The sign of a Good Mother

I have recently begun my certification as a Labour and Bereavement Doula and had the privilege of using this profession in my volunteer work at Vanier Correctional facility. I had volunteered at Vanier teaching Inspirational dance to the women for 5 years and was transitioning to help the many pregnant inmates in Vanier so that no incarcerated mother would have to birth alone. Being a mother of 5 children and having been an unofficially Doula for numerous family and friends for the past 20 years was an added benefit.

One of my first clients was a beautiful young First Nations woman who was pregnant with her first child. I was told by the case worker and the NILO on staff that this unborn infant had FAS (Fetal Alcohol Syndrome) and the ultrasound showed that it was missing limbs and would most likely die shortly after birth due to the many harmful defects. The mother had even gone into liver failure during her pregnancy due to excessive abuse of alcohol.
Due to this and among other factors her baby was going into the custody of CAS (Children Aid Society) as soon as it was born.

These circumstances were discouraging to me as I began to visit with this young woman to give her emotional support and childbirth information to prepare her for birthing her baby within custody.
We began to pray for her baby and that it would be born perfect and also for her emotional well-being having to release her baby 24 hrs after giving birth.

As I do with all of my clients I had encouraged her to give everything that she could to her unborn infant even while she was in custody.
So she took a prenatal class with me to help her with the pregnancy, labor and delivery.  We created a birth wish list stating her choices for a healthy natural labor and delivery.  She even decided to breastfeed her baby right after birth to give the baby the colostrum that it needed.
In her ninth month she was given another ultrasound and it came back with the baby in perfect health. We rejoiced at this miracle and prepared ourselves for the difficult delivery and release of this baby. She also found out that it was a boy.

At first she was unhappy that her baby was going to be with foster parents and that she would be coming back to the correctional facility fairly soon after giving birth, but she was learning different coping strategies to deal with the stress and seemed to be doing okay.
During this time I learned from her social worker that she was also in an abusive destructive relationship and this was compounding the reason that CAS was not willing to release her infant into family care.
I spoke to her about her situation and asked if she would be willing to do everything to be able to keep her baby and she seemed compliant but yet still hesitant. They were requiring her to enter a long term treatment facility after her release and also that she sever all ties with her boyfriend.
As we began to talk further I learned that in reality she was not willing to comply with the terms set out in the agreement to keep her baby and that she was considering adoption.

Needless to say as a prison Doula my job was not  to have emotional baggage about the choices and situations that our clients face, but to fully support them through the childbirth process with the outcome of healthy mother, healthy baby- awesome birth!

I did just that and watched as this baby was born healthy and this mother gave of herself selflessly, through eleven hours of labor, birth , breastfeeding, babies first bath, diaper changes, dressing in new clothes and blanket for the taking of photos as final memories.

She would love on this baby right up till the moment that the guards removed her from the hospital back to the correctional facility and CAS came and took her baby to be with foster parents,  We both had such a peace during this entire ordeal and when she signed the papers for the baby to be adopted I knew that this was her being a good mother.

It brought me back to a passage in 1 Kings 3: 16-22 where two mothers come to King Solomon to settle a dispute about one of their babies that had died throughout the night. Both mothers claimed that the remaining baby was theirs and in his wisdom to help make the decision King Solomon says that he would take a sword and cut the remaining baby in half and each mother can have half of the baby. On hearing this decision the true mother not wanting any harm to come to her infant, decides to give the baby to the other woman, This act of selflessness is the evidence of a good mother. Solomon returns the living child to the rightful mother.

Adoption many times is this same selfless act of knowing that to keep the child you may do it more harm than good and to give it away would take the love of a good mother. You would rather lose your baby than make it a half of a what it should really be entitled to. In making this very difficult decision you are in fact acting like a true mother, who always has the best interest of her child before her own.

My first prison birth would teach me an invaluable lesson and a few days later help me to pray for a Christian couple that after many years of infertility had recently adopted an infant and  during the 7 day required waiting period the young single birth mother would change her mind and take the baby back to live with her. This couple was grieving the loss of this decision and as I began to pray for them this same story would come flooding back to my mind. Miraculously a month later she too would decide to become a good mother and do what she felt was best not for her but for the well- being, safety and security of her infant baby, This couple would be allowed to parent this child because a mother again would surrender her rights and release her baby into what she felt was best.

I had begun a winding unpredictable journey with many new lessons to be learned and experienced as I received a complete paradigm shift about what a good mother really is.