Birth
in the Time of Jesus
Since becoming a midwife, I
have on Christmas Eve, watched my thoughts slip into a wondering place about
Mary and the birth of Jesus. In the
crèche that has been passed down from generation to generation, in our family,
Mary and Joseph are sitting alone with some animals and an angel. There is no sign of family, friends or
neighbors. There is no midwife. My nativity scene has grown, over the years,
to include many babies and many mothers, fathers, angels and animals. There are crèches made in Haiti, Guatemala,
Ecuador and the tribes of our first people.
There is a play mobile crèche and animals made from clay and wood. It is now a whole village of people
gathered to celebrate the birth of Jesus.
Small dolls, smurfs and action figures have found a place there as well.
All are welcome.
They face one direction;
moving towards a common light, no matter their background or nationality. If there should be a problem, there are many
people to go for help or offer assistance.
The baby has been born, however, and all seems to have gone well. There are gifts of food, clean water and a
community that cares about its children.
This is the crèche I create on these cold, winter days. It is the only
crèche my children and grandchildren have ever known.
I have learned a great deal
about birth from the women and midwives of Haiti, Vietnam and Cambodia as well
as from the archaeologists and scholars who have studied life in the time Mary
would have given birth to Jesus. I also
know that no two people ever tell a birth story in the same way; that the
midwife, the father, the mother and friends and family all have different
perspectives on one common event. This
is the way of stories.
The women, who gave birth in
the area of Judea, were part of small Jewish communities who were under the
rule of the Roman Empire. The Roman
Empire was vast and each part of the Empire was governed by a local
administrator. The Jewish community was
guided by rabbis and the temple in Jerusalem.
They were warm, costal communities nested into the dry, rocky shores of
the Mediterranean Sea. The women were
born, grew up, and celebrated the coming of adulthood, marriage and birth
within the laws of their faith. A young
woman, giving birth, would be part of a strong community made up of family,
friends and neighbors. She would have
known since early childhood, the activities surrounding birth and the care of
the newborn. Her own first menarche
would have been celebrated and a husband carefully selected by her family and
the community. Perhaps she had helped
with the birth of a sister, a mother or a cousin; the way women naturally
gather to support a woman and family having a baby.
Much of what we know about
birth, at this time, is from archaeology and also from two authors; Pliny the
Elder and Soranus. Soranus wrote a book
about midwives in the 2nd century AD. From his book, Gynaecolgy, we read his
description of a good midwife:
(3) ... A
suitable person ... must be literate in order to be able to comprehend the art
through theory too: she must have her wits about her so that she may easily
follow what is said and what is happening: she must have a good memory to
retain the imparted instructions (for knowledge arises from memory of what has
been grasped). She must love work in order to persevere through all
vicissitudes (for a woman who wishes to acquire such vast knowledge needs manly
patience). She must be respectable since people will have to trust their
household and the secrets of their lives to her and because to women of bad
character the semblance of medical instruction is a cover for evil scheming.
She must not be handicapped as regards her senses since there are things which
she must see, answers which she must hear when questioning, and objects which
she must grasp by her sense of touch. She needs sound limbs so as not to be
handicapped in the performances of her work and she must be robust, for she
takes a double task upon herself during the hardship of her professional
visits. Long and slim fingers and short nails are necessary to touch a deep
lying inflammation without causing too much pain. This skill, however, can also
be acquired through zealous endeavour and practice in her work ...
(4) ...
We call a person the best midwife if she is trained in all branches of therapy
(for some cases must be treated by diet, others by surgery, while still others
must be cured by drugs); if she is moreover able to prescribe hygienic
regulations for her patients, to observe the general and the individual
features of the case, and from this to find out what is expedient, not from the
causes or from the repeated observations of what usually occurs or something of
the kind. Now to go into detail: she will not change her methods when the
symptoms change, but will give her advice in accordance with the course of the
disease: she will be unperturbed, unafraid in danger, able to state clearly the
reasons for her measures, she will bring reassurance to her patients, and be
sympathetic. And it is not absolutely essential for her to have borne children,
as some people contend, in order that she may sympathise with the mother,
because of her experience with pain; for [to have sympathy] is not more
characteristic of a person who has given birth to a child. She must be robust
on account of her duties but not necessarily young as some people maintain, for
sometimes young persons are weak whereas on the contrary older persons may be
robust. She will be well disciplined and always sober, since it is uncertain
when she may be summoned to those in danger. She will have a quiet disposition,
for she will have to share many secrets of life. She must not be greedy for
money, lest she give an abortive wickedly for payment; she will be free from
superstition so as not to overlook salutary measures on account of a dream or
omen or some customary rite or vulgar superstition. She must also keep her
hands soft, abstaining from such wool-working as may make them hard, and she
must acquire softness by means of ointments if it is not present naturally.
Such persons will be the best midwives.
