by Hyapatia Lee
It is interesting to note that Linda Lovelace was married to a man named Chuck Traynor who, after divorcing Linda, married Marilyn Chambers. Marilyn’s career started when she posed for the box cover of Ivory Snow with a baby in her arms and the words “99.9% Pure” across the top. People flipped when she came out in a hard core erotic movie with group scenes and interracial sex at such a controversial time in history. Chuck and Marilyn are no longer married.
I wanted this pregnancy to be the opposite of my last. I wanted to be as healthy as possible, up and active to the end. I signed up again for prenatal aerobics and watched my diet like a hawk. With my Doctor’s approval, I asked Vivid if there were any bookstore appearances I could do. They said “Yes!”.
My first assignment was to go to Italy for the Mifed convention in Milan. There were distributors there who carried American movies and dubbed the dialogue using European actors. I was to sign autographs in their booth. The company would supply a bonded baby sitter. I hoped she would speak English.
After the long, uncomfortable flight, we waited forever to get through customs and get our work permit. We were familiar with this from all our work in Canada. Milan reminded me of Gary, Indiana, except no one spoke English. We enjoyed the shopping and I got many nice gifts for everyone and some very nice maternity clothes for myself.
My interpreter patiently wrote the names of the men with their correct spelling for me on a scrap piece of paper as the men crowded around me and dripped sweat on my photos and me. I was having morning sickness that lasted all day and frequently I would have to run to the bathroom. All the smells were ten times stronger because of my condition and all the warm milk over there was turning my stomach. Once, someone got me a sandwich for my lunch break and when I bit into it I discovered, to my horror, that it is customary to put an anchovy on a turkey sandwich over there! I just wasn’t in the kind of physical condition to be experimenting with food. I really was having a wonderful time though, the people were so friendly. They were all very helpful.
At the convention, they wanted me to wear traditional Native American fringed leather dresses and war paint with my hair in braids. I did have some “modern Indian” wear, but I thought it was kind of strange that they wanted me to wear my hair like that and put war paint on. I didn’t think it gave a good representation of what was really going on with my people back on Turtle Island. I felt very uncomfortable and kept thinking about how they would never ask my black friend, Jeannie Pepper, who was also there, to dress up like the old Aunt Jemima wearing a frock and bandana on her head!
Porsche Lynn was there too, and the four of us hung out quite a bit. It was very comforting to have some friends there that I could share my feelings with and who spoke English. Porsche met marvelous Marvin Haggler and they hit it off. She was on my flight back home and we had fun discussing our many experiences before we dozed off on the plane.
Next, Vivid sent me to Australia and New Zealand. New Zealand was absolutely beautiful and the people there were the friendliest I have ever met. The people we were working for there took us in like family. Their daughter, Claire, was a little older than our son was, but they became instant friends. Their baby-sitter watched our son and Claire while we worked and were treated to a special tour of Auckland.
We went out on our own one day and stopped for a bite to eat. After we were done, we asked the waitress if she could direct us to a shopping area. She took her break and walked with us to make sure we got there all right! That is how friendly they are!
The indigenous people, the Maori, are a close knit group. They honor their elders and still practice many of their traditional ways. In the airports you can see extended families holding hands and singing as they wish their loved one a safe journey. It is a wonderful sight and an honor to witness.
Australia was just as amazing. There are more poisonous spiders and snakes there than anywhere else. Sydney is a very big, clean, city. I loved hearing the bonded nanny read “Lady and the Tramp” to our son in that beautiful accent. After working in Sydney, we were driven down to Canberra in the Australian Capital Territory. On the way, we passed through rain forests and views of the ocean with its Great Barrier Reef. One of the sights we passed was Lake St. George. This lake is a mystery. It was formed almost over night, devouring fenced farmland and even a number of cows and lambs. Divers have been sent down to discover what the source of the lake is and why it sprang up all of a sudden, but they were lost under water and never found again. Navigational instruments in aircraft passing over the lake go haywire. I decided I wanted to do a traditional Pipe ceremony next to the lake, since it was so special. Bud and our host, Bruce Portman, joined me as I filled the pipe with tobacco in a Sacred way and we prayed. I was very grateful for my healthy pregnancy and these wonderful experiences I was living.
