Musings of a midwife.

From the very beginnings of my foray into midwifery, language, words and stories have helped me to map the wild and uncharted terrain of birthing. Amniotic fluid has one meaning - the colorless fluid surrounding embryo and fetus in the womb - but it also contains something of the mystery from which we come. Is it one of the triple layers of darkness referred to in the Quranic verse - “He creates you in in your mothers’ wombs, creation after creation, in threefold darkness (39:6)”? What is the physical and what is the metaphysical meaning? And so it is, nearly twenty years after beginning my midwifery journey, that I still find myself toggling between my midwifery texts, poetry, fiction, the Quran, and ultimately, my own words to help me make sense of the great and humble miracle of attending women give birth.

In this newsletter, I’m going to flesh out the snippets of birth stories and reflections I have from over the years, while hopefully, discovering and telling new ones along the way. Birth has always been my path to understanding a greater Truth about the world. Most of my expecting mothers perk their ears up when I begin to tell a birth story from last night, or last week. Stories are how women preserve our collective knowledge.

Join me as we together, preserve.

Some of you have been with me since the earliest days of blogging and reflecting over at Hakima Midwifery. Thank you for keeping up.

Sign up now so you don’t miss the first issue.

In the meantime, tell your friends!