Birth Terminology

A couple of recent discussions on Facebook and a yahoo group have got me thinking about birth terminology. Namely, the words "delivery" and "vagina." There's a lot of desire to avoid these words within the home birth community especially, and also among people interested in natural childbirth in the hospital.

They just don't bother me. Or perhaps, I am more bothered by the possibility for miscommunication or a reduced view of competence that comes with a desire to change these words.

Yoni, for example. If I go into the hospital with a transferring homebirth client, and I say "yoni" to the doctor, I'm not going to get taken seriously. If I use the word yoni with my friends and acquaintances, I am doing nothing to legitimize homebirth midwifery in the public eye. And then there's the question of whether the word vagina is really offensive. It's supposed to be offensive because it originally meant "sheath for a sword" in Latin. But in embryonic development, the term for the creation of the neural tube is invagination. This makes me think that vagina really means tube, and that the Romans happened to call the their sword sheaths by the word for tube. Makes sense to me.

Besides, in being offended by "sheath for a sword," we're ascribing our own cultural values and impressions onto that term. What if in Roman society, the sheath was seen as important because it protected the sword? What if the sword and the sheath were seen as important dualities, like yin and yang, with the sword representing aggression and the sheath representing peace, or love, or safety, or nurturing? I realize that these are only imaginings - I'm extrapolating things that are impossible to know - but my point is that we can not be any more certain that the term had any violent or otherwise negative connotations as so many people seem to assume.

And then the term "delivery." The saying that I've seen going around is, "Pizzas are delivered, not babies." I certainly understand and approve of putting the credit for the work of birth on the mother instead of on the midwife or doctor. I just don't have a problem with the term delivered, as long as it is used well.

I think the use originated in a religious/spiritual or safety aspect. As much as we sometimes like to romanticize birth because it IS usually safe, we also know that sometimes emergencies happen and where medical intervention isn't available when needed, outcomes are worse. So in the past, after a birth, thanks went to God for the safe delivery of the mom and baby on the other side of the birth journey, as God was seen as having shepherded them through.

When doctors got involved in every birth, the thanks started going to them - though to be honest, in the days of "drug-em-up-and-drag-em-out" doctors really were delivering the babies rather than the mom birthing them, plus then there was the sense of delivering as saving, like "deliver me from pain". Gross, yes, but that was the origin of doctors "delivering" babies - scopolamine, forceps, and our society's previous love of doctors as demi-gods.

If you look at the word delivered in the same meaning as the way a pizza is delivered, then using it is awful even if we say that the mom delivered the baby, because it makes her seem like an unimportant vessel who is only existing to put the baby on the planet, but if you look at it with its older, more spiritual meaning, I think it's actually just as lovely as the word "birthed." I have no problem saying that I shepherded my babies into this world through an epic journey. Yep, in that sense, for sure I delivered my three children.

And as for the doctor/midwife - I've caught 27 babies. One of them I delivered, because he needed me to get him out right then. Actually, my third baby needed my midwife's help to get him born too, so I'd say she helped deliver him. I'm not sure what other term we could use for when intervention is needed to get a baby out - whether hand maneuvers for a shoulder dystocia or an instrumental or surgical birth. "Extraction" is the only other one I've heard, and it's much nastier in my opinion.

I'm actually equally unhappy about the word "caught" - pizzas are delivered, baseballs are caught. (If somebody asks me if I have a catcher's mitt in my bag one more time...) I like the word received, but then people don't know what the heck I'm talking about, even my crunchy birthy friends.

Word choice is important, words can be powerful, but to me, a vagina is a vagina, and when a baby is born, her mother has delivered her earthside through the deep and powerful journey of birth.