Navigating Different Medical Models during Birth and Beyond

By Emily Anne Utia

On the morning of October 7, 2019, I was abruptly thrust from my homemade birthing nest into the hospital for an emergency surgical birth.  After 30 hours of laboring at home, my cervix had not dilated at all and my baby was beginning to struggle, as was I, especially since the amniotic sac had long been ruptured.  Thus started a journey of weaving a path, navigating between the unfamiliar land of the conventional Western medical model and my comfortable world of natural and holistic care.  A year later, I have learned so much about how to best utilize this integrative approach to medical care as I continue to dabble in all the many different areas, creating a system that supports me and my family in the best possible way.

In my late twenties, I went through a powerful transition of unwinding my dependency on the conventional medical system and taking my health into my own hands.  It was clear that the protocol I had been on for many years was not working and I was heading in a bad direction physically and emotionally.  I had been battling cystic acne since the age of 12 and spent over ten years taking antibiotics regularly as well as applying heavy-duty chemical medications to my skin, all to no avail.  Very much related to my acne, I suffered from terrible anxiety and eventually a deep depression, for which I was also heavily medicated.  On top of all of this, I was drinking heavily and had no awareness at all about diet and nutrition. 

After several failed rounds on the heavy-duty pharmaceutical pill for acne called Accutane, which was supposed to be some sort of miracle drug but came with incredibly dangerous side effects, the dermatologist I was seeing at the time told me that I might have to just accept that I would always have adult acne and I would just have to deal with it.  This was unacceptable to me and I finally began to look elsewhere for help.  I thus began a journey of awakening that continues to this day as I awoke to self-responsibility and began to learn about all of the things I could do to transform my physical, mental, and emotional body into one of vibrant health. 

I began with educating myself about diet and nutrition.  First going on an elimination diet that helped me to identify that gluten was playing a big role in my acne problem.  I gave up going to the bar and replaced it with yoga and biking.  I learned about meditation, acupuncture and weaned myself off all pharmaceutical medications.  I surrounded myself with like-minded beings and began to learn so much more about diet and cleansing techniques that, over time, led to beautiful, clear skin and a healthy lifestyle that left me feeling balanced, centered, and content with life.  I swore I would never trust conventional medicine again.

Until now. 

I have conventional medical facilities to thank for my life and that of my son. If we hadn’t had the option to birth surgically, it’s possible neither of us would have made it through that passage.  Plus, my son wound up in the NICU for almost a month following the birth, which were absolutely the hardest days of my life thus far.  I was forced to face my distrust in conventional medicine head on and, for the life of my son, open to the possibility that there is a way to work within the system without completely bailing on my belief and practice of natural and holistic medicine.  Learning to weave the two diametrically opposing models into what we can call “integrative medicine” has great advantages.

I see integrative medicine in three phases, all of which weave and overlap each other.  The first phase is prevention.  In all aspects of health and wellness, medicine and health care, the foundation is the aspect of prevention.  From an integrative perspective, preventative care means developing a sense of self-responsibility and taking righteous action to the best of our ability each and every day to practice lifestyle habits that guide us into a state of wellness and away from sickness and disease.  Preventative care, at the root of all intervention, is the cure for the disease before it starts.

Practicing preventative care means having strong body awareness, which is the second phase of integrative medicine.  When we understand how our body works, we know when it’s broken and what is the best way to fix it.  We can become aware of how our bodies meet the world around us to know how to best give care and make choices that support our wellness.  Awareness also means knowing what it feels like to be in a state of wellness so that we know when we are not there.  It means being able to notice subtle signs of imbalance in our systems before they evolve into a critical condition.

It seems that many people settle for a slightly impaired state of wellness for their baseline, often masking subtle symptoms with unhealthy habits such as drinking alcohol or popping Advil for aches and pains, assuming that their discomforts are “normal”.  When we awaken to a higher state of consciousness and we recognize what a solid foundation of good health feels like, we may no longer settle for day-to-day discomforts as the norm and begin to take notice of subtle symptoms in time to apply natural and self-driven approaches.  The longer we ignore symptoms of dis-ease in our bodies, the more they grow over time into a critical condition that will need more acute care by the hands of others, taking the power away from ourselves.

When we operate from a strong foundation of preventive care and the practice of body awareness, we can consciously choose when we need intervention outside of ourselves. This is the third phase of integrative medicine, which I see as being pro-active. Taking an integrative approach to our wellness means carefully considering all the many options of care and what will best meet our personal needs. When we aren’t in an emergency situation, we can take the time to gather information, ask questions and make empowered choices.  Practicing integrative medicine means being educated and knowing our options as well as the possible outcomes of they may bring.  Making decisions from an educated place is empowering and means we are taking action based on what we feel is best, as opposed to feeling helpless and following someone else lead.

So what about an emergency situation, like what occurred at the birth of my son, when we were abruptly and unexpectedly thrust from our dream of a natural, home birth into a surgical and conventional hospital experience? How can we integrate our beliefs and values into a situation that may hugely challenge or oppose them? 

For one thing, working to stay in a place of presence and trust helped me not to loose my ground and feel disempowered.  I definitely, at times, felt very helpless and enormously frustrated by what seemed like so many aspects of my “plan” spinning out of my control and far beyond my comfort zone.  However, rather than letting my emotions follow this spiral, I continued to return to what I DID know, including facts around birth, what my baby absolutely needed versus what I might have wanted, and how to listen and take care of my own body.

