Letters in issue 18

The making of love

I loved your editorial on ‘love blueprinting’ (The Power of 2 – Dec 2005). It’s so pleasing to see you communicating an essential element in families: the love life of the parents and its effect on their children’s ability to love and be loved. You are so right: making love and intimacy and optimal child development are very closely related.

And of course, the love life of couples doesn’t just affect their children, if they have any. Love has a rippling out effect. You and your husband, Alok, raise a relevant question about its effect on the collective consciousness.

Although it is consciousness and the presence of love that elevates sex to making love, neuroscience offers another window and rationale to support this truth. While it could create a strain and be counterproductive if people made a religion of not having an orgasm, it is a great thing to take the emphasis away from the whole goal-oriented and performance-driven approach to making love – that takes away from the simplicity and beauty of love between the two people here now. And yes, when love is made it ‘creates a presence or field … within which thoughts, agenda and beliefs are suspended’.

If people really get the point of this approach, it could be a huge relief and allow more space for love. It then doesn’t become a big deal to make love, there is no result to achieve, it doesn’t have to go on until someone has an orgasm — and then end. It becomes part of your ongoing life and love, not something separate. As you say, making love — or building your store of oxycoxin — is not confined to the bedroom.

I remember the spiritual teacher Barry Long saying that ‘you can’t be in a state of love if you are going for an orgasm’. He didn’t say that you shouldn’t have one, but if the focus is on loving and delighting your partner, it is less likely to happen. However, the important thing is what you have found from your own experience.

Fundamentally, it seems to me that this no-orgasm approach is an attempt to bring greater consciousness to lovemaking and may be better seen as an idea or direction rather than a goal in itself. If taken as a rule, it could be counter-productive to love, the very thing the ‘idea’ was designed to promote.

Thank you for being so open about your own life, Kali. That is a gift that you offer. I am so pleased that you have opened up this very important topic. The value of bringing more love into existence is immeasurable.

And congratulations on a wonderful magazine. I think it’s getting better and better.

Mary O’Brien
Horsham, Vic


Downshifting downunder

Thank you for your discussion on ‘Downshifting’ at the Sustainable Living Festival in Melbourne in February — I discovered my ‘time bandit’ was 20-30 mins on the phone with my mum each night. This week I have limited the phone calls to once every 2-3 nights (slowly weaning my mum!) and our family has benefited with more time to catch up after dinner.

My husband and I were so inspired after your editorial about downshifting in the magazine, that our local op-shop was ‘overwhelmed with our generosity’ after we cleaned out our entire house of unused gadgets and clutter. The irony was that we were grateful that they would take it and that someone might find a use for our clutter!

I am now spending more time at home with our daughter and tending our vegetable patch and just slowing down our life...thanks for the inspiration!

Kim
email


Three cheers

Just a quick note to thank you for the recent issue of byronchild — and to let you know, again, I think you and Alok are doing very wonderful work. I love the theme quotes on your cover:

‘supporting families in changing times’
‘encouraging the evolutionary imperative of conscious parenting’

From my perspective, you’re right where you are most needed, on the cutting edge of life.

And all the great content within, including the thoughtful letters (and responses), including your letter outlining your decision not to carry advertisements for ‘toddler milk drinks’ (three cheers for you), Alok’s article on DU weapons (he included some shocking figures I hadn’t heard before), all the information on biotech food, and, of course, the smorgasbord of childcare, birthing, fathering, and general parenting information.

Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that I appreciate the great (and important) work you are doing. And to put my money where my mouth is, I am planning to send out a post to the New Heaven New Earth News List (www.nhne.com) trumpeting your efforts. I thought I would include a copy of your Manifesto (which reads like scripture it is so beautifully written), and a link to your subscription page.

David Sunfellow
USA
NewHeavenNewEarth
http://www.nhne.com/



Thank you for an amazing, informative and affirming magazine; the articles have often lifted my spirits and enabled me to continue to have faith in my parenting choices and abilities. I am amazed at the number of people in our community who are uninformed about their options as parents and continue to go on blindly trusting the old ways even though this may create suffering and pain for themselves and their children. I am also amazed at how so many people feel like they have no other option.

Your magazine is vital to positive parenting and therefore a more positive society. I would like to see more articles about Montessori education. I have found the Montessori technique to be a really positive way to bring up children. Thank you again.

Jane
email



I have been reading your most beautiful magazine since my discovery of it in early 2003 (issue 4) and would like to let you know that although I did not know her personally, the tribute to Jeannine Parvati Baker in issue 17 (March-May 2006) is absolutely beautiful and brought me to tears — what an amazing life and an amazing legacy she leaves behind — thank you!! 

