So, I do tend to hyperbole. That being said, during the late sixties, there was an exciting thing happening. If something was happening to one of us, it was simultaneously happening to many. There are so many examples of this, I will give a typical one.
I was listening to the radio in my tiny house in Drain fucking Oregon. Richard Nixon was giving his lying speech saying we were not bombing in Cambodia or Laos. I had no other media outlet than my sometimes radio. The more I listened, the angrier I got. By the end of his talk, I had packed up my kid, gotten into my sort of car and was driving 30 or so miles to Eugene, Oregon where there was a large university. U. of O. As I drove into Eugene, thousands of people were gathering, coming from all directions. By the end of that week, colleges all across the country were shut down because of student protests. Shut down, not disrupted. All over the country and in fact also in many other countries.
This was not planned and communicated and organized. It was a monumental change that arose individually and collectively at the same moment.
This same thing was happening regarding childbirth at the same time. I was giving birth as the changes were happening. I was lucky. I was Julie Pierce, but I was also millions of other women.
I went to one prenatal sometime in Long Island. I don't remember much except that I had no insurance and the very fancy doctor told me some pretty strange things with a tone of absolute authority. He was the best, which meant that he was giving me the bull shit of the day.
He told me that I should not gain more than 15 pounds. I was skinny, that seemed strange. He said to drink alcohol because if I was relaxed, it would be good for the baby. Likewise, go ahead and smoke. When questioned about his, he said that the "Placental barrier would strain out any toxins so they wouldn't reach the baby. " He was the authority.
His nurse described the birthing process to me. I would go to the hospital, be given an enema, shaved, put in stirrups, and given some good drugs. Patrick could be in the waiting room and so on.
I didn't know much, but I had heard of Dr. Lamaz in Paris and heard enough nightmare birth stories that I decided that I wasn't coming back to him. I now know that I was being offered the worst treatment because I was in this expensive location. Doctors were minor gods there.
The home birth movement was starting to make news. All I got was that the drugs they gave were not good for the baby, that what was the norm in the USA was horrifying people in other countries, that anyone telling me to only gain 15 pounds was somehow ignorant and that what I had heard of natural childbirth sounded saner.
This was the summer of the moon landing and also of Woodstock. So science and technology were huge and the counter force was also huge. I was stuck in the middle. We borrowed a TV to watch the moon landing. We had dug clams and made gin and tonics as we went in and out of the waves. we thought it was really a funny show and speculated that we could have produced the movie for under $50. Woodstock we had to miss because Patrick was finishing his Masters degree that August.
When P. finished his degree, he wanted to move to Oregon because his parents were there and his father was ill. We flew out (9 months pregnant, but skinny as a rail) and P. had decided to teach school. I think school was starting the same day we arrived out West. P. went to the Department of Education with his weeks old Masters in Fine Arts with a focus on education and they had two openings for which he qualified. They were both in extremely undesirable locations according to the person he spoke with. One location was at the end of a long country road, the other had a road which drove through it. That was the one P. chose. Drain, Oregon.
The next day we were moving there. There was so shocking to me that I still remember my feelings. Drain was a barely surviving logging town. There was not an adult male without something missing. Like an arm or a hand or a leg or a foot. Logging was bad business. There was not a tree as far as the eye could see which wasn't far because it was in a hollow, like a - drain. There was a filthy, polluting wigwam burner in the center of the lumber yard. The 'store' was the size of a kitchen. There were bars everywhere. Cowboy bars.
One day, some cowboys (loggers with gun racks on their rigs) stepped out of one of those bars and shot over our heads, I had never seem a gun before!, and told us filthy hippies to get out of town. Funny, we were kind of dressed in LLBean and were pretty preppy because of P."s job. I began writing letters to friends to send us books, fast. One kind friend sent two big boxes with the complete works of Charles Dickens. Saved my life, she did.
So, 10 days later, I had the baby. I missed the baby shower that the teachers and parents of Patrick's class had put together. They were so grateful to have a teacher! Really. They gave us a house to live in. There was no such thing as a rental there. When I came home after the birth, I had further culture shock to find that some of the baby shower presents were fresh caught elk and deer meant. So much for frilly dresses and blankets. When I learned about the rugged economic conditions of the Drainians, I learned to respect their ability to hold their lives together, but I was deep into culture shock when my labor began in earnest.
We went to the hospital in Cottage Grove. I may or may not have had a prenatal there. I can't remember. When I got to the hospital, a tiny country hospital in a very depressed area, the nurses were so excited by me. The reason was that I was excited and wanted this baby. Apparently, most of the time, at that time, the women they delivered were sad or depressed to be having another kid.
They did not let Patrick in the room with me. I did have an epidural. They didn't have me do any of the other routine. When I went to my room afterward, I had a 16 year old roomie named Mare-Lee who was the first illiterate person I had ever met. Her mother brought in an electric fryer and made us fried shrimp that afternoon. Loved it all.
So, this is not at all a bad birth story, but it was the moment when I knew that I would never participate again in the routine that the professionals created. I learned about home births and I trained in midwifery and attended many home births. The thing is, that all over the country, women were, at the very same moment, making the same determination to effect monumental changes in the practice of medicine as it relates to women's health and childbirth. So many of us came to the same place at the same moment in time. And the medical text books changed fast.
There were good and bad aspects to the hippie days, but I still am filled with awe and wonder when I think of the telepathy that many of us had at the time. No matter how isolated we were and how pathetic our means of communication were, we often moved as one. El pueblo unido hamas sera vincido.
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