In the end, it was my decision to go to the clinic for the surgical birth, based on the strong intuitive guidance that something clearly was not right.  During the labor, I had been stifling my own inner voice up until that point and had I not listened to it in that crucial moment, it very well could have cost me the life of my son.  Because I was educated and informed, I knew what would lie ahead with a surgical birth and was ready to embrace the epidural, the medications, the chemicals, the antibiotics knowing that, at this point, it was necessary and that my body was strong enough to handle it.  I knew that whatever my son had to endure at this point, I would be able to help him heal and cleanse from after, and that his life now depended on a conventional medical approach.  So I was able to enter the experience from an empowered place and return to that place as best I could throughout the journey that led me through great trials and challenges beyond what I could have ever imagined.

In today’s world, there is too much emphasis on separation; this or that, one way or the other. 

Here are a few simple and personal examples of how I integrated my holistic principles on the fly into my emergency birth scenario.  As soon as I was safe to be off the antibiotics, I began rebuilding my gut flora with probiotics and fermented foods.  I showered my son with prayers, and healing songs through his incubator, and replaced his hospital diaper creams with those of my choosing.  I found the places where I could share my own beliefs within the conventional system and when my son finally came home with us, I overlapped his care with the overseeing of the hospital and my own more natural choices until we could eventually wean him from the hospital visits all together. 

I strongly believe it is time to open our minds fully to embrace all that is available to us with an open mind, trusting that whatever it is, is here to help us and teach us.  Surrendering to the grey areas can foster a more enhanced lifestyle with less tension and anxiety.  I didn’t have to settle for a conventional medical approach simply because I wound up with a Cesarean birth and a baby hospitalized for weeks after.  It wasn’t one way or the other.  I integrated my knowledge and understanding of natural medicines and plants as soon as I could, following my surgery.  I now have developed a deep passion for understanding integrative medicine and wish to continue broadening my understanding even more. 

In addition to being a new mama, Emily Anne Utia is a natural wellness practitioner dedicated to holistic healing arts which span different cultures. For the past ten years, she has been studying native healing practices from North America including Hawaii, as well as the Peruvian Amazon and high mountains of Columbia. Emily works alongside her husband, Emanuel, native to the Amazon jungle, and together they study, educate, and offer traditional treatments utilizing the vegetalista tradition of plant medicine. Together, they created Machimpuro, Centro para Plantas Naturales, a small and rustic center located in the depths of the Peruvian Jungle. In addition, Emily has her own U.S. based healing practice called Wahine de La Selva. Before dedicating her life to natural wellness, Emily worked as a professional child and family therapist in the field of speech and language pathology.  Her own story of how she overcame depression, anxiety, and addiction is shared through her book, Awaken, a 21st Century Manifesto, which can be found on amazon.com.   

www.wahinedelaselva.com

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Instead, Homestead

The author’s labor of love, her family’s hand built homestead.

By Méla Caza Pugh

Life at times has an uncanny way of serving you up exactly what you didn’t realize you asked for.

The awakening comes with embracing it and learning the Universe has sent you exactly what you could handle. This is precisely how I ended up living off-grid, homeschooling, farming and finding myself accidentally homesteading! Had you asked me 10 years ago if I saw myself at 40 years of age educating my own child and living amidst chickens, donkeys and sheep on a farm, my younger self would have had a very good laugh.

Yet, is where I stand today. My long and winding life path having brought me to my medicinal plant-farm to raise my little one. I’m endeavoring to save a corner of the rainforest at the same time. One part was a stumbled upon vocation and deep calling and the other is fulfilling a childhood dream.

It appears to be rather common among homesteaders that it happens without a 5-year plan. It starts with a chicken or two for eggs, to which you add a mammal or three to graze the grassland. Next thing you know you’re putting in fences and learning about herd management!  All the while fermenting and canning what you can grow on the land.

Six years ago my husband and I made the very conscious decision to leave the comfort of our car owning, apartment leasing, and albeit it “green” consumer lifestyles. We liquidated our goods, said our farewells to friends and family and carried our 46kg worth of packs (each) to South America. Taking a few detours here and there, we made our way to our somewhat predetermined final destination in the Northern highland jungle of Peru. By predetermined I mean a huge triangle spanning 3 regions in the Northern Highlands.

The start of this adventure marked the beginning of a subsequent and even more daunting yet rewarding one, the conception of my beautiful wild child. To be perfectly honest, the two events were certainly synchronistically linked. Embarking on this reconnection to the land opened the portal to my own deep rooting into motherhood!

What could possibly motivate us to do something so, well, crazy??

The author’s daughter leading her donkey to graze.

For my part, it fed my inner adventurer. As a family it boiled down to several overlapping points: our priorities, our ecological footprint and taking literally the “be the change” movement.

Before meeting my husband, I spent a portion of my free time attending eco-summits and devising means to protest in favor of environmental protection. I was taking on long-term substitute teaching positions and ensuring that ethics and the environment played a big role in my students’ daily classroom. I was making a difference. Yet... I felt lost in a sea of shoppers. A good many of who truly feel to their core that they are doing what they can. (Side note, I do believe that this is the case, please don’t think I am judging anyone: we all do the best we can.)

I peeled back my own truths.

