During the Christmas season birth is on my mind. Perhaps it is because I sing in two choirs and everything we sing is about the Saviors Birth. I am singing a solo for our ward Sacrament Meeting Christmas Program. It is called One Perfect Flower, and this video clip shares a recent rehearsal I did with Kent, who is our organist.

The words to the song are a perfect example of the music I have flowing through my veins during the Christmas season. I dream about it, hum while I do housework and cooking, and usually sing and rehearse in the evenings before I go to bed.
Singing all of this music and reading scriptures that reflect on the saviors birth really increases my thought time as compared to other times of the year.

A couple of years ago I had this thought come to me;
If Heavenly Father as the Master of the Universe felt that modern childbirth was so important, does it not make sense that he would wait until all of that infrastructure was set up and functioning before he sent the Savior, his only begotten in the flesh, to be born?
And why didn’t he send the Savior to an older more experienced woman, who had much to offer in terms of education, childrearing capabilities, and maturity?
Even in ancient Jerusalem, some sort of a birthing structure must have been in place in terms of midwives, family help, and even doctors for difficult cases. We know doctors were treating “female” problems because the story of the woman who had an issue of blood was mentioned by three disciples in three different passages, and one even said that she spent all her living on doctors but was not cured, and “was nothing better“. Touching the Saviors clothing cured her of her issue of blood.
Why did Heavenly Father allow his son to be born under such difficult circumstances?
The easy answer is that it was prophesied by all of the holy prophets. But who gave those prophets the visions and dreams that manifested on the written pages of the scriptures?
Heavenly Father could have set up any scenario he wanted for the birth of his son.
We have Mary who traveled over 200 miles during her pregnancy, visiting Elizabeth, and then back to Joseph in Nazareth, and then down to Bethlehem, where she happened to give birth surrounded by animals. All that traveling while she was pregnant.
And so poor they could not afford a room, and when the Savior was finally born, we have him born out in a dirty barn surrounded by animal smells and germs. Hevenly Father could have manipulated that situation any way he wanted to allow Mary to have the financial means to hire any sort of midwife, wet nurse to breastfeed the baby, all of the comforts and helps that jewish intellect and society had set up for the elites, and yet we find Heavenly Father picking a woman who was just past childhood in age, impoverished, and under the most intense pressure and strife during her pregnancy.

We had a great lesson about Mary on sunday in relief society and this quote from Bruce R. McConkie invited the holy spirit into the meeting while we read it.

“And Mary, What of her? Should her testing be any easier, her mortal trials lessened, because she carried in her womb the Son of the Highest? Should she be free from the burdens borne by Sarah and Miriam-whose very name in Hebrew she bore-and by the other great women of Abrahamic lineage?

Nay, rather, should not her burdens be greater? Whenever was there a great prophet – Moses, Elijah, Isaiah, Nephi, Joseph Smith- who was not tested to the full?

Whenever were the women who stood by their sides freed from the tests and trials or mortality? The greater the prophet, the more severe the test! The nobler the woman, the more she is called to bear!

It was the Son of God who descended below all things that he might rise to height unknown. It was his mother who was subjected to the most trying of all circumstances that she too might ascend the throne of eternal power, as had Rebecca and Rachel and her ancestors of old.”

I wonder if Heavenly Father was attempting to send a subtle message during Marys first birth, attempting to teach us what is normal and natural in birth.
He knew Mary did not need all of the bells and whistles of modern childbirth in order to bring forth the Savior of the world.
He knows that our lives, our hormonal lives, are greatly enhanced by private couples birthing. Our very connectedness as families are imprinted at that sacred moment of birth. And if it is frustrated and interfered with, it messes with the family unit.
He knows that the hallmarks of sick societies, which are summed up best by how we treat the unborn and the aged in our cultures, would be healed by mothers giving birth quietly in a sacred quiet space, and the normal bonding teaching Mother and baby how to bond and love each other in a normal natural way.

So yes, I believe he was sending a powerful message to anyone who cared to listen about what is normal and natural in birth. Then during the years leading up to the restoration of his kingdom on the earth, he inspired the great men of music to write the most exquisite works of sacred melody celebrating that birth. I get to sing the Messiah one last time tomorow afternoon. It has been such a sobering reminder of the simplicity and reality of the Saviors birth to immerse myself in the music for the past few months.

Lately I’ve also been thinking much about Sariah in the Book of Mormon.
The first 20 chapters in the book tell the story of Lehi the Prophets exodus from Jerusalem before the Babylonian conquest in 600 BC. It is an interesting story about a family and what Heavenly Father was willing to do to help them stay out of captivity.
Not much is said about Sariah, the wife of Lehi, but we can infer much from the story. Read the first couple of chapters of First Nephi in the Book of Mormon if you would like to read the actual text before I make my case.
I wonder if Sariah was prompted by the Holy Spirit to prepare for a time in the future when she would be delivering her grandchildren? I wonder if she, as one of the elites of Jerusalem Society understood that all of her grandchildren would be born during a “wilderness” experience, living out in the desert, and suffering from lack of home comforts, proper food, and even water while pregnant and breastfeeding?

