Are Freebirthers and Home-Birthers Allergic to “Need”?

(Some) midwives say it about themselves, birthkeepers reflect on it in regards to “medwives,” freebirthing women wave it like a banner:

The birthing woman needs no one. She has/is everything she needs. (“But sometimes support feels good,” we may add as a whispered afterthought).

I’ll be honest: I even have an entire session called How Not to Need Your Midwife (or Grow More Confident in your decision not to have one) featured in my ​Faith-Filled Home Birth​ intensive.

Birthing women keep dancing to the drum beat that says, “I don’t need you” to birth attendants. Midwives and birthkeepers are quick to remind birthing women, “You don’t need me.”

To be fair, I think what we’re all trying to get at here — it’s what I was trying to get at in my aforementioned video training — is that its good to operate from a place of confident inner groundedness, with faith in the process of birth and our bodies’ abilities to give birth without needing to be rescued from it, and to avoid outsourcing the responsibility that we have the weighty priviledge of owning as mothers.

I’m here for that! 👆🏼

Yet as with all things, sometimes pendulum swings happen. In our attempt to wriggle free of the trappings of old paradigms that are no longer serving us, we propel ourselves with unintended degrees of force into the opposite direction where we find ourselves tangled in another set of fetters.

I think that’s what we’re seeing happening: we’re convincing ourselves that birthing women don’t need anyone or anything and that if they do feel that they need someone or something then they probably aren’t doing it right. Ouch. (This is another manifestation of black-and-white thinking, which I’ve railed against ​before​).

We’re allergic to the word “need.” We can’t even say it; can’t admit that sometimes we have need and that is okay. In fact, we’re made to need.

As I was mulling on this topic, I happened to hit “play” on a song sent to me by my new SIL by Paper Horses called ​In Everything​. These lines jumped out at me:

A hand in mine, I’m not alone

And it’s alright to need someone

A kindred heart, a mother’s arms, all say it’s true

We all need to know we’re not alone, we need to sometimes be held while we engage our sturggle. And creation testifies to this through a mother’s arms around her child and the timeless solace of having ​what Anne Shirley would call “a bosom friend.”​

The song goes on with this line:

When I’m holding on, I’m holding on to You

Knowing this is a Christian artist, the “You” here is Jesus.

I think this line of the song holds the secret to a healthy relationship with needing someone: that we can see the truth that beneath the physical arms of our friend, mother, birthkeeper, or midwife are the everlasting arms of YHWH. It is to Him that we cling and in Him that we are kept safe.

Our need is meant to point us back to our Savior.

How will this impact the decisions you make about your birth, postpartum, and motherhood?