Celebrations

I’m just about through my first trimester and would like to mark that occasion. Did you?

Our Mommy MD Guide’s reply: During my pregnancy, I didn’t have any special celebrations; the whole pregnancy was a celebration. I was living on a spiritual commune called The Farm, and we were a bunch of young childbearing people making a community together, and so many of use were making babies. Pregnancy was fully supported and celebrated as a total process, but not with any particular ritual. We didn’t light a candle or anything. Pregnancy was a big part our life. There was such joy when women got pregnant, and we cared for the pregnant women as if they were queens.

When a woman went into labor, the word went out on The Farm, and the whole community would hold that space. It wouldn’t be with any fear; it was more like, “Theresa is going to have her baby today! Awesome!”

—Stacey Marie Kerr, MD, a mother of two grown daughters, a family physician with strong roots in midwifery, and author of Homebirth in the Hospital, in Santa Rosa, CA