I wonder if she spent some time and energy learning as much as she could about herbs and natural mothering, so that she could help her daughters give birth without any sort of help outside the family circle? I also wonder what she did when those who were birthing in what Laman and Lemuel said was a fate “worse than death” (1st Nephi 17:20) and truly suffering, and while she herself birthed two sons, as a middle aged woman, did she wonder if her preparations had been enough? If she wished she knew more about how to keep a woman comfortable, relaxed, and help to ease the passage of the babe?
I believe as the wife of a prophet, she did prepare. I believe she did research and study. We know she gave birth to at least six children before her family left Jerusalem. Four sons, and the sisters (plural) Nephi mentions in one passage. She may have had more children than those six, who are not mentioned in the story. Perhaps more daughters. At any rate, we know she already had a large family of at least six children, and was destined to give birth to and breastfeed two more sons while journeying in the wilderness.
Sariah must have been a strong woman physically to endure those hardships and give birth to healthy sons while a grandma.
My other question:
Why did Heavenly Father give us this story of a family at the beginning of the Book of Mormon? A real family, with sibling rivalry issues and problems? Why did he allow the record to contain evidences of marriages, births, and breastfeeding?
Are these issues important?
Was he trying to send us in the latter days a message of how we also may be required to go through a “Wilderness” experience where all we have to depend on for help during a birth is our family? Perhaps a loving husband, friend or neighbor to help while we give birth alone, with very little food, water, and help from any sort of modern surgery and medicine?
I believe he did send a powerful message to his Saints through The Book Of Mormon.
Message being, “While things may be “comfortable” for you as you birth your little ones, it may not be so easy for your children and grandchildren.”
So, like Sariah, prepare your heart, prepare you mind, prepare your hands to do the work of caring for those who are bearing and breastfeeding. Feeding and clothing the babes and helping them to be healthy and well.
I believe this is the future for our American Society, and for the world as a whole.
No matter what brings about this future of self sufficiency: Terrorism, Natural disasters, Pandemic infectious disease that prevents us from going to a hospital to give birth, or any other scenario that puts the family in a situation where they are alone and a child is on the way….

Jenny Hatch 42 weeks and three days pregnant with Benjamin Johnson Hatch October 24th 2002
I believe wise parental stewardship and Provident Living where one decides to learn the skills of natural mothering and become self sufficient will make up the difference.
What will happen in the future?
All I know is what I have been prompted to do for the past 18 years. Since Michelle was a newborn, I have felt Heavenly Father guiding me to learn everything I could about birth. To read non-stop about how to give birth alone, to practice this in my own family, and to breastfeed 100% with no supplementation.

Jenny with Benjamin right after I delivered the Placenta which happened fifteen minutes after he was born at midnight on October 25th, 2002.
I was very alone in these efforts, in terms of my peers, until I got online in 1996 and discovered a whole society of Mormon Mothers who had been guided to do the same thing. As I interacted with these women, shared stories, and rejoiced in the outcomes of our many, many births, I had so many witnesses from the Holy Spirit that we were on the right path. As mothers, it was comforting to feel that this was a Heaven Inspired Movement preparing individual hearts who were listening to the promptings of the spirit for a “wilderness” experience in the future.

Bens first feeding.
I don’t know when that time will come, and I don’t really care what will bring it about. My personal feeling is that disease, desolating sickness, will cause the most suffering, especially in America. I know what the scriptures have prophesied on the topic, and I am living for the day AFTER that day.
The book of Isaiah says it this way:
“Sing O Barren that thou dids’t not bear….”
He understood that the desolation of modernity was going to set the women of the world free. I’m not afraid of that desolation, wether it comes by nukes or disease or natural disaster. I’m not afraid of our sick society going down the toilet. I’m not afraid of hard work, living off the land, or birthing alone.
After the desolation, then life will be about healthy babies…..As it says in 3 Nephi 22:1

“And then shall that which is written come to pass: Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear; break forth into singing, and cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child; for more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife, saith the Lord.”

The scriptures have taught me that whole cities are going to be made desolate. While I am sad at the spectre of such a travesty, I understand that Heavenly Fathers spirit will only strive with man for so long before he allows them to be wiped off the map with fire, water, and the little bugs of desolating plagues.
I think the difference between those who have read the scriptures and those who do not believe in them is that we who have studied these prophecies from our infancy up have had a profound psychological preparation for the future. I don’t see much hand wringing at church. The Saints have had a lifetime of emotional preparation for what is going to transpire.
I just keep plugging away at life, doing my best to live in an imperfect world, with the understanding that at some point the insane parts of modern living – and top of the list is: newborns in day care at four weeks old – will be shoved aside when the desolation comes.
So I don’t get lost in hand wringing and wailing about the loss of our society. I know that desolation in various parts of our world are going to come one way or another. And I have chosen to focus on the good things that will reverberate around our world when it happens, and like Isaiah and Nephi of old, I want to shout….SING O BARREN, that thou dids’t not bear!
Lord knows, most of the ailments of my life have come with fighting the medical powers that be.
Whew, I did not know that this was going to be such a long rant, but these are the thoughts in my head on this blessed december day in 2006!

Jenny Hatch