By choice, I took off the blinders. The ones carefully crafted by our collective society and the corporations among us. The green washing became blah, I saw it for the propaganda it was. The impact was not less but more. The conventional veggies didn’t take less space at the grocery store; no instead new shelves were built to hold the organics. To the point where new stores: bigger stores were built! This hardly made a dent in an already guilt-ridden consumer lifestyle.

My very own hypocrisy had me teetering on the edge of a nervous breakdown. My inner self, the one whom had always walked to the beat of her own drum, demanded that I walk my talk! Though, being smack in the middle of Europe in the heart of Nestle country made this a wee bit impossible. A plan was drawn up and an exit strategy plotted.

The location we chose featured a lovely landscape and nothing else! We built from the ground up.

Sheep grazing in a banana patch.

Behind many of our choices were theories and texts ranging from a gamut of holistic living disciplines ranging from permaculture principles to gardening journals. I had loaded up on seeds and relied heavily on my temperate climate gardening skills. In the end my tropical farm garden reminded me everyday I still had a whole lot to learn. Some projects were a success. Others well, let’s just say we learnt to make do with “good enough” as we still do to this day.

I had dreamt of a life spent in part on the farm and in part seeing the world.

Instead, we have a donkey and a growing flock of sheep that I care for along with an expanding number of people I brew medicinal plant remedies for. I discovered an innate talent for formulating with our distilled plants and extracts.

Construction project in the works.

Living at nature’s doorstep has a way of doing that: bringing out your hidden talents. Farm life has me performing tasks that I never thought I could do but I do them, knowing that if I don’t no one else will.

Having traded in four walls of education institutions, I now teach a classroom of one, my very special Wild Warrior. Her upbringing is entirely unique. In truth, it is what keeps me motivated to continue to pursue this life during the many and varied challenges. My dream to create a conservation area has become hers too. One she may be even more passionate about than I! When I dream of running water or a friend to grab a coffee with I remember this is her dream come true too. This is the life I chose and continue to choose. The opportunities of this homesteading life gives us so much to be grateful for. We follow the rhythms of nature in our work and in our play! This is so unlike my old metropolitan life.

As the masses begin to plug into their 5G networks we plug along with speeds that take me back to the age of dial-up! Yet, we have enough tech and goods to live a full life. Albeit a simple one that fulfills our basic needs and aligns with our priorities.

I do not feel as though we are hiding away from the world. If anything, recent times have shown how connected we all are. We do still find ourselves dependent on global trade for some things like clothing that endures and maple syrup (yum!!) I strive to focus on solutions and creative ways to reduce even more our consumption all the while balancing it out in favor of the planet’s wellbeing.

We have certainly reached a crux in our society.

 Do we pursue the way it was or do we tear down the old to begin anew? I often hear that many long to return to the land. The best advice I can offer from my experience is to prepare yourself. This applies not only to physical needs but also to your emotional and spiritual ones. The honest truth is that the grass is never greener! There are as many bumps in the road in an off grid life as there are in a connected urban sprawl. The big difference: with elbow grease, determination and a whole lot of creativity they can be overcome!!

 Méla Caza Pugh holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Emily Carr University. Over the years she has taught in elementary schools and language centres. She has lived on three continents and swam in several oceans, seas, rivers, lakes and streams. Some of her current passions include plant alchemy, photography and education. She can be found mixing remedies and homeschooling her daughter in the Amazonian jungle highlands of Peru. She has founded the Adaptivore Private Reserve and her natural products business Esencia. You can read more about her adventures on her website.

Navigating the Path Unexpected Part 3: Lessons Gleaned

Visionary art of Lobsang Melendez Ahuanari

By Emily Anne Utia

I couldn’t even begin to imagine this tiny little being, being cut open, especially in the conditions of the current medical facility.  Thus began some of the most high anxiety hours as of yet.  The doctor had told us that William was living off the IV for too long and something had to be done or he was not going to make it.  It was so difficult to get any straight information about where this idea came from and what exactly they planned to do, as the different doctors were saying different things.

William being airlifted to a private clinic in Lima.

Everything snapped into clear vision and things started to happen fast.  I was absolutely certain we had to get William out of there immediately. It was late morning and I rushed out to get Emanuel and get back to our apartment where we got the ball rolling for the transport immediately.  It was a MIRACLE what happened from there and absolutely once again, a testament to the power of prayer.  My youngest sister had also arrived to help and help she did.  Between her, another sister in the US, and the grace of my parent’s credit card, everything was arranged for William to be rescued the next day.  It all just started happening so fast from that moment of clarity and after the absolute worst 11 days of my life, we prepared to be whisked off to Lima the next morning.

It truly felt like a swarm of angels that showed up at the hospital the next afternoon. I was beside myself with anxiety waiting for a doctor to show up.  I hadn’t been allowed back at all to see William that morning and there was definitely a whole buzz in the infant ward about what we were doing.  I didn’t care.  Nothing could stop us now.  When the medic transport team finally arrived, all I could do was watch from afar as they transferred William to their incubator and to a new IV and all their tubes and when they finally wheeled him out to the waiting room, it was the closest I got to be to him in days.  Oh my heart, when I remember that tiny being in there.  It was all I could do to hold back my wildly raging motherly instinct that wanted to just grab him right out of there and hold him against my chest.

