The gist, if you don’t care to read it for yourself, is that the process of birth, if left relatively un-tampered with, is a powerful parallel experience to some parts of the journey through prayer to God.  In fact, she worries about the effect missing out on a “natural” birth may be having on the spiritual lives of the women of this country: “But when an overwhelming majority of women in the United States have unnecessarily scheduled or medically augumented births, we must ask: Do we lose a window to God?  A window to the interior life?  When the Holy Spirit initiates a spiritual birth to something greater within us, will any of us be able to say, ‘I’ve been here before?’”

Go to your library, or do what you have to, but read this article.  It makes me want to stop the pregnant women I see every time we go to the zoo (there are always a ton of pregnant women at the zoo!)  and ask if they have considered (really, carefully considered, with the benefit of good information) how they are going to bring their babies into the world.  I am convinced that childbirth is transformative.  I am convinced that God designed it to be that way.  Not easy.  Most things worth doing are at least a little hard.  But transformative, in part in preparation for the challenges the next many years of child rearing bring.  Perhaps, if Susan Windley-Daoust is right (and I think she is), in preparation especially for the spiritual challenges these little ones bring us.  I think she asks a very important question:  What are we, as a community of women, as a church of women, missing?

Anyway, if I knew someone who thought they didn’t have time to research birth choices, I would recommend this movie, and hopefully by the end of it they would realize they had to find time to do this sort of reading and research.  I found the discussion of the difference between the artificial hormones doctors use to induce labor and the natural hormones women get for and from labor particularly interesting.

Someday I’m going to get involved in what I like to think of as the “better birthing” movement…someday…maybe soon…

“We drove to that house, and Mommy pooped in the bathtub.  You (Mommy) did a good job.  And that was Samantha!”

And we laughed.

Later, I heard Craig doctoring Lucy’s scraped knees while I was feeding Samantha.  He said, among other things, and over her screams,

“You know, a lot of your pain is psychological.”

And I laughed.  Hard.  Never a dull moment here!

I have been musing on the implications of this sudden change for a few days now. Shortly before Samantha was born, I was having a conversation with a friend who is an artist and stay-at-home mom by trade about how now, as her daughter is reaching a year old, she is finally getting back the creative energy which had seemed lacking since the birth. I think we both attributed the difference to the fact that her energy was being spent breastfeeding and raising an infant when her husband is out of town much of the time. But after my experience over the last two weeks, I have started to wonder if there may be another factor in my own lack of creative energy than simple exhaustion.

The birth of our first daughter was not at all what I had expected or prepared for. We went through Bradley classes and were prepared to have an unmedicated and as uninterviened-upon a birth as the local hospitals and birth culture would allow. After twelve hours of labor in the hospital, our doctor realized that he had missed the fact that our daughter was in a breech position, and in a matter of seconds I went from a low risk, unmedicated annoyance to the nursing staff to an automatic C-section. It was devastating, to say the least, despite the fact that we ended up with a beautiful, healthy little girl and no major complications.

I’m not sure that that day was when I lost the creative impetus that I remember having in high school. It could have been earlier, in four years of undergraduate focused on other people’s research, or the year of master’s work when my eyes crossed almost daily from reading so many texts. There was little time for creating for pleasure when I had three or four 12-15 page papers to write each semester.

I should note at some point that the lack of creative feeling was never total. I sewed, sometimes with a vengeance, and throughout college I went out of my way to find and capture beauty with my camera. But I have, for too long I fear, been away from all non-academic expression of the word.

Long history aside, I wondered what could have happened in the last two weeks that would renew my desire to write. Why do I suddenly feel compelled to put words on a page, and why do care so much less what any given reader may think now than I did even a month ago? I’m not sure, but a have a couple of theories.

First, this may be simply pragmatic. I have experienced both ends of the birthing spectrum now, and have a desire to share this experience with others, so that they can share my joy and possibly avoid some of my suffering. What easier way to accomplish this than web publishing, and how else could I reach such a potentially large audience?

Perhaps I have been given a glimpse of how fragile life is and want to leave something behind. Perhaps I am merely hoping, like the ancient Romans, to have my name remembered by later generations, and writing seems like a good way to go about it.

