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!
