Women, Write Your Bodies

While I did enjoy recently reading Helene Cixous, I have had to learn to navigate an awkward relationship with some feminist philosophy. This is an uneasy admission. I feel that I should wish to carry banners and bullhorns but the honest truth is, I’m of a generation that has enjoyed the fruits of the warriors for women that came before me. I am just removed enough from blatant oppression to rarely feel infuriated. I am not proud of this.

But today is different.

Today I am feeling petulant and angry and hormonal and distressed.

Today I finally got an email containing the list of doctors I must choose from in Lake Charles. These are the only doctors in the area who deliver babies and are covered by the insurance I have through LSU. Men. They are ALL men. On the list was a man in particular who came recommended by an acquaintance of a cousin of mine. He’s the ONLY person on the list who I have even HEARD of in my multi-week search for a comfortable match. He is also the man who I was warned would, under no circumstances, prescribe birth control. His convictions dictate that he requires women to give up all agency concerning when or how many children they are willing to have. I struck him from the list. The only man recommended had to be struck from the list.

I am so angry. I have absolutely NOTHING against men who wish to be OB/GYNs. I have the utmost respect for anyone who wishes to dedicate their medical practice to the health of women and the successful delivery of babies. But I do not want a male doctor. A man can only theoretically understand the birthing process. I did a massive amount of reading concerning the physiological, psychological and emotional changes that a pregnant woman goes through. I have often been aware of what would happen to me BEFORE things happened with me. And yet, for all the reading and theoretical preparation, I have been ceaselessly amazed at how the EXPERIENCE blows the book-knowledge clean out of the water.

This process is indescribable. There is something overwhelmingly astounding and humbling and beautiful and scary and exciting and inconceivable about it all. There is also something inexplicably isolating about it. I do not mean this is a morose manner. It isn’t a depressed isolation I speak of, its just that during this process, you must necessarily experience the MOST intense “stuff” you’ve EVER been faced with, largely by yourself. You sit in restaurants, classrooms and offices while people around you talk about whatever it is they speak of in day-to-day conversation and meanwhile you can feel your child learning to move. This puts you into dual-consciousness. You can be present in the pizza parlor or the conference room but you are also sitting with life, death, fear, God, hope, development, spirit and movement. MOVEMENT of the most intense and fluid kind…movement of thought, movement within, movement of the machinery in your mind whirring to handle the logistics, movement in your heart. And with ALL this movement, you physically remain still. You sit still until class is over, you sit still until the meal is done.

I feel like this is where the women SHOULD be communing. I feel like I should be with mothers, grandmothers, sisters. A tribe. My intuition strongly and clearly shows me that THIS is the time to be mindful, deliberate, aware.

I understand that access to medical help is important…especially since I am older and especially since there have been previous losses in my family throughout this process on both sides. But I feel like I should be able to go through this with a woman to guide me. I feel like I should be in a birthing center and not a fluorescent-lit stark and soul-less room.

Lake Charles is not a micro- town. How can there be no women doctors there who are covered my insurance? I feel like waving banners. I feel like picking up a bullhorn.