Raising a birth activist

My son is a boy's boy-he loves Star Wars or anything involving a battle. He is one of those kids who despite your very best efforts will turn his peanut butter and jelly sandwich into a weapon and despite the fact I was a vegetarian when I was pregnant with him-is a raging carnivore. I have learned over the last eight years to accept him for who and what he is and have let go of what I envisioned him to be. However, occasionally I catch a glimpse of the man he is going to become and I gotta tell ya-I am liking what I see.

I am a doula and when he was about 6 years old he asked me if he could come to a birth with me. I asked him if he knew what to do at a birth, he turned to me as if he was this aged midwife who had been practicing for years and said "well, I would just put one hand on her belly and one hand on her heart and tell her that everything was going to be ok." Well needless to say that floored me but I didn't realize that the best was yet to come.

A few months ago we were going to an outdoor event and I was ecstatic over the fact that there was going to be a nursing tent available. My son again looked at me and said "I just don't see what the big deal is-why can't you just nurse out in the open mom, I mean women have been doing it for thousands and thousands of years. Its just normal." He may have seen a tear in my eye. We had also been reading a book where there was an image of a mother bottle feeding her baby, he was disturbed by this image, it was just plain unacceptable. But when we were reading one of the many wonderful Barefoot Books in our collection and he read about a woman with her baby at her breast-he was delighted. Its funny what our children learn when we aren’t paying attention.

The other day I was preparing for a birth. I had a heads up and had time to prepare because she was being induced. My son was quite confused because he is used to waking up in the morning to find I had left in the middle of the night to attend a birth. When I explained what an induction was-he glared at me with horror in his eyes and said "that is a crime against women and their babies."

My budding birth activist was present at his little brothers home birth in May. As you can imagine he was a bundle of support. Not only did he suggest I close my eyes and feel the warm Egyptian sand at my feet (he wanted me to envision a dream vacation) he made it a point to hand out chocolate covered almonds to the entire support team.

These days when he is running amok in my house, battling imaginary foes, and wielding weapons I am ok with it because I know its probably a just cause.