To Be Human Is To Be Consumed: A Spirituality of Pregnancy

This summer the fun folks over at First Presbyterian Church of Waco are putting on a series of talks for their Christian Formation hour in which they are tackling the theological and spiritual implications of humans as consumers. Certainly the term “consumerism” has a negative ring to it, but is it always a bad thing to be a consumer? Are we not, at least in some ways, consumers by design? And are there ways in which we are the ones being consumed? Discussion topics include: beekeeping, the microbiome, pregnancy, agroecology, and more. Guess which one I was asked to speak on!


“Take, eat. This is my body, broken for you.”

“Take, drink. This is my blood, poured out for you.”

These (or similar) words are spoken over communion tables all over the world, Sunday after Sunday. As an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, I have spoken these words myself, holding aloft a broken loaf of bread or a full cup of wine. These words invite us to consider the sacrifice of Jesus’s broken body and shed blood and to participate in a holy meal that binds Christians together. But I wonder: have these words ever also invited us to reflect on pregnancy, birth, and breastfeeding?

I think that sometimes we shy away from talking about the spirituality of pregnancy because we think that reflecting on birth can only apply to half the population—and not even half, since every person with a uterus does not use it to gestate a baby, for a myriad of reasons. But I maintain that birtheology is a topic for every human to explore. Were we not all participants in at least one birth? It may be that many of us have only the one experience, and any memory of it has been lost to us. But each of us has been born, thus reflection on birth is for every body.

To give birth is to be consumed.

I spent five and a half years of my life pregnant and/or breastfeeding. FIVE AND A HALF YEARS of sharing my body with a small human or two. I’ve spent the past thirteen (and counting!) years of my life supporting new and expecting families in some way—as a birth and postpartum doula, as a childbirth educator, as a lactation counselor. I speak from experience about the toll it takes on a body to gestate, birth, and provide the primary nourishment for another human being.

This is my pregnant body, broken for you.

The pregnant body may not actually be broken, but it can certainly feel that way. Heartburn, nausea, vomiting, leg cramps, constipation, hemorrhoids, back pain, pelvic pain, fatigue. Depression and anxiety. As the uterus grows, it squishes the bladder (causing more and more frequent urination) and the diaphragm (causing shortness of breath). I could go on, but I think you get the idea.

This is my blood, poured out for you.

In a healthy pregnancy, there is no blood. Menstruation only occurs when conception has not, so for nine months we get a reprieve from periods. But there is a whole other organ, the placenta, that we grow to manage the transfer of oxygen-rich blood to the growing fetus, and to keep the baby’s blood separate from the mother’s. Consider that—the pregnant body grows an entirely new organ to support and protect the baby, and then discards it after the baby is born. We grow it alongside the baby, and then throw it away when it is no longer needed. There is no other occasion that the body does this.

But if, thanks to the placenta, blood is carefully managed in pregnancy, it certainly flows during birth. Once the placenta detaches from the wall of the uterus, all those blood vessels that were supplying the placenta are now bleeding freely. This is one of the more dangerous moments in birth, and why many women in centuries past did not survive. The amount of blood loss is carefully monitored by medical care providers, and if there is too much, then medications are administered to prevent life-threatening hemorrhage.

Human milk is made from blood. Take, drink.

When counseling new parents about lactation, I frequently say, “Breastfeeding may be natural, but it is not instinctive, at least not for the mother.” Nursing a newborn involves a steep learning curve, with a lot of trial and error. It is a labor of love, as much as gestating and birthing a baby is. And it is incredibly taxing on the body. Some parents feed their babies from their own bodies for hours, or days, or weeks, or months, or even years. Each drop of milk is a gift, created by the mother from her own blood, given to sustain and nourish her baby.

To gestate and birth and sustain new life is to be consumed.

For me, giving birth was a transcendent experience. Mind, body, and spirit melded into one, with no distinctions. I speak to my own experience, but I have witnessed and heard others say something similar—that birth is a spiritual experience. Here I have elaborated at length the physical elements of pregnancy, birth and breastfeeding, because these are spiritual experiences firmly and deeply rooted in the physical. And lest we think only a certain type of birth “counts”: a person does not need to forgo an epidural for giving birth to be one of the most physically grueling experiences they have ever known.

But also: what joy to participate in such a visceral way in the intimacy and splendor of creation!

In bringing each of us into this world, the broken bodies and shed blood of our mothers give us a glimpse of the self-sacrificial love of Christ and of what it might look like to willingly be consumed to bring life to another. These are the gifts of God for the people of God, shown to us through something as mundane and holy as birth. Thanks be to God!

Pregnant in Worship: Thoughts on Liturgy and Birth

I was SO going to post this week on the Curse of Eve (doesn’t that sound like a B-list horror film? spoiler: It’s not.), but then another idea came crashing in. Maybe next week I’ll take us back to the Garden of Eden, but today I want to go inside Christian worship and look for birtheology there.

Note the preggo belly--I was determined to get this one sprinkled before the next one came along.

