I received an email recently from Kitty Ernst, one of our favorite customers and a faculty member at the Frontier School of Midwifery & Family Nursing in Hyden, KY. She happened to be sitting with a copy of both the first and second editions of my book, If My Mom Were a Platypus: Mammal Babies and Their Mothers. She was comparing the Human birth page in each book and noticed that the tag line, the entire text and the illustration was different between the two editions. She asked us to explain how those changes had come about.
In the first edition of the book, I look at the way 13 mammals in the wild are born and are raised. Then we learn about the 14th mammal – the Human. As I wrote it, being an educated woman who knew a lot about breastfeeding, but not a lot about birth, I began with, But my mom is a human… and I was born in a hospital ... with a dozen people there. The text, in the child’s voice, then goes on to talk about how my mom pushed me out and my umbilical cord was cut before I was put on my mom to breastfeed. The illustration shows a man, woman and baby in a clinical room with two medical professionals in the background.
The revisions to the page all started in 2003 when I was fortunate enough to met Stacey Gregg, a Doula, childbirth educator and National Organization for Women (NOW) Childbirth Activist in New Jersey. I was in a television studio to discuss one of my earlier books, Milk, Money and Madness: The Culture and Politics of Breastfeeding on "New Directions for Women," a show hosted by Mavra Stark.
Stacey informed me that she loved the Platypus book, but had serious reservations about the Human page. She explained that I had more details about the births of the other 13 mammals than I did about the Human and felt it was a missed opportunity to educate if I just gloss over the subject. She let me know that she didn’t feel it was appropriate to place the scene in a hospital, that normal birth should be depicted in a home or birth center. And she told me that the picture simply had to go.
Stacey is a smart woman and she made her points well. I told her that I wanted to make some changes to the next edition (like adding metric measurements) and let her know that when the book did go back to press, I would change the page to better describe and reflect normal birth—but that she would have to help me.
We met again in 2004 at the Midwifery Today conference in Philadelphia. We sat down and, word by word, drafted a better version of the page. We replaced the tag line to read, But my mom is a human... and I was born in a birthing center! And we reworked the text to describe much more about the actual birth process. We doubled the length text describing the birth and brought in words like contractions and womb (which we then added to the glossary). We put in more details about pushing and about the baby using her lungs to breathe after the birth.
In the meantime, I asked the book’s illustrator to do a new drawing for us. Conveniently, his wife, Barbara, had just delivered their first child and he was more than happy to capture that beautiful scene. He drew his family in the birthing room they used cradling new baby, Julia. We took away the clinical-ness of the setting and included one medical professional instead of two. Andrew was delighted with his new picture – as were we.
That would be the end of the story, except there is more. Shoshana Hayman, a La Leche League leader and childbirth educator near Tel Aviv, asked us if she could translate the book into Hebrew. Shoshana is the founder of Life Center, the leader in Israel in promoting attachment parenting through the books they publish and workshops they give. But, surprise… surprise, she wanted changes to the Human page.
Shoshana explained it was important for her to better differentiate between animal and man; that man has a soul and that he has free choice and the ability to reason. She asked if she could change the text to include that humans are born with the ability to think and speak and with free will, and that we can think about what happens in our life and learn about our surroundings. The Hebrew version, includes the sentence, "Thought and speech, together with my own free will, give me the ability to make decisions and be kind to my family, my community and my world."
I plan to include these changes in the third edition of the book. But there is more...
Elizabeth Allemann, a physician, acupuncturist and La Leche League Leader in Missouri, recently told me that she is still not satisfied with the tag line. She feels that the people who are present at the birth are more significant than the location of the event. She asked us to consider changing the tag line to, But my mom is a human... and I was born into two loving hands! This is a beautiful change, indeed. We can place the birth in a birthing center in the text, but emphasize the relationships in the opening.
Many people think that books are finished products that sit on shelves and are quite done. For us, books are like our children. We give birth to them, we nurture them, we share them with the world and we help direct their growth. And through our children, our growth continues. The Platypus book is no exception. I not only had a chance to share my passion about mammal birth, but I have learned much about normal birth in the process.
I am touched that so many people want to help guide and focus my baby. And I am honored to make changes so that it grows and matures into something that we can all be proud of. Please let us know if you see things in our books that could be improved. It is only because people like Stacey, Shoshana and Elizabeth let us know what is on their minds that we can grow and shape our children.
And Kitty, thanks for asking!
This article may be reprinted for non-commercial purposes.
Dia L. Michels is author of If My Mom Were A Platypus: Mammal Babies and their Mothers, Illustrated by Andrew Barthelmes, Platypus Media, 2005, ISBN: 1-930775-35-0 (hardback) 1-930775-19-9 (paperback). Dia can be reached at Dia@PlatypusMedia.com.
If My Mom Were a Platypus: Mammal Babies and Their Mothers, is published by Platypus Media. For more information, visit www.PlatpusMedia.com or call us 1-877-PLATYPS (toll-free). Platypus Media is dedicated to portraying the values of family affection, sharing and growth, to give parents the resources to share and explore attachment values with their growing children.
To subscribe Platypus Post, our free electronic parenting newsletter, send an email to Subscribe@PlatypusMedia.com.