My dear, gentle little fourth baby. He came to me unexpectedly. His birth was a great gift, one he gave to me. A gift I did not anticipate fully.
He was gentle and easy on my body. We were a team, we were in it together. I spoke to him in labor, asking him to move down, to help me open to release him into the world. I felt so strong during his birth. I felt like a birthing goddess, the Feminine Divine.
I have two clear visual images of snapshot moments during his birth.
The first: I was sitting in the warm birth pool. The living room of the birth house was dim. My midwives had just arrived with hugs and smiles. My doula and husband were both quietly sitting behind me, ready to support me if I needed it. The single table lamp in front of me bathed the dark room in warm light. I looked down at my round belly, covered in delicate vines and flowers of henna. I closed my eyes and felt my body's strength flowing through me, opening my hips. I thought of my cervix, opening like a loose soft golden ring to allow my baby to come through. I felt like a beautiful birthing goddess. I felt peace and acceptance for where I was.
And then, not long after: I was up on the bed, reared back on my knees with hands clutching my belly. I could feel my baby moving down. It felt like a bowling ball dropping through my pelvis, pressing on my butt. I roared and it felt like power and strength. I felt overwhelmed with the sensation of pressure but felt no fear, only intensity. I roared to open my body and let that pressure build and drop lower and lower.
Until - out he came. There was simply no stopping him. He surprised even the midwives. I suddenly hollered "I have to change positions" and Josh got out of my way and I dove forward, onto my belly, and the pushing was happening without my volition. Everett was coming on his own, his body working in harmony with mine and my brain played no part in it except a moment when I felt his head emerge and briefly thought "I know I'm supposed to slow this down but I can't stop!" and then his body slipped from mine, sliding on to the bed in a gush of fluid and new life.
And it was right, it was what it was meant to be. My first words were "That felt so good!!" because it did. It felt so good to have pushed that baby out and the biggest rush of relief and ecstasy. And I could not at all believe it had happened, that the birth was done. It never felt unbearably or overwhelmingly difficult like the last time. It felt intense and strong but manageable.
But: to back things up to the beginning, to go in chronological order somewhat.
Early labor began in the morningtime. I had laid down for a nap when Virgil went down to nap and felt some crampy twinges. I had been having many Braxton Hicks contractions, some quite uncomfortable, but not usually in the morning. I let my birth team - Hannah, my doula, Karen my midwife, Karen's partner midwife Wetawnya and apprentice Sileah - know that today might be the day.
Early labor was wrought with some anxiety and a great deal of running around, preparing, trying to eat lunch, wrangling rowdy children. I kept doubting myself, "Is this really labor?" then when I would pay attention to a contraction, I knew it was real. In early afternoon, we headed to the birth house with Maggie in tow, Virgil home with my doula friend Kimmi.
Hannah arrived and could sense the tension in the air. Maggie was feeding off my anxious energy, in addition to her own fears around birth, and Hannah gently suggested that maybe having her there was not conducive to me laboring peacefully. It broke my heart momentarily and Maggie was very upset for a little while, but she recovered well and it was soon clear that her being home was the best option for all of us.
Hannah and I spent time together talking. Labor felt like it had stalled out. I was hitting an emotional wall, fearful to go on. We ate dinner - pizza (which about 12 hours later gave Josh and Hannah food poisoning, unfortunate timing!). Hannah left to get coffee so Josh and I could enjoy alone time and make good use of natural prostaglandins to encourage my cervix to soften. I took a shower, tried to nap. At one point, I sank to my knees on the floor and pressed my forehead to the cold wood floor. I was terrified of what was ahead. I did not want to do this. I wanted to go back to normalcy and being pregnant and not worrying about a baby coming out of my vagina. It felt like too much.
Josh was asleep when Hannah got back, around 8 pm. We had been at the birth house almost six hours and nothing had happened.
As we sat in the living room, Hannah gently prompted me to speak out my fears and bore witness to each fear as I wrote it and spoke it and released it with tears of relief. Hannah knew, from our many talks prenatally, that I had struggled with trauma from Virgil's birth. During Virgil's birth, I felt absolutely alone and afraid. I felt unsafe. I felt that I was lost in the darkness, swallowed by despair. The petrifying feeling of that darkness haunted me for days after his birth. I feared for his death, I feared for my own death. I was afraid, deeply so.
