In years past I believed that you had to apply pesticides to every plant to keep the bugs and such off of them. I bought broad spectrum sprays to kill aphids and probably (shamefully, I admit) did my share of damage to the local bee population because I didn't know there was anything different. This is what I knew, and it worked, and I was okay with that. I had a friend who shared a book with me on companion planting after seeing my arsenal of chemical warfare, and I began to see not only a natural way of increasing my yields, but it gave me a way of fitting more and healthier plants into the garden bed by letting them work the way they were made to work with one another, complementing one another's weaknesses with a strength. They protected each other, and brought beautiful fruit into my garden, and I left them alone to do it. It was magical in many ways.
This year, in keeping with the new and natural (normal) way of gardening, I planned, I planted, and let the plants be. They weathered storms with their companions and I waited in childlike anticipation for the first fruits to be ready to share with my family... then came mice from the vacant house next door. They nibbled on each partially ripe tomato one night, making the first dozen or so ripe ones inedible for humans. I was sad, but still determined to do nothing because gardens are a gift from God and surely I couldn't have eaten all those tomatoes myself... so for a week it went that as a tomato became ripe, just slightly ripe, the mice would chew holes. I was frustrated, and decided to do something I rarely do. I started plucking every mildly pinkish-orange tomato off the vines before the mice could get to it. We bought mousetraps and placed them between each plant, then resumed the picking schedule to get to them before the mice could... even after the mice stopped nibbling. I slowed down though when I realized that I was essentially doing to my garden what Western medicine is doing to pregnant women, that line of thinking I nearly accepted back in the day.
Four years ago I was content to believe that babies were born in hospitals. I had spent hours watching "A Baby Story" on TLC with my dorm-mates in college, I had four hospital-born siblings, and the one homebirth I had ever heard of was horribly tragic- the little boy's heart wasn't working properly and he had ended up with a severe case of cerebral palsy. I was secure in the belief that babies were born in hospitals, and that's how it was done. Birth was terrifying and filled with doctors and emergencies, because that's what the TV showed me. (Perhaps this is why I had to wait as long as I did to conceive a baby with the tenacity to go full-term... I do believe things happen for a reason.) Then I got to know K, a vibrant, snarky, weird, wonderful, earth-mama hippie-type, who was going to have a home birth. My goodness. HOME BIRTH!! She wasn't going to see the doctors. She wasn't going to be part of the machines. No needles. No prohibited activities. Her midwife looked at her as a human, not a collection of possible calamities. Unheard of. I thought she was crazy... at first.
Then she had a beautiful, healthy baby girl at home. Safely. No interference. She was fine. Her baby was fine. Nobody had to release her to do anything, she just laid down in her own bed to rest afterwards and her family was already there to be with her. Hmmmm... then I read her birth story and I was hooked. I already had a pretty healthy fascination for birth in general (though I have no idea why, I just naturally stalked pregnant people, maybe in hopes their fertility would rub off on me, maybe it's just because they're doing one of the coolest things on the planet), but then I began to read the birth stories out there and learn about the REAL normal. I understood that there was a time and place for the hospital, but that for every woman the hospital was neither the place nor even a good idea... and that for me, I was not a hospital woman.
The problem I see with the hospital is that the doctors treat women not with the honor, respect, and normalcy that they deserve in birth. Instead, they are treated like my tomato field- they must be plucked early- get them in out of the field before *something* happens. So, women are bullied into inductions or C-sections they neither need or want because they *could* have a big baby. They are told that their bodies aren't going to work for them as designed because there's just so much at stake... what if you go to term and something bad happens, but you could have avoided that bad thing by just doing what you're told now?
I hear from these women later that their babies are just fine, and for the most part they are. If you discount any bonding, breastfeeding, or emotional issues mother and child may experience from this method of birthing, yes, everyone is fine. Everyone has a pulse, that's fine. Everyone came home, that's fine. The doctor saved the day he or she helped create, and that's sorta fine.
My tomatoes ripening in the windowsill are fine, too... but I wonder as I stare at them sitting there, could they maybe have been better than fine if I'd left them alone and let them decide when they were going to be ready? If I had just accepted that nature happens and that not every tomato makes it out of the garden unscathed, maybe those tomatoes could have not only been fine, but outstanding, awesome, amazing, or other great adjective.
So, I guess there's a parallel between my love of green and growing things and my fascination with birth and pregnancy. If we learn to just leave things alone, maybe we'll come to expect that the unexpected is amazing, and amazing is better than fine.
-L.
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