About Birth Keeping

Coined by Jeannine Parvati Baker, the term Birth Keeper is the marriage of “Earth Keeper and Birth. Earth Keeper is a Native American Word for Eco-activists as well as holders of the sacred Earth-based wisdoms.” A Birth Keeper is deeply acquainted with the threshold of birth and motherhood and acts as the elder or Guide in a mother’s preparation (not education) for birth. She knows that a free and empowered women knows exactly how to birth her baby and acts only as a Witness.

She has tricks and tools that can help mamas and families discover deeper and deeper connection and authenticity, resilience and freedom. She knows the difference between process and outcome and takes full responsibility for the former and surrenders the latter. She also knows herself well enough to distinguish a genuine intuition from an urge to interrupt. She practices humility and knows how to make repair when it’s appropriate.

She understands that, like giving birth and mothering, standing with birthing women is not an acquired skill.

It is not a career path, but something that lays its claim. It is a calling, a surrender, a soul-craft. A Birth Keeper knows that, in order to support mothers, fathers, and their babies, to find their own way, she too must find her own way, without intervention, hierarchy, or observation.

There is a Guatemalan Village where midwives do not pursue apprenticeships, but are initiated through their dreams.

Their own experience of birth and motherhood is combined and transmuted in the dream world into authentic authoritative knowing. In this tradition, the Birth Keeper is bound by a sacred contract and steps into her ritual role when she has found her dream sign.

Because she is serving the modern world, a Birth Keeper, may also have an array of practical skills she can share with you. She is able to take blood pressure, feel a baby’s position, listen to fetal heart tones and help explore blood labs if you want these on your journey. She could even catch your baby, but she isn’t really interested.

She wants your hands to be the first to touch your precious baby.

She trusts you to land your own baby. And, of course her hands, and heart, are available if you want them – for whatever. She will learn from you and follow your lead. She will also tell you her weaknesses and be honest about her own fears and limits. She is bound by her own conscience, her integrity, and her  relationship with you, not a certification or licensing board.

A little About Me and My Journey as a Birth Keeper:

Motherhood is a Sacred and Heroic Art, one that fascinates and inspires me.

As a child I witnessed my own mother attend the birth of April Elaine in the front seat of our Datsun B210 hatch-back while on our ferry ride toward the hospital. She was calm and she was clear. When she felt the baby crowning, she sent me upstairs to find help. I surfaced in the cafeteria and broke into tears. When someone came over to soothe me, I blurted out, “My cousin is having a baby.” I watched men in white walk around the car with their hands in their pockets. I watched the audience cheer when the baby was unloaded into the ambulance.

That day I was imprinted with both the flow, and the fear, of birth.

I spent my youth taking care of babies. I rocked Fred to sleep each day after lunch, and watched my teacher, Fred’s mother, nurse him while giving an English lecture.

At seventeen I discovered Ina May Gaskin’s Spiritual Midwifery and recognized a call. As quickly as it emerged, the impulse disappeared from sight like a river running underground only to emerge nearly 20 years later in 2006 when I gave birth to my own daughter and grappled on the edge of trauma and initiation. It was a home-birth with wonderful midwives, but it was also the most horrible experience of my life. I longed for the knowing of my mother-midwife, and was haunted by its loss. What had happened?

Practical Skills

On my path as a Birth Keeper, I have taken extreme care to seek out teachers and mentors that are empowering, soulful and full of faith-in-life. While studying philosophy in a Ph.D. program, I came to understand the merits of book learning and memorization… and the limits. I also know how important it is to imprint myself with healthy resilient and deeply trusting paradigms and practices.

I have completed two doula trainings (Birthing from Within and The International Center for Traditional Childbearing) and acquired basic practical midwifery skills at “The Farm Midwifery Center” in Tennessee as well as from Canadian Independent Midwife, Gloria Lemay and Whapio Diane Bartlett of the Matrona. I have studied Craniosacral Therapy for Pregnancy Birth & Postpartum as well as Infants with Carol Gray. I completed the Nutritional Therapy Practitioner training in 2008 and continue to study Traditional, Sacred and Healing Foods. I continue my studies, and find community, in Undisturbed Birth at The Matrona.

I am currently training as a Homeopath and studying Anthroposophic Medicine.

In the End

As a Birth Keeper, I am simply one who takes a stand for the autonomy of birthing women and their families, for babies crowning into the earth world, for the dying passing out, the sacred way of the wedding, and those who are called to the soul-craft of personal, social, and community transformation. I bear witness, accompany you to the edge, and hold down the fort while you are gone to the underworld gathering shiny trinkets and ripe epiphanies.