We celebrated my birthday in Canberra. The company I was working for threw a huge party in a sheep-shearing barn, complete with a band, a huge cake, balloons and decorations, and about 300 people. It was a marvelous time. I couldn’t believe that people who didn’t even know me would go out of their way to make me feel so welcome. I have pictures of Bud dancing with many Aussie beauties.
On our way back home, our plane stopped in Hawaii for refueling. It doesn’t cost anything extra to schedule a few days off before boarding again to go back to the mainland, so we had planned a small five-day vacation for ourselves there. I had wanted to visit Hawaii since one of my favorite teachers in fifth grade gave a slide presentation on the islands based on her personal experience. With all the volcanoes, waterfalls, ocean, native Hawaiian customs and activities, it is a wonderful place. My only regret was that I was too pregnant to enjoy most of the activities, like Scuba diving snorkeling and jet skiing.
Once back home, I was so far along I couldn’t do much except concentrate on the pregnancy. With the need for Hyapatia gone, Victoria began to focus every ounce of my energy towards having a completely normal and natural childbirth. I had long been a member of the Cesarean Awareness Network and they were having a convention in Ohio with one of my favorite authors as a speaker. I decided to go.
Lynn Baptiste Richards is a very insightful person who spoke about our life experiences and how they affect labor and delivery. I learned how not wanting to let go of my baby probably played a large part in why I had to have a cesarean the first time. I had been through so much therapy in trying to heal the scars of my childhood and formative years, I thought I was over it all. Even my multiple personality disorder was better. I could now be myself for days and sometimes weeks on end. It seemed to me that if I could make these movies and perform in these clubs it proved I was healed. Lynn taught me that labor and delivery are sacred times when the subconscious talks to us stronger than ever. During pregnancy our dreams are more intense and frequent and our senses are all heightened. In labor and delivery, the mind can influence the events even more strongly. There were still some unresolved issues in my mind.
After the conference, I devised a plan. I had an authentic 18-foot tipi that Bud and I occasionally put up on our property out in the woods. Tipis are one of the best structures ever devised for living. They are warm and cozy in the winter with the fire burning right under the smoke hole. By design, they resist wind and are amazingly sturdy. We set up the tipi and I prepared for four nights of ceremonies to clear my emotions around these unresolved issues. I smoked the sacred pipe as I had been taughtand brought the spirits of each child I had lost, one night for each, to come inside and talk to me over the pipe. Each night, my dog Samekh, would come in to the tipi and sit by me as I worked next to the fire. It was February in Indiana and I would have thought, being a Siberian Husky, he would have been more comfortable outside.
After I had my nights with each of my miscarried babies plus my live birth, my midwife came and gave me a blessing way. With several of my closest female friends, we shared stories, songs, gifts, hopes and dreams relating to birth in my tipi. We sang songs that honored the sacred mother Earth an
d women’s special connection to the moon, who is on the same cycle we are.
It is funny that babies have been coming into this world in the comfort of their parents homes with the aid of midwives since the beginning of time, yet in the last 200 years western civilization has invented a need for hospital births. In some communities, the cesarean rate is 50%. I do not believe, and statistics agree with me, that laboring women need major abdominal surgery to give birth half of the time. In fact, the World Health Organization states there is no justification for having a cesarean rate higher than 10-15%. They also report that countries with some of the lowest perinatal mortality rates in the world have cesarean rates under 10%. It is not unusual for hospitals to boast a rate of 25-30%. This is considered low. Even so, our infant mortality rate is higher than most third world nations. In fact, it is one of the highest of all the industrialized countries. Why do one third of our women need such interventions to give birth? A cesarean increases the mother and child’s risk of death by two to four times according to statistics gathered by the International Cesarean Awareness Network. The pain and recovery associated with recovering from a cesarean costs many women their jobs. Very few companies will give their employees more than one week off for a birth. Physicians routinely keep their sectioned patients in the hospital nearly that long and prescribe bed rest for another week or so. Driving and stair climbing are restricted for six weeks.
