Badass Mother Birther

Raw, Physiologic, Triumphant; A Birth Story

I had a totally badass birth about a month ago and I’m going to tell you all about it. It was powerful and peaceful and completely undisturbed, meaning that no one fucked with me at all. I had the space and time to listen to and follow the messages of my body. I could surrender to the power that took over, the dance between me and Baby. No vaginal exams, bright lights, or machines that go bing.  No poking or prodding. No medications for pain or induction. No IV or fetal heart monitor wrapped around my belly impeding movement. No strangers coming and going or anyone telling me what to do. This is extremely rare in our current medicalized birth culture.

Labor began gently on the last Saturday night of February. I knew from my first birth that I needed to preserve energy and ignore the contractions as long as I could until they really took over. Someone wise told me, “Don’t look for labor, it will find you.” I stayed in bed, sleeping and resting as much as possible. In the morning the contractions slowed. I reached out to my midwife and we agreed it would probably get going again when the sun went down and perhaps we’d welcome a new baby that night. Mammals like to have babies in the dark. Darkness seems to help us feel safe and release the right amount of oxytocin for good strong contractions. I rested most of Sunday and went for a short walk. I opted out of my usual morning ecstatic dance class and the 4-year-old gymnastics birthday party we were invited to. My husband and son went and gave me the house to myself. I napped, watched a dumb show, and sat on our blue exercise ball opening my pelvis, mostly ignoring the contractions but sometimes breathing through them.

When it got dark, our 3-year-old son went to bed, and labor began to really kick in. I told our midwife that we didn’t need her yet but things were starting to feel real. I turned off the lights in the living room, turned on African drumming music, sat on our blue exercise ball and closed my eyes to feel what was going on in my body; beginning to give myself over to the waves coming and going. I sat there in this trance for a couple hours, getting up every ten minutes or so to pee or poop. Then my baby dropped down low into my pelvis and the next contraction literally brought me to my knees. I realized I couldn’t sit anymore because Baby’s head had reached the ischial spines and was hitting nerves. I got on my hands and knees rocking forward and back with each contraction. It went along like this until the first round of puking began. I hate puking. Without a doubt, my least favorite part of labor and it came just in time for our midwife to arrive at our home, around 11pm. Nonetheless, I laughed when she walked through the door, giving her the latest as my husband rinsed out the salad bowl.

She came in quietly and just observed my process for a few minutes, then listened to the baby’s heart tones and told me we were doing great. We filled up the birth tub in the back room that I had set up with lots of power totems to inspire me; poems friends had written, lions, bears, Buddhas, and one salt lamp to light the space. I got in the warm, but not hot, tub and closed my eyes to listen to what was going on and follow the new sensations with the support of the water softening the edge of gravity. For the next three hours or so, my eyes were closed and with each contraction I rocked forward on hands and knees, opening my pelvis in different ways.

My eyes opened a few times so I could either sip water or puke it back up. I also requested to change the temperature of the tub as my ability to thermoregulate changed with the trance of labor. Our midwife listened to Baby’s heart a few more times before going to nap on the couch and leave me and my husband to soften into the powerful sensuality of bringing this baby earth-side. Intermittently my mind would say things like, “This baby is never coming out,” and then, “Just one contraction at a time, just this.” Then the wave would pass and I would remind myself to completely let it go. I would blow out any tension from my body, relaxing my jaw, shoulders, and pelvis. Then I’d lay back in the tub, close my eyes and get what felt like two minutes of the sweetest deepest rest between contractions.

This birth felt like a culmination of everything I’ve learned in the last ten years of working with mothers and babies as a Birth Doula, student midwife, and Craniosacral Therapist. I’ve learned so much from teaching meditation and Sensory Awareness classes to prepare for birth and to support moms. Everything I’ve taught naturally kicked in as my body took over. Even the mantras to replace the thoughts of fear, worry, or doubt that passed through my mind bubbled up as if I’d practiced for this moment my whole life. I said to myself over and over again, “Soften, soften, soften. Open, open, open. You are powerful and strong. Just this moment, one at a time. Let it go. Nothing extra. Rest. Each wave brings Baby closer. When you think you can’t do it, you’re almost done.”