I think it more likely, however, that this demonstrates yet another instance of how power, or an apparent lack thereof, can change a person’s perceptions and actions. When I was rolled into the operating room for Lucy’s birth, I was entirely powerless. Sure, I could have refused to sign the waivers or go through with the C-section. That never crossed my mind. From the moment they said “breech” I felt trapped. My baby was kept away from me for hours. I was physically incapable of even standing up to do anything about it if I had thought to. Bonding was difficult. Breastfeeding was difficult. I had no control over the way my child had come into the world, her first experiences, or how she was treated by the adults around her. It is almost an example of Maslow’s Hierarchy for a Psyc 101 class: when safety is not present, creativity is not a priority and will not be pursued.

The birth of my second daughter somehow seems to have exorcised these demons. I chose exactly how she would come into the world, and we were blessed enough to have a midwife who was supportive and caring and respected our wishes as long as they were reasonable. She did not deliver my baby, nor did she deliver me from my baby and the work of birthing her. She empowered me to birth my own baby exactly as my body directed me to. She allowed me to prove to myself that I am powerful. I have been granted by God the power to bring new life into the world by the amazing, overwhelming working of my body. It is a holy thing to labor, and yes, to suffer, in this work. I am convinced it was sanctifying in some small way. And the awareness of the power of my body to participate in creating something so astonishing as a tiny, helpless child with an immortal soul has surely convinced me that I am capable of creating, even if my medium be something so lowly as mere human words.

Less than two weeks ago, on November 5, our second daughter was born. Samantha Rose weighed 8lbs 4oz and was 20 inches long. She has a tuft of dark black hair, which shocked me after fair, bald baby we had met with in our first daughter. In any circumstances, she was our small miracle.

But for us, the circumstances of Samantha’s birth were a miracle in themselves. Our first daughter, Lucy, had decided to stay in a breech position, and I was forced into the Caeseran section I had spent months practicing and preparing for childbirth in order to avoid. V-BACs had fallen out of favor in the medical community, so finding a doctor who would even let me try to avoid a second C-section was a challenge. We found a good doctor who did a number of V-BACs each year, and were in the process of trying to make a “high-risk” hospital birth as peaceful and natural as possible. I was never comfortable with the situation, and was starting to lose sleep at the thought of going through the hospital birthing experience again.

At this point, when I was already five months pregnant, we heard about a midwife who was working across state lines where legal restrictions on birthing were not so stringent. We met her, and decided to have our baby in a borrowed home in another state in hopes of avoiding the spiraling interventions that might ruin another birth experience for me, and which I feared would damage the health of myself or my baby.

Our day came and we made the hour-long drive to the birth center. My husband’s parents met us there to watch Lucy, our two-year-old daughter. After sixteen hours of labor, our daughter was born in the water with her sister and grandmother watching. I gave birth supported very literally (he was holding me up in a squat) by the arms of my husband. Samantha went, in a matter of seconds, from my womb straight into my arms. Surrounded by family, she was welcomed into the world by warm water, skin, soft blankets, and quiet voices and laughter.

Just over a week later, our newly enlarged family piled in the car to go visit friends who were in town to stay with an ill grandmother. We were welcomed into our friend’s aunt’s home, where Granny was lying well-bundled in the living room. We greeted her and she asked how big the baby had been at birth and how we were doing. She took joy in the sight of this new life. The family treated us as one of them, and we joined in the vigil near the end of Granny’s long, love-filled life. When she passes, she will be surrounded by the caring faces and quiet prayers of her beloved children and grandchildren.

While I sat there in the midst of this family slowly grieving its matriarch, it dawned on me how blessed I was to be present at these two parallel events. A new little life entered the world, greeted by the joy of her own family, and a woman of long life and great love prepared for her next journey with the constant companionship of those she loved most in this world. Both were free from the harsh impersonality of the hospital scene. Both enjoyed the peace that comes with being surrounded by loved ones. Two of what can be and often are the most traumatic experiences of life were softened and sanctified by the comforts of family and home. These rites of passage were, before my eyes, made holy by the power of God manifested in His most basic institution: the domestic church.

