A Labor of Love

Posted on 25 October, 2013 by Judith Halek

By Judith Elaine Halek
Photographs © Judith Elaine Halek

Women In Photography debuts an photographs and an article on
photographing water labors and births in the No. 8, Fall Issue,
October 1, 2001 Issue. The following is a rendition of the
article written by Judith Halek that appeared in this issue.

To view the website of Women in Photography, click here.

Archive 8 – WIPI News Article 3

Documenting births has been an obsession of mine since 1987 when
I assisted the first homebirth, waterbirth in New York City. Over the past fourteen years
I have slipped in and out of one of the most intimate experiences known to life.
I’ve had the privilege of documenting three separate environments;
homes, hospitals and birth centers. My specialty is underwater birth.

Waterbirth takes place when the baby is actually born from the womb of water inside the mother, to an extended womb of water, which could be a bathtub, a portable birthing pool, a jacuzzi, a water trough, or an ocean.

On my first contact with a couple, I give them a package of information and refer them to my website. After they have received the package and reviewed the site, we discuss what they like, what more they want and if whether there is a preference for a specific format, i.e., transparencies, and negatives, black/white, color.

Personally, I prefer to shoot with color negative because it offers more advanced emulsions. The additional color layers give better control in Photoshop. Black and white is the heart of photography, and from the purists point of view, film is superior to digital, yet, in the last three years technology has changed this. Today printing from a digital file with the special small gamut or monochrome black and white inks, creates a cutting edge print as acute as the traditional print from a darkroom.

The first thing to establish is the due date. One can be on call
approximately three weeks before the due date and two weeks after, unless it will be a home birth where the post dates could last up to four or five weeks. We discuss whether the couple wants me to be at their home before they go to the hospital or birth center.

It’s imperative to have permission to photograph from the hospital or birth center. Put something in writing and submit it to the medical facility before hand. One doesn’t want to become an intruder and sometimes medical personnel can be security conscious. When parents create their birth plan, photographic permission ought to be included as part of the labor/birth.

I work with the available light. Because of its invasive nature, I rarely use a strobe. I find available lighting creates a truer, softer,
journalistic reflection. I work with the fastest film for the camera:
Ilford and T-Max 400 and 800 for black and white and Fuji color (I find the skin tones are truer with Fuji). Sometimes I’ll be creative and shoot 1600 and 3200 when I’m at a home where candles are the only light source. I then utilize a monopod.I take anywhere between 5-8 rolls of film. I participate quietly in the labor and birth dance by making myself as inconspicuous as possible and shoot further away rather than close up. I work with the Canon EOS, SLR system; two cameras at a time with the Canon Elf as a third back up if we are transferring to the hospital or birth center. I use a EF 50mm f1:4 and EF 70-200 f1.2.8 lenses. I advise taking along a wide-angle lens such as a
21mm or 28mm for the confined areas.
When shooting, it1s important to focus on the details. Focus on becoming a Zen photographer and capture tender moments of father comforting mother, a gentle touch on a belly, a reflection in a mirror, a flower floating in water.If you are fortunate enough to be invited into the OR in a hospital,
you’ll wear their sterile gowns. Pay attention to where you can and cannot be, and don’t touch anything! Take a small fanny pack for your film. In a birth center you can wear comfortable clothing to move around in, climb on top of tables, beds, chairs, or edges of the tub. A home birth environment is the most relaxed. Wear clean clothes, shoes that slip on and off easily, take time to use the bathroom, eat and hydrate yourself with something other than caffeine.Labors and births can take from 25 minutes to 18-20 hours. Patience and vigilance are the keys. It’s like covering a sporting event. You have no idea what’s going to happen minute to minute. Conserve your energy by breathing in such a way as to stay in a calm, neutral state, both mentally and physically. Most importantly, enjoy… the miraculous experience.

Judith Halek is the director of Birth Balance, the east coast resource center for under water birth. Judith is now in the process of moving her 15 years of photography out to the public. She has been published in numerous birth journals such as Midwifery Today, The Journal of Perinatal Education an ASPO/LAMAZE Publication as well as New York Magazine. She will be debuting her first solo show at a prestigious birth center in New York City this winter.

