Silent Witness -- Be a Baby Keeper

Baby Keeper is the name of the training I am developing. It is on the “back burner” with many other bubbling pots of good stuff in my life. Better, it is a seed germinating and sprouting in the dark, rich soil and being nourished by the warm sunlight and sweet rains.

Baby Keeper is a new skill set for Doulas and midwives. I plan to teach the basic pre and perinatal psych and trauma healing skills to birth caregivers. Many of them are also wounded babies and women unintentionally bringing their own energy of woundedness – powerlessness, abandonment, violation, and fear – to the “outer womb” of the baby who is birthing. Women and caregivers are well-intentioned, and the burnout rate is high. Women begin to see patterns in the births they attend.

I thought it’s a good thing to share and to introduce the concept of the Baby Keeper. One who keeps the soul’s journey as the focus of birth, and one who knows that s/he is a part of a very important process that impacts that soul for life. In the training a caregiver will learn how to be a SILENT WITNESS at the birth. This means, rather than going to the birth to create a certain birth or to heal one’s own wounds, a caregiver knows how to Settle her own nervous system in order to hold the sacred space and just witness. Many people know how and do this already. The larger question is always, “What to do after the birth to support them?” Especially when the mother is so disappointed and both she and her baby are so emotionally, physically, and spiritually wounded. Our culture does not yet acknowledge that birth is the journey of a soul into this life and that it IS THE experience that creates the foundational, survival, and relationship template. This is where the Baby Keeper training provides the caregiver with basic skills to be with the mother, baby, and father to heal.

So … I found this while looking through files for something else. I wrote it some time back in response to a discussion on line. Someone had talked about witnessing birth and being judgmental.

At the risk of sounding like a speech writer for our great leader, “It’s only judgmental if you are judging, otherwise it’s witnessing.”

In our quest to be non-judgmental, we are not being authentic and reflecting truth to the other, the soul, the baby. Witnessing is seeing what is happening, what the baby is experiencing, and naming it – when you are able and willing to observe, remember and even hold it for the baby.

“I heard this ……” “I saw this …..” “I felt this ……” and acknowledging the reaction as one’s own and allowing the baby to express his or her experience of the event or circumstance. “I watched the nurse resuscitating you and heard her saying, ‘You can run from the doctor, but you can’t hide from the nurse.’ I am sorry – I was so angry, I couldn’t believe it, I!! wanted to scream at her to shut-up and to push her hands away, and pick you up. I wanted to put you in your mommy’s arm and let her gently give you the oxygen you needed.”

Giving witness to a soul preparing, to a prenate, laboring, birthing, or infant is about more than just being well-intentioned, non-judgmental third party. Being non-judgmental, well-intended third party isn't really all that possible, whether spoken as a warrior or a poet.

It is about engaging with that soul to see, hear, and feel THAT soul's experience. This soul is often in the body of a newborn who NEVER gets his or her experience acknowledged. I never say never, but I say in our world, in the US, almost never does a baby's experience get heard and seen and FELT as significant. HOW many people of any age lament that "they just don't get me" and starting in the earliest childhood behavior, children are trying to be seen and acknowledged. That is all any of us really need and want. Babies are not seen or acknowledged as EXPERIENCING their experiences. All of the stories of babies in the past few weeks --- mother going to work, father leaving,
mother focused on conceiving another baby -- these are all seen as the experiences of the adults in the life of these babies. The cultural behavior and belief that denies the sentience and fullness of the human baby leads us to ignore that THIS IS the LIFE of the BABY. The baby is vulnerable, impressionable -- SO impressionable as that amazing brain is computing all that is happening. Babies are sensory beings, sponges taking in EVERYTHING, including the energetic emotional and psychological patterns of those in his or her enviornment. No other time is so important. The baby will LIVE WITH whatever is programmed during this period. How do we as a culture so minimize this period to the degree of allowing such violations that human babies experience?

