what babies want

I had the great pleasure to attend a screening of Debby Takikawa's film What Babies Want on Friday evening.  The screening was in support of the International Breech Conference which will be held in Ottawa in just a few weeks, on October 15 and 16 (*hint hint* if you can make it, you should definitely go!).  The basic premise of the film is that how we are born, our experience during birth and in the perinatal period following birth, matters, is internalized by the infant and carries long-term implications both individually and interpersonally for the child. 

The film makers connect youth violence, including suicide, as well as behavioural issues with the injustices and wrongs so commonly visited upon our newest and tiniest people.  Author Joseph Chilton Pierce suggests that by removing violence from birth we could, perhaps, put an end to violence entirely.  Sadly, I think it is a far more complicated issue, however, I completely agree that the manner in which we are born and treated immediately following birth informs us, for good or for ill.

The film is divided into chapters.  In the second chapter, Sobonfu Some is featured, and engages several pregnant women and a small group of people in a welcoming ritual to bless and invite the not-yet-born infant to the world.  The scene is deeply, deeply moving.  From my seat in the auditorium I could see several other women wiping away tears, as I was, myself.  I find myself teary even thinking about it now: a small community of people, gathered in a circle, singing welcome and blessing to the infant in the womb, kneeling on the earth, embracing the mother's belly and speaking soft and encouraging and loving words to the child, standing and embracing the mother, speaking words of courage and joy to her in her final weeks of preparation before her birth.  The image struck me not only as a welcome to the baby, but almost similar to worship.  As each person knelt before the mother's belly, it was very like the supplicants of ancient Greece, or like the actions of those struck with a deep and reverent fear and awe.  Through the ritual of welcome, those participating not only invite the child into the world and make him or her welcome, they also remind themselves of the importance and specialness of that child, the very preciousness of this new person and that this tiny person is bringing important and necessary gifts not only to the parents but to the world.  Each baby is a gift for us all.

The film spends quite a bit of time on examining exercises in regression and rebirthing.  The stories and people featured are extremely interesting.  In particular, I was astounded by the story of a 6 year old girl who remembered with great clarity the hospital room in which she was born, including such small details as where her mother's shoes had been on the floor, and where her father had sat next to the bed.  She had been separated from her mother after her birth, and their relationship had always been troubled.  After this little girl used toys to recreate the scene of her birth - without prompting - she reimagined her birth, putting a baby figurine with a mother figure, in effect giving herself the birth experience she had been denied.  And amazingly, it worked: her relationship with her mother improved vastly, the divide between them somehow healed.

The filmmaker uses these stories and scenes of regressions to underscore the need for just and gentle birthing and aftercare.   It was fascinating, but sadly, I think it may weaken the film simply because it may prove fodder for sceptics who will decry hypnotherapy as 'bunk' and cite the many children who, in the 80's, were fed stories and convinced they had repressed memories of past abuses.  The stories featured in the film are, of course, very different.  As it is pointed out in the film, these are not intellectual memories about "that time in that place" but are instead impressions, sensations and feelings, both emotional and physical in addition to sense memories.  They may not be expressible, but they are present and inform our character.

The seventh chapter of the film examines the ancient and primal nature of birth.  Actor Noah Wyle, who was involved in the support and production of the film, in addition to being featured and narrating, describes his reaction to his son's smell after birth, how it suffused his [Noah's] being and seemed to imprint his son upon him.  Another father interviewed describes his desire to lick his newborn immediately after birth, and to lift him up in exultation.  What is most important to learn from the stories in this chapter of the film is that birth has ritual implications in our lives.  It is not merely the passing of the child out of the mother: it is an rite, a ritual, and when we touch birth we touch something deep, primal, and very, very old.  Birth is bigger and more powerful than we are.

So what, then, do babies want?  What is the ultimate message we take away from this film? I think that it can be reduced quite simply to one word: respect.  Such a conclusion is too simple, however, to be in any way helpful.  Babies want to be treated with respect, yes, just as any adult wishes to be treated with dignity and respect.  Babies are as deserving of dignity and respect as adults are, and should be afforded such treatment from the very moment of birth, and even before birth.  Babies want to be loved, yes, and held, certainly, but ultimately to have their needs and wants met as they express them, which they will in the expectation that we will respond in kind.

And we can extrapolate further.  In order to properly respect the baby, we must respect the mother and we must - we must - respect the process.  They cannot be separated; they are intrinsically linked.  We cannot properly meet the needs of the infant when the mother's body is needlessly put asunder, when the very act of birth is precipitous and truncated.  Likewise, we do not respect the mother when we tear her baby away from her, when we are more concerned with injections and sutures than with the transformation she has just experienced, and fail to allow her to encounter her infant child.

Respect the baby, respect the mother, respect the process: it's what babies want.