If you ever have the opportunity and honour to hold a new born baby, then really settle deeply in your body and allow yourself to feel what is in your arms. It is a moment that can be overwhelmed with pictures from ‘out there’ that are confused with emotion, ideals and superficiality, when actually it is profoundly profound and, if we allow it, completely life changing… for all involved.
A new born baby is and represents the purity we all are, not a blank canvas as some would have us believe, but a self-less new beginning with a job to do. And every new born baby ‘sees’ the world as rich and abundant, is naturally adoring and is absolutely alert to the flow of energy through and around us.
It is out of this world to observe a new parent holding their baby with this respect, awe and wonder; a feeling not to be lost as they start out on the adventure together and, for every new parent who is willing to stay open, transparent and up for the learning, the world is touched and enriched.
There is also the call and pull up to great responsibility, realising the fact that every time we touch and/or hold a new born baby we are either confirming them in the purity and sweetness they are, or beginning the crusting over of these qualities to comply and cope with life. Many of us will be able to relate to this. A distant memory of the purity and simplicity of early childhood and then the almost imperceptible incremental loss of this as rules, slights and impositions filtered in from family, school, society generally… all the shoulds, musts, belittlements and don’ts interfering with a natural and far more complete and beholding-of-all approach to life. Until we arrive into adult life with patterns of behaviour that are a far cry from transparent, adoring openness.
Working in maternity services it would be too easy to become blasé about holding a new born baby, but it is an important duty of ours not to lose sight of what is taking place every time we have this opportunity. It is an honour to work with new parents and their babies and I am forever stilled and humbled by what I observe and what is on offer. So again, back to the first paragraph and the call to be super settled in our bodies when we are holding new borns, interacting with new parents and moving around the hospital and home setting. If we are settled, this quality is offered to all and the babies we come into contact with will be met with something they can relate to rather than be jarred by. And this is not a competence thing; lots of new parents are uncertain about how to hold their baby, lots of maternity staff have been doing it for years, neither of these guarantee the quality of touch… this is the responsibility of each and every one of us to uphold and have attentive reverence for.
From observation and experience it can be said that for the most part we do not care for ourselves or others with tenderness and respect and that this is one of humanity’s greatest malaises. Why is it that we avoid and interfere with what is so natural? What is the set up that has us undermining and rejecting our pure and innately familiar qualities? These are fundamental and important questions, the ‘answers’ to which will reveal themselves as we wake up and return to the innate truths that are forever within us all.
I am an attentive, super respectful, caring and tender midwife and every time I have a new born in my arms, I am called by them and what they represent to go deeper, stiller and more exquisitely reverent.
