Ooh, I kind of love my new cover photo.  If you don’t, don’t worry, I won’t keep it up for long.  This baby is coming, so much sooner than I really want to admit…Lots of walks in the woods lately, loving the embrace of green and spring.
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What a full time.  We are moving back to Queenstown.  It’s happening, because I rented a trailer a few weeks ago, in order to haul some of our hoard…And because I rented the trailer for Wednesday, it’s happening on Wednesday, even though Queenstown is still essentially a construction site…We had thought maybe things would be a little bit put-together at this point, but not really—still bare drywall, and the house is empty.  In a way, this is not so bad.  A blank slate.
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I am still planning a minimalist, solo birth this time.  Lee is going out of his way to support me in this endeavour, by being highly irritating and exceptionally quiet at the same time, thus avoiding any undue attachment I might have to his presence.  I am choosing to interpret this as his way of helping me make sure to have that perfect birth experience.  We’re fine, don’t worry.  I have realized that we both get hormonal around this time: I am, I admit, hyper-irritable and a little bit anxious about not really having a stable home at the moment, (someone please tell me this is understandable) and Lee is valiantly trying to stay out of my way,  and spending every minute that he can in the studio, because that is his way of expressing his manly urge to provide for his family.  Everything is lovely.
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And so, I present you with some beautiful images of our happy children frolicking in the forest.
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No no, please don’t misunderstand.  The previous paragraph is mostly self-deprecating (husband-deprecating) silliness.  I am not barring Lee from being around for this birth on account of him having committed some fault or other. Not at all.  But I am planning to give birth alone.  I don’t know if that will happen, I am actually quite open to taking it all as it comes.  But I have been drawn to the idea of  birthing alone since my very first pregnancy, and this may be the right time.
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In addition to loving every single bit of it, I also find giving birth to be incredibly interesting—it is so raw, and potent and full of mystery, and real and yet distinct from waking life.  Is the filter different, or gone, when we’re alone?  I’m very curious about the tone and timbre of solo birth, compared to my previous experiences.  I will be filming and photographing the birth, but on my own.  Somewhat goofily, I have rigged up an ersatz way of remotely controlling the cameras, so I will be the sole author of the images.
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These images will make up components of the art project I’m completing, on birth.  Would you like to hear more about that?
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Alright.  Here is the proposal I wrote for a grant application that I’m sure I won’t receive  (they rarely give me grants, so I felt I really had nothing to lose just going for it in this case—let me know if you have any connections with obscure artist-run centres who might want to take this one on).
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Here we go:
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“Maternity, Lucidity: Self-Portraits in a Liminal State”, is an exploration of the birth process from the radical context of the female birthing body as sovereign and self-determining.

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This project involves the installation of a series of self-portraits made using various media, including sculpture, video, life-sized still images, and ephemeral, event-specific, improvisational body-fluid drawings of the trajectory of emergence.  The latter will be created during the act of giving birth, through which I will show a view of birth in euphoric opposition to the medical/institutional perspective, and the Judeo-Christian mythology of nativity as divine punishment.

