The Birth Essay ~ A Story of Perfection

Enjoying a wierdly warm January...
Most of the time, looking after my busy toddler keeps me very much in the present moment. Everything for a two year old is immediate, "I would like to do it right NOW," Sky says politely, but emphatically. Often it's difficult to remember what Sky was like just a few months ago, to say nothing of a few years ago. The moments that bring me back to those early challenging and ecstatic times are poignant, and I am surprised that my feelings are still so strong. This essay about Sky's birth was originally written in the summber of 2005, although I revised it substantially this month. I wanted to post it right around Sky's birthday (Nov. 21), but his party, and Thanksgiving, and Christmas, and life kept getting in the way. So now it's February and here is the Birth essay--finally. This essay is a bit intense (a reflection of my feelings at the time) and a bit long. If you don't have the patience for either, please just take a look at the pictures (how quickly time moves) and read the last few paragraphs -- the part about joy. Blessings, C.-)

Over the last few days, my sister Lizzie has been calling me with updates on the labour and challenging c-section birth that a friend of ours has experienced. In the process of hearing this story, I have been processing my still complex feelings about birthing Sky, which have run the gamut of emotions from (early on) feeling jealous of our friend's then smooth labour, to now feeling deeply sad for her. There is a flow of grief for myself and Sky as well, rising from small hidden places within. I know that when I talk to my friend, or to Lizzie, I need to not project my own sense of failure & anger about Skyler’s birth onto her birth experience. I need, instead, to be able to just listen to their experience. But, I also need a space & place to process my own ambivalence & continued feelings about birthing Sky. Here is the space and place.

The first layer of feeling is grief. I feel profound sadness that, despite planning, hope, and doing the right things, Sky needed to be born in the hospital. I feel this deep sense of loss for the peaceful centered birth experience I wanted for us both. I grieve for the loss of joy in this miraculous event. I feel sadness on Sky’s behalf, that he needed to have a challenging birth, that his first experience of this world was difficulty, bright lights, stranger’s hands, loud noises. A fetal monitor in his soft head. A suction tube down his throat. I cry as I write these words, as I imagine his experience. But this grief is gentle, simple in its way, easy to express and process. Acceptable to talk about. This grief is a mourning in waves for what couldn’t be, and for the distress my tiny, beautiful baby felt.

Next there is anger: Anger at the medical community for pushing interventions, for the entire hospital experience that made me need to FIGHT to have as natural a birth as possible. Anger and betrayal at the midwives, who seemed to support the medical model of acceptable interventions, who didn’t explain the dangers, who encouraged me to accept aggressive interventions like pitocin & the epidural I ended up having after the pitocin levels became so high that my uterus stopped releasing in between contractions. I feel anger and frustration also at the hospital environment: TV on in the admitting room, constant monitoring & interruptions, invasive plastic unnatural world & a lack of understanding of how sad these things made me feel. And I feel fury at the Doctors and Nurses who so often didn’t understand my reluctance to ‘take advantage’ of the medical options available, and who terrified me into believing that I was endangering Sky’s life by resisting fetal monitoring and pitocin and all the rest. And would he have died without all that? Would he have been born c-section? Did I endanger Sky by agreeing to the interventions that seemed so necessary? Or did I endanger him by resisting interventions that saved his life?

Equally powerful, and much more hidden, is my anger at natural childbirth advocates, at my wonderful and supportive midwife/doula sister Lizzie, at mothering magazine, at Sears and Sears, at myself. This anger is intense and complicated to express ~ I really believe that the ‘best’ birth choice, for most Moms & Babies, is a natural, un-medicated birth in home or a home-like setting. Of course, the ‘best’ birth actually, is the birth that Mom and Baby survive! And that is why these unanswerable questions about my birth experience become so important. Did I make the right choice? I listen to Lizzie questioning some of the interventions that seemed pushed on our friend, I listen to her talk about how strong our friend seemed, despite the midwives insistence that she was getting tired and needed something to help her along, and I feel anger rising. Projecting Lizzie’s observations about our friend’s birth onto my own birth experience, makes me question even more the choices I made. I feel anger towards this idea of what makes a ‘good’ birth, anger for making me feel like I didn’t fight hard enough; made toxic choices; should have had a home birth; failed at being a ‘natural mother’. I am angry with anyone, or any ideology, that makes me feel guiltier than I already do for a birth that I cannot change.

