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Birth, Joy, & Raspberry Leaves
-a new video compiled by Catherine and Amanda Young
of The Compleat Mother

Go HERE for more information on the waterbirth video! 

Click here to read: The Farmer and the Obstetrician

Click here for the Home Sweet Homebirth (Video)

This item was sent into one of the midwives e mail lists recently by a young midwife.  It inspired Gloria Lemay to write her memories of being pregnant in the 70s.

YOU KNOW YOU WERE A LITTLE GIRL OF THE 70'S IF:

1. You wore that rainbow shirt that was half-sleeves and the rainbow went up one sleeve, across your chest and down the other.
2. You made baby chocolate cakes in your Holly Hobbie Easy Bake Oven.
3. "Oh Mickey you're so fine, you're so fine you blow my mind Hey Mickey!" was your first favorite pop song.
4. You wanted to be Laura Ingalls Wilder really bad. You wore that Little House on the Prairie-inspired plaid, ruffled shirt with the high neck in at least one school picture.
5. You wanted your first kiss to be at the roller rink.
6. You tried to make sure that no boys would grab the comb out of your back pocket and skate away at the roller rink.
7. Your hairstyle was ever described as having "wings".
8. You thought Shaun Cassidy actually wrote the songs "Da Do Run Run" and   "Hey There Lonely Girl".
9. Strawberry Shortcake and her friends Blueberry Muffin and Huckleberry  Pie.
10. You couldn't wait to be old enough to wear high-heeled shoes....the one's called "Yo Yo's" with the plastic heel with a hole through it!!
11. You carried a Muppets lunch box to school.
12. You and your girlfriends would fight over which of the Dukes of Hazard was your boyfriend.
13. You memorized every song on the "Annie" movie and know at least one person who immediately went out and got the Annie afro.
14. You had Star Wars action figures, too.
15. You thought unicorns were real.
16. It was a big event in your household each year when the "Wizard of Oz" would come on TV. Break out the popcorn and sleeping bags!
17. Light as a feather, stiff as a board.
18. You loved The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe so much you got the whole Chronicles of Narnia series for Christmas but never read the other books.
19. You crawled in a wardrobe somewhere and actually believed for a few seconds that you were on your way to Narnia.
20. You completely wore-out your Grease and Saturday Night Fever soundtrack albums.
21. You tried to do lots of arts and crafts things, like yarn & popsicle sticks or those weird potholders made on a plastic loom.
22. Shrinky-dinks! What was so appealing about these? I loved the Raggedy Anne & Andy shrinky dinks. I still remember how the oven smelled when they were "baking".
23. You used to tape record songs off the radio by holding your miniature tape recorder up to the speaker.
24. You couldn't wait to get the free animal poster that came when you ordered books from the Scholastic book orders your teacher would give you.  Remember? The order catalogs looked like miniature newspapers.
25. You learned everything you needed to know about sex and your period from Judy Blume books.

---

I am a big fan of women born in the '70's.  The books you loved and the rainbow shirts
produced a group that are the future of midwifery.  My first homebirth was in l976.  
Thought you might like to know how it was to be pregnant in the 70's.

You know you were pregnant in the 70's if:

1. You had to battle to keep caustic silver nitrate drops out of your baby's eyes to prevent gonnorheal infections that you didn't have.

2. Every maternity top had puff sleeves and frills. All the pants were Fortrel.

3. No one would ever wear a bikini if pregnant. Nothing form fitting either.

4. Your favourite books were "Birth Without Violence" by Frederic Leboyer and "Spiritual Midwifery" by Ina Mae.

5. Even though you weren't a hippy, you had to make friends with some hippies to lead you to a midwife.

6. Your midwife was a follower of Baba Hari Dass or Rajhneesh. You never knew her last name and you paid her cash ($75 per birth. . . or $50, if you can't afford it).

7. The idea of waterbirth, Dad's catching or birth on all 4's had never occurred to anyone yet.

8. there was mandatory separation of Mother and baby in hospital births for 24 hrs after birth for "observation" in the newborn nursery.

9. Episiotomy was standard practice for all hospital births unless you could find a British-trained doctor. Then, you'd get one anyway but at least he'd tell you in the office he wouldn't do one.

l0. The cesarean epidemic had started.

11. Women were told to toughen their nipples with toothbrushes and rough face cloths to prepare for breastfeeding (no one did it). No one knew about
positioning for breastfeeding so we held our babies at the breast like we were feeding them a bottle (face up to the ceiling). Sore, cracked bleeding nipples were part of
life.

12. Millions of women had already given one child up for adoption.

13. The birth control pill was tested on us and that could be why a lot of your Moms have breast cancer now.

14. As children, we played on X ray machines in the shoe stores.

15. We loved our babies and created a grassroots movement of birth that the most powerful medico-legal-pharmaceutical groups in the world have not been able to quash.  We are proud of the young women rising up to carry the torch for us.
You are the best of the best.

Love, Gloria Lemay, Vancouver BC

(Correspondence from a friend of Gloria's)
I tried to explain to my mother the other day about why she was such a birth revolutionary, why I admire her so much, why the way she has lived is inspiring to me.   She doesn't see it that way at all.  She says, she was afraid of needles, and of being out of control and remembering nothing (on scopolamine) and of not having the money to pay the only doc in town who would do a Le Boyer style birth up front ($1800) and these, she said, were the basis for her choices in childbirth that gave both me and my brother gentle births.  I was trying to thank her...lol.   Ahh well, perhaps another day. 

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