Note the preggo belly--I was determined to get this one sprinkled before the next one came along.

It seems to me that the church doesn’t offer much in the way of ritual or spiritual support for families in the childbearing year. It seems that most churches do a really good job of helping with the practical considerations of having a baby–chiefly, organizing a baby shower before birth and a care calendar afterward.  And when my church did these things for me, I felt loved and knew that this was a way for people to show that they care about me and my family. But, I wanted more. I wanted ritual–words and symbol used as a way for my church to acknowledge and support the spiritual journey my growing little family was on.

Of course, there is baptism (or baby dedication, depending on one’s tradition), but this happens well after the birth (and if you are like me, you don’t get around to doing this until your baby is a toddler (note the photos of my own family’s experiences) and MUCH less open to the idea of a semi-stranger coming at them with wet fingers). Plus, the baptism or baby dedication ritual is much more about starting the baby off on a solid theological grounding in life than about acknowledging what the parents and older siblings have just experienced.

Clearly I did not learn from my experience the first time around. My apologies to Ken White, the pastor who had to chase after my son’s head as he did his best to duck and dodge.

Clearly I did not learn from my experience the first time around. My apologies to Ken White, the pastor who had to chase after my son’s head as he did his best to duck and dodge.

Credit to Barb Nunn, a wonderful Dallas-based photographer and friend

Credit to Barb Nunn, a wonderful Dallas-based photographer and friend

This kind of ritual acknowledgement of the incredibly transformative spiritual experience of pregnancy and birth was something I actively searched for when I was pregnant. There are two moments when I felt my pregnancy acknowledged in church that stand out in my memory. One was at my friend and colleague Chantel’s ordination. During the celebration of Communion, I walked up the aisle to her beaming face, and as she offered the bread to me she gestured to my belly and said, “May this nourish both you and your baby.”  I returned to my pew with tears in my eyes.

My other moment came a bit later in my first pregnancy, at Holy Trinity, the Anglican church I attended in Utrecht, the Netherlands.  They hold a healing service every few months in which people are invited to come forward to the altar rail and receive a blessing. I went forward as I approached the end of my pregnancy in order to have the minister pray over me and my baby for a healthy birth. That moment of having hands laid on my shoulders, oil anointing my forehead, and words of blessing spoken over me as I kneeled in church did much to allay some of my anxiety and to remind me that God would be with me in the physical act of delivering my child.

While I treasure both these memories, I did sort of happen upon them by accident. Neither communion nor a healing service are particularly designed to support pregnancy. So where are the rituals for pregnancy and birth? Why does the church, and its vast store of language and symbol regarding advent, and hope, and fear, and creation, and journey, and, well–LOTS of themes which easily relate to pregnancy and birth, remain silent?

I can’t answer that one. I have lots of thoughts, but of course no real answers.

But if the church, or even a church, (hey, what about your church?) wanted to start acknowledging and supporting the spiritual journey expecting families are on, here are some ideas:

  • A blessing for a pregnant woman, as well as for her partner and other children. What I’m suggesting is something that would happen within the context of worship, with the whole congregation present and participating. (As opposed to what is known as a “blessing way“, or “mother blessing”: a home-based ritual meant to provide emotional and spiritual support for a woman in her pregnancy. This is fodder for a whole other post entirely. Stay tuned.) This blessing could be short and simple, but the pledge of spiritual support from her congregation would be quite meaningful to a woman and her family journeying through pregnancy.
I love this image, but I think it is sad that this woman is all alone. Where is her community?

I love this image, but I think it is sad that this woman is all alone. Where is her community?

  • A blessing for the mother and her family after the birth. There used to be such a ritual, and it still survives in some Christian traditions. It is known as the “Churching of Women“, and for many people it carries negative connotations about the impurity of women following childbirth. However, I am proposing that we move beyond any such connotation, reformulating and reclaiming this ritual as needed in order to focus on welcoming a new mother back into worship, acknowledging the enormity of what she has just done, and lending support to her and her family as they move into a new way of being.
  • Always in the back of my mind when I am working with this concept of birtheology is the knowledge that pregnancy and birth are not always simple or even accessible to all. Of course, considerable discretion would need to be used, but I believe that offering a means of acknowledging the loss of a child through miscarriage or stillbirth and praying for and with the parents who have experienced this within the context of their community of faith could be a powerful means of supporting their grief.
  • Along these same lines, there are those in the pews who silently struggle with infertility.  I have no idea what this might look like, but perhaps there is a way to break the silence and shame on this subject as well. What is the church for, anyway, but to support one another in faith through life’s journey, whatever that journey might hold?

These are just preliminary ideas, and I could write a whole post on any of the points above. What I would really love is to hear your thoughts and experience. Is there a way in which you found spiritual support in the childbearing year within the context of worship, or do you have suggestions for how that could happen? Or have you felt excluded within worship as one who has struggled with fertility issues? How would you suggest the church address people in this situation?