Our daughter Hannah is doing one of her last clinical rotations as a physicians associate at St. Luke’s Ob/Gyn here in Duluth. She is learning so much from this all woman team of health care providers. Hannah works both in the clinic and in the hospital’s birth center. It’s the same birth center where she was born 26 years ago.
Hannah was born in the midst of a snow storm. I remember standing by the window looking out at Lake Superior as the wind whipped waves and snowflakes around and pain rippled through my body. Her birth too had an all woman team. There were moments of fear like the look on the resident’s face when she broke my water and it gushed out full of meconium. But all ended well after my final push. Hannah was swept up and her lungs were suctioned out before her first breath. I was so relieved to see her blue body slowly pink up. We were so grateful for the loving care she received from Dr. Kelley and the other women in the room.
Hannah’s first week working at St. Luke’s Birth Center we were in Sedona, Arizona. I thought of her on one of our hikes that week off of the Long Canyon Trail. We took a spur trail to the Birthing Cave. We went late on a cold and cloudy afternoon, so we met no one else on the trail.
The two mile hike was relatively easy until the final scramble up to the cave. As you look up, you can’t help but notice that the cave’s entrance is heart shaped. It is a Native American archeological site, sacred to the Hopi people. Hopi women came here with other women to deliver their babies. I sat in silence in the roundness of the cave. It did feel like a womb. The cave even had a little ledge half way up the back that reminded me of a belly button.
The cave looks out upon incredible vistas. I looked out in wonder and also wondered how many babies took their first breath in this space. The cave is a vortex of feminine energy. You sense this in the very shape of the cave which resembles female anatomy.
You feel the energy too as you touch the red walls and remember the power of women pushing out the life. I sat and wondered how many babies were born in this cave. Blue babies leaving their watery world of the womb, breathing in life. This space is surely a sacred vortex.
I’ve always thought of hospitals as sacred spaces too, so much life begins and ends there. Hannah is learning in a practice that provides care to so many different women, young and old, straight and gay, poor and not so poor. And she is learning from other women.
This group also can make referrals to the WE clinic in Duluth to make sure women have access to all the health care choices that they need. They are women circling women, trusting that women have the right to make decisions about their own bodies.
This morning Tim and I were part of a counter-protest rally at the WE clinic. We silently stood outside lining the sidewalk around the clinic as protestors marched with a large cross and lots of signs. Protecting the right to choose is so important especially when abortion access is being taken away in so many other states.
Last Tuesday morning Hannah got to be first assist in a C-section birth. It was interesting to hear her explain how this is done. She was the one who got to push down on the woman’s upper abdomen as the physician carefully held on as the baby emerged from the womb. A sacred vortex of life in an operating room right here in Duluth. A first breath and the words,
“It’s a girl!”
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