Choosing Waterbirth: Reclaiming the Sacred Power of Birth (3 page)

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Chapter 2—

Nature's Lesson

My first awareness of birth as a natural experience came to me at a very young age. Not, as might be expected, from the stories told by wellmeaning aunts and grandmothers, nor from the obvious example of my own mother who had six children. My awareness came from firsthand experience, powerful and more farreaching than any story. It came from the fourlegged friends of mine, the horses, whom I valued at the age of five more than any of my human friends.

Living on my grandparents' horse ranch with my mother and father and my three sisters, I was third down the list of four girls and I was quiet, a dreamer. By the time I was three, I was spending more time in the pasture than in the house. I don't know how old I was when I first began to climb through the gate to mingle with the great beasts on the other side. But I feel quite certain the event nearly gave my mother a heart attack and I feel equally certain she and my father did their best to keep me from venturing in with the horses again. After all, these animals weren't puppies; they were thousandpound thoroughbred mares. One wrong move, accidental or otherwise, and I would have been sent very quickly to the "great beyond." However, two things soon became apparent, and these allowed me to have a childhood I can never forget.

First, there was no way to keep me out of there;

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any time I was left on my own, I headed straight for the pasture. Second, the mares took a liking to me, treating me with gentleness and care as if I was one of their own, only considerably smaller. I spent untold hours with the mares, following them through the pasture, wandering in and out of their legs, sleeping in their feed bins. I grew to love them with a passion that is still with me today.

I had one particular favorite. Her name was Rosy May. She was a widegirthed, gentle quarter horse mare with a beautiful strawberry roan coat and a black mane and tail. I loved her more than any of the others and was rewarded in turn by her total acceptance of me. She would stand perfectly still while I sat leaning against her front legs, singing to her in my offkey voice. Rosy May would allow me to climb on her back when she was resting on her side. When she stood up, I clung to her like a burr and thus spent many hours of my early childhood on horseback.

My mother tells a story about me (much to my adult embarrassment) of how she found me on Rosy May's back one evening, sitting unconcerned, as something wet streamed down the mare's sides. With some amusement she realized the wet streaks were pee. Apparently I was not even willing to get off the horse's back in order to use the bathroom. My mother also tells of looking out her kitchen window and seeing me asleep on the horse's broad back, the gentle giant unmoving while I slept the afternoon away.

These powerful and beautiful creatures were my life and, for a time, I half believed myself to be one of them. Many were brood mares, and each spring would bring the promise of a dozen new foals on the ranch. Next to Rosy May, the foals were the closest to my heart, and I would wait with suppressed excitement for the birthing season. . . .

It 1is 4:00 A.M. on a cold spring morning. A gentle shake awakens me.

Lakshmi, come on. It's time.

I open my eyes and look into my mother's face leaning over me.

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"Hurry!" she whispers. "Or you'll miss it."

Shaking the sleep from my head, I spring from the bed feeling a burst of excitement. Still in my pajamas, I follow her through the quiet house. We pause at the back door to pull on our coats. Then, stepping out into the brisk predawn air, we hurry across the patio towards our destination.

Maybe at that time my sisters are there too, I don't know, I can't remember, because all my attention centers on the dim light coming from the cracks in the side of the barn.

Thwump! A collapsing sound comes from the barn as the mare lies down.

"She's dropped!" Mom smiles at me excitedly. "Quickly, now. Come quietly. We don't want to frighten her."

I scramble up the side of the barn to the window opening, trying to be quiet, even in my haste. Peering into the eerie semidarkness made red by a heat lamp suspended from the ceiling, I see the mare. She lies dark against the straw, her sides heaving, her gaze turned inwards. She breathes long slow breaths, deeply relaxing. She doesn't appear concerned or frightened by what she is doing, even when the muscles of her abdomen tighten with the next contraction. I watch wideeyed and silent as she begins to breathe quicker, almost panting through the peak of the contraction; then as it slides away, forgotten, she takes deep, soothing breaths, releasing her tension, allowing her strength to return for the next one.

The mare labors naturally in the rhythm of birth. Breathing, allowing each contraction to do its job, relaxing completely in between to keep up her strength. Soon a subtle shift begins. Now, during the height of each contraction, the mare holds her breath and engages her abdominal muscles to begin the job of pushing her little passenger out into the world. The contractions become more intense and before long, the forelegs appear, covered in the pink amniotic sac. On the next push, a head appears, followed soon after by the foal. It wriggles, tearing the sac, and I get my first glimpse of the new arrival.

Soaking wet, its hair plastered to its head, making its already large ears appear even bigger, the foal is not much to Page 11

look at. But as the wide black eyes turn my way, I know that I've never seen anything as beautiful.

The new mother sits up straight and cranes her head around to examine the foal. Her eyes are bright and curious as she nuzzles her baby; all the pain of labor is forgotten in the magic moment of birth. I sigh, resting my chin on my arms, filled with awe by the miracle I have witnessed.

