Birth Story

Well, here's the unedited version of my mom's experience with birth. Like I said, you can feel free to skim:

“PUSH!..2,3...C’mon you can do it!”
We’ve all seen the images of a woman in labor: sweaty, scrunched up face wearing an expression of anxiety and anticipation, knees pressed to her chest, two assistants on either side holding her legs, a nurse and husband coaching her and cheering her on. In her hospital smock and little elevated bed she is the center of a flurry of activity about her, periodically measured and prodded and advised. She looks somewhat sheepish at the very momentous task she is to execute according to everyone else’s directions. She calls out for pain killers.

I had seen these images too, whether it was an actress on T.V. crying out through her fear and sweat, or the “real” births on T.V. that are edited for the public to witness in a half-hour spot (minus commercials). I had wondered since childhood what it would be like to give birth. And I remembered fearing it at times (even though a girl) and hoping maybe I could just skip that part when the time came.

Shortly after I discovered I was first pregnant I remember awaking one night feeling petrified that this baby was inside of me and there was only one way for it to come out. I had experienced the same sense of claustrophobia when boarding small aircraft, or even large ones. There’s that brief moment of anxiety and finality when they lock the cabin doors, the reckoning that this is it, there’s no exiting now until we’ve landed at the other end. And so it was to be with my child. We were on a journey with one destination, his passage, through me, into the world.

I knew that I didn’t want to have a labor like the ones I’d seen on T.V., with the sterile hospital rooms, the bright lights and hospital garb. I didn't want to be the one lying in a bed while people coached from the sidelines, cheering as though I were running a football instead of delivering a child. I recognixed that I wasn't sick, I was pregnant. I didn'y need to be treated. There was no naturally pressing need for intervention. I knew my body was meant to do this, just as it was meant to conceive and nourish the being within me.

At the time I was teaching high school English in Boston, and a group of our classes went on a field trip to the science museum. I remember discreetly slipping away into the “birth room” (the permanent exhibit featuring most all aspects of birth and fetal development). I discovered to my delight that the museum had added a video viewing booth in which one may watch the delivery of three different types of births: a hospital birth, a cesarean section, and a home birth. This was a gift to me. I expectantly selected the home birth, and waited for the miracle (hoping no students would happen upon me the while). Since I'd never had the privilege of watching a child come into this world (and had only witnessed hospital renditions, as mentioned above) I savored the opportunity to partake in this woman's personal experiencce of labor. It was the fist time I had seen the image of a peaceful and harmonious birth. The woman featured in the video was herself a midwife, and with her family at her side, she labored calmly. She gave birth to her baby girl in a deep bath tub in her home. She peacefully pushed her little girl into the world with her expirations. I knew, then, that this would be my ideal birth.

I also had a close friend who’d delivered both of her children at home with her husband in rural New Mexico. I remember her describing herself in labor and she said that she felt like an Indian woman who goes off behind a tree, squats and had her baby, then comes out with the child and goes on with her day. I knew I would love to feel that way, and I was enviable of her experience. But I dind't yet feel that sure of myself, seeing that I'm given to panic, and my husband certainly didn't consider himself a trained midwife. So I finally opted for a birth in a birth center, which I decided was the closest setting to home without actually being home.

I ended up going into labor at 11:30 at night, only an hour or two after I’d gone to bed. I labored steadily through the night and arrived the birth center at noon the next day (when my contractions were timing 4-5 minutes apart). I remember feeling as though I’d been transported to another level of being and consciousness the whole time I labored at the birth center. It was as though I couldn’t see or speak to anyone although I could feel everything. My son wasn’t born until 5:44 that evening after three (very trying) hours of pushing. I tried the tub at one point, but the warmth of the water made my languid limbs and tired body relax so much that the contractions slowed. So I tried other positions (the least effective being the one we most often see, lying back on a bed with my knees pulled up). It was suggested that I sit on a toilet as the third hour of pushing approached, and sure enough, the moment I sat down, I could feel the baby move the rest of the way down the birth canal (although it didn’t register as a “logical” thought at the time). It wasn’t until one of the midwives cried, “if you don’t move now your baby’s going to fall out into the toilet”, that I realized it was finally happening. But rather than going back into the tub (which they urged) I wanted to maintain the same exact position I was in then, so they scrambled to get a birthing stool for me to sit on and and stools for my feet, and my son was born a few excruciating moments later.