Her website is www.birthbalance.com
Her email is Judith@BirthBalance.com
Phone and Fax: 212-222-4349

*Judith Halek is among the photographers of
WIPI’s 20th Anniversary International Tea Time exhibit

The Truth About Motherhood – Oprah 4/6/09

Posted on 3 September, 2013 by Judith Halek

Times have changed. My mother raised 5 children in the 1950′s, without a nanny, cook, housecleaner, or babysitter. When she was pregnant with me, she had 3 toddlers under the age of 5. Tired? There wasn’t a WORD for it according to my mother. She sat down one day at the table in the middle of the day with her mother and just started crying. Her mother was shocked, “What’s the matter?” My mother released, “Oh, I guess I am just tired, it all seems so overwhelming!” Of course my stoic grandmother came out with, “You dry up those tears. You have nothing to cry about. You have a house over your head, food on the table, a husband who doesn’t drink and run around with other women. You have nothing to cry about.” Ah yes, yet ANOTHER level of suppression.

Here we are in 2009, with programs allowing “voices to be heard.” My question is, by expressing one’s experience and focusing on the negative can this potentially keep people in the negative? Or is it therapeutic to ‘get it out’ and not keep it trapped in the body? I understand the rationalization of the expression is to ‘release’ the tension, ‘be heard,’ ‘allow one to vent,’ in order to move on. Yet on this particular show, “The Truth About Motherhood,” while there were funny moments throughout and interesting concepts to ponder, I wonder if we are setting up the women to get ready for the dysfunction before it might not happen?

Because I have not bore or raised children, most would say I am not one to even have an opinion. For the past 22 years I’ve counseled, assisted and helped over 1,100 babies come into the world. I speak not as your average woman without child. I am empathetic and have always encouraged my clients, friends and family members to ‘express themselves’ in order to release and move on. I don’t lie about the realities of ‘lack of sleep,’ needing to take care of oneself amidst the demands of the baby and/or their partner. I encourage coping tools, humor, support and expression to counter the extraordinary demands in this high paced society we live in today.

“The Truth About Motherhood” : Monday, April 6, 2009. http://www.oprah.com/article/oprahshow/20090311-tows-mom-truth

Longtime friends Trisha Ashworth and Amy Nobile set out on the motherhood journey together. They had perfect plans—Amy would stay at work after kids; Trisha would have three children, set exactly two years apart. But, like so many best-laid plans, things didn’t work out like they thought. Motherhood, they say, was more overwhelming than they expected. “It was like a bomb hit us,” Amy says. “I didn’t feel I had permission to talk about how hard motherhood really was.” Eventually, Trisha and Amy say they reached their breaking point, and they set out to see if other mothers shared their struggles. After interviewing hundreds of women, they say they’ve heard all the dirty little secrets of motherhood. Their first book, “I Was a Really Good Mom Before I Had Kids,” was based on their findings.

One of the most poignant messages on the program that day from a, ‘Stay At Home Mom:”

Dee-Dee is currently a stay-at-home mom, but she was a working mother once too. “The competition is there because we create it for ourselves,” she says. “There’s really no reason to compete, because [stay-at-home moms] are just as busy as the working mom. The working mom is just as busy as we are. We just tend to sometimes put the focus on the wrong things. We’re all busy 24/7. I consider myself an at-home working mother.” Amy says these wars arise out of our own uncertainties as mothers. “We’re insecure about the choices we’re making—that’s why we’re judging each other,” she says. “We need to give ourselves a collective break.”

That is right everyone needs to give themselves a ‘collective break.’ People don’t these days, the ego runs rampant. The oxygen mask goes on the mother last and unfortunately everyone around her as well as herself is dead because she didn’t put it on herself FIRST. So often women have lost themselves and their relationship with their partner, in the details of everyday life. Family and children come first, work next, life next, maybe partner and then themselves. The last and most exhausted part of who they are. And so these women get sick. All the time they think they are being “strong” because they are able to “do it all.” This is not a reflection of strength, it is weakness.

