Babies, Bodies, and Your Brain

I sat cross-legged on the rug, listening intently, notebook open, pen in hand. I watched her chins bob up and down and she gave the class on…childbirth. Yes, I have been plunged into the world of birthing as I await the anticipated arrival of my niece, and for now, there is nowhere else I would rather be. This is despite the detailed depictions of delicate data that apparently humans have known for centuries—or I wouldn’t exist.


My brother sits on his living room sofa lovingly tangled up with my 36-week pregnant sister-in-law, and I can’t help torturing them with meaning glances at the most personal of moments of our little class. Next we’re all on the floor doing pregnancy yoga to practice breathing through “concentrated effort” (i.e. PAIN). As I sit back on my heels I can’t help but think of our strange American culture.

We enshroud our bodily nature in mystery and confusion, and exalt the means above the end. How can we be so silly to find the miraculous birth of a complete human being out of a woman’s body too disgusting and private to discuss much despite its unbeatably euphoric conclusion, while the means to similarly create that little human is titillatingly glorified, dissected, and depicted? I can’t help but find that somewhat painfully amusing. If I were to list a series of words need fully associated with birthing a child, you would squirm and hope nobody was looking over your shoulder. If I were to talk about the other end of the baby business your brain, likely Americanized, would eagerly sweep up the details, occasionally checking over your shoulder. And I laugh. What’s our deal?

Perhaps this doesn’t apply to you. Perhaps you’ve never tittered about the human body as if it was something mysterious, isolated, and weird. I cease comparison with other cultures, and instead steadfastly hope that you are simply one of those that view the body for what it is: a miraculous, irreplaceable, created gift to be respected and used only as directed in the Manual. It is just that: completely amazing—and profoundly normal.

Today is neither Queen Victoria’s 1900, nor the modern age of assumed comfort with nudity. There is nothing as silly as what we allow ourselves to culturally embrace in subliminal ignorance. It is our turn to realize what we think about sex and birth, and change it to what is actually plain and simple truth. We need natural respect and ingrained belief in the Creator and what He has made, and our body language will be right on track. So, what does your behavior say you think?