Midwives - Tumblr Posts
the thing is like. i get that it's scary and makes people who do desire to get pregnant uncomfortable when we talk about the brutality and violence of pregnancy and the damage that pregnancy can do to your body
but you deserve to give informed consent to that process.
the lies around pregnancy - that it's inherently safe, that it doesn't do you permanent damage, that it's only extremely rare for people to die of pregnancy complications, etc like
all of these are lies constructed so that more people will get pregnant w/o knowing all that
there needs to be more talk about the impact of miscarriages and how common they are, how different abortion processes are and how accessible they are
but also like. talking about how pregnancy fucks your body up should not be taboo
this is a process that permanently changes most people's bodies, and that's even if the pregnancy doesn't do them like. severe illness or injury
and i just think everybody should have a right to KNOW that
bc to live in a society that intentionally obscures and hides facts about a completely optional and dangerous process does so for a reason, and that reason is based in a very sinister ideology that does not value bodily autonomy or informed consent
The hypnobirthing book by Marie F. Mongan also talks about this.
My sisters who have given birth love using midwives to help them deliver and we like to say we have birthing parties. It is extremely valuable for whichever one is giving birth to have many of us sisters there (there are 5 girls in my family plus a sister-in-law and my mom).
The birthing process is natural and wonderful, hard but good and should be treated as such.
My sisters and sister-in-law who have given birth work almost exclusively with midwives and two of them infinitely prefer home births (where they feel safe and comfortable and can crawl into their own bed afterward) to hospitals (where it's sterile, often associated with fear, and visitors are quite limited).
Hospitals now can be very good places to give birth, especially if there are complications, but most births don't have complications. Fortunately, many hospitals now work with a midwife group so if you're worried about complications but still want a more calm birth experience, you can have that option.
I’m reading a book about midwifery in New England in the eighteenth century and I’m struck by how pro-woman their treatment of birth was compared to how it’s done today.
Like, it was the norm for labouring women to be surrounded by a midwife and several female friends who all performed some kind of function to aid the woman in delivering her baby safely. Male physicians hated the social tradition and dismissed the gathering of women as facilitating “gossip” and as a hindrance on the rare occasion they attended a birth.
The work of midwives was so valorised that many town maps from this period clearly identify where every midwife was located, and paying the midwife was one of the biggest household expenses alongside taxes.
Midwives developed their own manuscripts full of medicinal remedies for all aspects of reproduction. Birth was managed by women themselves – it was a collective female ritual.
Male obstetricians, motivated in my opinion by a deep-seated envy of women’s reproductive power, began to steal and suppress women’s wisdom around childbirth in the nineteenth century, and by the twentieth century unnecessary medical intervention in childbirth had exploded.
We need to make childbirth woman-centred again.
men be like no actually!!! prostitution is the world’s oldest form of labor performed by women 🥰 forget midwifery or literally any other role you might see women in, historically your place has always been to please us and nothing else <3 women are so brave and powerful ❤️ #realfeminism
two midwives show off their searchlight tattoos.
searchlight designs vary between families, communities, and specialties but always incorporate sky themes like suns, moon, clouds, stars, flying insects, ect. thinking about the context of a design can tell you a lot about the rabbit it's on.
tattoos and dyework, especially if they're ritualistic or emotionally significant, are usually touched up every 5 years or so if they're the kind that are meant to last. the pigments used for these tattoos not only color the skin but bleach and/or color the fur for years afterwards so everything shows up nicely. midwives and doctors keep the fur on their arms very short for hygiene purposes so any designs there are especially clear on them.
dirt and blood don't stain this treated skin/fur easily, so it's common to see pale rabbits with the tell tale signs of being up to their elbows in viscera often decorated with markings so bright white that they almost seem to glow. it's either very cool or very unsettling depending on who you are.
Oh joyous day, day that @walternitram fully claims the role of midwife,
We shall begin our work soon.
@the-cal-zone is watching the crowd like a shark hawk, making sure they do not avert their gaze;
@walternitram provides cheeky moral support, a friendly face hiding the knowledge of what to come...
I will conduct the interview, feigning ignorance to what is occurring, but ultimately steering the conversation towards the ultimate next step (aka Eggst Step), where @the-muppet-joker will reveal his eggs to the crowd, and begin his joker rage, mupping them with his fanged hole in order to get blood and nutrients for his brood, like a demented horse fly, biting through the crowds hides as though they were nothing but unsuspecting equine.