When I reflect on my journey to and through birth, what stands out to me is how many people showed up to support me. As a birth doula, I got to receive the support I preach about and for that I am so grateful.
The materials for my braid include:
- a string of beads, which loved ones and birthworker colleagues shared with me during pregnancy so that I could create a strand reminding me of the strong women in my life who wished me well.
- a cord from a TENs unit that my doula lent me to use during labor. Little jolts of electricity - or perhaps the ritual of pressing a button - carried me through one contraction at a time, and the number “10” was my consistent count of breaths it took to make it through to the other side of a surge.
- one of many food delivery receipts, as friends from near and far sent meals to nourish us so we could spend as much time in bed as possible
Woven together, they form a symbol of the wraparound support I received during pregnancy, labor and postpartum. I am so grateful to all those who showed up in the ways they could. It only takes small tokens to feel big love.
True Knots, Tight Bonds. by Christine Mitchell Adams
I had a challenging and long labor before being rushed to an emergency cesarean. My body was not progressing and the umbilical cord had a true knot which was likely the cause of my son's decreasing heart rate which sent us to the emergency room. I honestly wasn't surprised, he had been doing somersaults and flips in my belly for months. He's always been active and now that he's outside of my body, he does flips and summersaults and climbs all over my body instead of inside it. My son has ripped the knees of so many of his little stretchy pants in his three years of boisterous activity. Around his 3rd birthday, the knees on my nice linen pajama pants—ones I had treated myself to shortly after his birth—also ripped open. It felt perfect to make our birth braid out of the fabric worn for our daily morning snuggles. Our crawls around the floor in the early hours when only the two of us were awake. Those endless days stuck inside during the stretches of Sheltering at Home during the COVID-19 pandemic. There are numerous knots throughout the braid, reminiscent of our tight bond—both literally and figuratively.
Christine Mitchell Adams
Born Under a Full Moon by Joanne Delmonico
Braid by Joanne Delmonico, instagram: @joannedelart
The materials for this braid represent five generations of women in my family: a doily crocheted by my grandmother, a purple ribbon from my mother’s funeral flowers, a tiny mala beaded by me, a bracelet made by my daughter with embroidery thread, and pink yarn chosen by my granddaughter for a blanket.
My daughter was born in 1987 during a full moon. There were so many women in labor that all of the birthing rooms were full, with overflow in the corridors. After I gave birth, my baby and I were transferred to a hospital room and settled in. The nurses were so busy that they seemed to forget about me. I was too scared to try breast feeding her, so I bottle fed her every few hours and changed every diaper. I don’t think anyone else ever changed her diaper while in the hospital! This first night set the tone for the rest of my postpartum experience! My most vivid memories of the first two months of both my babies’ lives (my son was born in 1990) was the time I spent awake with them in the middle of the night when the rest of the world seemed to be asleep. The house was completely silent and mostly dark. There were no distractions back then… no cell phones or computers or other gadgets. It was just me with the tiny human I birthed, face to face and completely in the moment. There’s nothing better than that satisfied look on a newborn’s face when they’ve had an ounce or two and they completely relax their bodies. I never rushed to put them back in their bassinets so I could go back to sleep. I would just hold them and study everything about them, making lots of promises and vowing to love them forever. And often, I would fall asleep like that until my husband would yell for me to put the baby to bed… that would happen multiple times each night. I don’t remember the early days like I remember the nights because the nights were so intimate and there were no other pressing chores to do. I do remember that when it was time to return to work at 12 week’s postpartum, both of my babies were sleeping through the night. That was helpful. But, I still cried a lot at work after dropping them off with babysitters who were strangers. That was the most stressful and distressful part of the whole experience!
Shifting identity, changing reality. by jess Ford
I used the strip of canvas with a subtle wash of light blue painted as my grounding piece, tethering my postpartum experience to my previous self as an artist and bringing through to my current life as a mother. The blue to represent my postpartum blues, this grieving experience, and also the calmness of being present with my baby. I used an old shirt my baby has grown out of, and wound it around a shirt I've grown out of, to show us growing together. Lastly, I wove in an old burp cloth to remember the raw, fresh early days of postpartum.