And the first, last & deepest difficult feeling here is guilt—that depth of guilt that only being a Mom seems to be able to bring. I feel guilty that I failed, somehow my body failed us both and I was not able to give Sky the natural birth he (& I) deserved. I feel guilty about the hot-tub I sat in for a few minutes the night before labor started, guilty that I didn’t rest enough or take enough herbs or really push my midwife to acknowledge what I knew—that I was leaking something (which of course turned out to be amniotic fluid), when I saw her earlier in the day, before my water broke—guilty that I caused the ‘fetal distress’ which caused the merconium, which led us to being admitted to the hospital instead of the birth center. Guilty that I made wrong choices during my labor, that the fetal monitoring, the pitocin, or not choosing a home birth from the beginning, caused the need for ongoing interventions. That these interventions may be the reason for the seizures that Sky deals with now. Or maybe I didn’t allow early enough interventions, & the oxygen problems we had late in labor caused some brain wave disruption. I worry so much, so deeply & so secretly that, somehow, the choices I made during labor upset the delicate processes of his growing brain. I know there is a part of me that will always be looking for the next problem--the problem caused by my bad choice. This is why I cannot hear Lizzie’s report on the dangers of pitocin. This is why I feel angry at her for saying that she doesn’t really understand why the midwives are encouraging our friend to have the epidural & rest—because I don’t want to hear (for sure, to confirm) that the choices I made have potentially caused damage to my most precious baby. This is the most difficult feeling, the hardest to speak of, or acknowledge.

And finally, after the expression of all these challenging feelings, is resolution. There was a moment during Sky’s birth when I stopped fighting for howI thought things should be, when I surrendered to what was. After an epidural to help manage the very high levels of pitocin I was getting, I remember looking down at myself, and weeping. I was lying flat on my back, unable to feel the lower part of my body, with a six-inch needle in my back, two internal monitors (one screwed into the top of Sky’s sensitive head, monitoring his heartbeat, another monitoring my contractions), a blood pressure cuff, a pulse monitor on my finger, a pitocin drip in my arm, unable to move. The bright florescent lights were on and the room was filled with people in white coats. “Look at me,” I said to Erik, “look at me,” I cried as I slowly fell asleep after 36 hours of labor ~ this was as far from the natural, warm, private, waterbirth I had imagined as possible. I woke a few hours later because the nurse was placing an oxygen mask over my face. Sky’s heart rate was failing and he needed oxygen. In this terrifying moment, I let go, I surrendered. I stopped fighting for what I thought I wanted from this birth, and I came fully into the reality of fighting for my baby. Okay, I said to myself, to the nurses, to the Divine, okay, whatever it takes.

And here is my resolution, my surrender. I cannot change what happened for Sky’s birth. I do feel that this was the birth Sky needed. He chose this birth, as much as I did. And there is deep joy here as well. Just as I was entering transition, I started feeling my contractions, and it became clear that I had pulled the epidural needle from my back. During the next 3 plus hours of pushing, I was aware and moving, able to walk and stand and push and moan and feel each contraction, able to feel Sky coming into this world. I touched his soft damp head as he crowned & held his slippery skinny body as the midwife cut the cord. He was wrapped close to my body, skin against skin, as he gazed into my eyes. He was peaceful almost right away. Strong and healthy, alert and aware, he looked around with that powerful, knowing Scorpio gaze. He saw me. He saw Erik. He saw Mom. He knew us all. He knew me, heard my heart, nursed and slept. I celebrate the joyful miracle of this small being emerging from my body, already so much his own unique self.

This is what I want to take away from my experience and story, every time. Not the knowledge of what I want different ‘next time’. Not self-recrimination for the choices I made, or anger for choices I felt were pushed on me. But joy in the beautiful baby who was born and faith that Sky and I had exactly the right experience. Faith in Sky, and in myself, that we did, and are, making exactly the right choices for ourselves, for our health & our happiness. I need to remind myself of what I know—that birth is a rite of passage, that the underworld had to be present in some form, that surrender is more important that control, that the divine held me and Sky ~ and holds us still.

Finally, I take a breath. I want to hold for our friend, and for all mothers, that the divine does not desert us in the challenge, but instead holds the joy for us while we focus on what needs to be done. When we are ready, we open our arms and our hearts and the joy is there, waiting to be welcomed. And this is what I want to remember from Sky’s birth. The smell of iron and roses. The ecstasy in the moment of his actual birth. The joy of looking at Sky for the first time, of holding is small body, of marveling at his perfect long fingers, cleft chin, and blue eyes. The way he has opened my heart. I want to hold onto the deep knowledge that Sky’s birth was what it needed to be, and was therefore perfect.