Birth Poetry

Poetry and prose about pregnancy, childbirth, and parenthood

[birthpoetry]

D.H. Lawrence - The Rainbow

[doulacollective]

The Language of the Brag

by Donna

I’d like to share a poem, specifically, a poem about childbirth that brings a big smile to my face. Actually, it gives me permission to revel in the power of women!

The Language of the Brag

I have wanted excellence in the knife-throw,

I have wanted to use my exceptionally strong and accurate arms

and my straight posture and quick electric muscles

to achieve something at the centre of a crowd,

the blade piercing the bark deep,

the haft slowly and heavily vibrating like the cock.

I have wanted some epic use for my excellent body,

some heroism, some American achievement

beyond the ordinary for my extraordinary self,

magnetic and tensile, I have stood by the sandlot

and watched the boys play.

I have wanted courage, I have thought about fire

and the crossing of waterfalls, I have dragged around

my belly big with cowardice and safely,

my stool black with iron pills,

my huge breasts oozing mucus,

my legs swelling, my hands swelling,

my face swelling and darkening, my hair

falling out, my inner sex

stabbed again and again with terrible pain like a knife.

I have lain down.

I have lain down and sweated and shaken

and passed blood and feces and water and

slowly alone in the centre of a circle I have

passed the new person out

and they have lifted the new person free of the act

and wiped the new person free of that

language of blood like praise all over the body.

I have done what you wanted to do, Walt Whitman,

Allen Ginsberg, I have done this thing,

I and the other women this exceptional

act with the exceptional heroic body,

this giving birth, this glistening verb,

and I am putting my proud American boast

right here with the others.

–Sharon Olds

Painting by: Amanda Greavette

[birthpoetry]

The mother's body knows how to grow a baby and how to birth; she can trust the "knowing," for it belongs to her.

Robbie E. Davis-Floyd

[simplytonka]

[birthpoetry]

[birthpoetry]

At this time there are few poems about pregnancy and childbirth do I find this curious I want to shriek at any identity this culture gives me claw it to pieces; has nothing to do with me or my baby and never will, has never perceived a human being. My baby is quiet and wise, but I'm a trade name and I'm chaos rainwater on a piano -- I'm so scared then but now of then I'd say I want to make your tunes go away to have a child is more casual than, you might say, and more serious than the definition for who, frankly, was ever born or gave birth? After the usual pain and the well-meaning, mostly but not all, intervention of others and others' words and meanings I find him. Lying next to me yes and being nursed by me. I serve him why not he isn't wrong. I'm infused with a noxious dispirit as the world makes me be a woman everything has gone wrong in some sense by now. Of two poems one sentimental and one not I choose both of his birth and my painful unbirth I choose both. The woman in the photo has a haircut from Vidal Sassoon wears a black silky synthetic top and probably a long skirt the baby on her lap in sleepers and a blue and white Peruvian cap. They look abstracted in the same way. He is the baby unchaotic he is born and I am undone -- feel as if I will never be, was never born. Two years later I obliterate myself again having another child not to be a form of woman but in allegiance to the process I can't quite see. I have begun to be. I sit with my sons in a barely cared-for apartment inside from Chicago in the TV's ambience (black and white, like the snow) purple crocuses there Ted's becoming sick with a lasting illness though we are calm while money doesn't press us a moment of happiness, these bodies are clear all four finally clear and still clear but first, for two years, there's no me here.

Alice Notley, “A Baby Is Born Out of a White Owl's Forehead” (1972)

[birthpoetry]

Germ of new life, whose powers expanding slow For many a moon their full perfection wait,— Haste, precious pledge of happy love, to go Auspicious borne through life's mysterious gate. What powers lie folded in thy curious frame,— Senses from objects locked, and mind from thought! How little canst thou guess thy lofty claim To grasp at all the worlds the Almighty wrought! And see, the genial season's warmth to share, Fresh younglings shoot, and opening roses glow! Swarms of new life exulting fill the air,— Haste, infant bud of being, haste to blow! For thee the nurse prepares her lulling songs, The eager matrons count the lingering day; But far the most thy anxious parent longs On thy soft cheek a mother's kiss to lay. She only asks to lay her burden down, That her glad arms that burden may resume; And nature's sharpest pangs her wishes crown, That free thee living from thy living tomb. She longs to fold to her maternal breast Part of herself, yet to herself unknown; To see and to salute the stranger guest, Fed with her life through many a tedious moon. Come, reap thy rich inheritance of love! Bask in the fondness of a Mother's eye! Nor wit nor eloquence her heart shall move Like the first accents of thy feeble cry. Haste, little captive, burst thy prison doors! Launch on the living world, and spring to light! Nature for thee displays her various stores, Opens her thousand inlets of delight. If charmed verse or muttered prayers had power, With favouring spells to speed thee on thy way, Anxious I'd bid my beads each passing hour, Till thy wished smile thy mother's pangs o'erpay.

“To a Little Invisible Being Who Is Expected Soon to Become Visible” by Anna Laetitia Barbauld (1799)

[birthpoetry]

I have mourned lost days When I accomplished nothing of importance. But not lately. Lately under the lunar tide Of a woman’s ocean, I work My own sea-change: Turning grains of sand to human eyes. I daydream after breakfast While the spirit of egg and toast Knits together a length of bone As fine as a wheatstalk. Later, as I postpone weeding the garden I will make two hands That may tend a hundred gardens. I need ten full moons exactly For keeping the animal promise. I offer myself up: unsaintly, but Transmuted anyway By the most ordinary miracle. I am nothing in this world beyond the things one woman does. But here are eyes that once were pearls. And here is a second chance where there was none.