As I sat there at the birth house, I realized that yes, I was afraid to birth again, but more than that I was afraid to walk through that darkness alone again. I realized I had not asked my Higher Power to be with me during Virgil's birth. So with Everett, I asked. I was so afraid to ask because what if I asked and did not receive? But with Hannah first asking if she could pray for me, and my acceptance of her blessing upon me, I found the bravery to ask for Presence, to ask for Strength. I hoped for a vision, as my dear friend had had a month ago during her labor to birth her baby girl, to show me the presence of God in my labor.
That fear release made a night and day difference. If ever I doubted the mind-emotion-body connection in birth, it was fully confirmed with this. Before we began talking, there was no labor happening. By the end of the hour of fear-releasing, I was having rushes strong enough that I needed to stand and rock through them. I was ready for the midwives to come. I knew Everett was on his way and I welcomed my labor with a smile and excitement, finally.
For awhile, labor felt so good in straddling the couch, sinking into it facing the back with my knees spread and belly sinking down as I grasped underneath it, feeling the pressure and tension wrapped around my lower belly. Then it felt so good getting down on the ground on all fours. Then sitting on the toilet after peeing. Then laying with my head in Josh's lap, a soft rebozo shawl draped over me. I often wanted Hannah's hand to hold during rushes so she came back and forth from living room to kitchen, beginning to prepare hot water for the birth tub (which Maggie had helped set up and inflate earlier in the day) and coming to hold my hand when I felt a rush coming strong.
I suddenly was completely ready to be in the tub and sank in, face and belly down, knees bent and feet pointed to the ceiling, hanging my head and arms over the edge. It felt so good like that and Hannah sat on a chair in front of me and held my hand when I needed it and when I said "Strong. My body is so strong," she affirmed and echoed that right back to me. I truly felt that the waves rushing over me were strength, not pain. Josh pressed into my lower back when I asked; feeling the counter pressure such a good relief and exactly what I needed as the intensity mounted and the power of my body wrapped from front to back and around my hips in radiating heat.
My midwives arrived. Karen checked Everett's heart tones through a contraction as I sat in the tub. They all quietly settled in and labor continued on, as I shifted to sitting cross legged in the tub, focusing inward on letting my body soften and open and asking my baby to move down through me.
Then I was done with the tub and I left it and never thought about it again. I was in the bathroom, moaning on the toilet, more staccato and low now. I found it funny, because I sounded like our 12 month old Virgil when he would moan in the car, tired but trying to keep himself awake. Wetawnya said, "I can tell by your noises that you are getting close!" and I felt absolutely furious because I was nowhere near the end! There was just no way. Things had not gotten hard enough and I had not panicked and I had not suffered at all yet, not like I remembered with Virgil.
Someone asked me where I wanted to birth and I could hardly register the question in my mind but somehow managed to dazedly say I'd maybe like to be in the bed in the purple room but I didn't know I didn't know.
It was amazing to have no timeline. No idea when things would end or what progress had been made. No one asked to check my cervix. There were a couple moments when I thought "how much longer do I have to do this??" and I wanted to know what my cervix was doing, how far I had progressed, but I remembered that assigning a number to my progress would not help. I was able to mentally recalibrate and tell myself that I needed to just submit to what was happening and whatever it would be. I was grateful that Hannah never told me how far along I was or gave any indication of how much time had passed or how much labor was likely left to go. It helped me stay in labor land, to move onward without fear of the future or thought of what might come next.
Then I was there in the bed. It was time to lay down, I knew. I laid on my side, very still. Josh was next to me I think, Hannah was near the bed, no one was touching me. I felt waves of the most intense rushes carrying me forward. It was the strongest they had been. I hiccuped, and Hannah said that often was a signal that transformation was upon me - which I barely was able to register. It did not feel like I could be that close to the end so I paid it little mind. I lay still, waves rushing over me, and a vision came to me. I saw myself as a mountain climber, reaching close to a great summit. I was attached by ropes to the top of the mountain and at the top, there was God, pulling me up the last bit as the strength of the contraction crested through my body and peaked. It was the most spiritual experience I've ever had, in the depth of the physical intensity that was transforming my body. I had the vision that I had asked for.
Not long after, I remember standing in the hallway, shaking uncontrollably. I think transition may have been upon me, as my body stretched the last bit it needed to open for my baby I felt surrounded in love by my midwives and husband and doula. Hannah asked me to open my eyes and look at her and she spoke of how I was strong and that I was doing this. I laid on the bed after that moment and closed my eyes said "I feel so safe and loved." I felt the opposite of what I had felt during Virgil's birth. I felt I was okay and what was happening was okay and that all would be well.
