Midwives Honor the Sensuality of Pregnancy and Birth

by Shafia M. Monroe

© 2008 Midwifery Today, Inc. All rights reserved.

[Editor's note: This is an excerpt of an article which appears in Midwifery Today Issue 85, Spring 2008. View other great articles and columns in the table of contents. To read the rest of this article, order your copy of Midwifery Today Issue 85.]
Photo by Alejandra Sarmiento from the book Beautiful! Images of Health, Joy and Vitality in Pregnancy and Birth by Jennie Joseph (2007) reprinted with kind permission of Jennie Joseph.

People have often said to me, “You must really love babies to be a midwife.” And “Wow, how you can stand all that blood?”

Of course midwives love babies. We work hard to provide care to ensure that a woman has a healthy pregnancy and thus a vigorous baby. But in actuality, midwives love women. We love to see them happy during their pregnancy, supported during their labor, honored in birth, sustained while breastfeeding and nurtured as new mothers.

My role as a midwife is to help a woman and her partner celebrate her newness and embrace her sensuality.

The Western culture has taken birth from our view and put it in a place that is hard to find. On television we see birthing women often in hysteria, sweating profusely, out of control and not looking pretty. Pregnancy has been mystified as nasty and not a nice thing; it is thought of as a shameful and an unclean act.

Although birth is physical, birthing women are beautiful. As a society, we must reclaim birth as normal, stunning, sacred, sexy and exotic. When the pregnancy hormones come alive, a woman’s nipples darken to beautiful hues, her breasts grow globular to make milk and the linea nigra darkens into a sexy stomach tattoo. Her hips and buttocks become inviting, her hair and nails grow and her skin glows. She truly becomes a unique creation. The changes from pregnancy are healthy, expected and normal changes.

I remind the expecting woman of this transformation. Even though I can’t prove the anthropological rationale, I believe that the sexuality of pregnancy had a protective purpose. Perhaps in the topless hunting and gathering societies expectant women elicited a certain spell of protection.

Shafia M. Monroe is a mother, midwife and author, and speaks professionally to promote midwifery to reduce infant mortality. She is the founder of the annual Black Midwives and Healers Conference and trains Diva Doulas. Visit www.sistahmidwife.com.

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