In Soranus’s book he describes the supplies a
midwife should bring to a birth. They
include the following:
olive oil
[clean, not previously used in cooking], warm water, warm fomentations
[ointments applied to the body], soft sea sponges, pieces of wool, bandages [to
swaddle the infant], a pillow [on which to which to place the infant], things
to smell [pennyroral, dirt, barley groats, apples, quinces, lemons, melons,
cucumbers; these were used as we use spirits of ammonia to revive someone who
has fainted], a midwife's stool or chair [this was the property of the midwife;
she brought it with her to the home where the delivery was to take place], two
beds [a hard one for use during labor and a soft one for rest after delivery],
and a proper room [of medium size and moderate temperature]. (38)
If possible a midwife should
also, he writes, bring a birthing chair but if this was not available a woman
should sit on the laps of two women and be supported in this way. They did not
give birth on their back. There is also
an indication that sometimes a hole was dug for a woman to squat over with
brightly painted birth bricks for her feet.
In all situations, the laboring woman was held up, encouraged and
supported by other women with the midwife sitting in front of her to catch the
baby. Soranus recommends that the
midwife cover her hands with cloth, as the baby is quite slippery.
A woman, giving birth in the
time of Jesus, would have lived in a small stone house with perhaps one or two
rooms. Most families had a room
upstairs for living and a room below for the animals. This is how it was in Cambodia and
Vietnam. Animals were kept close to the
family so they could be easily watched and cared for. I remember, this Christmas season, the women
who rested, after birth, on platforms, next to cows and so now the image of a
mother and baby in a place of animals comes with it, an image of mothers
laughing and smiling as the cows lazily chew their cud on a warm
afternoon. In the place where Mary gave
birth, the animals might have been in a cave with the house on top.
Each community would have had
a mikveh; a pool for women to wash themselves in after they give birth or
during their monthly bleeding. After the
birth, a woman would have gone and submerged herself in fresh rainwater. For those of who have given birth, having a
pool deep enough to completely submerge ourselves in after birth, sounds
peaceful and soothing, after the hard work of birth. A wealthy family might own their won pool but
we might imagine that in a middle class family this would have been shared by
extended family and would have been sued by the mother before when she bathed
there with her menarche.
When she returned to her
house, the baby would have been washed in salt water or wine and rubbed with
olive oil. The baby would have been
wrapped in pieces of linen with the arms and legs straight. The baby was swaddled as we all swaddle
babies but this was also thought to help the baby develop strong, straight arms
and legs. Room was left free for the baby to go the bathroom. There were no
diapers. The baby was kept close to the mother at all times and she caught
droppings in a small clay pot.
Her house most likely would
have opened onto a shared courtyard that was shared by other small houses. Sisters, aunts, cousins and grandmothers
would have ben close by to help with the recommended 40 days of rest for mother
and baby. At 40 days, a family would
travel to the temple in Jeruselum to present the baby to the community. This is
sometimes known as “Churching”the baby. The baby would have been circumcised,
according to Jewish custom, at eight days of age.
A baby was typically
breastfed for 3 years and a special celebration was planned for the weaning of
a baby. Other than the natural spacing
offered by early, exclusive breastfeeding, a woman of this time would give birth
to many babies following the customs of her community.
When I reflect on the most
familiar forms of the nativity scene I think of many things.
I consider the image of a
woman isolated from her community and from midwives; isolated from the unique
religious and cultural customs of her life.
A woman who had no one to support her.
Her visitors are all men; shepherds and wise men and not women bringing
food and wise council. I think about
hospitals all over the world in which women are forced to choose between their
cultural traditions and safe birth; how the two often fail to come
together. I see the women in Haiti and
Vietnam in a hospital bed, laboring all alone, flat on their back. And so I build a new nativity in which
women are always in the presence of caring friends and family; supported on
either side by women, with a skilled midwife there beside her.
The other image is the image
of “no room at the inn. “ These words are spoken at Christmas all over the
world. These words bring to mind the
fact that hundreds of thousands of women each day, give birth without adequate
prenatal care, clean water, a skilled midwife and emergency referral services.
I draw, in my mind, a crèche
in which all these things are provided for all women; loving culturally
appropriate practices, skilled midwives, emergency resources and the care of an
extended community that provides a peaceful, equitable world for her child to
be raised in.
I can never know, this
Christmas morning, what Mary’s birth was like. But based on what we know about
Jewish law and the customs of her day, I build a crèche that includes midwives
and the support of women in her community. I can see that animals within the
home were a normal part of life both now and then.
I also think of what it means
to follow not just the Star of Bethlehem
but to follow the deep inner light that exists within all humanity. I consider the simple message, offered by a
then grown up Jesus; the one that asked us to love one another as he loved
us.
This message inspired and
gave strength to many who strove make the world a better place for each baby
born. The church, named in this one
baby’s honor, would struggle to understand these words as they saw the church
as a place of exclusive membership that a brown skinned Mary, living as an
oppressed religious minority, would have had difficulty recognizing.
And so on Christmas Eve, with
my granddaughter beside me, I raise a candle and say a prayer for all the
mothers and babies of the world. I pray for the healing and compassion and
generosity that will make each child’s life safe and celebrated.