It had not really been that peaceful, ideal birth I'd wanted to have. But I told myself that I was proud that I did have a natural childbirth, and that I had a team of gentle, caring midwives who'd attended me with respect and patience. But inside of me I knew I could do better. I found myself pregnant a short seven months later, and I knew this was my chance to realize my dream of what birth can be.

I asked my husband if he would consider having the baby with me at home now that we both had been through the experience of labor. He (probably reasonably) refused, saying that he didn’t feel ready for that. And since I was now on his health insurance, which didn’t cover birth centers (or even midwifery care, over which there is some question of legality), we started looking for a homebirth midwife. Less than two months before my due date I found a midwife (to whom I’d been referred by two other midwives while receiving my prenatal care at the hospital), and together she and her practice partner and I prepared for the upcoming labor.

I still harbored secret fantasies of having this baby on my own, however. When I was still unsure of whether we’d be able to afford a homebirth (since the expense was out-of-pocket) I kept telling myself I’d rather drive off into the woods and have the baby by myself than give birth in a hospital. (You may wonder at my aversion to hospitals, but it is that birth is such a private and personal experience, and I myself prefer to conduct such a miraculous and personal experience privately, according to my own dictates (and birthing is so very affected by the environment within which it takes place). I had read two books by a renowned midwife named Ina May Gaskin, and I reveled in the birth stories of the many women who’d delivered their children naturally at home. I especially envied the stories of the women who’d had their babies before the midwives even arrived. These were a select few who seemed to possess an extra sense of magic or miracle.

I knew which night my labor would ensue. Not only had I marked the delivery date on my calendar when I first learned I was pregnant for the second time, but I also had a distinct feeling that evening. I put my sixteen-month-old to bed with a bittersweet sense of nostalgia. I gave him a little extra blessing that night, and told him how much I’d loved being able to spend every day of these past sixteen months with him, watching him grow into the wildly brilliant being he is. I knew it was the last time that I would be just his mother. It was October 17, a full moon, and the day after my official delivery date (my first child had also been born on a full moon the day after his delivery date). And I went to bed relaxed and peaceful, thinking of the fully dilated moon.

I awoke just before two AM to the tensing of my uterus. It was a gentle sort of contracting, and I welcomed it. I waited. Another one came, perhaps ten minutes later. I woke my husband to tell him that it was beginning. He aqueezed my hand and smiled, and with an "okay" fell back to sleep. The next one came. I called the midwife and told her the labor had begun. She asked whether I'd like her to come over now. Since I'd only had three contractions, and it was two thirty in the morning we decided not, and I told her I would call her after dawn, or when the contractions were around four minutes apart. I put on the music I had set up in the stereo and labored peacefully in my bed. I spread the layer of blankets and pillows I’d readied on the floor of the bedroom, and lit a candle next to the trinkets I’d collected on my windowsill for this hallowed occasion. All had a beautiful stillness, and the moon shone brightly through the window. I looked out on my silent neighborhood, and smiled to myself at the thought of such a miracle taking place under the cover of night, and all those sleeping so close by had no notion of its happening.

After some time of peaceful anticipation and labor I decided I ought to do my best to rest between contractions so that I'd save my strength and feel some sense of having slept. With a pillow between my legs I laid on my side and closed my eyes. I kept envisioning the moon in the back of my mind, fully dilated, and I was to follow suit. I stopped counting the minutes between contractions (otherwise one would bever really rest). They would come and go and come again, and I would just breather all the while. I remember a few of them feeling rather wrenching at some point, but all was smooth.

My step-sister arrived at 7:15 to take my son for the day. We chatted in my room until around ten to eight. I would pause every so often for a contraction, and then continue talking. I felt quite “normal”. I wasn’t in the throes of some seeming other dimension as I had been with my first labor. And to this estimation I decided I would have hours of energy yet to expend. I frankly felt rather tired, and I’d been getting a cold, and decided that’s what was making my body feel more tired. I told her, "I really just have this underlying feeling that I'd like this to be over with so I can sleep." I wasn't having any momentous revelations at this point, I was just my regular self with contraction every so often.