Braid by Olanda. 2022, materials: repurposed cotton textile, grommets, and hospital issued wristband.
Sharing is Healing. By olanda
Talking openly about my experience has been the best source of healing for me. Creating life is no easy feat.
- Olanda
My daughter's eyes
My whole life I’ve been really self conscious about my appearance. I felt too big, odd looking, ugly. Pregnancy didn’t help. I was swollen, uncomfortable, sweaty. I prayed my daughter would get my husband’s looks so she wouldn’t have to deal with the self consciousness I felt in my life. When she was born, she looked like the most beautiful baby I had ever seen. I was too tired to care what I looked like, but I knew it wasn’t good. One hard morning, after a hard night, I was taking a long time brushing my teeth in the bathroom while my husband held the baby. I looked up into the mirror and caught my reflection, and before I could even really think about it, I thought to myself “I have my daughter’s eyes.” She is perfect and beautiful. Those perfect little eyes I’d been staring lovingly into for these first few very hard weeks, are mine, and mine hers. Now I look at myself differently when I look in the mirror, knowing that no matter how low I might feel, I will always have my beautiful daughter’s beautiful eyes.
— Anonymous
What Ifs. By Samantha Snow
Braid Materials: Diaper, Baby Wipe Packaging, Cloth Face Masks
What started out as a seemingly "normal" postpartum period for myself and my family, quickly deteriorated in the face of COVID. My daughter, born just a few short weeks before the 2020 lockdown, kept us busy with typical nighttime feedings and round-the-clock diaper changes. As we adjusted to our new lifestyle the world slowly shifted, and news cycles turned sinister. It soon became clear that we would have to accommodate an unrelenting virus, and we began to live under the crushing weight of “what if?”
What if she got sick? What if we got sick? What if, what if? For weeks on end, like so many others, we spent our idle time worrying. Naps and feeding times were now spent endlessly scrolling through newsfeeds, searching for answers to no avail. Extra postpartum and baby supplies were stockpiled through Amazon, hand sanitizers were scavenged from our local bank lobby, and pediatrician visits were hurried as we were ushered through back hallways, sweating in bulky cloth masks.
As winter turned to spring and spring to summer, our days were still marked by separation from our family members and friends, preventing any sort of bonding experience. Visits with our parents were spent on the doorstep as they longed to hold their grandchild.
Part of me will forever feel robbed of a “typical” postpartum experience. Instead of connection, I was met with isolation. There were no days out, no visits to family, no sitting on friends couches while they offered advice or held our daughter.
Most of all, for many months, there were no cherished moments between my parents and their grandchild, the sting of which has been magnified by my Father’s (“Papa”) recent and untimely death attributed to COVID. This crushing blow, delivered two years after living in careful consideration of his health challenges me to live under a different weight- what were all those “what ifs” for, if only to lead to this?
- Samantha Snow
The Craziest Rollercoaster You've Ever Been On
The intensity of those first few months of postpartum life is still unthinkable, even after experiencing it twice - the pure joy in holding my baby, the sheer panic of the responsibility, the anxiety of how vulnerable everything is, the uncertainty in your own ability, the safety in feeling the weight of them on my chest, the surreality in functioning at night. I don't think it matters how many times you do it, it is always the craziest rollercoaster you've ever been on.
