settles the room.

You can feel the respect that naturally

Attends the arrival of a baby.

One doesn’t shout in a church.

One spontaneously lowers one’s voice.



If there is such a thing as a sanctified place, surely

It is the room the child is about to enter.



Subdued light, silence…what else is needed?

Patience.

Or rather, the sense that one should slow down

And thereby enter into another rhythm; the profound

Rhythm of life,

To which the mother has spontaneously become attuned,

And which is also the tempo of the child.



Unless you have re-created this incredible languor

In your own body, it is impossible to understand

Birth. Impossible to meet the newborn in his terms.

In order to reach this deep understanding, to arrive at

A place where you can meet the child, you have to, as it

Were, step out of time.

Step out of our time.

Meaning our strong, familiar sense

Of how time is flowing, of the apparent speed with which

For us, it seems to flow.

Our sense of time and the time sense of the

Newborn baby are practically irreconcilable.

The one is a state of near statis,

The other state, ours, is often a frenzied restlessness,

Close to madness.

Besides, we adults, are never “here.”

We are always somewhere else.



In the past, in our memories.

In the future, in our plans.

We’re looking back, at what is gone,

Or ahead, at what is yet to happen.

Never focusing on “here and now!”

Yet if we have any hope of rediscovering the newborn baby,

We must step outside of our own furiously running time.

Which seems impossible.

How can we step out of time?

How can we escape in fast and furious flow?

The only way is by trying to be fully present with the moment.

Yes, to be here and now, as if there were no yesterday, no tomorrow.

To allow any thought that the moment

Will end, that appointment awaits,

Is enough to break the spell.

As usual, everything is very simple.

And apparently impossible.

How can we reconcile the irreconcilable?

How can finite combine with infinite?

It can only happen if we open completely to the other,

Which means completely forgetting oneself.”

Birth without Violence by Frederick Leboyer pages 50-52

I don’t know if Frederick Leboyer is a Christian, but this concept works because the present is where God’s grace is!  Elizabeth Elliot said, “There is no grace for imagination.”  It’s not about the past, He has already forgiven that.  It is not about the future for we cannot handle the future.  The present is where His grace and peace are and when we are there, we can do anything with Him!  Blessings on your births and precious babies, midwives all over the world! 
Love, Bethany