We got so many comments on Rachel’s story about how a newborn deeply affected a physician that we wanted to share it again with you.
It’s a powerful reminder to keep your eyes open – you might be surprised by what you see.
Take a look and let us know what you think.
How has Rachel’s story encouraged you to make note of the holy moments in your life? Please leave a comment below.
I agree with Christel and Donna. What a shame that child birth, even if in the hospital, could not be done more naturally – positioning, suctioning, holding the baby below placenta? This story of “gratitude” and pride of the doctor , pride of “his” accomplishment, is misplaced.
I am glad however, that this doctor now looks for the “holy” moments; hopefully not at the expense of parents who are the rightful ones to be experiencing this for what they have created. Childbirthing at home with midwifes, is thankfully, now a choice that parents can make, at least in some parts of Canada. The rates of healthy births, non-complications from these births, and post partum is significantly better than those done in hospitals with MDs. I think that is because they emphasize and live the entire childbirthing journey as holy.
For me this is the moment in which you are present and everything around you seems to stop! Great moments when we chatche life and it becomes part of us instead of us being trapped with imputs of duty, obligations and others common to our everyday life. Lovely reminder of how we can choose to really see and be part of! Thank you!
putting life in perspective !!
I’ve known of Rachel’s work for many years as a member of IONS, etc. As a mother of a disabled Veteran with PTSD, in denial, and not willing to implement modalities outside the VA mainstream and as a Healer believing I have no right to imposition what I believe are answers, as well as an Advocate for our many Wounded Warriors she articulates her beliefs with wisdom and grace breaking through old barriers placed simply because of a fear of the unknown and as we all know, fear is simply False Evidence Appearing Real.
Rachel, thank you for sharing, always in a nicest kind of way….
Angel hugs….
Beautiful story… thank you.
It’s called ‘bonding’ – it’s the way we mothers naturally connect – and remember we’ve already had 9+ months to begin getting in touch. And if our partners were allowed to be present – as didn’t happen in my time – they would have been part of that connecting.
Most of our grandchildren arrived per home/water births – family & qualified midwife in attendance – and are all more independent, self-motivating, creative etc
Moderation and common sense in all things !
i am signing up
When we replace regrets by gratitude, we experience spiritual enlightenment and joy in anything we do. Thank you Rachel for reminding us of that.
The doctor sure got a doses of oxytocin from this baby! I hope this experience and his developed sense of gratitude encourages him to grant to his patients the first gaze from their babies’ soul and thus the jump start into the most needed secure bond. It is right brain science that unfortunately is overlook by hundreds of doctors!!
I love that term “holy moment”. I can remember I was witness to a similar moment when a good friend invited me to be present at her home birth of her one and only child. Once the baby was born, after way too many hours of labor, the midwife placed the baby on the mother’s chest and he just looked up at his mother in that deep way the emergency room physician had described. I will never ever forget it.
How powerful and compeling….It filled my heart with joy!
Thank you for sharing this. Having witnessed my neices’ birth, and the amazing wonder of it all. I too, understand how incarnation is so holy a moment.
Thank you so much for sharing this. It is a reminder not only for that doctor who recognized the glory and magic in his job but for all of us who are honored with the gift of being allowed into the intimate moments of healing, growth, and discovery. I am grateful every day that I am blessed with the gift of being able to be a counselor and I see the beauty of vulnerability and emotion with every client I come into contact with. To me this experience is spirit, the often unspoken human connection.
This really is not news to any mother who has given birth and looked into her newborn’s eyes. So what makes this story apparently profound — is it that a man finally noticed this holy moment? I’m not the kind of person who goes around grinding axes but women have known this for centuries and apparently have never been given credit for knowing of this profound meeting of mother and child — two souls meeting, one as a newborn. I’m happy for the doctor that this tiny baby succeeded in opening his eyes to the humanity of the smallest among us, but excuse me sir, if you’d been really listening to the mothers around you, you’d have heard of this phenomenon. It annoys me that he gets the credit for seeing something that new mothers have experienced since time immemorial.
Very touching.
I delivered babies for 25 years. I am a certified nurse-midwife. This video has brought back so many wonderful moments in my life as I too cherished the happy, blessed and thankful moments as I was the first human each baby would look at. I always knew in my heart I had a supreme guidance with me as I participated in each birth guiding me to a successful outcome. This physician has truly put into words a wonderful memory for me and left me with a smile on my face and a wonderful feeling in my heart. Thank You
I agree with both comments. It is a beautiful story; and what the hell has an ambulance got to do with pregnancy – its not a disease!
I’m gong to be a nay-sayer here. I like some of Dr. Remen’s work a lot. Here’s the short version of my objection: *Many* healers are sensitive, aware, and connected, as this ED doc became. Do healers need to be sensitive & aware. Uh-DUH. However, in the face of a steady stream of spirit-killing, multiple & significant financial & institutional impediments to effective healing, a focus such as the one presented in this video strikes me as sentimental in the worst sense.