— Anonymous
Hand expressing in my colleague's office
When I went back to work after my baby was born, I checked ahead that I would have a space to pump. I was assured that I would have that space. When I arrived on the first day, there was an unused office designated as a space, but no one could find the key to it. I am a college professor and had an hour to pump before my next class. We frantically searched for a key to no avail, so I ran across campus to the women and gender studies building where there is a designated room. We couldn’t find the key to that room either. I plunked down in an empty classroom and pumped, hoping no one would come in. I was assured that I would get a key to the room in my building, and that in the meantime they would leave it unlocked so I could access it until the new key came in. The next day, I found the room unlocked, successfully pumped, and left the door open so that I could get back in again. The following day, I did this again, feeling relieved that I had a reliable access to the space. I decided to leave the pump in the room so I wouldn’t have to lug it back and forth. no one else was using the room that semester and I had permission to leave things there. The following day I found the room locked….with my pump locked inside. No one could find the key again. I felt like crying. A colleague who has a kid and had to pump at work had previously offered that I could use her office so I asked if I could use it today, she said “of course!” I told her I only needed 20 minutes and she went for a walk. I pulled my boobs out and started hand expressing into a bottle. I had never hand expressed before, but I had seen instructional videos so I hoped it would work. I made my hand into a c-shape, squished my boob back to my chest wall, and pulled my fingers forward, stretching the nipple out. Nothing happened. I tried several variations of this for a while and nothing happened again and again. Suddenly a stream of milk squirted out of me onto the filing cabinet next to my chair and a tear streamed down my cheek. I aimed the milk stream into the bottle and started squirting milk out into the bottle, so relieved! Suddenly the door popped open and another colleague walked in. One of the most highly respected and accomplished professors in the department. I hadn’t met him yet in person, but here was his first impression of me, shirt open, bare breasted, hunched over a tiny bottle, squeezing milk out of my swollen tits like a sweaty cow. “Oh sorry!” he said. “Oh sorry!” I said. He backed out of the room and closed the door. I finished pumping, way less milk than usual but more than nothing, wiped the filing cabinet, the chair, and everything down with alcohol wipes and left. I saw him in the hall and said, “Sorry about that, I’m done in there and I usually have a space to pump so you won’t have to worry about that happening again.” “Hey no worries, do what you have to do.” he said it in a casual, friendly and understanding way that I really appreciated. After three weeks, I finally got a key to the damn room and spent the rest of the semester pumping normally in private while relaxing, eating lunch, and scrolling through pictures of my baby on my phone. I always felt so weird gong back to a classroom full of unassuming college students after tucking my milky boobs back into my ragged milk stained bra under my “teacher blouse.” Going back to work and being away from my baby was hard enough, the pumping situation made it worse. I just wish the simple act of getting access to a space hadn’t been so hard. It made me feel unnecessarily embarrassed and like asking for an accommodation was burdensome and irritating. I’m grateful that my two colleagues were so nice when I had to use their space to hand express, but I shouldn’t have been in there in the first place. - anonymous
I am an exploding plant with blood coming out of it
I thought when I got pregnant that I would feel like a *Woman* glowing with divine feminine energy, brimming with the vaginal power of all my woman ancestors, connected to all the women of the world past present and future. But I didn’t. I thought that once the milk started flowing out of me I’d feel a deep connection to womanhood and that my gender expression and identity and assignment would click together and pour out of me like a joyous river. It hasn’t. Something beautiful has happened though. I do feel clicked, whole, broken apart and reformed but not in the ways I expected. The whole time of the pregnancy, and now as I am climbing out of the foggy boggy soggy woods of the postpartum time and into my new phase as a parent, I have felt like a plant. Like a peat fen, like a tulip, like a Venus fly trap. I’ve felt like a chapter in a biology text book. Things feel like they are on autopilot and like my body is gestating, blooming, tearing open, bleeding, leaking, in ways that feel very mundane and out of my control and just…. factual. It doesn’t feel magical or divine, it feels earthly and biologic. I am tired from all of it. In the early days, I felt weak, torn apart at the seams, frayed. Now I feel more put together, but in a matter-of-fact way. I am tending to her every need. I am a source of comfort, learning and food. I am absolutely dumbfounded that we all start out this way, it is so hard. Why don’t we talk about it and why don’t we get time to do it properly? I am tired, and I am already feeling guilty about not being productive enough, not bouncing back enough, not showing my capacity enough. My capacity is expanded in a way that I have never expected but its not magical to me, its out of pure necessity. I am a genderless biological blob trying to form around what my larva needs of me and what the world wants of me and what I can possibly be and turn out and express. I am an exploding plant with blood coming out of it. so much blood, and milk, and tears, and sweat, and I am covered in saliva and I am being chewed on and sometimes I tuck it all in and put on work clothes and go to a place where I do work and get paid and pretend to be a normal human being meanwhile the blood and milk are streaming out of me and my larva is home pulsating and waiting to be plugged back in. I feel guilty about being away, but guilty about being home too much when I am not away. How do so many people do this? How is this normal?
— Anonymous, She/They