Performing Ethos: International Journal of Ethics in Theatre & Performance - Performing Maternities: Part 2, Jan 2023

This article explores, touches, prods and pokes the theme of ‘palpation’. Prized as a skill by midwives and obstetricians, this method of discernment may be in demise as the interpretive art of palpating the size, shape and position of the baby within the womb is replaced by numerical methods such as the tape measure and the ultrasound scan. Does this matter? I discuss how touch can be warm, relational, fascinating and practically useful, and/or how it can be harsh, cold, painful, harmful. Inspired by Jess Moriarty and Mike Hayler, I attempt to ‘shine a light forward’ on the embodied experience of being palpated and of palpation.

Infertility is an aspect of motherhood that is ‘Other’ and is broadly met with silence by the wider western society and its pronatalist culture. The silence surrounding infertility impacts our individual, mutual and cultural understandings of motherhood, as this silence arises from its taboo nature. Speaking up about any aspect of motherhood that is not typical is still treated as taboo, and the experiences of ‘atypical’ mothers, such as those who have experienced infertility, are still side-lined. The taboo nature of infertility, coupled with the grief and absence that define it, all contribute to the silence that surrounds it. This article is in the form of a lyric essay that combines my own poetry about infertility and Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) with a broader critical analysis about the challenges of writing about infertility. I intersperse my own infertility poetry with a close textual analysis of infertility poetry composed by contemporary western women poets, such as Kerry Priest, Gerrie Fellows and Julia Copus. This close reading highlights the poetics employed by these writers that recreate, reformulate and reinvent writing about infertility, and motherhood more broadly. Alongside my own poetry, I include a self-reflection that highlights how my poems challenge and resist the conventional approaches to performing maternity. This self-reflection also details how I utilized poetics to both present and represent the silence and absence of infertility’s ‘non-event’, and give it presence and language.

We have lost touch with birthplace. During the twentieth century in Ireland, childbirth was uprooted from local environments and relocated within hospital-based settings. This process contributed to a loss of touch with birthplace – a process worsened during COVID-19. There have been no maternity services for over 30 years in County Clare, a region in the west of Ireland where I conducted a series of interviews with people reflecting on their experiences of birth. These multigenerational birthplace stories inform the content and direction of the creative component of this research. As part of this research, a series of artworks is currently being made in relation to these birthplace stories, some of which are shared in this article. This research project is theoretically and methodologically rooted in critical post-humanism, in particular the work of feminist new materialists. A speculative ethics of birthplace care underpins the research and drives the development of an ethos of care that considers the entwinement of birthing bodies, matter and place.

This article offers a window onto the authoring and performing of lived maternity experiences by new mothers who met virtually and participated in group art therapy during the time of COVID-19 lockdown in Melbourne, Australia, between July and December 2020. The eight-week, face-to-face art therapy programme CONNECT for distressed mothers and babies was delivered for the first time via Zoom to participant mothers, each provisioned with a printed booklet and a pack of art materials. In weekly Zoom sessions, women-mothers were encouraged to contemplate and revisit their motherhood journeys through engagement in a series of art-based exercises facilitated by two experienced therapists. Through words and picture-making, mothers authored and represented their lived maternity experiences and, in turn, took to the Zoom stage to ‘show and tell’ the group audience just how maternity had played out for them, with the added anxiety of that uninvited guest at the party – COVID. A lived maternity group culture arose that permitted a redefinition of maternity; understanding and wisdom flourished as group members decided for themselves what the ‘new normal’ was for lived maternity in the time of COVID. Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale scores showed a reduction in distress over the course for the participants. Post-group written feedback from participants about the CONNECT-from-HOME Zoom group revealed benefits including feeling less alone, feeling affirmed in a sense of struggle, wisdom gained in understanding past life experiences through reflection and group discussion, enjoying the process of art expression to give visual form to emotions/experiences and gaining understanding/wisdom from hearing other mothers tell about their motherhood journeys in words/pictures. Whilst several mothers were able to identify a positive impact on their mothering from the COVID pandemic, with their partner able to share in the early life of the baby, the vast majority of mothers performed fear and loss. Written feedback revealed largely negative impacts from the COVID pandemic and lockdown, specifically anxiety about health and reduced access to medical care and support. Lockdown elicited a sense of crisis, feelings of being ‘cheated’ (out of anticipated/wished-for motherhood experiences) and anger, anxiety, isolation, profound loss and disappointment alongside impact on energy, well-being, stress levels, mental health, self-esteem and relationships with baby, partner and extended family.

Back in 2015 I gave birth to my first child and had a complicated birth and postnatal experience. I suffered birth trauma and I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) when my baby was eight months old. Whilst I mostly dealt with the mental and physical difficulties of PTSD with therapy, what I was not prepared for nor do I think I’ll fully get over, was the effect the investigation report into my birth had on my mental well-being. Writing became part of my therapy. In fact, my therapist prescribed it as ‘homework’ at the time. I had not written creatively prior to this and I didn’t understand how writing would benefit my well-being positively. What I learned along the course of my therapy was the power the written word has in healing a hurt and damaged soul. I maintained a blog and could see my healing progress as time moved on.

Therapy for me has since finished but I still try to write when I can. I do this often around my child’s birthday as I struggle most with memories from the time of birth. I write when I feel emotionally overwhelmed and I feel a release in this process. Whilst I do not think my pieces are award winning, each holds a period of time when my emotions ran high and to me, they have become precious notes capturing the rawness unique to my experiences and where others may also find some comfort in that they’re not alone.

I will share some of these pieces with you. Dedicated to anyone who has suffered birth trauma or from the effects of poor communication and lack of acknowledgement around psychological harm, this is for you.

A visual conversation through art herstory and mothering, made during the first lockdown of 2020. Faced with a lack of private space, the author locks herself in the bath and discusses paintings from the past as she grapples to make art when her son wants her full attention.