Your magazine helps me to question, crystallise those things that niggle at my mind/consciousness and to be the true parent/person/partner/human being I want to be for my two gorgeous daughters! I found your magazine at a time when I felt very disconnected from modern/current/mainstream parenting practices and parents/mothers in general and whilst in the throes of dealing with a very difficult first birth which resulted in a caesarean and all the trauma and challenge that created/brought into my/our lives — your magazine has been an amazing antidote to all of this!! Thank you.

Lisa Zucca
Raymond Terrace NSW



Compassionate living

I just got my magazine in the mail, it is always such a pleasure to read it.  There is one little thing that I’d like to point out: in the crafts section — which I love and use the recipes with my son a lot — there is a cheese-making recipe.

I just wanted to make sure that people know the difference between rennet from animal sources (slaughtered milk-fed newborn calves) and rennet from bacterial sources, which is a much better alternative and doesn’t involve cruelty. I hope you don’t mind my observation. I know you are one of the most ardent proponents of compassionate living.
Best wishes and thank you for doing such an amazing job with the magazine. 

Daniela Ginta
Vancouver, Canada



Web birth support

I love reading your publication, though unfortunately I don’t have the pleasure as often lately as I am living overseas!

At the moment I am planning a homebirth for our first child.  I wanted to let you know of a website and forum which I have found to be incredibly supportive and useful in my quest for a homebirth. It is the joyous birth website, www.joyousbirth.info. On this website there is a multitude of useful information from finding your local midwife and homebirth support group to gentle parenting and placentophagia (ingesting the placenta) — lots of good reading!

Donna Anderson
email



Fear claims a midwife
Months of planning went into the birth of my son. I had engaged a midwife with whom I’d felt secure and made plans for my much desired homebirth. I had glanced over a sentence in the midwife’s notes about a 42 week limit, but from her repeated emphasis of the importance of informed choice, I was unconcerned and assumed it was a guideline.

It wasn’t until I was 41 weeks pregnant that we discussed it.  I was a little shocked, and we agreed to talk about it later, if it came to it — it did. The last week of my pregnancy was spent under considerable pressure from my midwife, a factor which, upon reflection, may have prolonged my inconsistent prelabour! After acupuncture, herbs, birthing dances at a cliff top, stimulation, walking, running, membrane stripping and much discussion, I sat playing scrabble with a dear friend and my husband Sudha in early labour, but still not established labour. The next morning I received my midwife excitedly and was checked internally and told that I was 2 cm and my cervix was too far back to break my waters. I was informed that if I wasn’t in established labour today, I would have to go to hospital. I agreed to go to the hospital for ‘monitoring’ to ‘make sure everything is OK’.

I was told we may need to stay there, so I should pack a bag. I initially refused, then relented, but was very clear that I would be coming home unless something alarming was revealed. It was not.

I was 4 cm dilated two hours later and was having regular contractions 5 mins apart. I swung my legs down ready to go home, when she dropped the bomb: she wasn’t comfortable taking me home. I was a little baffled, as we had come up all clear and I was raring to go. I asked what could have happened here that would have made it OK to go home, and I was told ‘nothing’, and she cited a fear of litigation and a memory of three failed post-date placentas in her 30+ years’ experience as a reason.

It was then I realised I had been lured to the hospital by a fearful woman, who planted me there and expected the system to bowl me over. She offered me the phone numbers of other midwives, I accepted them and left.

I birthed my beautiful son at home within four hours from the moment my homebirth midwife abandoned me. With the way labour progressed suddenly 20 minutes or so before the 12 minute pushing stage, there was no time to engage another midwife, or to return to the hospital.

What I have taken from this is an issue for the State and an issue for the homebirth midwife. My midwife buckled under fear-based pressure of what could be, possibly, she chose to betray my trust, and she displayed no faith in my body and its natural ability to birth. She did this under the pressure of a system, which cowers under the shadow of litigation and blame. Our personal sovereignty has now become something we need to clutch at desperately, sitting cross-legged on an observation room floor between contractions.

A homebirth midwife needs, above all else, courage. We could have done with some courage from a homebirth midwife that day.

What we needed was a midwife in our home, not a hospital who had offered to break my waters, even though the head was high in my cervix, and, as they informed me matter-of-factly, it might result in cord prolapse and an emergency C-section!!

Regardless, we did have our beautiful homebirth, with me instinctively pounding the hallways like a prowling lioness, which I now realise moved the head down to birth! Guiding my boy down the birth canal with tender fingers and love in my heart, breathing him out to naturally preserve my perineum — this was love and life and the energy and miracle of birth.
Sorry she [the midwife] missed it! (Samadhi Gideon Giacomo Hamilton was born 9/02/06).

Suzy Barry
Blue Mountains, NSW
(edited for length)


** Editorial correction
In the March 06 edition of byronchild, we inadvertently misspelled the author’s name of Birthing in My Head by Suzy Barry; we sincerely apologise for the error.