Mentoring the Mentor

I've been reading this book called Sacred Contracts by Caroline Myss and it has totally changed how I think of myself, my place in this world, and who my tribe is. The book is all about how each of us has several archetypes which influence our personality and our actions. We can live in the shadow aspect of these archetypes or in the light of them. Through this reading I have found that one of my archetypes is that of the mentor. I can remember "mentoring" other kids as far back as elementary school. In first grade, I took a so-called "troubled" boy (really I think he was just a normal, kid who couldn't sit for 6 hours straight) under my wing and mentored him. All I did was talk to him and told him something along the lines that I knew he wasn't a bad kid and I knew he could do better. And lo and behold, he did! I was 7 years old.

There have been many more people on my path that I have mentored in one way or another and honestly, I thrive in it. There is nothing better than giving a few words of encouragement, sending intention, and hearing later that those very words and support changed someone's life for the positive. It's not the thank you that I need. What I need is the knowledge that a few words of encouragement can spur someone into self introspection and that they themselves do the work that is necessary to change for the positive.

But I do believe that one cannot go about only being a mentor. A mentor needs a mentor, or probably more accurately, several mentors. I have myself had several over the years and this weekend I met another one.

I've read several things written by Dr. Michel Odent and was surprised that I agreed with nearly everything he said regarding natural birth, even though I came to my conclusions based on my own experience. It is always cathardic when someone else observes the same thing and comes to the same conclusions. I was very interested when I learned that Dr. Odent was going to be speaking at the DONA conference, especially when I read that his topic was about re-evaluating midwifery practices.

There were so many things that spoke to me in his talks but most of all was his reminder to me that midwifery is fundamentally supposed to be about selective care, not routine care. We should treat each woman as an individual, because she is! As soon as we start making arbitrary rules about what the supposed line of health is, we weaken midwifery a little more. Right now the rules say you are only within normal limits if you go into labor sometime between 37 and 42 weeks, if your baby is head down, if you only have 1 baby, if you are not "infected" with GBS, if you do not have gestational diabetes, if you hemoglobin/hematocrit levels are within the proper range, if, if, if. What happens when we, as Dr. Odent suggests, use these limits as a sign to increase vigilance. We use watchful waiting. We give positive emotional support and make sure the woman does not feel that there is something wrong with her body. What if we teach her how to check in with herself and her baby, something many women don't know how to do and something that could arguably help her long beyond pregnancy.

Dr. Odent spent great length answering my question regarding care for women when they approach 42 weeks. It is never my choice to push an induction, even if it is a "natural" one. Mostly this comes from the fact that I myself went beyond the 42 weeks mark, albiet by just 1 day. I knew there was nothing wrong, that it was normal for my body and my baby, and mostly I knew that my baby was healthy and knew the right time to be born. It is interesting to me how few people truly believed that as I was going through it. Of course few people actually spoke to me directly about it but I heard the whisperings of "How late is she going to go? Can you go past 42 weeks? Do you think she's really OK?" I know that there was pretty much no way that I was going to do anything to "augment" my labor, even if it was supposedly natural. So I have a very hard time telling someone else that they should.

After spending such time in answering my question, I felt that tingling of what I know others feel when I speak to them as a mentor. I can see it in their face that I am saying something that is hitting them on a very deep level. I can see the change starting to happen, the wheels beginning to turn. I wonder if he saw that in me.

After the workshop, I was sitting at a table of friends eating my lunch when I hear from behind me "Ahem, pardon me, is anyone sitting here?" and who do I see but Dr. Odent himself plopping down in the seat next to me. We discussed a few more things but the change had already happened for me. Don't get me wrong, I was honored! But, I didn't need any more from him. I already got the tell-tale changing phrase that started the wheels cranking in my head. Thank you Dr. Odent for mentoring the mentor!