Ecstatic and life changing

Twenty-six years ago I gave birth to my only son in a community hospital, with a nurse midwife and his father at my side. I had the unusual and wonderful experience of being compassionately and expertly attended by midwives who worked in a local, slightly non-traditional obstetric practice.

Through a very experimental and short-lived project, I was taught and encouraged by them to use self-hypnosis to manage my labor. I am thankful beyond words for the grace of being in that place at that time, when a resurgence of the idea of natural childbirth was occurring among some forward thinking people. I am also thankful for the wisdom of that moment when I chose to open to the idea that birth might teach me something different about life.

No one who watched my labor and delivery would, I suspect, call it a blissful or ecstatic birth, but it was for me. My experience was transcendent and ecstatic and life changing, so much so that I have never lost my passion for the birth process as moment of potential transformation.

Throughout my 36 hours of labor (5 of them in the hospital), I was mostly in a state of bliss. I remember being in awe of the power of what my body was doing. I was totally transformed by the energy of birth as it took over my being and completely absorbed in the sensations and the awareness of the sacredness of what was happening. That is for the most part how I remember my son's birth.

I do remember being annoyed by the process of inserting an internal fetal monitor at some point during transition.

And I certainly do remember being furious at the "cheerleader" nurse who came into the room to loudly and aggressively direct my pushing when she thought the time had come. "Ok now push, push, push, push, push and push," she barked from the corner. She made it nearly impossible to retain my blissful trance. She and my husband both caught the profoundly obscene expression of my unfiltered rage. How could they not see that my body knew what to do? How could they even begin to justify wanting to jolt me out of the most instinctually grounded state of being that I can ever remember experiencing? Fortunately, for me my son was born before the rage wore off.

But the bliss was lost. And I also remember feeling beyond helpless and terrified when my son was out and unattached but wasn't breathing. No one had told me, that because of meconium staining, there would be no stimulating him to breathe, no putting him to my breast or onto my belly at the moment of birth. So, in a state of sheer panic I watched, terrified at the site of his blue, limp body, while doctors apparently "assaulted" him on the cart in the corner.

Fortunately, the body memory of that moment of panic quickly paled, in the wake of the hours and hours of blissful trance that I had experienced while giving birth. When my son was (thank Goddess) eventually breathing, and pink, and placed in my arms, I had the memory of the sensual rightness of it all to sustain me. And sustain me it has, through the challenges and many years of trying to guide him on his path in this sometimes crazy mixed-up culture and world he will inherit.

Barbara, Columbia, South Carolina