What No Parsley?

I’ll race ya!   Grandma says when she  picks me up from school.We run home. Sometimes we skip.

At  home, Grandma has a big bowl of parsley and hummus ready for me or a glass with a bright green shake of parsley & apple. It’s delicious.   

But if I don’t want parsley, Grandma looks me in the eye and says, “What no parsley?!!!”

Whatever Grandma does, she sings while she does it.  She has a voice that makes you close your eyes and listen. Its delicious too.  She says, “Wo man singt, laßt Euch ruhig nieder. Böse Menschen haben keine Lieder.” Where people are singing, settle there. Mean people have no songs.

Today she is singing Joni Mitchell’s Circle Game. I know some of the words.

  After eating, I lean into her on the sofa and she tells me stories.

She loves to tell me the story of how I was born. She is not just my grandma, she is the Midwife who helped bring me into this world.

She tells me how my head came out first and even when my face was all crunched up, when only my eyes and nose were born, I took my first breath (before even my chin and body came out!)

She tells me how creatures know how to breathe when they are born. They don’t  even have to think about it. Just like women don’t have to think about how to give birth. But the world spends all their time scaring women into thinking birth is a head on car crash. 

“Women, Just do it!” Grandma shouts. That’s Grandma’s mantra. But the problem today, she says,  is people eat too much, especially sweets, so the babies are bigger and harder to deliver. Makes sense. Grandma taught me, that if you dont interfere, 99% of babies breathe automatically when they come out. Only 1 in 100 need a bit of help to breath when they come out- like by massaging their backs or blowing air in their mouth, called mouth to mouth resuscitation. Meanwhile the mom has to deliver the placenta, the organ that fed the baby for months. 

Next the mom looks at her new baby for the first time and usually the baby looks at the mom also. Most babies born at home don’t cry right away. They are curious.

What happens next?

Sometime in the first hour, the baby begins to nurse.

It sounds simple. 

Grandma told me people think birth is so complicated because medical people use fear to control women. That way they can charge tons of  money to watch women do what they already instinctively know how to do.

Grandma takes me out to play at the playground.  She said, this is where you give birth-  with  the trees, with the wind.

Come she says, lets run with the wind. Grandma is the wind and she blows us around the playground.  She says her grandma used to blow her around and someday I’ll be a grandma too, blowing kids around.

 Are you cold? Grandma asks?

No. I’m fine.

Good, then you’ll stay healthy. 

Grandma says it’s simple. People get sick from getting cold and not getting enough sleep or healthy food. Another good way to get sick is going to a hospital. When you are pregnant  your immune system is on ‘low’ so it’s a good time to avoid hospitals. Also, hospitals are run for profit, and half of births don’t go quickly enough for them to make profit so they speed it up with Pitocin.  The Pitocin causes contractions so hard, making it hard for the fetus to get oxygen. Then the doctors say you need a cesarean, when you didn’t need Pitocin in the first place.  Most (60%) of cesareans are done for a meaningless undefined word “dystocia”.  How do women believe in this stuff?

When grandma gets started talking about birth, it’s hard for her to stop. But then we find some boxes and bottles and we walk them to the recycling center containers.   Grandma says we have to recycle ♻️ so they will be some boxes and bottles for my grandchildren! She is always thinking ahead!

Grandma looks at me and  says what should I make for today’s birth party?

I say pizza and ice cream.

Grandma looks at me with her big brown eyes and shouts,

WHAT!! No Parsley?!!!!!