Kids need to see that you are ‘real.’ One mother’s response to that realness was:

Now that Karen has learned the ropes of motherhood, she’s got some tricks she’s willing to share. “I think the best way to discipline is for your kid to think that you’re just a little bit crazy,” she says. “You’ve got to make them think that this might be the moment that Mom finally loses it.” Karen says she came up with her new method when she once threatened to take away all of her daughter’s toys. “Of course she didn’t believe me, so she [misbehaved] again and I didn’t even yell. … I went in and cleaned out her room. There wasn’t so much as a Lego left,” she says. A day later, Karen put the toys back, but she says those 24 hours did the trick. “Now, all I have to do is get that sort of wild I’m-gonna-take-all-your-toys-away look in my eye, and she straightens up.”

Of course motherhood, with the baby on the outside, creates lessons of surrender:

Melinda Roberts, a mom of three, says she had to learn on her own that motherhood is like a 12-step program. “You’ve got to take it one day at a time sometimes,” she says. “You feel like: ‘If I can get out of bed and get breakfast on the table, I’ll be happy. If I can get them to school, I’ll be happy.’”One major motherhood realization that Melinda says she had with her first child was that she could no longer control everything in her life. “You can no longer choose your activities, your down time, when you get to sleep,” she says. “No matter what you do or where you go, you’re always tethered to this other human being in this unbreakable, incredibly fragile way. Anything you do will affect this child potentially for the rest of their life.”

No program would be complete with out discussion of “Is there Sex after babies?”

One popular topic on Heather’s blog (http://www.dooce.com) is sex and how it changes when you are a mom. “It took seven months [before I had sex after giving birth]. No one had told me that it was going to take that long after what the baby did to me,” Heather says. “Any guy who wants to have unprotected sex? Seven months without it. Just think about that for a minute. Let that number circulate in your head for a little bit.” Karen says the definition of intimacy has changed for her marriage since her child was born. “Intimacy in our house nowadays is my husband and I touching ankles below my daughter’s sleeping form between us,” she says. “It’s really hard to get that loving feeling when you’ve got a 40-pound kid between you.”

No wrong or right, good or bad, a forum for reflection, discussion and support. Where do you stand in YOUR truth about motherhood?

The Photograph- Hand From The Womb

Posted on 3 September, 2013 by Judith Halek

Please read before viewing picture – it’s worth it!

A picture began circulating in November. It should be ‘The Picture of the Year,’ or perhaps, ‘Picture of the Decade.’ It won’t be. In fact, unless you obtained a copy of the US paper which published it, you probably would never have seen it.

The picture is that of a 21-week-old unborn baby named Samuel Alexander Armas, who is being operated on by surgeon named Joseph Bruner.

The baby was diagnosed with spina bifida and would not survive if removed from his mother’s womb. Little Samuel’s mother, Julie Armas, is an obstetrics nurse in Atlanta. She knew of Dr. Bruner’s remarkable surgical procedure. Practicing at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, he performs these special operations while the baby is still in the womb.

During the procedure, the doctor removes the uterus via C-section and makes a small incision to operate on the baby. As Dr. Bruner completed the surgery on Samuel, the little guy reached his tiny, but fully developed hand through the incision and firmly grasped the surgeon’s finger. Dr. Bruner was reported as saying that when his finger was grasped, it was the most emotional moment of his life, and that for an instant during the procedure he was just frozen, totally immobile.

The photograph captures this amazing event with perfect clarity. The editors titled the picture, ‘Hand of Hope.’ The text explaining the picture begins, “The tiny hand of 21-week- old fetus Samuel Alexander Armas emerges from the mother’s uterus to grasp the finger of Dr. Joseph Bruner as if thanking the doctor for the gift of life.”

Little Samuel’s mother said they “wept for days” when they saw the picture. She said, “The photo reminds us pregnancy isn’t about disability or an illness, it’s about a little person.” Samuel was born in perfect health, the operation 100 percent successful. Now see the actual picture.

Don’t tell me our God isn’t an awesome God!!!!!

