Birth Agni
This Podcast explores how indigenously Birth has always unfolded, among women - our tribe, where children could see how breastfeeding was done and how birth happened. This an attempt to fetch the stories of the past as well as bring out the new India’s Birth culture to expose the defining features in both. This shall join the dots to where the increasing problems of postpartum anxiety, rising rate of surgical births and poor breastfeeding outcomes are coming from.
Birth Agni - Agni meaning Fire, the Fire that brings us alive, transforms us and has the ability to burn. Birth is designed to affect a woman’s integrity. It is the fire of awakening that makes her life experience wholesome. Deep down her body knows what Birth is supposed to feel - a euphoria of bringing a new life on Earth. The cocktail of hormones are designed to give her a high.
However, birth today has quickly swayed away from a phase of joy to the one marked by Fear, the constant questioning of a woman’s capacity to Birth naturally and the ugly calculation of the odds of a healthy baby at the expense of the mother’s health. We forget that their health is interlinked and flourish as a dyad. In India, the urban rate of Cesarean Sections on an average until 2020 is a whopping 40% which is concerning.
Birth is linked to Patriarchy, Healthcare Politics and Women’s Rights. Respect in Birth is long due to women and it affects the core of who they are.
Join me Divya Kapoor, a Certified Birth and Lactation Counselor and aspiring Traditional Birth Attendant in the quest to shine light on what we can do as parents and a community to change the narrative.
Birth Agni
#103 - Part II - Sanjana's Ecstatic Home Birth Story | Pregnancy, Moon and Womanhood
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Contrary to her previous experience (EP 102) of a quick birth at the birth center, Sanjana manifested a slower transition this time and knew instinctively that she wanted to give birth at home, with her daughter as a witness to the simplicity of life and birth.
We are often presented with the narrative of a painless birth and today the 'option' of a painless birth with medical interventions at play. What if these narratives are carefully selected to create an image that suits the industrialized system, benefiting from the victimhood of women in their own bodies? What if the natural bliss of birth is being carefully shielded away from us?
In this episode, we discuss:
- Experience of Pregnancy
- Sanjana's preparation for birth and postpartum
- Experience of Labor and events leading up to birth—unmedicated, undisturbed
- Ecstasy of Birth, when birth becomes painless
- Postpartum Experience
Resources discussed:
Book : Ten Moons: The Inner Journey of Pregnancy, Preparation for Natural Birth
About Sanjana:Sanjana is a Political Scientist by profession focused on urban-rural linkages, urban studies, and inequalities in India. She is the co-founder of the Beejvan Biodiversity and Collaborative Research Foundation. A winner of the Erasmus scholarship, the German Chancellors’ Fellowship, and a Visiting Fellow at the University of Cambridge. Her project, Beejvan, won the Lush Spring Prize 2023 in the UK.
Sanjana is also a home-birthing mother of two daughters and very passionate about immunology, and enjoys learning about various indigenous healing modalities. Her quest for truth, led by her intuition, beyond what science and religion have attempted to understand and preach, is what led her to birth her daughters and raise them on her own terms. The journey of healing is non-linear and ongoing, and she trusts it is a beautiful one, even on the worst days.
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