I planned to give birth at home because I wanted comfort and intimacy; what I got was pure enchantment. In the first weeks of my pregnancy, I was visiting a doctor who told me I would deliver at St. Luke’s Roosevelt and boasted that “…it’s the busiest labor unit in the city,” as if that was supposed to reassure me that the busiest meant the best. When I think of “hospital,” I think of “illness.” To me, childbirth may not always require the expertise or attitudes encountered in medical institutions. I think childbirth is more like sacred sport—instead of doctors and nurses—for a low-risk pregnancy—three voodoo queens and a wrestling coach make sufficient companions to guide a woman through the ordeal.
More than a way to avoid unnecessary medical intervention, home birth gave me a precious opportunity to touch the primal core. I kissed our Ancient Mother. As the blues singer belts, “I held back lightning with the palm of my hand, shook hands with the Devil, and made him crawl through the sand.” In those last moments of butt-breaking struggle, the life force of my own dear child converted me from Maiden to Mother.
My early labor sensations began around six in the morning on Saturday, November 24. I felt tightness and pressure deep in my pelvis. This sensation accompanied a weird urge, like I needed to move my bowel. I was not certain this was labor. At 11:00 a.m. I still felt the sensation and paged my midwife, Martine. She chatted with me, casually, then told me to page her again if anything changed.
By 6:00 p.m. the sensation in my pelvis had grown more intense. It seemed useless to time “minutes between contractions” because this sensation baffled me with its persistence. I had expected labor pains to start in the lower back and move along to the uterus, all the while growing intense and then fading away. Martine had asked me if I felt anything in my back or uterus. I had to admit to her that I did not, only something weird low down in my pelvis. Sitting on the toilet, I feared I would eliminate a sledgehammer.
Martine advised me to eat a meal, drink some wine, and page her if anything changed. She asked how I felt. I told her I was nervous, my palms were sweating, like I was about to go on stage. “Are you ready?” She asked. My answer was a definitive “Yes!” But I didn’t know what to be ready for, really. Giving birth? Motherhood? Neither seemed real to me, yet.
I ate a little, but could not concentrate on eating. I tried to take a bath, but the pelvic pressure absorbed so much of my attention I could not get comfortable in the bathtub, and I usually love the bath. While in the tub I sipped some brandy, but that did little to soothe me. The sensation pulled and yanked and stretched my emotions too. I felt frustrated with Albert, who I blamed for not focusing enough on my discomfort. For a moment I even feared that my midwives were not really midwives but were strange women with unusual pregnant belly fetishes. I feared my baby would come out looking green and sponge-like, with its head on backwards. Was I really bringing a human being into this world? I grew more and more anxious that I would have to give birth to this bizarre creature alone without support.
Sick of this bath, I put on my bathrobe and climbed into bed to see if I could sleep. I tossed and turned and started to get more annoyed with my pelvis and the whole world. At the point of greatest frustration, I put my face in the pillow and shouted and cried. Then my hand moved under the pillow, and I felt a small object both sharp and round. I pulled it out and was looking at a pearl earring, something I had been looking for over the past eight months.
The pearl earrings were a sentimental gift from Albert’s mother; they were one of the very few pieces of jewelry that Albert’s grandmother had owned and worn when she was alive. Albert had been very close to his maternal grandmother. I never could bring myself to tell him that I had lost her earrings. Since losing them, we had moved to a new apartment, and I was sure that Albert’s grandmother’s earrings were lost to me forever. I felt ashamed. Albert would never forgive me. And I would hate to look careless in front of Albert, lest he should turn on his superiority charm.
So I was thrilled to find that earring, and wondering how the hell it got there made me forget my pelvis and my irritation. Then I reached into the pocket of my bathrobe and found the other earring. I was amazed at this stroke of fortune. I called Albert into the bedroom and told him the whole story about how I had lost and searched for his grandmother’s earrings for moths; only in that moment of intense labor sensation, the earrings just appeared. This convinced us that our ancestors were watching over this birth.
Suddenly I felt nauseous and told Albert to hurry and get me a bag to puke in. He came back with a bag. While I was puking, my water broke and splashed all over the floor near the bed. “Wow!” Albert said through tears triggered by the memory of his grandmother, “this means we’re going to have a baby within 24 hours! Right?” Albert and I finally believed I was in real labor. Excited, I paged Martine. Now we could get the birthday party started.
Martine came and unpacked all her things. She sat down, checked my blood pressure, and soothed me with a soft hand run through my hair. Martine made me feel secure because she sees birth almost every day. She merely needed to be present, and I felt safe. Maybe it wasn’t her intention but through Martine’s touch, she forfeited to me her confidence and strength. Later, during my post-partum high, I told Martine she had seemed to me like an otherworldly birth goddess that night. Deb, my doula, came prepared with her “bag of tricks.” She provided a supportive “talk through” method of guiding me through contractions. Theses two women excited me that night with their expert, professional, and sagacious female energy.
Around midnight I started to lose my mind. But it was a good kind of insanity. I felt a strange sort of ecstasy, a distance from the world. Sensations urged me on; I felt a profound sense of focus: nothing—not a labor pain nor a natural disaster—could distract me from the job of delivering this child. I felt free to moan and command my body to open. I felt more authoritative and powerful than I have ever felt in all my life. This was hard work, but I could not judge it as such while in the throes of the sensations. I became all sensation, and some benevolent force kept reminding me that I am, and we are, the Great Beast, the mother of all beasts.