Samuel Alexander Armas, Picture of the Year, Hand of Hope

The Future of Our Children

Posted on 3 September, 2013 by Judith Halek

~ ~

TO ALL WHO “SURVIVED” THE 1950′s, 60′s and 70′s…

Jay Leno, Television Talk Show Host

(February 2009)

We were born to mothers who smoked and drank while they were pregnant. They also took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can and they didn’t get tested for diabetes. We were put to sleep on our tummies in baby cribs covered with bright colored lead-base paints. We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, locks on doors of cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we wore baseball caps and not helmets on our heads. We rode in cars with no infant car seats, no booster seats, no seat belts, no air bags, and riding in the back of a pick-up truck on a warm sunny day was a sumertime treat for every kid and teenager and family dog.

We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle. We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle, and no one died from it. We ate cupcakes, white bread, real butter and things cooked with bacon grease. We drank Kool-Aid made with real sugar and rarely ever were any of us overweight. Why? Because we were always outside playing… that’s why! We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back by the time the streetlights came on. No one was able to reach us all day and we were O.K.!

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride them down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times we learned to solve the problem. We did not have Playstations, Nintendo’s and X-boxes. There were no video games, no 150 channels on cable, no video movies or DVD’s, no surround-sound or CD’s, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet and no chat rooms. WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, got a few broke bones, and there were no lawsuits from these incidents. We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever. We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls and, although we were told it would happen, we did not put out everyone’s eyes. We rode bikes or walked to a friend’s house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them. Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team.. Those who didn’t had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that! And the idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law- and the law actually sided with the PARENTS.

These generations have produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors in history. We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with ALL of it. If you are one of the lucky ones who were fortunate enough to grow up in America BEFORE the lawyers and the government regulated childhood out of existence, congratulations! Try not to cry today when you look at your grandchild’s smiling sweet face, try not to think of what a pittiful excuse for a childhood they’re going to have compared to yours. Cry when you think of THEIR children.

“With hurricanes, tornadoes, fires out of control, mud slides, flooding, severe storms tearing up the country from one end to another, and with the threat of bird flu and terrorist attacks, are we sure this is a good time to take God out of the Pledge of Allegiance?”

Lotus Birth II

Posted on 13 August, 2013 by Judith Halek

Lotus Birth: Trend or Risk

This is an interesting article about not cutting the cord after the baby’s birth. This is called, a ‘lotus birth’. When I broach the topic to some people they are disgusted. Others are fascinated and still others ask many questions. Read on and enjoy the information.

LOTUS BIRTHING: TREND OR RISK
BY MONICA ORBE/ MEDILL DEC 03, 2009

Named for the lotus flower, lotus birthing is becoming a trend in home birthing circles where parents opt to keep the baby attached to the placenta.

It raises questions about the practice of cord clamping right after birth and raises eyebrows in the medical community where many doctors contend this birthing practice poses unnecessary risks of infection. Lotus birthing means the baby’s cord is not immediately clamped or cut. The parents and their midwife instead opt to have the placenta remain attached to nourish the baby and let it fall off naturally.

During this period before it does fall off, parents clean, salt and wrap the placenta, usually in a cloth diaper. This option is not offered in hospitals and some hospitals don’t even allow the parents to take the placenta home.

People who have chosen lotus birthing said they believe that the placenta is providing the baby with nutrients and oxygen even after it separates from the uterus.

At the very least, they contend the clamping and cutting of the cord should only be done after the cord stops pulsating.

The immediate clamping and cutting of the cord as soon as the baby is delivered, the standard at hospitals, may deprive the baby of the ability to transition from a liquid-based environment to an oxygen-based environment, according to supporters of delayed clamping.

American obstetrician Dr. George M. Morley is considered a champion of delayed cord clamping. Morley’s argument for the delay is that cutting before the umbilical cord has stopped pulsating could mean that the baby is being deprived of oxygen and nutrients. If a child becomes hypoxic (it lacks oxygen) and ischemic (lacks blood flow), Morley believed the child could be placed at greater risk of brain damage.

The argument for delayed cord clamping is often used as a springboard for those who believe in lotusbirthing, a more extreme version of delayed cord clamping.

Some doctors are becoming more accepting of delayed cord clamping, but they criticize the idea of lotus birthing methods.