It took us a while to find the right environment for the birth of our second child, but after visiting three different doctors and still not being totally comfortable with the one we chose, we heard about a midwife who would do a VBAC. (Our first baby, Lucy, was breech so our planned drug-free hospital delivery had suddenly become a c-section.) We had to drive an hour across state lines to do it, but we had a “home birth” in another couple’s home and it was well worth all the trouble.

I had been having practice contractions since the fifth month of pregnancy, and they had been getting stronger and more frequent over the last couple of weeks. On November 4, they started getting strong enough to slow me down and closer together, so we called our midwife around 6:30that evening to let her know things were starting to change. She suggested I shower and try to rest and see what happened. The shower seemed to slow things down, but a couple of hours later the contractions were picking up again, and we called again and decided to start the drive for the birth center. We gathered a few snacks and other things, carried our sleeping two-year-old to the car, and called my husband’s mom, who was coming to watch little Lucy during the labor.

The drive was uneventful except for some fairly thick fog. My contractions were still very manageable, and we happened to time the trip so that we heard Barak Obama’s victory speech on NPR on the way. When we arrived, Kami, our midwife, was waiting for us outside. I headed inside, and she and my husband went to try and turn on the water, which the water company had turned off because of a leak in the pool in the back yard. I spent a few minutes trying (unsuccessfully) to get Lucy to go back to sleep.

After a little while, my husband’s parents arrived. His dad had decided to accompany his mom because it was so late and she had never been to the birth center. After a failed search for matches to relight the water heater, Craig and his dad went out to buy a lighter. I made yet another unsuccessful attempt to get Lucy to sleep and rested myself as well as I could. By the time the guys got back, lighted the water heater, and finally came back to me, I was more than a little annoyed thatCraig had deserted me for so long.

Craig’s mom took Lucy and Craig and I spent some time puttering around. Kami made ginger tea to help with my indigestion. Then we tried to rest for a little while since the contractions weren’t too bad yet. Lucy started watching Tom and Jerry’s A Nutcracker Tale in another room. The most difficult part of the whole experience was that Lucy refused to sleep until around 4 AM, and I could hear her yelling intermittently through the whole night, but didn’t have the energy to try and help her myself. We had considered several ways that the birth might be hard for her, but it hadn’t occurred to us that she would keep herself awake all night.

After a little while, I decided to go the bathroom, since the contractions were getting harder, and then we woke up Kami, who had also been resting, and ran a hot bath. Craig put on his swim suit, and we must have spent several hours in the tub (actually a large jacuzzi) trying different positions. I went back and forth to the toilet few times, and the contractions kept working. In the background I could hear “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” from Lucy’s movie. She finally went to sleep, but she was up again around 6 AM.

Craig went to get Kami around that time and the sun started to come up. Kami suggested I spend some time on the birthing stool to see how that felt. When I first sat down, it felt awful! I thought all my insides had fallen right down onto my cervix. Kami checked me then, and found that I had a cervical lip on the front side. So I spent some time on my knees with a birthing ball and miserable compared to being in the water. After a few contractions with the ball, I laid on my side on the bed, and the urge to push started to assert itself. I was convinced I could not move from the spot, despite how much more uncomfortable it was. It was amazing to feel how things were moving and changing, and I was fascinated by that even through the tough contractions. But with a little encouragement I headed back for the water, making a side stop at the birthing chair on the way.

As I sat on the birthing chair and a contraction hit, Craig looked at me and said, “The head’s coming out!” I couldn’t see her, but I can picture Kami’s face as she said, “Well, get over there and catch it!” It was a good thing he didn’t move too quickly, because it wasn’t the head, but my bag of waters. It exploded and made a puddle a good five feet past the puddle pads on the floor. Craig thought it was one of the coolest things he had ever seen.