Emanuel and I rode with William in the tiny airplane that lifted us out of Cusco and that whole nightmare and landed us in the next leg of our journey in Lima, where William was admitted to a private medical facility that was as nice if not nicer than a hospital in the U.S.  The team there had a surgeon on call, based on the reports from the previous hospital but wanted to do their own evaluation first.  Emanuel and I approached the infant unit with extreme hesitation after the traumatic treatment in the other hospital but to our absolute joy, we were immediately escorted inside TOGETHER and told to disrobe under our hospital gowns so we could get William onto our skin right away.  Oh my sweet baby boy, finally in my arms, against my chest, sharing our breath.  13 days after his birth, I finally could hold my son in my arms.

Over the course of the next couple days, we got into a new routine at this beautiful and very modern clinic, of holding William for hours between feedings and pumping.  I was given a new breast pump and with that and being able to hold William, my milk slowly came back, as I had been having difficulty pumping the tiny bit needed for his feedings.  To our astonishment, not only could this clinic find nothing wrong with William, they went from feeding him 3cc’s to 30cc’s in just a few days, with no sign of distress or vomiting.  It seemed the more we were able to interact with our baby boy, they more he began to thrive.

This is truly testament to the incredible need that newborn babies have to be immediately put into the arms of their parents.  William needed to feel us in order to have the unconscious motivation to choose life.  In the 10 days we were there, William began to take up to 45 mls of milk, MY milk, at each feeding; he gained weight, and even FINALLY breastfeed.  It was and still is an absolute miracle to marvel at and I am so grateful for my prayer for clarity being answered that day to get William out of the other hospital before allowing them to perform an open abdominal surgery!

On Monday morning, October 28, exactly 3 weeks after his birth in Cusco, Emanuel and I alongside my parents and sister walked out of the clinic with William in arms.  He was still so tiny at 4.5 lbs, and even after the long fight to get him home with us, I was suddenly nervous about how to care for this fragile being.  The worst of the storm was over, but we still had many challenges ahead of us to navigate.

We wound up having to give up our home in Pisac that we had spent so much time and resources preparing for our new little family to live in while we waited for Emanuel’s immigration process to be finished.  The people we were renting from actually started making posts about us “abandoning” the property and their cats even though they knew what was happening.  As hugely and incredibly frustrating and disheartening as this was, this treatment gave us the lucidity that we were not meant to go back there.  Ever. I actually sent Emanuel and my dad from Lima to go pack up our life there and bring to us in Lima what they could stuff into suitcases, where we were needing to stay for at least another month or so. 

My parents and sister left the following week and our new reality began to set in.  It was like being lifted up in a tornado and then being dropped down somewhere completely different when it was over.  What the heck were we going to do in Lima?  Neither Emanuel nor I are city folks, him less so than I.  Emanuel grew up in a small village out in the Amazon jungle and had never left until I came along.  And here we were, stuck in a tiny apartment in a world of concrete and traffic, noise, and pollution, far away from anyone we knew, alone with our tiny infant.

The next few months were really hard as much as they were amazing to be with William.  My postpartum reality finally began to set in and I never had felt more alone in my entire life.  There was no meal train, no visits from friends, no one else to hold or gawk at our baby.  To go outside and try to find a bit of nature meant navigating busy and dirty streets of loud traffic.  It was always a toss up of which was worse, being stuck inside or trying to go outside.   

My grief and disappointment over the unexpected conditions we found ourselves in only grew.  What happened to my organic life surrounded by nature and committed to natural and plant medicines?  How did I wind up bringing my son into his life in a world of needles, pharmaceuticals, operations, and being in the care of strangers before my own?  When did I suddenly toss out my commitment to eating only organic food, especially at such a crucial time?

All of it is so very humbling and the truth is none of that mattered.  All that seemed important anymore was surrounding William with love and helping him to grow and thrive, holding him in our arms as much as possible and beginning a process of repair to recalibrate all of our nervous systems.

This seemed especially hard in the city limits of Lima with constant noise and a busy city around us.  My nervous system pretty much stayed in flight-or-flight mode until we eventually landed in the United States and moved into my parent’s home in NY.  Even now still, there is residual anxiety trying to make sense of all the pieces and also because of having to separate William from his Dada after all that without knowing when we will all be together once again.

When William was just shy of three months, we did take him out to our Amazonian jungle home to see if we could make a go of it there.  We were all just desperately craving nature and he seemed stable enough at that point to make the journey.  Unfortunately, after being there only a few days, it was obvious it wasn’t going to work.  We don’t have a developed enough living space to shelter and care for an infant and it just was too hard.  It was then I knew what I had to do and even Emanuel agreed.  William and I were going to leave Peru for the comfort of my parents’ home in NY where we could rest and truly begin a healing process. 

Separating our family was never part of the plan, but then again neither was a C-section birth, being separated from my newborn son for almost 2 weeks, or moving to Lima.  At this point, all rules were off and we had to make difficult decisions from a heartfelt place and not with any ego influence of judgment.  We had been uprooted and misplaced and I desperately needed to rest and heal my body after already getting in infection from my surgical wound.  Plus, the tension between Emanuel and I was getting to be too much and, even though it meant separating father and son, it seemed that space was necessary for both of us to reflect and recalibrate.

The plan was to return to Peru in April if things had not progressed with Emanuel’s immigration process.  As if, there having been enough unplanned out-of-the-ordinary events, now here we are amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, which has caused Peru to indefinitely shut down their international borders, making it completely impossible for our family to re-unite for an indefinite amount of time on top of prolonging the immigration process even more.