High risk obstetrician Dr. Mara Dinsmoor questions the safety of both delayed cord clamping and lotus birthing. “The concerns are that, because there is quite a bit of blood in the placenta, you may end up with a baby whose blood count is too high from doing that,” she said.

She said that too much blood in the baby’s system due to the delayed clamping has been known to cause blood clots and sludging in the baby’s organs, which could result in damage to those organs. She also said that carrying the placenta around could be a “potential infectious risk.”

Dinsmoor also said that she believes lotus birthing may not really be of any use. “Fairly soon after the baby is born those umbilical vessels…basically are obliterated. So you are not getting anything really good from the placenta through those umbilical vessels,” she said.

But, lotus birthing is gaining popularity because women choosing to take more control of their pregnancy are asking questions and turning to the Internet for answers.

Chicago attorney Leonard Hudson and his wife Gayle Hudson, a stay-at-home-mother, said they discovered lotus birthing on a Web site.

Gayle Hudson said she had only one priority: “What is going to give [my baby] the best start in her life? And I thought – the least amount of drugs, the least amount of stress.”

Hudson said her fear of having a birth in an environment where she felt doctors and nurses see birth as surgery, made her choose home birth. After making this decision, her mind turned to more alternative birthing methods and she found and researched lotus birthing.

After about three days of carrying around their baby with the placenta attached, the Hudson’s decided it was time to cut the cord. Gayle Hudson said the placenta had become unwieldy and the couple feared their child would get tangled up in it.

The Hudson’s urge other parents to take control of their birthing experience by educating themselves.

“Part of the organizing principle of our birth plan was the timing of it should be set by Gayle and the child,” letting nature take its course, said Leonard Hudson. ”So having the lotus birth was sort of a continuation of that.”

To see video of LOTUS BIRTHS: THE DEBATE By Monica Orbe with Medill Reports:
http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/news.aspx?id=151179

Father Knows Best – Oprah

Posted on 20 June, 2013 by Judith Halek

On April 13, 2009, Oprah did a show on the challenges and wonders of fatherhood. While there are far more single mothers, there are about 2 million single fathers in the United States. They deal with all of the struggles a single mother does. Schedules, cooking, laundry, school activities. Oprah celebrated these ‘unsung heroes’ on her show. There were four rather unusual stories that will shock you, move you, bring tears to your eyes as these amazing men find the strength, stamina, heartfelt, selfless duty and love, to share with their children.

One father, Larry Shine, lost his wife, Kate, two and a half years after the birth of their first child. He went on to adopt eight more children from all over the world. Watch a typical day in a house of 10. Larry is a full time corporate attorney and he starts his day at 3 am. Not only would nine children be a challenge, but the household could not have been complete without their token dog, Betty the Bulldog.

Another father, Matt Logelin and his partner Liz, had just became a proud new parents with a beautiful baby girl, Madeline. Born in the morning and by the afternoon, Liz died of a blood clot no one knew she had. Matt had to mourn the loss of his wife and find and follow-through with a typical day of diaper changes and life moving on. Matt created a blog to help him cope with the pain (view his blog here). Thousands of people started reading Matt’s blog. This online community shocked him. Complete strangers were sending him money, toys etc. Matt believes in the ‘give back as much as been given.’ He’s been recycling the clothing Madeleine has grown out of, and has established The Liz Logelin Foundation which helps widows and widowers with children.

The next couple, Gregory Maguire and Andy Newman fell in love and adopted three children from Cambodia and Guatemala. While they might be judged as unconventional by some people…they believe their household is ‘just like any others.’ The names the kids have given their dads are: ”Dada” and “Ba,” the Khmer word for father.

Probably the most touching and heart wrenching story was of a couple Dana Canedy and Charles King. During Dana’s pregnancy, Charles was deployed to Iraq. Six months after Dana gave birth to their son, Jordan, Charles was give 2 weeks leave to see his new family. A full, whirl wind of a visit was to be his only visit with his son. Sadly, Charles returned to Iraq, he was killed in a roadside bombing. When Dana was five and half months pregnant, she’d bought a journal for Charles to record his notes to his unborn son, Jordan. Charles became obsessed with putting down on paper his deepest thoughts about what he wanted to say to his unborn son. After a long day, Charles would come back to his bunk and spend countless hours therapeutically, writing, releasing and sharing. He wrote about the power of God and prayer in his life. He wrote about his love for the military service and more than anything about his respect for women. What a gift this father gave to his son.

