Decompression

I was fortunate to finish up Cesarean Awareness Month (aka April) by attending the ICAN Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. It was, in a word, incredible. The speakers, the topics, the women-- especially the women-- were amazing. I volunteered to help plan the conference this year, and while I don't especially feel that I contributed much of anything, I was privileged to see how much energy and heart the women of ICAN put into the event.

I arrived Thursday afternoon, in time to help with the set-up. I helped put the name badges together-- it was like a virtual reunion, seeing who was attending this year, made even better by the knowledge that every familiar name I came across (Bonnie! Jenny! Erica's coming? Cool!!) would soon grace the neck of an actual flesh-and-blood scar-sister, and I'd be hugging them as soon as I saw them. We organized the gift bags for attendees and speakers (darn, I didn't score one of those adorable ICAN t-shirt-wearing bears!), colated manuals, arranged display tables. Our coordinators were amazing-- it was like watching an entire crew of Martha Stewarts in action!

Chapter leader training began that evening, and as more and more of my sisters arrived, I began to feel more at home, in my element. I am not broken... when my sisters are with me.

We share so much, you see. Most of us have undergone one or more cesareans, sometimes necessary, usually unwanted. We all decry the appalling rise in the c-section rate and the lack of support for birth choices, including VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean, a safe option for most mothers) and out-of-hospital birth. We come from all backgrounds, differing in religion, philosophy, parenting style, socioeconomic level, education, politics... you name it. We all come together, though, where our babies our concerned. We can all agree that babies deserve the safest birth possible, the best start in life, and more and more evidence supports the fact that birth is safest when it proceeds the way nature intended.

One of the high points of every conference is the informal song session, where many of us gather to express ourselves musically. This year, one of my dear sisters was holding the space for a geographically distant friend whose time of birth was drawing near, and she recorded us singing for Tudu . Nothing I could say captures the spirit of the conference better than this brief moment of communion and conviction.

Birth is as safe as life gets. Birth is life... we only want to live it.