The idea for Rodil­nitza was born after a few like mind­ed women got togeth­er and real­ized the need for infor­ma­tion in Bul­gar­i­an in regards to birth as a nat­ur­al process in wom­en’s life. We want­ed a place where we could share in peace our quite dif­fer­ing from the sta­tus-quo views. A place where those who are going along the same path can find a com­mu­ni­ty, be it online, where they could be under­stood and accepted.

The first event which we orga­nized was the protest “Protest Against the Vio­lence and Tram­pling over the Rights of Birthing Women in Bul­gar­i­an Hos­pi­tals”. We rolled sleeves and got to work from every cor­ner of the world — Aus­tralia, Cana­da, Ger­many, Hun­gary, USA, New Zealand and of course Bul­gar­ia — and from noth­ing in the space of around ten days we made the blog, pub­li­cized the event, the protest was held and attract­ed a con­sid­er­able inter­est from the media. After that fol­lowed radio and TV inter­views, as well as numer­ous arti­cles in media pub­li­ca­tions. The protest note con­tin­ues to be signed to this day.

The protest was a call for help. As we said there:

“We are not an organ­i­sa­tion. We are not an asso­ci­a­tion or a club. We are a group of women and moth­ers, which just hap­pened to wit­ness the sto­ry of this woman. We prob­a­bly all know about the offens­es, lib­er­ties and pre­sump­tions tak­en towards labor­ing women. But even so, this sto­ry demon­strates every kind of vio­lence and abuse (both phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal), which could hap­pen to a woman in the hos­pi­tal, so it left us ter­ri­fied and shak­en. We agreed we can’t just offer sym­pa­thy and vir­tu­al hugs and keep liv­ing our lives as if noth­ing hap­pened. We want some­one to scream from the top of their lungs, that such treat­ment is not and should not be accept­able, regard­less of the circumstances.”

We have not aban­doned the fight. The prob­lem is still cur­rent and unfor­tu­nate­ly will con­tin­ue to be for a long time.

This blog/site, on the oth­er hand, is for women from women with love. The arti­cles writ­ten here are from dif­fer­ent women with dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ences and views, but unit­ed in our goal to give women back the respect and belief in their own bod­ies. Because we are not bro­ken, we are not frag­ile, we have no need of con­stant super­vi­sion from “pro­fes­sion­als”, rather we are strong, healthy and we only need peace and secu­ri­ty dur­ing the won­drous process of birth.

If you wish to browse the rest of the Rodil­nitza web­site in Eng­lish, please use the auto­mat­ic trans­la­tion pro­vid­ed here.