So here we still are, living in my parent’s home praying for spring to come and bring a warmth that will uplift and inspire us.  At almost 40 years old, living with my parents is definitely not what I expected.  So here is the lesson of surrender appearing again.  As I watch William grow each day, getting stronger and more adorable, I commit to trust and to faith.  My son is my prince of patience, teaching me to be present in the now moment and to see the blessings I have instead of living in the past or the future and grasping for something I don’t have. 

Here the waters are calm, the house is warm, and the washing machine works, allowing me the space and solitude I need to take responsibility for all that has passed and to forgive myself for the way I pushed things to happen a certain way, ignoring the strong intuitive voice within, to forgive my midwife, forgive the doctors in Cusco and forgive Emanuel. It is only with forgiveness that the path forward will open with clarity.  Here is where I begin to process through my grief and my guilt, allowing it to be what it is and allowing it to ignite self-love at the same time.  Faith and love is what creates miracles and a miracle is what we want now to bring our family together again. 

I still feel that twinge when I see posts from other women in their pregnancy or birth, surrounded by nature, in their homes, and hear the success stories of natural home births of healthy babies.  I wanted that so much and I can never change the story of my past to be that.  I still have numbness in my womb that only time and gentle, loving awareness can awaken. I feel disconnected from my yoni, like it just shut down on me.  I felt so inadequate, not being able to open and bring a child through my vaginal space and still have a lot of work to do around that. 

But the work I will do because my son is worth it, because I am worth it.  Because at the end of the day, what birth ISN”T natural?  To compare is only to despair and I can only allow myself to dwell in that space for a short moment before pulling myself out to look in the eyes of my beautiful son.  The fact that his placenta wound up in the trash instead of planted with a tree doesn’t actually influence the person he is becoming and I am so in love with him regardless of the way he came into this world.  To see him happy, healthy and thriving; to be able to feed him from my breast after everything we went through, these are my greatest joys and they help me to chose presence and trust over fear and uncertainty.

I pray that we all grow stronger during this time and that we remember trust and faith and love, that we remember there is always a plan bigger than we can see and riding the current is easier than fighting against it.  That, as women, we always do what we need to do for the sake of our children, even if it means going against a belief or idea that was from yesterday, as today is a new day and it is the biggest blessing of all to have the honor to be a mother, a woman, a life-giver.   Above all, I pray that we all listen to and fully trust our intuition, the voice of our highest self that guides each of us each day, so long as we are open and willing to listen. 

In addition to being a new mama, Emily Anne Utia is a natural wellness practitioner dedicated to holistic healing arts which span different cultures. For the past ten years, she has been studying native healing practices from North America including Hawaii, as well as the Peruvian Amazon and high mountains of Columbia. Emily works alongside her husband, Emanuel, native to the Amazon jungle, and together they study, educate, and offer traditional treatments utilizing the vegetalista tradition of plant medicine. Together, they created Machimpuro, Centro para Plantas Naturales, a small and rustic center located in the depths of the Peruvian Jungle. In addition, Emily has her own U.S. based healing practice called Wahine de La Selva. Before dedicating her life to natural wellness, Emily worked as a professional child and family therapist in the field of speech and language pathology.  Her own story of how she overcame depression, anxiety, and addiction is shared through her book, Awaken, a 21st Century Manifesto, which can be found on amazon.com.   

www.wahinedelaselva.com

FB wahine de la selva

FB Machimpuro para plantas naturales

@wahinedelaselva

Navigating the Path Unexpected Part 2: A Traumatic Entry

Visionary art of Geenss Archenti Flores

By Emily Anne Utia

Now Emanuel is at my side and he is crying too, going back and forth between baby, looking at my abdomen wide open behind the curtain and me.  I can hear my son.  My heart is beating fast as I hear all the voices in Spanish talking fast and my mind is too much of a blurry mush to understand anything.  Then there is a nurse with a tine bundle coming towards me and suddenly a warm, pink, wet check is against mine.  “Tu hijo” she says.  “Your son.”  And then he is gone and it is the last time we will be together for almost 2 weeks.

This is where the real nightmare begins.  Because of the inhalation of meconium and his low birth weight, William was whisked off to the NICU in the public hospital across the street while I was still being stitched up.  The clinic that had done the C-section did not have a facility to care for newborns that needed intensive care.  This meant William had to go to the public hospital across the street.  So we went from home birth, to a fairly nice private clinic, to a public hospital in Cusco, Peru, all in the matter of a few hours.

This facility, the public hospital, was something out of a movie.  Except that it wasn’t a movie, it became my real life.  Released from the clinic two days later and barely able to walk, I went with my husband, who had been back and forth, to finally meet my son.  In my mind, we were going to pick him up and go home.  Entering the hospital, my husband guided me through the swarms of Cusqueños and up to the infant unit.  It’s hard to really explain the conditions of this hospital, but cold, dirty, and dreary will have to do. In the infant unit was a tiny waiting room with one wooden bench and a giant flat screen TV blaring Latin soap operas, which is where I would spend countless hours among the other Cusqueño parents.

