Friday, February 05, 2010

From Belly Dancing To Water Birth, At 46

By Angel La Liberte for her web site Flower Power Mom: The Truth about Motherhood after 40

4 February 2010

At 44, when I lined up at the maternity ward check-in for a scheduled C-section—just like one of the herd of shaking midlife-mother-sheep, fatted up on a 9-month diet of risk-factor fear—the very notion of a home water birth was a fool’s fancy.

After all, we were the old ladies—or gals of “advanced maternal age”—who’d played our fertility hand, cheated the stork, and won the gamble.

There was an inherent sense of potential retribution, a haunting fear that somehow he’d return to take his ‘pound of baby’—and we’d urgently require some sort of unforeseen medical intervention to save the day, and perhaps our lives.

It’s an angst-ridden specter with which most over-40 mothers must contend.

Well, most.

Maha Al Musa—47-year old Lebanese mother and founder of Belly Dance For Birth, who lives in Byron Bay, Australia—likes to do things her own way, and proceeded to shock her doctor by insisting on a home water birth at 46.

“He was very alarmed” recalls Maha Al Musa, “and kept asking me if I realized I was an older woman and many things could go wrong.”

Permalink: http://flowerpowermom.com/wordpress/?p=1098

Main site: Flower Power Mom—The Truth About Motherhood After 40 is an online information resource, blog and newsletter for new mothers over 40.




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