I acted beastly, too. I endured the intense pelvic pressure on all fours; I relinquished all ability to communicate with civil words and roared the one word “Open.” Roaring felt good and Deb reminded me, “Open throat, open vagina.” Later, we all wondered if the neighbors heard anything. Lucky for me, they were out of town. With all the barf and fecal matter that comes out while birthing a child, I didn’t really need the humiliation of what the neighbors might be thinking. But while I made those monstrous sounds, I wondered if someone was going to call the cops. After the birth, I had to suck on throat drops for two weeks and couldn’t sing to my babe without sounding like Tom Waits gargling a beef-flavored martini.
While my body worked on, Deb held my hand and Martine sat quietly observing. Twice, Martine suggested I stick my finger inside to feel my baby’s head. My finger could travel the birth canal up to my middle knuckle before I felt a hard skull. At that point I felt dread and thought, “Ugh! There’s a million miles to go yet.” Martine never announced how many centimeters dilated. She never used the word cervix. She never wondered, “how far apart are they?” She kept her calculations to herself and trusted me to get my job done. Fuck a cervix that dilates by centimeters, anyway; I was opening by the mile! Time passed and the second time I could put my finger inside up to the first knuckle, I felt the baby’s head, and was convinced of progress.
I sensed Martine’s trust in me, and that compelled me to kiss her hand. While on all fours, I couldn’t use human words to tell my midwife and doula that I thought they were just beautiful. I resorted to a gesture. I kissed their hands, they’re lovely hands that have been so helpful in so many other births. I felt grateful for their hands, and my mind was so clear and feeling all lovey-dovey toward the world—a complete turnaround from the bitter mood earlier that evening in the bathtub.
Sometime around 3:00 a.m., I got into the birth tub that Albert had finally finished filling. We had run out of hot water, so he had to heat water in a kettle on the stove. This kept him busy; he had no time to get anxious. By the time I entered the tub, all bodily sensations revolted me. But the water soothed and helped me surrender to whatever sensations might be worse than what I was already feeling. Around this time my second midwife arrived; Martine and Karen have a partnership, and they had switched off visiting me in my home throughout my pregnancy. When she arrived, Karen squatted down next to me while I was in the tub and she said, “When the second midwife arrives, that’s a good sign.” That’s all she needed to say, and I felt inwardly relaxed, confident, and grateful at the same time the struggle was getting tougher.
The birth process eventually progressed to the bearing down phase. I had no idea what “bearing down” really meant, but this was no time to ask. I felt a powerful urge to drive a tempest out of my body. During this phase, I swear the baby’s head was slipping back up toward the womb. Martine explained that the baby was respecting my vagina, moving like a corkscrew. “So you can have more children in the future,” someone added. If I weren’t too busy roaring and crying I would have laughed at that comment. My mind, indeed, was laughing and feeling quite blissful in its own world, while my body endured the struggle. Thinking back, I credit my years of Yoga and meditation practice as having helped my mind go elsewhere while I gave birth. And if counting 108 Kegel exercises twice a day for seven months on prayer beads, while chanting to Krishna Das’ music—not that I am very religious, though I can be quite superstitious—may sound hokey, it worked for me!
While writhing and groaning in the birth tub, I looked up out the Western window and there was a perfect, full moon. The moonlight amused me so much that I felt I could articulate something in words. “Look! A full moon! We’ve chosen to name her Selena. Selena was a Greek moon goddess.” And she chose to arrive under a full moon.
After that, it seemed the whole universe got real quiet. Martine told me to be sure I face my backside to her during the next contraction so that when the baby comes she could pass her through my legs like a center pass in football. This is the only way that I knew Selena was ready to make her final exit from my body and her grand entrance into the world. “You can cry if you want. Do whatever it takes to move it all down to your bottom.” Martine told me. I conjured all my strength and told myself I was larger than Life. Give birth! After her head was out, Selena’s body slipped with ease through the birth canal and into the warm water. Words really fail to communicate this brilliant, mad, terrible, ecstatic rush.
At 5:29 a.m. on Sunday, November 25, I held my baby in my arms. She looked up at me as if the journey meant little more to her than a walk in the park. Her eyes met mine instantly; she was alert and searching, searching for something. My breasts! Food. My daughter wanted a meal, or at least she was eager to explore the nipple, the instant she was born. So I pulled her in close to the breast for the first half hour after her birth—the best moments of my life. Selena did not cry upon entering this world. When she opened her mouth, it was to show off her rooting reflex. Her first expression in this world was, “Let’s eat!”
We did as Selena wished. Albert fed me rice porridge that I had asked him to prepare for me and that I nibbled throughout labor. Selena looked for and sucked on the nipple. I never had a problem with my milk coming in.
I delivered the placenta on dry land about ten minutes after Selena. My midwives encouraged me to feel the chord, feel it pulsing, the blood rushing into my darling girl’s body. Albert cut the cord only after the placenta was delivered and the pulsing stopped. Martine did not only examine the placenta, she admired it. Then she discovered I hadn’t torn, only small lacerations. Martine even gave me a little bow while saying “First-time mother!” Martine, Karen, and Deb agreed that I should feel proud of myself. Even Albert—who is generous, but not with praises—said, “Good job, Rebecca.” Those words from him made the whole pregnancy and labor that much more worthwhile.
I like to think that Selena’s graceful entry into this world makes a significant impact on her life. When she nurses, I like to caress her and repeat this little phrase: “Charmed birth. Charmed life.” Karen once told me that home birth is not for everybody, and I understand why. My wish, these days, is for every mother-to-be to enjoy as smooth and happy birth journey as I had with Selena.
Rebecca Jane
New York City, 2008