It is unutterably rich to feel your brand new baby close to your skin, and smell her sweet head still damp with birth- just after her birth, not a few hours after the fact, when the drugs have finally worn off a bit and you can see and think and feel a bit clearly again. It is every woman's birthrite to push, roll, pee, eat, love to her heart's desire without worrying about pulling out IV tubes or ripping her incision open. It is with fury and all the gentle beauty in the world that we must claim our births for ourselves, claim the sacred, inviolable beauty that birth is intended to be. But no one is going to give you a great birth. You must claim it for yourself, and demand your autonomy be respected.
Babies feel sorrow.
Babies feel everything- every tremor of emotion, every bleak sense of neglect. They feel pain. Feel my venom, feel my passion, feel my ferocity and love for beautiful, healing birth. It is wrong to be cut in birth. It is wrong for strangers to manipulate our bodies and minds for no tangible benefit, with no proven safety.