After that, I headed back into the water. The pushing urge was getting more and more overwhelming, and before long I had settled into a squat with my husband behind me holding me up and pushing me back up after resting between contractions. The sun was getting higher, and it started to come through the cord holes in the venetian blinds right into my eyes. Kami had to hang a towel in the blinds so I wasn’t blinded every time I got up to push. She did a wonderful job of encouraging me when I was afraid for my C-section scar (“Let it go. Give it to Christ!”) and helping me to push and breathe more effectively. Of course I had read and heard how I should do those things, but I certainly forgot until she was there to gently remind me! Towards the end Craig’s mom brought in Lucy. She did amazingly well with the whole scene. Every now and then she would say, “Mama cry?” when I was groaning/yelling through the pushes, but she was totally absorbed by it all, and not at all upset by it as we had feared she might be.

After about 50 minutes of pushing, I started to feel the stretching that meant Samantha’s head was ready to come out. In retrospect, I wish we had thought to have a mirror available, although I’m not sure how much we would have been able to see under the water and from that awkward angle. After a couple more pushes, her head was out, and I reached down to feel a fuzzy tuft of hair! Our first baby had no hair until she was over a year old, so I was really shocked by that. The next contraction I tried to push her body out, but it felt like there was nothing left to push on! I finally did it, though, and as I sat back in relief Kami lifted the baby up onto my stomach. The black hair was so surprising, but it was quickly covered by a hat, and between trying to kiss and otherwise love on this new little person, I managed to move her leg to see that we had another little girl. My mother-in-law snapped pictures, Kami watched the baby’s vital signs, Craig peered over my shoulder at the little one, and I started the process of rubbing in the vernix on her skin. I suggested that Samantha, one of the names Craig had always liked, seemed like a good fit, and Samantha Elizabeth was the working name at that point.

I pushed out the placenta a few minutes later (which we brought home to nourish the tree we’re going to plant for Samantha) and Craig got to cut the umbilical cord. Samantha was only a little interested in nursing, and we moved from the tub to the bed soon after that. There she nursed and we curled up for a nap before the rest of the weighing, measuring, and checking happened. She only left my side to be spirited away to spend time with her grandparents. Craig’s dad started working on breakfast for all of us from the supplies Mom and Lucy’s early-morning shopping trip had procured. Scrambled eggs, orange juice, and muffins were very welcome, since I hadn’t been interested in eating much during the labor.

After the nap Kami filled out the paperwork and tied up lose ends. Samantha was 8lbs 4oz and 20 inches long. She was the picture of health. I lost a little more blood than was probably good for me, and since I have low blood pressure anyway, it was very low after the birth. I almost passed out when I sat up too fast on my way out of bed to the bathroom. But some more time in bed and lots of fluids soon had me right enough to make it to the bathroom, get dressed, and finally get on our way back home, less than 24 hours after we had started the drive the evening before. Other than the blood loss, I only suffered a minor tear (no stitches!) and some bruising to my tail bone which plagued me for a couple of weeks.

Every time I think back on any aspect of the experience, I am filled with such a sense of peace. The setting was beautiful, and very home-like, even though it wasn’t our own home. Kami was so calm and helpful through the whole thing, and I know that is her job, but I was impressed with how easy and straightforward she made everything. The extra time in bed gave us a chance to sit and talk with her more about the birth process and what she did, and about the politics of it all, which had driven us out of our own home and across state lines to seek the birth we wanted. We decided that Samantha’s middle name should be Rose. I am amazed by the contrasts between the two births I have experienced, and I am overwhelmingly thankful that I had the opportunity to bring my baby into the world with no drugs, no poking and prodding, in the presence of her sister and father and grandmother, in a safe, loving, gentle environment. Daily, if not more often, I have little realizations of how wonderful this birth actually was. “Everything worked.” “Lucy was right there.” “Samantha never really left me, except in the arms of family.” “I chose how she was born.”

When we got home, I looked again to see what the name “Samantha” means. I could have cried. It is the female form of Samuel, which means “God hears”. It was so true, so perfect. I was nearly in despair about how this child would come into the world, and God heard my distress and gave me another option, as well as the courage to pursue that option. Then, when He had completed His miracle with us, I am convinced Samantha’s little angel whispered a name in my ear to remind us of His hand in it all. God heard, and He answered.