One note to Dana in his journal: “This is the letter that every soldier should write. I want to thank you for our son…I’d like to see him grow up to be a man, but only God knows what the future holds” (See what Charles wrote on his son here).

Men don’t typically keep journals. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if they might take a lesson from Charles about the preciousness of life, teaching, learning, sharing and pick up that pen and write down in words, that which they might not say directly to their partners, children or family. The world would be a different place.

‘Birth Dissonance’ Into ‘Birth Consonance’

Posted on 6 January, 2013 by Judith Halek

Are you ready to stop pouring your life energy into defining yourself as a separate entity and allow yourself to beome undefined? Going from wasted energy put into egoic identity can be invested into a new and more interesting purpose. A whole different perception, way of being and knowing, gettting and doing or not doing, when interacting with the Universe?

The dreamstate is a magical place and we are a part of it. We ARE it. We are the miracles, the mysteries and we keep looking outside ourselves, giving our power away, for something or someone else to create it all or fix it for us; TENS machines, epidurals, pitocin, doula, acupuncture, homeopathy, cesareans, prosteglandin gell, a birth tub, midwife, doctor, partner.

A psychological term to describe the discomfort we feel when our thoughts, (seeming reality) and beliefs, (feelings and emotions) come into conflict is: Cognitive Dissonance. I see it all the time in pregnancy or particularly in labor and birth. The woman get’s signs from her body and the baby that it is not ready to come. Her doctor says, “The baby needs to come now.” She is in conflict with her belief and the thoughts instilled in her by the doctor. The problem begins as the pressure builds and the woman allows herself out of fear to go with the doctor’s demands.

What does she know? This is her first child? This doctor has ‘delivered’ thousands of

babies. They are the expert, yet her belief and inner knowing is, ‘the baby is not ready to come.’ The problem excellerates as she gets induced and her body is not dilating. Even with all the drugs, everyone is confused about the “insufficient cervix,” or the “inability to progress.” No one is taking into consideration the most important element in the center of the drama. The mother’s belief’s conflicting with her thoughts.

I call this ‘Birth Dissonance’. Where the internal belief collides with external reality. Where self and not-self come into contact/conflict. We are not innocent by-standers or victims of our experience. We are the shapers of our dreamstate reality. Until we get it, really get it, by standing up for, falling apart from, letting go of, surrendering into the opposite of where we have been all our lives, things are not going to change. And we will continue to blame everyone and everything for our lives being the way they are. Falling apart is coming together.

Society has put billions of dollars into medications, illegal, legal drugs to separate mind from body. Something to put you to sleep, something to make you wake up. Something to make you dialate, (pitocin) something to numb the pain, (epidurals) and when the epidural stops the pain and the contractions, there’s more pitocin to regulate it back to par. (Providing all systems are ‘go’ for the woman being induced.)

What people are looking for is ‘Birth Consonance,’ an end to discomfort, not the delusion. But the truth is, the consonance sought can only be found in deeper unconsciousness which requires reduction of dissonance. How does one get to reach that natural, integrated level of consonance? Through serenity and tranquility or diving to the depths of the self-delusion and swimming through the muck until one gets to the surface and is able to see and know the insanity and madness they have been buying into all their life.

So, are you a person who is stuck and wants to get unstuck? Or a person who knows you are stuck and wants to stay stuck your judgements and denial?

Ah, and there truly lies a of potential consonance or dissonance.

Whatever your choice in or out of the labor room: ”Everybody Breathe!”

(Ideas inspired out of Jed McKenna’s third book in a trilogy entitled, Spiritual Warfare)

By Judith Elaine Halek Photographs © Judith Elaine Halek

By Judith Elaine Halek
Photographs © Judith Elaine Halek