I trained my husband to be my Doula, as I’ve trained other husbands and birth support people. (He told me to write that he did a great job. Which he did!) I told him to practice regulating his nervous system, relaxing his jaw, shoulders, and pelvis; allowing his breathing to be long and slow, to fill up his whole chest and belly all the way down to the pelvic floor. His job was to hold me in a spacious bubble of trust and reverence. His tasks were to bring me water, drinks, and frozen fruit (I ended up only wanting water once the puking started), to touch me if I was open to it (I was not, it was too overstimulating and I pushed his hands away), and possibly to remind me to pee and poop if I became too tranced out to remember my body (this was not necessary either, I was very embodied).

Around 2am or maybe 2:30, there was no clock in the room, my eyes burst open and I told my husband to get our midwife. I could feel Baby’s head very low in my pelvis and it felt huge. I was starting to have the urge to push and reached up inside myself to feel and there was the bag of waters! It felt like a water balloon bulging and I shared this with my husband and our midwife. She suggested that I try standing up and maybe walk around a bit to allow gravity to pop the bag. I stood up after hours of moaning and writhing in the water and suddenly felt the pull of gravity and noticed how wobbly my legs were. The next contraction brought me back down to my knees in the water and one push popped the bag. It was clear (meaning no meconium- Baby’s first poop) and we all realized I was not going to leave the water, Baby was about to join us. I reached up inside me and could feel the baby’s head, one finger deep, and announced this to the room. Everyone laughed and was so happy by my play-by-play.

One push brought the head low enough that I could feel it one knuckle deep. I had the thought, “This head is huge and it’s going to break my tailbone.” I could feel it, big and round, completely maxing out the bones of my pelvis. Then another voice kicked in, “There’s no way out but through. Forget the tailbone. Trust the process.” One more push brought the head down to the water and then I could feel myself opening more than I ever had. I got the head halfway out and felt “The Ring of Fire.” I missed this moment with my first baby because I was so overstimulated with lots of people around, yelling, and bright lights in the hospital. I’ll share this story another time.

This time it was just me, my body, and the baby dancing into the world, surrounded by the love and trust of my husband and our midwife. I could close my eyes and follow every nuance. The head was halfway out and I reached down to feel it. It was wrinkled and slimy and I could feel my tissues completely stretched out and how thin the perineum (tissue between the vagina and butt-hole) felt wrapped around this massive head. I knew to pause and breath here to allow the tissues to stretch and not tear. I had the thought, “This is impossible, it’s definitely going to tear.” Then I thought, “Don’t worry about that, just get the baby out.” So I breathed and followed one more push and the head was out. I reached down, felt a little flap and said, “I feel an ear!” This made my husband and midwife laugh again which felt so lovely to be surrounded by joy and surprise in this moment. It was amazing to feel this baby partly inside of me and partly outside.

My husband wanted to catch the baby and his hands were down near the head. I could feel it start to rotate inside of me and I almost yelled at him to stop touching the baby and then realized I was feeling the natural rotation of the baby’s shoulders right before its body was ejected from mine. It was an incredible thing to feel. Then my husband lifted Baby out of the water and into my arms and I said, “I did it!”

It was a totally badass, triumphant, redemptive, healing birth experience. The placenta was born soon after and then our three-year-old son woke up and joined us in the birth room just after 3am. Our little family.

What a revolutionary experience. I will never be the same. I trust birth more than I ever have. I trust birthing bodies and babies’ dance to find their way earth side. I want more people to have this experience of completely trusting, following, and knowing the process of birth as a perfect balance of hormones, muscular contractions, nervous system regulation, and external circumstances that support physiologic birth. I am all for having someone around to help in case of a problem, but the practice of routine interventions for all low-risk pregnancies and births is a fucking travesty. We all deserve physiologic birth, undisturbed birth, un-fucked with birth. We all deserve a shot at allowing the body to do its miraculous birth dance without any “help” from the outside. When we offer routine interventions to everyone we cause more problems than we solve. Birth is not a pathology. Birth is not a disaster waiting to happen. Our bodies are not broken. Birthing bodies are incredible, built perfectly to create and bring forth new life.

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Resources to prepare for a badass birth experience:

Meditation For Birth & Mom Village (These classes will continue in a few months when I’m not on maternity leave but feel free to get on email list for more info)

Transformed By Birth, Britta Bushnell, Sounds True, Colorado, 2020

Birthing From Within, Pam England, Partera Press, New Mexico, 1998

Ina May’s Guide To Childbirth, Ina May Gaskin, Bantam Dell, New York, 2003

For the partner or support person: The Birth Partner, Penny Simkin, Harvard Common Press, Massachusetts, 2013