Birth has always been women’s business – in both the act of birthing, and until very recently, in the tending of women during childbirth too. On the latest episode, I explore the sacred nature of childbirth with Bridget Supple, author of the new book “Birthkeeper of Bethlehem: A Midwife’s Tale” (Womancraft Publishing), which tells the fictional story of Salome, the midwife who attended Mary during Jesus’ birth.
Bridget has spent the last twenty years supporting women and birthing people through all stages of pregnancy, labour, and parenting. A mother of four herself, she works as an antenatal teacher for the National Childbirth Trust (NCT), the UK National Health Service, a major UK Maternity Hospital and Birth Companions, a charity supporting pregnant women in prison. She is also the founder of an information resource all about the Infant Microbiome (www.babysbiome.org) and runs workshops on parenting, brain development and hypnobirthing.
On today’s episode, we explore:
• Bridget’s spiritual background, including her experience of a more inclusive form of Catholic Christianity, and why she would consider herself a “distanced Catholic” now
• Why a Divine Feminine force makes more sense to her than the idea of God as male
• How a traumatic childbirth experience with her firstborn guided Bridget to birth work and more holistic birth experiences with her subsequent children
• What it means to see birth as a rite of passage, and the transformational experience of labour
• The historical precedence of women tending other women throughout their entire pregnancy, including childbirth and the period of aftercare
• The significance of the story of Mary, and why it’s important that we see her not as divine, but as a human woman
• Why Bridget wanted to write this book, and why it is much more than a book about the birth of Jesus
• The challenges of the “modern” current healthcare system, and how we are failing to adequately support birth-givers in so many ways