Thus started the next leg of our disastrous journey through the public health system of the Hospital Regional de Cusco.  We were only allowed back to visit William at certain hours of the day for only a few moments and one at a time.  The overseeing doctor was only available for consults at 11 am each day, unless he had something more important in which case there would be no information that day.  The nurses wouldn’t talk to us unless they were giving an order or telling me I was doing something wrong.  Every three hours I was called back into the lactation room with the other mamitas there to squeeze our breasts by hand into glass jars.  There were no chairs, no heat, and pumps were not allowed. 

Being the only white woman in this part of the hospital, I experienced a vast amount of prejudice.  There was already a great disconnect between the elite doctors and the poor patients, but add in my white skin and there was a general attitude of complete ignorance towards me and Emanuel, who is a native Peruvian. It was like pulling teeth to get information about what was happening with our son, if he was improving, and how long he would be there.  It was a complete nightmare.

Ultimately, what I’ve pieced together is that William’s initial admittance to the NICU was due to low birth weight and the lung infection from inhaling the meconium. He had needed to be on breath support, but quickly overcame this issue and stabilized enough to be off any additional support pretty quickly.  The issue that kept him inside his plastic box hooked up to tubes and such was that he was not digesting the milk they were feeding him.  This is a huge area of frustration for me and is still difficult to write about.

First of all, had they allowed me to hold William right away and attempt a breast-feeding, we most likely could have avoided all the problems that followed.  Unfortunately, because of the issue with his lungs, this was not possible.  However, had I been allowed to hold him, tubes and all, and put him against my skin, his life-force energy would have kicked on and he most likely would have started making gains much faster.  This point is proven later on.

Also, if when they were attempting their feedings, they properly offered my tiny bits of colostrum I was painstakingly sucking out of my breasts with a syringe in the room next door, I believe he also would have had a better chance of developing his digestion system more easily.  Not to mention actually holding him in human arms and not just sticking a tube through the box and down his throat.  The first feedings were either another woman’s more deviled milk or formula, as I was not able to produce anything they could even use for the first three days and even when I did start collecting the tiny bits of colostrum I am positive they didn’t use it.

I am not a doctor, but I am a mother.  The protocol they were following makes absolutely no sense to me and, I believe, is what made the problem in the first place.  The depth of rage that I felt and had to manage on a daily and moment-to-moment level was enough to make me feel crazy.  I hated getting up each morning, still hardly able to walk yet making the journey each day from our rented rooms to the hospital, hunched over, bearing the cold and sitting on the hard wooden bench all day, waiting to be called back to stand in the cold room and squeeze my sore nipples until drops of milk landed in their jars, my contracting uterus sensing shots of pain through my already aching womb.  How did I get here?  One moment I was creating my birth altar in the cozy next of the home we had put so much effort into preparing and the next I was in this absolute nightmare that there was no stopping.

Days were going by.  All I could do was stay present.  If I allowed my mind to wander, toward the past and what happened or the future and what was going to happen, I would surely lose it.  It took every ounce of anything I had left within me to muster the energy to face my reality every day.  My tiny little son, barely making it in that box and living off an IV for survival.  I was so scared.  So very scared and if for one moment, I gave into that fear I would crumble, which I had to do a couple of times.  I was even more scared of the crumbing because I didn’t know how I would pull myself back together to be able to go and see that precious little face in there, counting on me to fight for him.

It was the prayers that kept me going.  By this point, one week later, my parents had arrived from the States and I had a huge network of support around me from their community in New York to my friends and family that spread through the West Coast and out to Hawaii.  The word was out and even though I didn’t dare even look at my phone and the thought of Facebook nauseated me, the web of love and prayer that was created around us was astonishing.  My parents were complete angels, getting us out of the crappy hotel where we had been staying and into a decent apartment within walking distance of the hospital.  My mom began cooking for us and I swear I think it was the first time Emanuel and I ate since we left the clinic, where I had been letting Emanuel eat the meals they were bringing me.  They were completely at our beck and call for anything we needed, most of all they were a shoulder for me to cry on, and arms to collapse into.  I hadn’t done this with Emanuel, I think because we were just in robot mode, going through the motions of each day and doing our best to hold each other up.

When I did allow myself to collapse into my moms arms, crying deep from my womb, it was the prayer of all of our family and friends, even people who didn’t know me personally that had found out what was going on, that wrapped around me and lifted me up to keep going.  I could literally feel the moment that I would be drowning in my despair without any idea of how to make my way out and then there would be this warmth that would wrap around me like a blanket and literally lift me up again, to put the pieces back together and to make that walk back to the hospital, to sit on that hard bench facing the blaring soap operas, surrounded by the other Cusqueño parents eyeing me with both judgment and compassion, as we were all in this one together.

On day 10, the thing hit rock bottom.  We had somehow gotten into enough of a routine of the back and forth to the hospital, settling into a rhythm of how to get on the best sides of the right doctors and nurses and to be there at the best times to see William while juggling eating and sleeping.  Every day, there was a different doctor on call to be overseeing the infant unit and it was a juggling act to get direct information about our prognosis.  One day the doctor said he had been digesting some milk and he looked good and the next day it was back to no milk is passing and he is on gastrointestinal rest.  Finally, on this day, after receiving a relatively inspiring report the day before, the doctor on duty announced to us they wanted to do surgery.

This was shocking.  One day our little baby is finally making improvements and the next they want to do open abdominal surgery to correct whatever is causing the digestive issue. 

We were beside ourselves.

