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Mom Entrepreneur Award: A very special thank you!

I am unapologetic for my art. The d’bi young, the pre-pregnancy, pre-motherhood d’bi young, would have flinched in the face of disapproval – flinched but gone ahead with it nonetheless. I do very little flinching these days. I stare people deadpan in the eye and say what I have to say.

I absolutely give credit to being someone’s mother for that. When you go through the process of carrying life inside your womb for nine months, which in itself is turbulent, challenging, energizing as well as energy draining…I mean, it’s the best of everything and the worst of everything. To give birth you literally have to go on the brink of death. Once you’ve done that, it puts you in a different relationship to fear. It puts fear in perspective.

I had morning sickness all throughout my pregnancy. I was throwing up all throughout my pregnancy. The first four or five months were incredibly challenging. Not only because my body was going through such a revolution, but I was also going through an emotional revolution and a psychological revolution that really put my sense of self to the test. My resiliency, my knowing who I wanted to be as a Black woman, knowing what I wanted out of relationships, knowing what I was looking forward to in being a mother, knowing where I wanted to be artistically, all those things were right up against my face. I couldn’t turn away from them because a child was coming and things needed to be answered. It was the most challenging period of my life thus far.

It really forced me to become focused. A lot of things had to drop to the wayside. But sometimes you just need that push over the hill to just get you over the hill. And that’s what moon did.

the birth of moon

Wow…you know, that weekend, I’d been getting slight contractions. And my friend Ordina’s wedding was coming around on the Sunday. Everybody was like, Lawd Jesus have mercy, please don’t mek Debbie have baby. I was due on the sixth and she was getting married on the second of May. So me, I was talking to moon every day, moon, hold on, hold on. And he held on, he held on.

The Sunday morning, I got up and went to the wedding. Went to the wedding, and man, contractions started to lick me left, right and center. We didn’t tell Ordina that I was having severe contractions. It was her wedding and I was one of the maids of honour. My other friend was the other maid of honour as a backup to take care of me. You should see the wedding pictures, me trying to smile like Lawd Jesus! through active labour pains. The plan was, if I went into serious, serious labour where I couldn’t take it anymore, another friend would drive me home and then we’d get all the team together. I planned on having him at home.

So that was the plan. I went through the whole wedding, labour pain, contractions. At around seven o’clock I started feeling these contractions that I couldn’t smile through. I couldn’t smile and I couldn’t pretend. That’s when I knew it was time to go. I couldn’t do the I’m a good actor thing, no.

Fortunately by that time all the major parts of the wedding were over and they were about to go into the reception, dinner was over and stuff. So I got to be there for her. I got to speak at the part where you talk for the wedding. I even sang through the labour pains! Omigod, it was so beautiful.

And then, I had a really beautiful birthing experience. The way the community of women really came together, it was really something special.

the rite of passage

A home birth was the plan. So Naila drove me home after the labour pains got tough. When we got home, Naila started setting stuff up and then we called everybody. I had a birthing team: my mom, Weyni, Naila, my doula Denise and my midwife. And my neighbours! They weren’t a part of the birthing team but they were supporting. They were there.

My alters, they were already set up and my music, my magic music, my Yemaya/Olokun music. And we had planned to use a bathtub. Naila bought a big pool. We never made it to the pool! The pain never made it to the pool. So we got home around 7:30 and I laboured with an incredible team of women from 7:30 to 5:30 or 6:00 in the morning.

And it was a full moon. It was the most incredible experience I’ve ever experienced. Can you imagine having a circle of women, chanting with you while you labour and transcend and go through a rite of passage? I had an official rite of passage! I never went through a rite of passage before because unfortunately, you know, so many of us who live in the Diaspora don’t get rites of passage that honour us and usher us into womanhood and manhood. We just sort of go with the flow.

So, at twenty-six, I had my rite of passage and it was beautiful timing for me. I felt like I’d been called to have a child. And moon and I were working together, my mom, my doula, everybody working, taking turns. Alison was there too, recording.
Dilation went beautifully, I dilated up to nine centimeters, moon was working. The whole experience was incredible. I went out, spoke to the moon, chanted to the moon, you know, and invoked his spirit.

At around 3:30, the midwife said to me, There’s nothing to be panicked about…but he should be coming out by now. You’re dilated nine centimeters. Your contractions are beautiful. Time has passed, hours have passed. He should be coming out now. We’ll watch it for another little bit. If you start swelling, something is wrong.

My cervix started swelling at around 4:30. She said OK, let’s watch it. His heart rate was fine. At around 5:30, the swelling was getting out of control. I was no longer dilating and moon was definitely sitting right up under my chest, the same place he was twelve hours before. He wasn’t coming down. My midwife said, OK, you’ve worked. And at that point, I literally felt like I had worked. I felt like, time for him to be out of me, I’m ready for the next stage. That part of the rite of passage was over. I said to her, Let’s go.

the next stage

We packed up and went to the hospital. They had me on all these machines. They were trying to slip something on moon’s head but he had so much hair. Nothing could clip onto his head. Trying to find an IV…I mean, it definitely moved into the space of looking like a film. It was just surreal. My mom, everybody was freaking out and my doula was telling people not to freak out. At that point, I was very calm but knew that he needed to be out however he needed to come.