"Ordinary Miracle" by Barbara Kingsolver

[birthpoetry]

The giant wave rises to a peak breath-stopping and the world splits open. Waters flow and on their salt flood a child presses deep, stinging sweet and urgent for birth.

Sheila Kitzinger, A Celebration of Birth

[birthpoetry]

Breathe help me as the next generation carves a pathway from my body. Breathe in this space between worlds I link my life and yours. Breathe each physical exertion pushes you toward my arms. Breathe in vigour and action.

Roma Potiki

[doulacollective]

How beautiful is this quote? Tag someone you know who is getting close to their due date! This makes for a great imagery meditation during labour.

[urshad]

Child/Bearing

Weeks before your arrival

I am frightened

of your impending and violent entrance

in my world

your presence has already been marked

by blood episodes/hospitals/needles

pains from a placenta/ill-placed

a sub-chorionic/hematoma

my vain form has suffered such distortion

veins enlarged/lungs squashed beyond efficient breathing

bloated and alone

I am waiting for the gush

the tearing of some expected membrane

that will force me to push forth

your profound babble

I am told your landing will show me

how much I don’t already know

will usher me to go where so many women

have gone/willing/unwilling

the tyranny of motherhood

has always been used as tool

to highlight out women’s inadequacies

never mind how gargantuan the push

to make life from that rush of red needed

to sustain life/make me better/you stronger

your movement inside me stills my tongue

my pen is all I am able to move

in these last days

together

we transform into some alien magic

beautiful and grotesque

we become some science experiment

the cosmos created/amazing and banal

because dogs do it

hogs do it

elephants everywhere angle their bodies

muddy with effort

they rip themselves to make passage

for what makes us creatures of survival

reproduction

replication of a self/narcissistic

our desire for our features reflected

human from one generation to the next

with gestation almost done

I still don’t understand

how we do it

nearly ten months(I cannot imagine why they tell us nine)

forty weeks/weak with the ungraceful details

of constipation

incontinence

vomiting and the urge to spit

constantly/some women do it again

and again

I lift my womb to them

artful Amazons arching the arrow of ovaries

to shoot patriarchy in the balls

more than once

no matter how they want to

male bodies are unable to do it

lions

tigers

or tyrants with dicks

do not possess the equipment to eject a child

fully formed

into the collective wisdom of our flawed existence

only women

with little less than a thimbleful of sperm

can carry the burden of bearer

such men must be jealous

or mad

may be why the weakest among them

call us the weaker sex

speak of us in derogatory terms

so firm are they in their deficient diction

they cast state-supported aspersions

on the abilities of daughters

and sisters

grandmothers who remain mothers

two and three times removed

men who know nothing of fibroids

and uterine cancers

of contractions or crowning

look at the blood

spilling monthly from my cunt

and decree to scorn me

adorn me with the smallest parts of the harvest

behind the camouflage of unconstitutional laws

they pay me less/yearly/hourly

compensation for my labor

dropping daily

under the duress of misogyny

and still some women are forced to do this

even when they don’t want to

by people

who care nothing

for the children who are borne

by these illegal proclamations

these people know

whoever controls the production of labor

controls the world and its wealth

health care is where the battle for women’s bodies

should begin and end

so men

with no first-hand knowledge of pregnancy

no experience of birthing children

tell us where to go

when to go

what pill we can take to prevent conception

the months before

the morning after

they decide which medications are illegal

at what age

Priests who are really

old men in dresses/straight/jackets

young men who write checks

and balance the business of birthing

babies/everything plugs into a matrix

of dollars and no good sense

to them our eggs are only currency

to be traded on a global market for profit

everyday

we are made victims of one crime or the other

perpetuated by those in places drunk with power

and still we choose do this

everyday

we grow large with hope

heave and heft our pelvic bones

toward the future of our species

often in blood and feces

we writhe with screams and sorrow

our joy mixed in with our most primal urges

we commit to bearing

all this

with the belief that humanity

is more than the sum of our collective failure

we still look to the days ahead

expecting more

from our children

the men/women they will become

we open our legs

our hearts

our arms

we open the most vulnerable parts of who we are

to keep doing this

generation after generation

bleeding/amniotic/umbilical

we splay our limbs to connect the dead

with the yet to be born

we do it

knowing there is more to being human

than this bloody evidence

smearing what remains of our errors

we arch or backs

and push

we blend magic and madness

making people

one liver

one kidney

one cranium

one heart beating

meaningful and rhythmic

one baby at a time

[4thtrimesterbodiesproject-deact]

[softmom-blog]

[littlejacksons-deactivated20220]

[mother-of-faeries]

[pregnantnotfat]

Love x 100.

The Hundred Names of Love

The children have gone to bed. We are so tired we could fold ourselves neatly behind our eyes and sleep mid-word, sleep standing warm among the creatures in the barn, lean together and sleep, forgetting each other completely in the velvet, the forgiveness of that sleep.

Then the one small cry: one strike of the match-head of sound: one child’s voice: and the hundred names of love are lit as we rise and walk down the hall.

One hundred nights we wake like this, wake out of our nowhere to kneel by small beds in darkness. One hundred flowers open in our hands, a name for love written in each one.

-Annie Lighthart