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These images will shift the visual language of birth away from the appropriation and presentation of the female body as sexually binary, technologically dependent, available to various forms of penetration (medical), and vulnerable.  My objective is to re-frame childbearing through performance/authenticity, exploring ideas of independence, agency, power and ownership during the birth experience, and to question the received narratives surrounding birth which tend to obfuscate the ideologies that underpin contemporary childbirth practices, limiting the complexities of authorship, nature, sexuality, and ecstasy, as these relate to birth and the wider implications of reproductive choice.”
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Ta d!. I think it’s going to be great!
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Somewhat related to my project, and my birth plans, and my sensitive pre-birthing state,  I have noticed lately (but not for the first time), the suggestion  by various birth workers online, that those of us involved in the birth-freedom/autonomy/anarchy movement aren’t really motivated by the baby, or who the baby is, or what the baby needs, but rather by our “choices”, and our “rights” as women.
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This criticism is presented as though the there is even a remote possibility that the “choices” a mother makes as to how her child enters the world is based on anything *other* than thoughts of her baby.
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As though there could ever be a separation between me and the child in my uterus.  As though this baby swimming in my womb wasn’t created in me, by me, through me.  As though my thoughts, and my emotions are somehow discrete from this person who is living in my body, dependent on my every breath, nourished by my cells.
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As though there is any arguable distinction between our existence, me and my baby: one, inseparable, yoked, permeated by each other.
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As though birth “choices” are not *always* mediated through the dual and often conflicting lenses of biology and culture.
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As though every “choice” that every mother makes, from the mother who aborts her child, to the mother who takes the c-section being offered, to the mother who gives birth on her bathroom floor with no one else around, isn’t acting out of a kind of love that is inexpressibly vast, timeless, universal, and private.
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The implication in suggesting that I and other birth activists are fixated on our own selfish “rights” and “choices”, is that women are, fundamentally, mere receptacles for the the development of this future citizen.
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This is the foundational notion that the tragedy of “maternity care” in the world hangs on:  Women don’t really know (or care) what is best for their children.  Pregnant and birthing women are sub-adult, sub-human, sub-worthy of respect. Pregnant women behave unilaterally, unreasonably, and erratically, when it comes to their pregnancies.
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We see this bald distain for mothers playing out globally with nauseating predictability, as women are hauled off in shackles to be cut open against their will.  We see this day after day in our own hospitals as women are lied to about risk, and coerced into “consenting” under physical and psychological duress to unnecessary surgeries and procedures.
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Governments and industrial birth complex workers are only the most obvious cohort when it comes to the various ways in which mother/babies are attacked and our autonomy threatened during pregnancy and birth.  Most sinisterly, registered midwives, doulas and other “birth workers”, who, ostensibly, have dedicated their lives to “supporting women” continuously offer a lovely array of “options” to birthing mothers on a silver platter—lots to choose from!—just shy of the full scope of what it means to have sovereignty over our selves.
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I have often been accused of “having an agenda”, or of being “overly political”, an indictment that is, I think,  beyond absurd.  How is arguing that every human being has the same inalienable, fundamental right to their bodies, and to their biology,  “having an agenda”? My position is totally apolitical.  Or maybe truly anarchistic (what are “rights”?  Does anyone really have them when it seems that by definition the state involves an inherent power imbalance and abuse?  Sigh).
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I used to write and agitate a lot about the risks and lack of evidence when it comes to so many of the standard hospital procedures women and babies are exposed to.  I used to write and agitate a lot about the benefits of physiological, unhindered birth.  I do believe that science supports that normal birth is best for mothers and for babies.  I do believe that birth outside of the hospital is (much much much) safer than industrial birth.  I do believe that it is a global tragedy that so many babies are cut from their mother’s bodies.
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But as I near the end of this pregnancy—my ninth pregnancy, and my sixth baby—I realize that none of that needs to matter—not to me.  I don’t have to be angry about the lie that is hospital birth.  I just have to openly be who I am.
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Birth, I realize, is all I have.  It is the only landscape that I have ever travelled, with any real measure of true freedom.  At home, I have tasks, chores, responsibilities.  I adore my children, and I am with them every day, teaching and raising them.  But in small, normal, and even comforting ways, they are lost to me.  Motherhood is defined by surrender; a relinquishing of the tether, the vestiges of which slip through our fingers so very quickly.

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I know, we create our own meaning.  It’s fine for this to matter to me, but not to you.
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Birth might be the only private experience of my life.  After the baby emerges, the family celebrates, mum and dad connect, we all get to know each other again in this new way, a new configuration, a changed tribe.  But birth has been my most powerful lesson in knowing how beautifully alone I am.  During birth, I travel into my very deepest most primal self, hold my hand, and surrender to the very essence of what it is to be alive.
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Anyway, I’ve rambled on quite a bit here.  It’s that time, I guess.