Beliefs about Birth

Birth is powerful.

Birth is beautiful.

Birth is empowering.

Birth is private.

Birth is light.

Birth is spiritual.

Birth is primal.

Birth is going to the point of no return and then beyond.

Birth is finding out that you can do more than you ever imagined possible.

Birth is taking part in the plan of happiness.

Birth is becoming partners with God.

Birth is dark.

Birth is taking one step into the darkness and then another, and another, and another.

Birth is the embodiment of love.

Birth is an expression of love.

Birth is the result of love.

Birth is transcendent power.

Birth is individual.

Birth is collective.

My list of sentences is somewhat representative of a contraction. It begins small, grows to a crescendo and then wanes small again and, like a contraction, it is not perfectly symmetrical. In this list, I see some opposites including: light and dark; individual and collective; primal and transcendent power. Birth is that way. You can feel powerful and yet helpless at the same time. You can be part of the act of creation while at the same time you might be ripped apart (mostly figuratively but possibly literally).

My beliefs about birth have evolved both as I was having my babies and after as I have learned more. I really wish that I had learned at a much earlier time the things I now know because my birth experiences would have been even better. None of my birth experiences were bad but none of them were entirely my own, either.

When I had my first child, I was young and I had never heard of midwives. My doctor was one of a group practice in which there were three doctors. I liked my doctor alright and the one other one I met I didn’t like at all. As luck would have it, I got the third doctor whom I had never met when I went to the hospital. That turned out quite alright because he ended up being my favorite. The birth was not my own because I was in the foreign world of the hospital. Until the moment I entered in labor, I can remember having been in it twice: once when my dad was diagnosed with diabetes and once for an ultrasound. My mother gave birth to my younger sisters there but I wasn’t allowed to see her then and when she had gall bladder surgery, I saw her through a window but that was my only contact with her while she was there. So, it was foreign to me. I did not know what to expect. Because it was foreign and it was a hospital and in hospitals doctors reign supreme, I do not feel that I really owned the experience. However, I did manage to push my baby out when I had been told I would have to have a cesarean birth. So, in that respect, it was at least partly mine.

When I remarried, my new husband was very controlling and one of his methods was to keep me out of the hospital. Personally, I was okay with that because I figured women had been giving birth for eons out of the hospital so what difference did it make if I wasn’t in one? The birth of my second daughter was, in spite of the fact it was at home, still not something I could own as mine because the husband was there and he was controlling it just as much as he could.

I can begin claiming a bit more of each subsequent birth.  For the birth of my third daughter, we had a wonderful midwife and I think she instinctively knew that all was not well in the relationship between me and my husband. He was still there but wasn’t the driving force behind what I was doing: I was coming into my own and was doing more what I felt was right. I’d done more reading before this birth and was slightly better prepared.

For the birth of my fist son, I was on hands and knees. I hadn’t really done any more reading but I remembered some of the things I had read previously and hands and knees was one of the things I remember. It was nice. It took the pressure off my back and helped open things up so that my largest baby to that point was able to be born with minimal tearing.

The next birth was even better. We had another midwife and I did a lot of reading in a short time. A lot of reading. I learned about visualizing and because I was able to use what I learned, the birth of my fourth daughter was more my own.

My second son was born as we were driving to the midwife. He was in a hurry and I was actively trying not to push. I wanted a water birth and wasn’t going to get one in the van. It was during this experience that I learned what the ‘ring of fire’ really meant and I learned that babies can and are born without the mother actively pushing.

The next birth, that of my third son, was again at home, but before our midwife arrived. For this birth, I felt like I was in effect being my own midwife as well as pushing a baby out. It was not a fun experience and in spite of the fact that all turned out alright, I would not want to do it again.

The birth of my eighth child, my fourth son was more an experience I could call my own. Finally I was getting the water birth I had been dreaming of since I’d read a book about water birth by Dr. Michel Odent. When I was in the water, I was in my own space. I was free. The husband I knew I needed to leave had no control over the situation. I got out of the water when I felt I needed to walk down the street and I got back in the water when I was too uncomfortable out of it. It wasn’t entirely my own but it was more so than any of the others and it was wonderful.

If I had known then what I know now, I would have been able to own these experiences to a much greater degree than I was at the time.