To be continued and concluded, next full moon…

Emily Anne Utia

In addition to being a new mama, Emily Anne Utia is a natural wellness practitioner dedicated to holistic healing arts which span different cultures. For the past ten years, she has been studying native healing practices from North America including Hawaii, as well as the Peruvian Amazon and high mountains of Columbia. Emily works alongside her husband, Emanuel, native to the Amazon jungle, and together they study, educate, and offer traditional treatments utilizing the vegetalista tradition of plant medicine. Together, they created Machimpuro, Centro para Plantas Naturales, a small and rustic center located in the depths of the Peruvian Jungle. In addition, Emily has her own U.S. based healing practice called Wahine de La Selva. Before dedicating her life to natural wellness, Emily worked as a professional child and family therapist in the field of speech and language pathology.  Her own story of how she overcame depression, anxiety, and addiction is shared through her book, Awaken, a 21st Century Manifesto, which can be found on amazon.com.   

www.wahinedelaselva.com

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@wahinedelaselva

Navigating the Path Unexpected Part 1: An Untimely Labor

Visionary art of Lobsang Melendez Ahuanari

By Emily Anne Utia

I am a woman of faith and of prayer. 

I believe in manifestation and the power of the word.  I am committed to integrity and an ever-evolving spiritual practice.  So why, then, when it came time to birth my first child, did it not all unfold according to plan?  Along the spiritual path, there is always room for improvement, for fine-tuning.  There are always deeper lessons to be learned.  The way my birth story unraveled certainly brought to light a huge lesson for me in regards to trusting my intuition that I feel many women possibly are also working with and for that reason, it feels potent to share.

The details leading up to the day my water broke 4 weeks earlier than anticipated, as tempting as it is to share each one, are not actually important.  What is important are the lessons learned and the undeniable fact that there were several significant events that were clearly guiding me one way that I pretended I did not see because I did not want anything to get in the way of what I was wanting to create.  There was what I wanted and what the universe was wanting for me. 

At the same time, there are no mistakes and even when we feel like we fell off the path, we are ALWAYS on it, learning and growing stronger from the bumps and unexpected detours.  I never imagined I would be where I was when I gave birth or even still am today in postpartum and I have had to hugely grieve the loss of my dreams, letting go and releasing so much guilt and grief so that I can be present in the best possible way for myself and my son.

As my son rounds the corner to 6 months, I’m aware that the twinge of despair that was once so strong in my heart is slowly starting to weaken, though it is still very much present any time I turn my mind around to reflect on what we have been though over the course of his short life.

Emily & Emanuel in their jungle home

William is my first born and, like many women, I had a very clear vision of how I wanted to bring him into this world and how I would care for him and myself during the postpartum time. I’ve lived on Maui for many years where I have studied sacred birth and been a part of the natural and home-birthing community of women, which gave me a pretty clear idea of how I would birth my children.  Surely it would be there on beautiful Maui, surrounded by the loving and nurturing support of many other women who shard my beliefs and ideas, honoring me and celebrating my rites of passage from maiden to motherhood, as I had done for so many before me.

However, due to a hugely challenging immigration process, my husband and I were in the high mountains of the Andes when my water began it’s slow leak on October 2nd, when I was 35 weeks pregnant.  We had decided to move up to the sacred valley from our Amazonian home for the birth so we would have a home with more modern amenities, have more community around us, and be able to work with a home birth midwife with whom spoke both English and Spanish. 

The freezing cold mountains were nothing like the tropics I had always thought I would birth in, but it felt much more important to birth with my husband present than birth in the States without him.  This was obstacle number one that actually put a good deal of stress on us both, as neither of us were very familiar with this new area we were living, we really didn’t know anyone, it was such a different climate, and everything just felt new and unfamiliar.  Nonetheless, when I was 30 weeks pregnant, we made the move and had done our absolute best to create a cozy home and workspace that could support us through the birth and until we would be able to travel together as a family to the states.

On the surface, everything seemed to be coming along perfectly but one didn’t have to dig very far to see that there was no root or foundation and I was actually stuffing a great deal of stress and uncertainty inside.  I wasn’t really jiving at all with our midwife, but felt stuck as it was so close to the birth and plus we had basically moved to this area to work with her and I really didn’t even know where to start to search for another.  She was also from the States though she had been living in Cusco for 8 years, so she seemed the perfect match for our bicultural family, especially since she spoke both Spanish and English.  It was important for me to feel I would be able to express in English if needed during my labor.

There are many reasons why over the next few weeks I began to feel very disheartened by the birth team I was seeking to cultivate.  The more clinical approach of our young midwife was nowhere near the nurturing support I was so craving.  Emanuel never really liked her, which made things difficult for me, as I was always sticking up for or defending her, even though inside I also felt so let down.  I felt so alone in my process and inside I was definitely dancing with a good amount of anxiety even though I would not let anyone, including myself, truly know this.

On top of the lack of birth support I felt, we were also dealing with other stressors including the whole money story and not sure if we would be able to build the client base we were hoping to and be able to sustain ourselves.  On top of this, the altitude alone was having quite an impact on my largely pregnant body, as I was constantly out of breath and feeling dehydrated regardless of the amplitude of water I drank.  Plus, there was definitely building tension between Emanuel and I based on a constant clash of cultural beliefs, language barriers, and my constantly pushing him to go along with my decisions regardless of his own intuitive feelings.

