birth_stories ovenbird Fourteen years ago on this very day I moved a life through my body and into this world. How can such a commonplace thing carry such awesome (awful) power? Fourteen years ago I stood on the dividing line between life and death. Labour started at the magic hour of midnight, so slow and kind at first that I wondered why everyone thought birth was such an ordeal. I spent the first ten hours in the bath. All night I stayed awake, a silent vigil, the minutes marked by the peaks and valleys of gentle contractions that hardly registered as pain. I didn’t know what was coming so I didn’t know to be afraid. I did not intend to go to a hospital unless I absolutely had to. I needed darkness, and music, and hot running water, and solitude to birth my baby. I needed to feel everything that was happening to me in order to believe I could survive. I was more afraid of numbness than pain so I steadfastly refused pain relief of any kind. By mid morning my contractions were close enough together to summon my midwife and doula. They came with their warm blankets and confidence and I held tight to their guidance. Their eyes were small flares that showed me the shore. There was an anchor in my doula’s calm and steady voice: “What you are feeling is exactly right. You are safe.” I believed her. I believed her even as the contractions came so frequently that there was no break from the pain. Before I gave birth my doula taught me something that I have carried ever since. There is a difference between pain and suffering. Pain is the physical sensation, suffering is what happens in your mind. You can navigate pain without also suffering, because suffering is a product of fear and anxiety and hopelessness. If you feel supported and seen and known you can move through the physical experience of pain without the mental experience of suffering. And so I gave my animal body over to the care of women who knew birth intimately. I trusted them and they watched over me with deep compassion. There was pain. There was pain more extraordinary than anything I have ever experienced. I was taught to sing through it, to let my voice be low and gutteral, a rumbling vibration that would give my pelvic floor permission to relax. Sound came through me that I didn’t know I was capable of making. It was terrifying and exhilarating and wild. There is a point in birth called transition. This is the most intense phase where contractions happen every minute and last 60-90 seconds so that they are literally coming on top of each other. There is rapid dilation. This is the point where many people believe they can’t go on and when I reached this precipice I thought I would die. My whole body was shaking so hard I wondered if I was having a seizure. I vomited repeatedly. I began to panic. I said, “I can’t do it, I can’t do it,” over and over and at the same time felt connected to every human body that had birthed before me. My doula was unwavering. “You ARE doing it,” she said and there was no going back. No time now for epidurals or hospitals or second guessing. I was going to experience every sensation whether I wanted to or not, the building pressure, the overwhelming terror, the sense of unbridled power that was rising within me accompanied by wolf-like snarls. I paced the room on four legs, I arched my back, I howled. I’m not sure anything in me was human then. I was ancient. I wish, sometimes, that I could have stayed there, inside the peak of my own strength, inside my body where my mind could not even get a toe hold. I was alive and triumphant in that moment of birth when my baby came wailing onto the earth. And when the pain was gone my mind returned with all its tormenting thoughts and worries and darkness. And that’s when I suffered. But I won’t visit that now. Today is the birthing_day. The day when I was sinew and muscle and whale-song. Love was so powerfully present that day. Love for my baby making his way to my arms, love for my body that brought him here, and awe wrapped us both in its expansive arms and I thought, “I will never doubt my own strength again.” And now when I falter, I remember, and I know there is a way to go on. 260209 ... epitome of incomprehensibility Happy birth day to you, and happy birthday to your oldest! ... Not just to ovenbird, now, but this made me think how people create bonds by sharing these stories, even in times when giving birth is/was thought of as something private and even embarrassing (not always women vs. men, but sometimes), and how important it is because it helps people gather knowledge on the many similarities and differences of this experience. ...That thought sounded more profound in my head. Now it just seems obvious. ... But an example. When Mom was in labour with me - a story she often tells - one of the medical staff interrupted her concentration by saying something about oxygen and needing a C-section. Mom: "But I don't want a C-section." The woman talking to her (I forget her exact role): "Your baby's in danger." Then her surge of worry; their surge of hurry; signing a paper for the operation; sedation. Just a little less sing-song-rhymey. The problem was that my umbilical cord was wrapped twice around my neck, choking me, something rare but possible. Poor Dad, when he saw Mom being wheeled away, either cried or fainted; his words or my memory have produced two stories. Now he doubts the fainting bit. But yes. The operation went well, but when Mom woke up, she was shivering, and for the first few minutes she couldn't speak to ask for a blanket. Or how her baby was. I was a priority, but so was warmth. And that makes sense. ... So it's common to have times of distance or separation from a child, even near the beginning of things. Mom did get a more regular experience of birth with my brother. (He got a laugh as a kid by asking, after she told the story of my birth, "But what about me?") Later, to me, she mentioned the "embarrassing" problem of throwing up in labour with Y. - from eating popsicles, she suspected. But people are so different: some can eat large meals beforehand and not feel nauseous. Either way, no shame for her, for anyone; everyone is grime and slime sometimes. (I've never had a baby, but my nose right now is a snot factory. I'm telling it not to produce so much - the product doesn't perform well in today's market - but it's not listening.). ... But back to the first entry. I just want to say this story is amazing in how it combines all the good and bad, the grounded and sublime feelings. 260209 ... ovenbird Thank you for your kind words e_o_i and thank you for sharing the story of your own birth. I completely agree that there is a profound power in telling these stories to each other. 260209 what's it to you? who go blather from