(Look at that rainbow cake for my birthday. The sprinkles were about an inch thick, thanks to Rubylicious.)

It's mothers day--happy mams day, Mams--in France today (I think pretty much the rest of the world celebrated it a few weeks ago), so what better time for me to write a few words about birthing our children?!

Last week I had to go see my midwife for my yearly OB/GYN check-up. Because Joan is so amazing, I decided, after Ruby's birth, to stick with her instead of going back to a standard OB/GYN doc. Joan has a bunch of toys in her office and she loves seeing the children she has delivered. So Ruby always goes along with me.

This time Ruby was really engaged in the whole process. I explained it to her beforehand and Joan explained it to her before the exam. Joan got her a chair and Ruby stood on the chair next to Joan the whole time, watching everything closely and we both talked her through what was happening. Ruby was very curious and asked a lot of questions.

I'd actually toyed with the idea of not taking Ruby this time. Just because it's a quicker visit that way and even though I like going to Joan's office, in her house, why bother? But in thinking about it, I thought what better way to help my daughter get to know her own body than by seeing mine, from so close? And what better place to give her a powerful sense of how important and beautiful and special our bodies are? Why not take her to a place that reinforces what we already do at home, which is to not hide our bodies and to talk about them? So that when I tell her women need a doctor to check if our vulva's are healthy, it's okay. Joan commented to Ruby in fact, "we all have vulva's in this office." And finally, why not honor and celebrate a midwife and her powerful place in helping our children get born?

Turns out that midwives are at real risk in NY currently. Midwives are licensed medial professionals, but New York State requires that they get a "written practice agreement" from a physician before they are actually allowed to practice. One of NY's hospitals, St Vincents, gave out most of the wpa's to midwives and so when it went broke and had to close, suddenly all our midwives, including the few who do home births, lost their wpa's and are struggling to obtain new ones. This is just wrong and I'll do what I can to help. You can too--sign the petition linked above! Thanks!