So there we were, trying our best to make the pieces fit together enough and to feel like we were doing the right things in the right place regardless of the many obstacles we were navigating and on that morning of October 2, I awoke to warm amniotic fluid dripping down my inner thigh.  We notified our midwife, who basically put me on bed rest, assuring us that most likely the leak would seal.  It did not and on Saturday afternoon just shy of 36 weeks, my water completely broke and I prepared for labor.

By 4am the following morning, light waves of contractions were well underway and by 7 we called our midwife to come.  Everything felt like it was advancing quickly, with the contractions growing stronger and closer together.  We had the tub set up, though because my water had already broke, I was discouraged from really going in there, which was hugely disappointing to me, as I had planned on laboring in there as much as possible.

As the hours went by, I sank deeper and deeper into my own world, having no idea of the time or progress, if any I was making.  Exam after exam by the midwife continued to show no signs of dilation.  Emanuel was growing more anxious as well and there was a huge clashing of energy between him and our midwife, which made things even more difficult for me.  Even for me in the depth of my own world, I was beginning to grow frustrated with her and her seemingly novice approach to assisting a birth.  I began to connect fully with this little being trying to come out and made a pact with him that it was just him and I anyway and I didn’t need anyone else anymore.

Then the meconium started coming. First time was late afternoon and then a second time in the evening.  This was hugely alarming to me, though my midwife seemed to shrug it off.  Emanuel was beside himself, having had a very clear vision that the baby was suffering greatly and needed to be taken out via a surgical birth.  I was around 17 hours of labor at this point and the thought of not completing the home birth that was “supposed to happen,” just seemed out of the question.  So I pushed on.

Looking back, the entire labor was such a strange energy.  I felt alone for most of it, laboring in the cave I had created in our bedroom. Emanuel was outside praying with his mapacho and our midwife seemed to be resting or sleeping. I had a beautiful, young and very sweet doula with us who was my guardian angel, always hovering nearby, watching, offering gentle words of encouragement and massage when I wanted.  I am so grateful she was there and it was a very last minute synchronicity that she was.  The clashing energies of my husband and my midwife created such tension and it felt like there was all this drama going on around me never mind the fact that I was in labor!

By late Sunday afternoon, I was vomiting anything I tried to take down, including water.  So by Sunday night, I was exhausted, weak, dehydrated, and just floating in this altered space.  The contractions were one after the other, often without space to rest or breathe in-between.  As the night broke into the next day, Emanuel was growing more and more anxious and it was time for another exam.  This time, our midwife announced to me that I was finally almost completely dilated and she could just about feel the head.  Hallelujah!  This gave both Emanuel and I the boost of energy we needed to keep going a few more hours, working together now, him supporting my weight as I squatted into the contractions.

Then, around 9am is when it all fell apart.  Since nothing had seemed to progress anymore, I had yet another exam from the midwife who reported that she had made a huge mistake.  I still wasn’t dilated at all.  There was no baby coming through anytime soon.  My heart sank deep and I could feel a true sense of fear rise inside of me.  It was clear to me in that moment that I had to make the call.  Something was not right and this baby needed to get out of me.  It was time to let go of the home birth and do what I never thought I would do, get to the clinic and prepare for a C-section.

There wasn’t much time to stew on it.  Lights came on and somehow between the crashing waves of the contractions I directed Emanuel on packing bags and getting us out of the house.  It was the hardest thing I have ever had to do and the walk from my cave to the taxi waiting outside felt like a walk of shame.  My head was spinning with questions and yet the unstoppable pain piercing through my womb forced to me stay only present, breath, and manage the contractions. I labored in the back of the taxi for an hour, over the mountain pass and to the front doors of the clinic that I never thought I would see again. 

It is so much of a blur in some ways and in others I can see it all so clearly it’s as if it’s happening now.  Wheelchair, exam table, more hands inside of me, yes she is dilated, no she is not, wheelchair to the doctors office, exam table, speculum, no there is no dilation.  I roll off his table to squat while the next contraction rolls through and this time leave yet another puddle of meconium on the floor.  This time, finally, there is a sense of alarm and everything escalated even more.  Wheelchair to stretcher, to operating room, needle in my back and then the numbness that starts at my feet and climbs through my body, iv in my arm and I am freezing, convulsing on the table.  I feel them trying to yank the baby out as my body bounces up and down on the table.

Then, the release.  The silence.  The cry.

To be continued, next full moon…

Emily Anne Utia

In addition to being a new mama, Emily Anne Utia is a natural wellness practitioner dedicated to holistic healing arts which span different cultures. For the past ten years, she has been studying native healing practices from North America including Hawaii, as well as the Peruvian Amazon and high mountains of Columbia. Emily works alongside her husband, Emanuel, native to the Amazon jungle, and together they study, educate, and offer traditional treatments utilizing the vegetalista tradition of plant medicine. Together, they created Machimpuro, Centro para Plantas Naturales, a small and rustic center located in the depths of the Peruvian Jungle. In addition, Emily has her own U.S. based healing practice called Wahine de La Selva. Before dedicating her life to natural wellness, Emily worked as a professional child and family therapist in the field of speech and language pathology.  Her own story of how she overcame depression, anxiety, and addiction is shared through her book, Awaken, a 21st Century Manifesto, which can be found on amazon.com.   

www.wahinedelaselva.com

FB wahine de la selva

FB Machimpuro para plantas naturales

@wahinedelaselva