Babies, from the soul coming in and beyond, need to be seen, felt, acknowledged, and supported in order to have brains and bodies that are functional. They are mini-me's. They want what we adults want -- only we want what we need after many, many years of not getting it. We want from our lovers, our friends, our families, the world that which we always wanted. To be held. To be seen and acknowledged. Touched gently. To know when someone is coming or leaving our presence. To not be let alone to cry it out. To snuggle into the warm, soft safety of the arms of a loved one. If our mother didn't get that during our gestation and we didn't get it during our birth and infancy, we cry for it forever. My son, GI Joe, coined the phrase, "Baby Cry" referring to people's behavior. It's so true. It is our amgydala, the early brain that remembers the early woundings that seeks to have that loss healed.

How do we do that? Logic, inner wisdom, and compassion -- and now, science confirming we are energetic beings, tells us our brain is plastic and we can re-imprint, re-wire, and re-connect. Our baby self can experience that which was lost and reorganize. We do this in relationship with the other. How? How can this be? Most of us know -- when we are in something deeply -- when someone "gets it" or when they don't. When we really "get it" that our friend is in emotional, mental, or physical pain, we feel it, we tear, we make eye contact, and we express it, "I really see or feel for you" --- and we do. We say, "I am sorry." Babies need what we all needed as children and grown ups --- genuine, empathic touch, and words by someone whose intention is to support our intention. It's magic.

In healing work we are acknowledging the earliest experiences of the soul and body -- I cannot undo that my mother was a hairdresser in 1955 and breathed toxic perm and color solutions, or that everyone else in the environment smoked cigarettes. I cannot undo the traumatic aspects of my birth experience that made me the survivor I am. But, until someone supported me to tell my story (a lot via the body as babies communicate) and acknowledged it, those imprints prevailed. Our earliest brain is not differentiated from who we are today. Our neocortex developed, wired around early childhood experiences and prenatal and birth events. We believe that when we try to get rid of pain or dysfunctions that the earliest part of our brain (that experienced it) feels that the self is trying to get rid of it. Witnessing is about how to hear, hold, acknowledge a baby whose experience and perspective differs from the parents, and our own. It is a bit judgmental to say to a woman, even today, "You are hurting your baby by smelling toxins all day long." We cannot do that!! I WISH we could -- because we all know within us what is needed by the baby (our self and others) to be a functional human being. How can a chronically depressed or bipolar mother parent effectively? I don't know. Is that judgemental or reality? Do we have the right as a society to expect that those not capable of bearing a healthy, functional human or who are capable of loving, caring, protective supportive parenting not bear children? Or, is it the soul's decision?

We cannot intrude upon a woman's right to choose her life and her actions. We cannot say to a woman, "This is not the time to be conceiving a baby. Your body is not healthy enough -- your marriage is a wreck --- you are a single parent -- you are on depression medication and it is wrong! -- You cannot induce your baby -- you cannot bottle feed, and on and on and on. WE CAN, whether it looks judgmental or not, be the one who, even if NOT spoken out loud, acknowledges that soul's journey. When the soul, whether in a two day or two month or two year old body has a third party who is witnessing the experience, this baby does amazing things. And, parents often begin to see the pattern in their own lives.

So, the soul/baby (if there is one) who may be conceived to a woman who is already has post-Partum depression and is on medications can actually be acknowledged right now.

The spiritual idea and intention is one thing -- we each still bring who we are to every situation and relationship. The soul is conscious before conception and comes into a body at conception. Physical and emotional and mental development begins. One of the possibilities to consider from the prenatal and perinatal psych and trauma healing/attachment healing field is that when we ourselves are not conscious of our own conception, prenatal, labor and birth, and infancy experiences (our earliest brain development), we are acting out the experience in our daily life and relationships. This becomes very important we engage with pregnant and birthing and post partum women. The soul AND the brain/body is a recording everything.