Until some king in England (I can’t remember which pervert it was) wanted to watch babies being born and gave his peasants the option of a free birth if they would have it at his castle (where he could watch hidden from view) women almost never gave birth in the lithotomy position, or laying on their back. It cuts off the vena cava, the main artery giving oxygen to the baby. It’s no wonder so many women have babies with declining heart rates while pushing in this position, it’s actually pushing up hill, as far as the anatomy of the birth canal is concerned.
When one of the queens of England was offered anesthesia during birth, it became the faddish thing to do for all the wealthy women who could afford it. It is interesting to note that midwives and Native American medicine men and women too, have always had herbs that could speed, slow or ease a labor like red raspberry leaves, uva-ursi, castor oil and black and blue cohosh. When, as sometimes happens even today with our medical miracles, a birth ends tragically, there are sometimes very hard feelings between the parents and the birth attendants. Puritan men thought they should be in charge of the miracle of birth. These highly charged emotions are what gave rise to the witch-hunts. Midwives were the wise women of the era, the healers, and as such, were often said to have made a pact with the devil. After the witch burnings the stage was set for the beginning of modern day medicine and obstetrics. It was begun in an effort to keep women under control and take away their power and the over-use of cesareans today is an extension of that desire. Many women, including myself, consider it, in addition to the epidemic hysterectomy rate, to be the equivalent of female castration. There is something really perverse about the way we view sex and birth in this country.
My midwives agreed with my beliefs, although we also believe there are many wonderful modern inventions that, when properly used, can increase the chances of a healthy baby. That is why I was having my baby in the hospital, even though I wanted the birth to be as natural as possible. The blessing way was imperative to my emotional preparation. They gave me herbs for a special bath to be shared with my new baby and medicine gifts to help with the labor. The blessing way tookplace on the night in between my honoring my last miscarried baby and my first live birth.
After all of this, I went out alone to the tipi for one more night of ceremony, to honor and connect with the child I now carried. This time Samekh did not come into the tipi, but stayed out in the cold. I could hear him walking in circles outside. As I started my ceremony, I felt a strong backache coming on. As time went by, the pain grew stronger and I found myself adjusting my position and getting on my hands and knees to relieve the pain. When I was almost done with my time there, I realized that these pains were coming in spasms. I was in the beginning stages of labor! My dog knew it before I did! Most male animals will instinctively circle and protect a laboring female.
Remembering my 24-hour labor and cesarean, I decided to ignore the labor for as long as possible. It could also easily have been false labor and I wanted to be sure this was really it. I went inside.
When I got pregnant I was overjoyed and so was Bud. Then I saw my doctor. She took me in her office and with a midwife I had chosen, read my chart off to me rather non-chalantly.
“Let’s see now, you’ve had three miscarriages, you took progesterone suppositories with your fourth pregnancy when the levels dropped and you experienced spotting, you had high blood pressure, swelling and protein in the urine in the final trimester, we did a section for CPD and failure to progress, I really don’t think a VBAC is feasible for you.’
I couldn’t help it, I started to cry. To me it was like saying I would never be able to enjoy sex as all intercourse would have to feel like rape to me. The doctor handed me some Kleenex and said “but if you want to try, I guess there’s no harm in attempting, I just don’t want you to get your hopes up!”
I don’t believe one’s chances for a VBAC are unchangeable until labor starts, so I did everything and read everything I could to stack the deck in my favor. I read in the VBAC Source Book that acupressure can loosen pelvic ligaments and increase the diameter, so throughout pregnancy I saw an acupressurist and a chiropractor, to keep everything in alignment. In the same book,
I also found a number for Gayle Peterson, a holistic therapist and author of several books on childbirth outcomes as they relate to emotional issues. I called her. My visits with Gayle and in particular, the tapes she made me, had a profound influence on my pregnancy and birth. She gave me images that helped me gain confidence in my body (not an easy feat!) and taught me ways to relax when fears came to mind.
