They shut you in a hospital, they shave the hair off you and tie your hands down, and they don't let you see, they don't want you to understand, they want you to believe it's their power, not yours. They stick needles in you so you won't hear anything, you might as well be a dead pig, your legs are up in a metal frame, they bend over you, technicians, mechanics, butchers, students, clumsy or sniggering, practicing on your body, they take the baby out with a fork like a pickle out of a pickle jar. After that they fill your veins up with red plastic, I saw it running down the tube. I won't let them do that to me ever again.
~~~I can feel my lost child surfacing within me, forgiving me, rising from the lake where it had been prisoned for so long, its eyes and teeth phosphorescent; the two halves clasp, interlocking like fingers, it buds, it sends out fronds. This time I will do it by myself, squatting on old newspapers in a corner alone; or on leaves, dry leaves, a heap of them, that's cleaner. The baby will slip out easily as an egg, a kitten, and I'll lick it off and bite the cord, the blood returning to the ground where it belongs; the moon will be full, pulling. In the morning I will be able to see it: it will be covered with shining fur, a god, and I will never teach it any words.
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Friday, September 14, 2007
Surfacing
Two excerpts from Margaret Atwood's novel Surfacing.
This is definitely food for thought. Where did you find this?
ReplyDeleteOh my. I've always liked Margaret Atwood...now I like her even more!
ReplyDelete-Jill (nsi)
I read Surfacing a few years back but never paid much attention to these passages. Then, when I was researching about the history of the natural childbirth movement in the US, I came across an article that quoted these passages.
ReplyDeleteIf any of you come across descriptions of birth in books, please let me know.
that's beautiful. reminds me of something my father told my father-n-law, although not as poetic. my FIL had continuously griped about me birthing at home, so my father sent him an e-mail, a very long one. To which at one point he said something along the lines of "i'm positive michael knows what she's doing. she doesn't just rush into things, she studies and researches, and if given the opportunity would birth this baby perfectly healthy alone in the woods without a worry."
ReplyDeletedo you read the blog "20 years of birth stories" i like her writing style.
ReplyDeletehttp://navelgazingbirthstories.
blogspot.com/
ooh, I didn't realize Navelgazing Midwife had a separate birth stories blog! Shucks, more time to waste sitting at the computer... :)
ReplyDeleteWow....that was rather...eeky
ReplyDeletewhat's "eeky" is the article i just read in a pregnancy magazine this evening....one of the women interviewed talked about looking at pictures taken of her in labor in the hospital. she said she was shocked when she first saw them, and couldn't help thinking she looked really sick, hooked up to machines and tubes and wires....
ReplyDeletethat's "eeky". natural birth is just gloriously messy. why not revel in it?
Gorgeous, absolutely stunning. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteI love Atwood... but at the same time after reading the Handmaid's Tale I'm not sure if I could handle another novel like that! But you've piqued my interest...
ReplyDeleteI love Margaret Atwood, but her work is not exclusively pro-natural childbirth to any extreme.
ReplyDeleteIn The Handmaid's Tale women are forced to birth naturally because it's best for the baby and scared with stories of medical birth from earlier times. They are denied pain relief.
She's obviously conflicted about extremes in general when it comes to women's bodies.