Here’s the longer version of my rant: Dr. Remen and others talk about “spirituality” and “being in the moment” as though it is a holy grail, an inner cure for the many external or objective problems in our professions and in the people we work to help. Don’t get me wrong: it’s good that this doctor had this moment and this insight. But in the way Dr. Remen tells it, with oratorical flourishes and lush orchestration, it feels romanticized, as though “being there” or adopting a “spiritual” view are effective against the widesread & significant difficulties of our work, including the interference, limitations, and low reimbursement schemes of insurance companies, the severely reduced funding of inner city hospitals and clinics, and the institutional and financial difficulties of providing integrated services to patients who present needing medical AND psychological AND social services. Again: it’s good that this individual doc had a transcendent moment. The bigger truth, it seems to me, is that many, many ordinarily sensitive male and female healers across professions have these moments ALL the time. In the face of the objective realities of our professions, these moments — moments of being highly sensitive, connected, and aware — serves to make them *more* vulnerable, vulnerable to burn-out and ordinary exhaustion.
In my view, stories such as this one, presented with lush orchestration and heart-grabbing diction, do not represent a significant and generalizable need in the healing professions. The urgent, significant, and generalizable need in the healing professions is not in the realm of “spirit,” but is in the realm of funding, equity, and in the use of adequate measures of effectiveness.
Amen!
Got it! Thanks a lot again for hepinlg me out!
Lilly,
Thank you for expressing my thoughts more clearly than I would have done. As I was watching this, I also thought of ‘sentimentality’, and my basic view is that so many experiences are co-opted as ‘spiritual’, whereas, they are existential moments pertaining to the observer. What meaning we make of life, or parts of life, is to do with the way we construe the world. Wonder and awe is around us, however, I don’t think it is ‘spiritual’.
Stories like this are wonderful to hear! Let’s hope more and more people start to “wake up” to what is right there in front of us all along! Moments like this can be abundant in each one of our eyes but usually our ego stands in the way. In that moment the drs eyes met the babies, bodies do not exist, it is a linkage of our soul (spirit, life energy, whatever you want to call it, words are but words, its the feeling that matters). We are more then just flesh and blood and once you have this kind of experience you “know” this on a deeper level (both conscious and subconscious in nature). I am sure many of you out there could understand exactly what he felt at that time, like me, its a somewhat familiar feeling to you. I am sure all of us want to send our blessings to both the good dr and the newborn child. Welcome to being awake to the miracle of being alive. Welcome to the World!
Rachel is one of my favorite teachers. This is a wonderful reminder story. I’m still practising at 83 because of that feeling of wonder when I’ve been able to faciilitate a client’s movement towards finding their own pieces of themselves that can lead to them finding peace in their lives. I do feel sometimes as though I’m assisting in the “birithing” of someone. So glad that you gave us this extra. I was sooo disappointed that I could not hear her talk on Wednesday and can’t figure out why not since I heard the first one perfectly the week before. You are doing something different this time and it wasn’t good for me. I hope you fix that up for next Wednesday. Thanks.
I LOVE this story! To be able to find the holy in the everyday moments, and to remember why we are here— means everything, in transforming our experience to being miraculous! THANKYOU!
Thank you, Ruth, for bringing this to us – brilliant! May I urge anyone who has the opportunity to hold and interact with a tiny baby, to just does so with absolute reverence, just ‘get out of the way’ (in terms of expectations), and just watch very very carefully. It’s like an epiphany – as you look into their eyes – a sort of revelation of truth, love, authenticity, and even immediate beneficial changes (by some kind of placebo telepathy?)
A wonderful story. I also loved her story about her mother and being worthy of her chickens. With a mother like that, maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise that Rachel has such a capacity for the depth of her humanity. Thank you, Ruth. Thank you, Rachel. These stories are sacred.
This story brought tears to my eyes as well—and I promise to myself to resume looking for those moments. Thank you.
It is unfortunate that there was no mention of the mother’s birth experience. I can be happy for this Doctor’s experience, but this story is also a great example showing the consequences of a medicalized birth. Why wasn’t the mother the first person this baby saw when she opened her eyes? Why was the mother in an ambulance in the first place, if the delivery was so easy? I wish for far more women in this country to experience spirituality in a home birth (approx. 90% in the Netherlands).
I, too, was struck by how this completely unusual birth was described as though it were the most normal thing for our species . We, as a society and as a medical profession, still do not honor the wisdom of our bodies. Women were not designed to birth on their back with their knees up on the shoulders or nurses! As soon as a baby is born it should be placed on mother’s body. The movement of the baby up to the breast and the subsequent suckling at the breast facilitates the birth of the placenta and the umbilical cord is still supplying a blood supply to the baby’s body. Only when it stops pulsing should it be clamped. Babies don’t need to be suctioned like that, either. As beautiful as this story is – the opening of the doctor’s ‘eyes’ about what he is privileged to witness – it is also very sad to me.
Thank you Christel, this is such an important perspective. I also wish more mothers in Australia were free to choose homebirth and experience their power of love when birthing their baby. My partner is a doctor and was initially against homebirth of our child, but gradually accepted my wish. He had a similar experience and has been very grateful that I stood my ground trusting myself, trusting life and trusting birth. Our connection with our child is a continuing source of joy.
I, too, was struck by the completely unnatural form this birth, like too many others, took. I appreciate the moment of holiness but, really, didn’t it belong to the mother? How did that moment, taken by the doctor, affect the mother-child bonding and relationship for the rest of their lives? Both mother and child long for each other at birth. Suctioning probably wasn’t necessary for such an easy, apparently healthy birth. Being with mother was, as it always is. It would be interesting and informative to interview the mother and her baby about this important moment and understand their perspectives, too. If we were allowed to be born in the holy way we are designed for, would we need to miss and then seek holiness in other ways?
What a beautiful story! Thank you for sharing it with us.