"Are you having another one?" my step-sister quipped. It was true, I was saying that I was still having them about every ten minutes, but sometimes I would have an "interim" contraction, I'd said, which wasn't really that strong, so I wasn't exactly counting it as one. After all, they tell you a real contraction is one that you can’t speak or walk through. These “interim” ones didn’t seem to happen all the time, and they weren’t that strong. She fixed her eyes at me, giving me a look she might give to one of her seventh grade students who’d just made up some lame excuse for not handing in her homework assignment. I assured her I’d call the midwife after the next contraction. She left the room and I phoned the midwife. I told her of my contractions, and the “interim” ones, and said how I thought I was getting a cold, and I was tired and my bowels felt full. Not to worry, she assured me, the baby would clear everything out before she came. She suggested I call her back when my contractions regularized, or if anything changed. Easy enough. I got up shortly thereafter, thankful for the feeling that I would be able to relieve my bowels. I went in to sit on the toilet, and suddenly everything changed. I went to the bathroom, all right, but the next thing I knew I felt frighteningly ill. I broke out into an immense sweat that was running down my swollen belly into the toilet. I felt nauseous and weak. For a moment I panicked in the back of my mind, “Now what have I done! I’m going to have to call the ambulance after all!” I called the midwife back and tried to explain my condition in between moans. “I’m on my way,” she reassured me. I called downstairs to my husband. I asked him to get me a drink and he brought in the bottle of Recharge, forgetting the straw. “The straw! The straw!”, I cried, hunched over. "Forget the straw!" I changed my mind, and he awkwardly tried to hold the bottle to my lips while I leant forward. Suddenly I felt a burning sensation that I recognized from my first labor. "The baby's coming!" I said. And I realized that if I sat there any loinger sher would fall into the toilet. So I stood up, and as my husband recounts, he could see the baby's head crowning between my legs. The next thing I knew, I was leaning over my husband’s back as he crouched down positioning himself to catch the baby. He was so serene that I felt completely relaxed. I breathed, and with that breath and push I felt the head come out along with the warm flow of waters. I breathed again, relaxing and using the “horse lips” technique I’d read about from Ina May (it’s supposed to reduce the risk of tearing by slowing down the pushing), and I breathed like this for an extended moment until the next natural urge to push presented itself. And with that out slid the rest of her warm body. My husband wiped the vernix from her face, and assured her breathing with a gentle gesture. She let out her first cry. It was 8:10 AM (according to my step-sister who checked the time in disbelief when she heard the cry, "...it couldn't be..." she later confessed to thinking). My husband placed her in my arms. Suddenly I felt fine. Normal. Great. And I was just standing there in my bathroom with this baby in my arms. I sat back down on the toilet and called the midwife.

“Now what do I do?” I asked.

“Nurse the baby, and stay warm. I’ll be there as quickly as I can.”

So I sat on the toilet with this new little peaceful being latched on to my breast. And shortly thereafter I was, indeed, shivering, so my husband wrapped me in blankets. When the midwife arrived she marveled at the little birth cave I’d created, there, on the toilet. My husband took the baby then, and I got up and stepped directly into the shower while the midwife cleaned up (but having a baby on the toilet proved to be the cleanest way because it all flushes easily away). When I was clean and warm in my bed with my sweet, peaceful daughter by my side I could hardly believe what had just happened. I’d called her my “quiet miracle” baby throughout the pregnancy, but this was the icing on the cake. An essentially pain-free labor in which she slid out so gently.

I had done it. I had had my ideal birth. I wasn’t squatting behind a tree. And I didn’t do it with as much finesse as the woman whom I’d watched have her baby peacefully in her own tub. But I had done it nonetheless, a completely natural childbirth. No one poked, prodded, measured or monitored me, and I gave birth to an eight pound girl, while standing, without a tear. After all that I decided that if I ever do get pregnant again, come time for labor I’ll skip all the lying in bed and breathing, and go straight for the toilet.