Not long after, it was time for him to come. I felt his body dropping through my pelvis. I yelled "where is Karen??" knowing that if she was not in the room, it meant it wasn't time for the baby to come out yet! I was up on my knees, feeling the pressure of him dropping. Instinctively, without thought, I reached inside myself and felt my bag of waters bulging. I must have borne down (none of my pushing was a logical process, it was all purely my body doing it of its own accord) and my waters burst onto the bed. I felt unsteady, slipping around on the chux pads laid down to protect the bed from my wetness. I hollered "I want the birth pause!" panicking to make my post-birth wishes known, and Hannah knew I meant that I wanted to be the one to pick up my baby first after he was born, not have him "caught" and handed to me.
I reached inside myself again and felt my baby's head and it felt impossibly far away and I recalled a birth I had attended where the pushing took hours and I felt frustrated that he seemed so far away and thought it would be so hard to get him out and would take so long.
I must have been bearing down more but it felt like I did not think at all, I simply felt the pressure and tried to relax and let it drop down and down and down until it felt my bottom would fall off completely. And then with a rush - I yelled that I needed to change positions - and dove face first onto the bed, flat on my belly, knees bent and feet pointed in the air - and he rushed out of me in a mighty whoosh. The glorious fetal ejection reflex had happened! Eight minutes had elapsed between my water releasing - the beginning of pushing - and birth.
So he was born and it felt so good and I rolled over onto my back after a minute and reached down and picked up his slippery crying body and said "Oh hello I love you baby I love you!" over and over and kissed his face and marveled at the vernix caked on his body, a coating of white birth day frosting.
He had not yet opened his eyes and was crying but one of his lungs did not sound properly inflated when Karen checked, so she asked if she could blow gently into his mouth and I said yes - and I watched as she placed her mouth to his and softly breathed into him. I think maybe there is no greater visual image of the bond between midwife and birthing mother, the deep trust that grows within that relationship - because what trust there must be, to place your lips upon a fresh unwashed baby covered in his mother's birthing fluids and vaginal flora? What doctor in a hospital would administer such tender, trusting care?
Everett pinked up and breathed just fine after that, he had just had such a quick exit that his lungs needed that extra help to adjust to the outside world. When time came to cut his umbilical cord, limp and white as it had done its job of nourishing him for thirty-seven weeks and had pulsed all his blood back into his newborn body, I decided that I wanted to be the one to sever the physical tie between my body and that of my baby. I cut, and we were two people rather than one.
I couldn't believe he was here and that he had been so kind to me in his birth. I felt he had given me a gift with the ease of it all. I marveled out loud at how good my bottom felt! And indeed, no tearing despite his hasty exit.
Josh and I gloried in our new baby and lay undisturbed for a long time before I felt ready to get up and shower off and pee and have the baby checked and weighed. As I was getting up to go to the bathroom, Wetawnya exclaimed, "Oh look how sweet he is!" And Everett was laying wrapped in the towel on the bed, eyes wide and wondering, quietly observing the room. Looking at this new world he had entered. My littlest boy. My last baby. My unexpected gift.
I have little doubt that the beauty of his birth had much to do with how little I was disturbed. There were no interventions, natural or otherwise. I was the one who birthed my baby, no one else did any of it. No one touched me unless I asked them to. No one asked to check my cervix. The passageway of my body was touched only by myself and my baby. No one told me how or when to push. No one told me to sit here or stand there or move this way. No one could have predicted that my baby needed to come out with me laying flat on my belly, but that was indeed right for the both of us. My body was almost unscathed, no tearing despite him being the biggest baby I have birthed.
I got to birth the way my body told me to. It healed and empowered me. I could finally let go of the pain and grief of Virgil's birth. This birth gave me the strength to survive a dark and difficult postpartum time, because I had glimpsed the depths of my power as a mother, as a woman.
Everett's birth is the kind of birth I wish for every mother. Empowered. Gentle. Full of respect and dignity, love and support. It inspires me, as I move forward in my work as a birth doula. It informs how I treat the birthing women I support. It is informing all aspects of my life, really.
We call Everett our "bonus" baby, now. He was the baby I didn't know I needed. His birth was what I could not have imagined. Such a gift.
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