Two Shiny Pennys from Heaven

Today I was touched by two amazing Pennys from Heaven.

The first Penny added value to my life by impacting me to look outside myself and be the change I wanted to see in this world. She was a role model in the way that she continually allows her life to be shared, relevant and impactful . She holds space for you and is full of information and wisdom. Always looking for solutions to the "unanswered" problems. Being a connector for those that have, to help those that have need. When you know better you do better was a mantra that she gifted others with.
She was in the end of the beginning and I had the privileged to tell her that I loved her. When someone makes a difference in the way you live your life its important that you recognize it. She was leaving the place but I knew her presence would still be felt on the planet. To me she was like lightning and thunder, a supernatural natural phenomena that is caused by change and causes change to occur.

My second Penny was a beautiful sensitive soul that I had the honor to bring value to. We bonded our hearts together during a difficult season as she gave birth to her eighth child, a son. As she loved him in adoption, she trusted me and put my name on his birth certificate so he would one day know the story of how he came to be. Now that she was having her ninth and was incarcerated once more, I had the chance to go down memory lane to remind her how strong she was and how HOPE is a choice. My smile was wide and my heart was glowing as we held hands and cried and got caught up. Tomorrow she will be leaving and arriving all at once and my prayer for her was that angels would guide her as she tried to find her way. 

Two shiny Pennys from Heaven have been loaned to me to remind me of the value in things that I sometimes deem worthless. These two Pennys were the sum and value of my fortune today.

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.

Lead Me to that Place of Wide Open Space

I believe that we learn about life not just from formal education but also from our everyday life interaction. There are lessons to be learned through nature, relationships and daily observations, if we just tune ourselves into the multiple messages being spoken to us every day. My husband and I were travelling to an appointment when all of sudden there seemed to be traffic. He noticed that we were being funneled and channeled into one lane and this bottleneck was the cause of us slowing down and delaying us to get to our desired destination on time.

In his frustration he asked more to himself but still out loud “Why is the road only one lane on such a busy street?”  As I surveyed the area more thoroughly I realized that they were expanding the road and that to do so they had to contain the lanes so they could have enough room for the expansion process. They were going from two lanes to four lanes but before that they had to go to only one lane. As I shared this out loud I also said “So everyone has to go through a small space and the inconvenience for a short time so that later there would be a larger space after the work is completed”.

 My husband got a hold of this internally and with me being a Doula he gave an example that really resonated with me.  He said “It's kind of like when a baby is being born, they start off small and then they grow until they fill the space and then they go through a small space (birthing canal) to be able to come out to the world which is a much wider space”

 This spoken revelation was awesome because it spoke about how growth happens in many areas in our lives. As human beings we all usually get frustrated when we feel we are being slowed down or channeled in any given area. It may be happening in our business, personal life or even spiritual growth.  When sometimes in actuality what truly is occurring is the “growth expansion process”.   For us to be able to come out into wide-open spaces sometimes we have to go through a narrow space so for a time we may feel confined as we prepare to be birthed into something much bigger. This uneasy, unfamiliar, messy, uncomfortable and sometimes even painful place may cause many of us to want to make a U-turn or even plan an easy exit route. But there is a purpose in the process! A plan in the pain!  A destiny in the delay!  We must begin to trust that we will get to our destination on time and that there is a reason for what we are going through.

There are now proven studies that children that are brought into the world by C-section, which is sometimes a short cut into the world, though may sometimes be necessary, may start life with insufficient intestinal bacteria flora (microbiomes). These bacteria are known to play a part in protecting children from developing allergies and children who lack them may be at higher risk of other health problems.

During a regular vaginal birth infants come in contact with a rich dose of their mother’s bacteria as they are pressed through the birth canal. C-section babies don’t get this exposure, which is likely to be vital in developing the immune system and helping it to mature.

When we relate this process to our everyday life we see that even the things we don’t understand while we are going through this tight confined space that they will eventually help to make us stronger and more immune when we come out into the bigger wider open spaces. If we do not struggle or resist, or try to circumvent the process no matter how difficult it may seem. If we yield, resist the fear and just let nature take its course, then and only then will we enter the other side from one lane to four lanes of wide open space and freedom.