On any day ‘she’ could be close, around the corner, standing nearby – a woman of any age between 28 to 48 years old. And what distinguishes her is a subtle sadness in her eyes from a deep longing to hold a baby in her arms. She is the one currently in the midst of an artificial, painful, and very stressful process of trying to have a baby. Maybe she is your sister, your cousin, your best friend, your colleague, or maybe she is you?
There are hundreds of thousands of women out there whose whole existence, at a certain point, narrows down to one single focus, the desire to ‘have a baby’. They have been convinced that their current existence is not considered valuable or precious unless they undertake the ultimate achievement of ‘having a baby’. And for that they are willing to completely sacrifice their bodies and health. Even making love, which for many used to stand on its own as an intimate sharing with a partner/lover/husband, has become a technical part of the procedure that leads to the ultimate goal of ‘having a baby’. As a result, in the long run, making love often ends up connected with the painful feelings of repeated disappointed from the failure to get pregnant.
These wonderful and beautiful women often put aside all their treasured talents and virtues, everything that potentially could create a wonderful life. Instead, they put their physical bodies, as well as their nervous systems, under tremendous stress. They take endless medications and hormones to impose on their bodies what does not seem to happen naturally. (But maybe there is a reason? And maybe the answer has spiritual and energetic answers society does not normally consider.)
Within this group of women who long for a baby but can’t get pregnant, there is another group of women for whom having a baby is actually a great health risk – a risk even to their survival. Pregnancy, even under the best of circumstances involves great demands on the mother’s body, and is never without some risk. Yet many women purposefully put themselves at risk of death to fulfill the wish to be a mother.
With all of these women who are repeatedly disappointed and who risk survival the question arises: what is the reason for intelligent and educated women to become so blind and risk their health, ignoring the message their body is giving them about having or not having a baby in this moment? What leads sensitive women – who are often aware of others’ needs, and who operate at a high level of consciousness about the world in general – to not to listen to their own body when it speaks up by shutting down their reproductive system. (The body never shuts down a whole system of the body for no reason.)
As a little girl I remember how the women in my extended family would talk with admiration about women who had serious health issues and as a result were forbidden by doctors from getting pregnant. These women decided, however, to risk their health and sometimes their lives to get pregnant, no matter the consequences. These women were perceived as ‘brave’ because they sacrificed their health for that most important thing in life – ‘having a baby’.
Many of these women, after one or more children, dealt throughout their lives with chronic health issues, often permanently medicated. Their own quality of life and long-term health conditions were never a concern – the important thing was that they fulfilled their duty as women to bear children. In the Middle Eastern culture in which I was born having a baby was the biggest aspiration of every woman. Nothing could, or should, come ahead of the desire to be a mother.
My mother always preached to me that a woman who does not have a baby is not a real woman! The fanatical approach of my tribe towards having children demonstrates the strong evolutionary drive of nature to continue the race. As human beings the biological drive to fulfill our role in the continuation of the race manifests as an internal desire to have a baby. This desire manifests with powerful feelings of love that are often mistaken as unconditional love towards our children.
Most women are not aware that their deep and often unbearable desire to become mothers is a result of strong hormones. The hormones’ job is to make the female physical body fulfill its role in the evolutionary process of continuing our race. It’s no different from mother giraffe or mother kangaroo, and often without any rational thinking about the wellbeing of the child or of the mother. In most of us the drive to be a parent is an instinct, not a choice.
This is the reason why the tribe will encourage such sacrifices from women. In the collective human sub consciousness, pregnancy and birth have a higher value than the mother’s health.
In the last week the newspaper had a big headline about a woman who risked her health for the sake of giving birth. She has Cystic Fibrosis and as a result had a lung and liver transplant! The message of the article was that nothing could stop this beautiful young woman from becoming a mother; she was praised as the ultimate woman. But at what cost? Maybe instead we should praise the women that do consider making a decision to take care of their own health instead of investing all their weak body’s energy in making a new human being (whose future would be uncertain due to the poor health of the mother)
It is necessary to ask the question: what quality of life and level of health will the mother have after her weak body (which is dealing energetically with so many health issues) goes through investing all its energy in creating a baby? From my point of view any woman whose life becomes meaningless if she cannot become a mother, turns herself into a walking womb where her only function is to fulfill her role in the evolutionary production line. Below is an explanation from the yoga point of view of why it may not be a good idea to have a baby when your body or mind are struggling with heavy duty health issues.
In the philosophy of yoga the energy that keeps the physical body together is called Prana (life force). Prana is the force that moves our physical, energetic and mental bodies.
For the process of healing we need tremendous amount of Prana. Every disease or injury takes lots of Prana from the body. This is the reason why people who get injured and already have good reserves of Prana in their bodies heal faster than people who are injured with empty reserves.
In any case where the body is dealing with extreme conditions such as cancer, diabetes, severe asthma, etc., there is a need to switch to an emergency mode where we do not waste Prana, and instead we start to build up the amount and quality of Prana in our body, which will be used for healing.
Embryos that develop in a woman’s womb need huge amounts of Prana to evolve from a fertilized egg to a complete human being. This is why a baby in the womb gets the first priority for receiving Prana in the body. That means that even if the mother does not have enough Prana to share with her growing baby, her Prana will be redirected to the baby, to the detriment of the mother’s body.
This is the reason why so many women these days deal with depression after giving birth. If the woman became pregnant while the level of Prana in her body was low, as a result of stress or dealing with an extreme physical or emotional condition, by the time she gave birth her Prana would be so depleted that a large imbalance in the mental and emotional aspects of her being would have been created.
Therefore, if a woman gets pregnant while her body is dealing with an extreme health condition the damage after her pregnancy can be serious. Instead of enhancing the Prana in her body for healing, the baby and the pregnancy will have taken the little Prana she has, and the body will be empty of this precious ‘fuel’. When seen from this perspective, weighing not only the desire to have a child, but the actual spiritual and energetic consequences is very important. This is not a decision to be made by society or the need to serve the race.
On the spiritual path the choice to have or not to have a child comes from our high consciousness – not from a blind instinctual drive.
If you consider yourself a spiritual person, take the time, when the idea or desire to having a baby appears in your life, and first check that you are acting from a clear authentic choice and not from a strong physical and evolutionary drive. Secondly, make sure that you do not sacrifice your own existence as a person, as a body, and as a mind, for this wonderful creation. After all, you are already here, and you are no less wonderful as a person that stands on her own!
In case while reading this article you were wondering… I am 52 years old, and no, I am not a mother – a decision I made from a completely clear and conscious choice.