My pregnancy progressed totally normally, without progesterone suppositories or bed rest this time. I even traveled around the world with my work and never had an abnormal problem. I asked the doctor if I could start seeing the midwives that worked with her and to my surprise, she agreed.
I called Krystn, the midwife, and Bud loaded the truck with enough stuff for a two-week stay. The hospital is an hour and a half away and if I had to have another cesarean it would be at least that long before I could stand the long ride over bumpy gravel roads home.
We headed for Kristen’s house near the hospital with our two and a half-year-old son. My contractions got closer together and more intense before I even got off our road. Last labor my contractions were one minute long and one minute apart from the start, so I thought we would have many more hours of this before I could hold my baby.
The moon was a beautiful clear crescent with a bright star next to it and as time progressed, the sun rose with the moon still in the sky, both sending their energy down to me. The Earth sent her energy up through my body and all three met in my uterus with all the force and sound of a thunder bolt.
Krystn recommended placing two combs in the palms of my hands, teeth facing the palm to help with strong contractions. I had bought two black combs just for the occasion. They were in my purse in the back seat and luckily Bud could at least give me my purse and I found the combs. They did help! We made it to the hospital just in time.
Immediately after the birth I felt an amazingly empty feeling. With my first born, it felt like all my insides had been removed, severed from my body, but this time I felt the kind of emptiness you feel when all your dreams have come true and allyour goals have been met. I quickly spun around to grab my baby. I didn’t even know until later that Bud had caught him. I was too concerned with getting him into my arms as fast as possible to notice who was handing him to me.
I got to hold him while he was still wet with the sacred waters of birth, unlike last time when my poor baby cried himself to sleep wait
ing for my arms to hold him. This baby was so alert, eyes wide open, focusing on me, the bonding was so fast and complete. What took me months with Kevin was achieved in seconds with Keith.
I never believed life could come from the vagina that let three very small babies go way too soon. I had never made peace completely with my traumatized vagina. I knew it could save my life, bring me pleasure, etc., but I wasn’t quite sure that it could really give birth. To so many women it may seem like such a little thing that they take for granted, I am so very grateful for my deeply healing vaginal birth.
MEGAN LEIGH
One week after Keith was born, Megan Leigh came to my house to help me recover from childbirth and take care of the new baby, in addition to the rest of the family. Some people call it a Doula, a “mother’s helper”, who comes after the birth to assist with the transition. We had become very close friends over the years. She had gone with Kevin, Bud and myself to Sea World in Northern California when I was dancing there, near her home where she lived with her mother. They were building a new house. Actually, from what I understood, Megan was building a new house for her mother. She loved her mother dearly and wanted to give her something special, something that proved her love and her worthiness of her mother’s love in return. She was very excited about it. She called me often with the details of the decorating and pool installation. She and I used the same dancing agent for gigs in clubs on the road and she always spoke to both of us about it. Megan was trying to get as much work as she could to pay for the whole thing.
Fred, our agent, has been booking me for over 10 years. He is one of the few reliable agents out there. When I first started going on the road and booked through Lee, he was doing business. Lee had once booked us for two weeks in Peoria, Ill. On the second half of the two-week stay, he also booked us in Kearney, Nebraska for two weeks. So the second week of Peoria was also the first week of Kearney. We danced at the Kearney club before and it was a nice, classy place where we were treated right. The club in Peoria was lacking muscle to protect the dancers. There were fights and chairs thrown and beer bottles tossed on stage. My contract read that I got paid in full on each Saturday night. At the end of the week, the Peoria club refused to pay me. I called Lee and he told me it was in an effort to get me to stay the second week and not go to the Kearney club. That is not the way to make someone want to stay and work for you! First of all, why did Lee double book us? Secondly, he should’ve straightened it out, not let us decide whom to piss off. Thirdly, regardless of our decision, the club still owed me the money. This Lee guy was a real character, typical of the agents out there. Fred was a welcomed breath of fresh air.
