The Spaces of Birth

Birthing our son at home was not a political statement. Our motivation was never to prove a point, fight the system, or join a movement. It came down to gut. On one hand, at the 41-week mark, my hospital-based providers cornered me and pressured me to schedule an induction even though the baby showed no signs of distress, and basically made me panic until I was hysterical and my whole body closed against them. My home-attending midwife, on the other hand, gave me an overwhelming sense of peace from the very first meeting. When she came through our door, I immediately knew she would be the one to accompany me as I faced the fragile boundary between life and death. That with her, I could do it.

While research validates the safety of a planned home birth for low-risk pregnancies – and in fact its ability to prevent complications – no crystal ball could guarantee that our baby would absolutely not require medical intervention. So even as I grew to love my home-attending midwife, I decided it was wise to avoid cutting ties with my hospital-based providers. Because that is what choosing to birth outside of the hospital in the U.S today will do: cut you off from the system with no easy re-entry. As it turns out, that practice was perfectly capable of cutting itself.

Emmanuel was born on a Sunday night, and Jesse called the practice the next morning to say we wouldn’t be coming in for the 8 a.m. induction the doctor and midwife had scheduled against my will. Their hub of rage abruptly entered our home as I opened the letter of patient dismissal that arrived in a matter of days. They quickly did everything in their power to discredit the doula who supported me – who I had hired to support me, who always did her job with the utmost integrity and more diplomacy than anyone else could muster in the same situation. It got unprofessional. It got ugly.

Since then I’ve begun to understand the political climate that exists in the U.S. around a woman’s basic right to birth as she feels best, as it has been done since the beginning of mankind: with the continuous and unrelenting support of strong, wise women in the space of her choosing. Competent midwives who practice outside of a hospital are being jailed and outlawed. Today. And while her work is not explicitly illegal, the exceptional midwife who attended our birth could be arrested at any time for practicing medicine without a license in a state where the opportunity for licensure does not exist.

No other experience will parallel Emmanuel’s birth. Immediately afterwards, I felt it was something we could never ask for again. At first I interpreted that to mean we would never have more children. Now that I’m pregnant with our daughter, I feel that a home birth in particular – with the total oversight of a woman who I respect beyond words – is what we won’t ask for again.

It seems that each birth is meant to take its own shape. Just as I could never envision a hospital birth for our son, I can’t quite visualize a birth in the house where we live now. With a three-year-old running around, the idea of packing a bag and traveling a little ways to a birthing space sounds appealing. And after finding a hospital-based practice that is genuinely supportive of natural birth, I can visualize birthing in their space, almost – bringing with me the doula who is my guide, a steadfast husband, spirit-filled sister, and the strength from all I’ve been taught.

A friend who is now training to be a midwife had a similar experience. She birthed her first son at home about a year before me, and her no-nonsense approach was inspiring: She wanted to birth at home, and she did. For her second child, she (tried) to go to the hospital for financial reasons – tried, because her daughter was born in the car on the drive over. Clearly she didn’t need any help for delivery, but sometimes there are more complicated considerations.

Like money. While a hospital birth costs about $29,000 more than a home birth, it generally costs the woman herself $1,500 less to birth in the hospital. Do I feel good about perpetuating a system that is fundamentally broken? Not as a whole. But when I tour the hospital and hear them stating kangaroo care, breastfeeding, and no separation of mom and baby as their standard protocol, I want to support them. When I meet a midwife who herself birthed two children at home and has made it her life’s work to help others have a healthy birth, with no intervention if desired – I want to support her. When I see a practice actively working to assist underserved women with the same respect and integrity as those with more resources at hand, I want to support it. And when I realize that our society’s approach to birth will not change unless people fight for healthy, natural births within the system itself, I want to try.

Still, there are compromises. Sometimes I feel like an anonymous cow on a huge farm – the kind of farm that lets you munch on a patch of grass now on then, but a factory nonetheless – rather than a beloved pet in a secluded pasture with wildflowers in full bloom. It’s like the difference between a random vet coming in to nod his head and fill out the chart when the calf is born, and the farmer who knows the cow’s every marking and cry, waiting patiently on the periphery of its natural environment to gently stroke the calf’s soft bloody fur upon arrival.

But peace is, after all, a mindset. So for the birth of our second child, we will again enter personally uncharted territory. This time with the love and strength of those who sacrificed more than we ever knew to show us that birth is beautiful, birth is sacred, and birth is something that women are designed to do. My first midwife’s birthing presence is with me forever. There is no going back, no separation. Of course there’s a big part of me that mourns the loss of her physical presence this time around, a huge part, but I feel blessed that she’ll always be there.