They were fussing, doing their thing, people were arguing. I called the doctor over, I said, Doc, he’s not coming vaginally, eh? He’s not coming vaginally, take him out. And I don’t want an epidural. Whatever you do, don’t give me an epidural.

The minute I said that, bredrin, not two twos I said that, they had me on these machines listening to moon’s heart rate and moon’s heart rate fell to 52. Then everybody flew into a panic. From that moment it was only ten minutes before they took him out of me, C-Section. Ten minutes.

When the doctor took him out, the umbilical cord was wrapped two or three times around his torso, holding him in place, tightly. He wasn’t going anywhere vaginally. And so they didn’t give me an epidural.

So they had him out. I was under. My mom saw him first; as soon as he was born. They took him out so quickly that my mom was scrubbing to go in and, by the time she finished scrubbing and putting on her gloves, she heard Wah! They brought him out immediately to my mom so my mom’s the first person that saw him. And that’s recorded too. All of it was filmed. I haven’t seen the footage yet ‘cause I’m not ready. Yeah, that was his coming. That was his journey!

owning our experiences

I know a lot of women say sometimes they’re not satisfied when they have a C-section. And I can’t understand that. At any other time in herstory, we both might not have made it. I definitely have to give credit to technology because the cord was snuggly wrapped around. At any other time, it might not have been a very lovely-type story.

This is how I look at it. I had the most amazing birth experience for me. In that experience, I see how it mirrors my entire life; a life of polarities. Out of the really difficult moments has come absolute beauty. The story of growing up in Jamaica, Maxfield Avenue, is a very difficult story to tell. But I see who I’ve become.

I feel like for me, my rite of passage was as it was written. I wear the scar that I carry, from having a C-Section, with absolute pride. I feel like a warrior. I have earned that marking, the only tribal mark I have. Being a Diasporic African Woman, it’s the only significant mark on my body, coming out of my rite of passage.

We have to own our experiences. There’s no point in allowing a society’s conceptions to disempower us. Women who feel disempowered by this experience of a C-Section often feel that way because somebody has communicated an idea to them that you are less than a woman if you don’t have a vaginal birth. It’s one of the ways that social conditioning owns and controls a woman’s body: telling her what it is that makes her a full woman and what it is that doesn’t make her a full woman. Who are the half women? And why should there be half women? I’m not even feeling that.

I have a friend who had a C-Section. When she talks about the experience, she’s completely disempowered. I look at this beautiful queen, this warrior who carried this child for nine months in her body who now gets to feel like half of a woman because the child didn’t come from her vagina? Then, at the same time, we disrespect women’s vaginas? It’s like you can’t win.

So that’s not my thing. That’s not my song. I refuse to sing that song. No, ‘cause I know that my rite of passage came as it was meant to come. I look down and my son is here.

the first time…

I got moon around two and a half hours later because I had to wake up from the morphine. I didn’t know I was having a boy. Neither me nor his dad wanted to know what his gender was. So that’s the first thing I found out, it was a boy. I thought I was having a girl! So I had to sit with that for a minute. I was sitting with it while they were bringing him towards me.

One of the first things I thought was, Oh my goodness, he looks like his father. That was one of the things I prayed for in my pregnancy ‘cause his father’s so incredibly beautiful. I mean, so am I but…it was one of those things you know, when you love your partner, you’re like, I want our child to come in your image. I remember asking for a round face. Chaka has a really round face that reminds me of the moon. I remember when I met him, the first time I saw him, I was like, Omigod, you’re the moon. You’re like the moon and the sun together. My face is more oval-shaped and I really wanted him to have a moon face. So when I saw him, I was like, Wow, he looks like his dad. It was beautiful.

And then I held him and…it was like arriving. That’s the only thing I can think of. It felt like, Wow, I am here.

his name shall be

We call him moon anitafrika. Now, Olokun is the Yoruba god, the balance to the female principle of Yemaya who is the mother of all the gods and goddesses. Olokun is at the bottom of the sea and guards the treasures of the ocean bed. That’s his domain. The mysteries of the sea. And there’s an intrinsic relationship between the sea and the moon. You know, like, the tides, women’s periods, the cycles, it’s all connected. It’s like the most evident place we can see the connection between male and female energy.

His last name, anitafrika, is a meeting place of Anita, my mom’s first name, and Afrika. That was really important to me because, unfortunately, with the colonization, women have been written out of our own herstories. We continue to get written out of our herstories because our names are not celebrated anymore. The lineage was matriarchal at one point. It was. And it makes sense that the lineage is matriarchal because the women have the children. So you can trace the family line through the mothers; it’s very difficult to trace paternity. I mean, now with technology we can do it but it has been very difficult to trace paternity over time.

And Afrika, to root him in the very beginning. The very foundation on which we all, all of humanity stands. A coming out of the womb of Mother Afrika. As a Diasporic African, as someone who’s been purposely severed from my own ancestry, it was so important that moon be rooted in that. So anitafrika literally means “of two mothers.” And re-acknowledging these slave women who have mothered this whole survival, the very reason why Black people are here. These Black women who shouldered the brunt of the brutalities in slavery are to be credited with our survival.

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