39. Birth as a rite of passage // KRISTINA TURNER

I’m writing this to you after putting my little girl to bed. And this episode is on a topic I’ve been mulling over since I was pregnant with her more than two years ago. As I was preparing for her birth I began to understand just how complicated and paradoxical the topic of birth is. As I say in the introduction to the episode,

“Birth can be beautiful and it can be traumatic, often at the same time. It’s intensely personal and highly political. It’s something extraordinary that is also entirely ordinary.”

Another paradox I came to wrestle with intensely is how births have become safer with the rise of modern medicine, while that very medicalisation has in turn created new risks. Women who give birth in hospitals are much more likely to have complications and c-sections than women who give birth at home. The amount of women who give birth without interventions at all is rapidly declining.

My own birth was a prime example of how hospitals get things wrong, and was very traumatic for my mother, and my father, too. How much of that does my body remember?

I wondered, is it possible to be deeply grateful for modern medicine, and simultaneously feel that one would be safest at a certain remove from that apparatus? I share part of my journey in this, as well as my questions and doubts, in the episode.

Kristina Turner is an author and birth activist. I first encountered her work in a documentary on Swedish television on home births, which is a hot topic of discussion in this country at the moment. Kristina’s view is that,

This is not really a women’s issue… Every single person is born and how that happens matters profoundly for them as an individual and for us as a society.

In this conversation, Kristina takes us through how the cultural understandings of birth has changed in the past centuries. What happened when birth moved from the realm of the women wisdom keepers and into the male arena of doctors? What have we forgotten about the deeply mysterious dance between the bodies of mother and baby which is at the heart of birth? Could we recover a sense of reverence for the wisdom of women’s bodies and, entangled with it, a reverence for the ultimate life-giver, the Earth herself?

I hope you enjoy the episode. It’s been a long time coming.

Ingrid

EPISODE DESCRIPTION:

Birth is complex and paradoxical. It can be beautiful and traumatic, often at the same time; it’s intensely personal and highly political; it’s something extraordinary that is also entirely ordinary. You give birth to a baby and you also birth yourself as a mother.

Another paradox is that birth has become much safer the past two-hundred years because of the advancements of modern medicine, and yet that very medicalisation has created new risks. Women who give birth in hospitals are more likely to have complications; the amount of women who have births without any interventions is rapidly declining.

Is it possible to build a culture of birth that takes the best parts of modern medicine and combines them with a deep respect for the wisdom of women’s bodies? Instead of seeing birth as a medical event, how do we honor it as a rite of passage?

In this episode, Ingrid shares some of her personal journey of pregnancy and birth, in conversation with author and birth activist Kristina Turner. They discuss how the view of birth has changed in the past centuries, and what ingredients are needed for a healthier birth culture to take root.

Kristina Turner is a writer, birth activist, and women’s circle facilitator with over 25 years experience. She is the author of Natural Birth – A Holistic Guide to Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Breastfeeding and Revolution i BB-fabriken (Revolution in the Birth Factory). Across her work, Kristina returns to one central thread: the sovereignty of the woman’s body — its intelligence, rhythms, rites of passage, and its ability to transform consciousness. Kristina lives between Sweden and the UK and works internationally as a writer, birth educator, and Compassionate Inquiry practitioner supporting women healing from traumatic births.

LINKS:

Kristina’s Substack

Kristina’s book Natural Birth – A Holistic Guide to Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Breastfeeding

Kristina’s book (in Swedish) written with Maria Bengtsson Revolution i BB-fabriken

Meta-study finding that births in hospitals gave more complications as compared to home births (in low-risk pregnancies)

Meta-study showing that risks for babies are not higher in home-births (for low-risk pregnancies)