To me, all this seems normal, business as usual. There were no doctors, no bright lamps, no fetal monitors or forceps, and the mother felt safe and comfortable in her familiar surroundings with no need for painkillers. Long before I had ever heard of "natural birth," I had witnessed it many times in the dimly lit interior of a foaling shed and from these experiences came the absolute belief that this is the way birth was meant to be.

Many years later, when I received the news, via a home pregnancy test, that I was to have a baby, I knew that I wanted to do it at home without interference or drugs.

I wanted to do it naturally, in a dimly lit room with warmth and silence surrounding me, just as I had seen it done so often by the "playmates" of my childhood, the mares.

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Chapter 3—

A Challenging Reality

Deciding to give birth naturally was one thing; having to seriously consider going through all that labor without painkillers was another thing entirely.

Birth may be beautiful, but it is also challenging. It is to women what a coming of age ceremony might be to men. It is a time when we must reach deep inside ourselves to find a strength we didn't know we possessed until the moment comes and it is needed. During this time, nothing outside of us can help; no person and no thing can birth our babies for us. It is our bodies that must open up to allow these babies to be born, and our minds that must accept the pain caused by their births. Midwives and doctors, husbands and friends may offer us support and guidance, but it is we who must actually go through the process.

Knowing this it was with some trepidation and a lot of determination that I decided to birth my baby, naturally, at home.

I began reading everything I could about the process of labor and birth, educating myself in the hope of relieving some of the anxiety I was feeling. But there were few books on the subject that could tell me what I wanted to know. Many of them addressed the physical process of labor and delivery in great detail, but fell short of providing me with any practical advice, or even information, about having my baby naturally, at home. Living in a rural community, fortyfive miles from the nearest big town, neither did I have access to Lamaze, or

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any other birth organization or childbirth education class that could offer support and encouragement.

What I did have was a firm belief in natural birth that was shared and supported by my immediate family and also the spiritual community in which I lived. This belief and support is what caused me to choose home birth, but it was one particular book,
Spiritual Midwifery
, that gave me what I needed to feel truly comfortable with that decision.

The book, written by Ina May Gaskin, who was the primary midwife in the spiritual community called "The Farm" in Tennessee where the natural births depicted in the book were taking place, appealed to me because it was so in line with what I already believed.
Spiritual Midwifery
filled in the missing link. I already had the belief;

Spiritual Midwifery
provided the practical advice. From this book I learned that knowledge does have an influence over matter, that by knowing my cervix was opening with each contraction, I could not only help myself to be more accepting of the pain, but could actually help my cervix to open faster. This was very encouraging. It made me feel that I would not have to suffer helplessly, but could actually play an active role in giving birth to my babies. It made me feel more comfortable with my choice and allowed me the mental freedom to relax and enjoy my pregnancy.

My first pregnancy went beautifully. I am graced to be one of those few lucky women who love being pregnant. All the good things that are
supposed
to happen during pregnancy happened to me. I got just the right amount of morning sickness, enough to make me feel like a pregnant woman, but not enough to prevent me from enjoying the experience. I was content with my changing body and suffused with energy and light. I was energetic and serene and had never before felt so complete.

Pregnancy was for me the ultimate feminine experience, and I spent those nine months marveling at being able to create a child. I would look in my many birthing books to see in what stage of growth the baby was, and as the pregnancy progressed and the due date drew nearer, my anxiety about Page 14

giving birth began to fade, replaced by a keen eagerness to see this developing person.

By the time the ninth month came, there was only one thing left that was bothering me. One of the childbirth preparation exercises I learned from my reading—that was also suggested by my midwife—was the use of visual imagery as preparation for the birth. To do this, you settle into a comfortable position, usually in a relaxed sitting or lying down position, and picture yourself giving birth.

All my life I had done similar visualization practices in yoga, so initially this exercise was easy for me. I would relax, watch my breathing and feel the tension leave me, and then I would begin my visualization. Everything would begin all right. I would picture myself relaxed and happy in my house, feeling my excitement and anticipation of the event. I would see myself going through the labor, breathing with each contraction, handling them as they grew more intense. I visualized myself in transition, which, as the cervix opens to the full ten centimeters, is often the most difficult time of the birth—here, I would be relaxed, breathing, succeeding. However, when I came to the pushing stage, my visualization would stop. I could not see a laboring position that I felt would be good for me, I could not picture myself in the pushing stage, and I could not visualize the baby being born at all. Try as I might, I could not visualize the birth.

One week before I was due, Mary Carmichael, who was to be my midwife, introduced me to the idea of giving birth in water. I had never heard of it before, but I was intrigued, attracted by the idea of an entirely natural supplement to home birth that offered painreduction for me and a gentler entry for my baby.

Though there was very little information about waterbirth available at the time, Mary, who had been interested in waterbirth for a couple of years, had recently attended a lecture given by Michael Rosenthal and Michel O'Dent, two pioneers of waterbirth, at the University of Virginia. In addition to this I was able to watch a video called
Water Baby: Experiences of

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Water Birth
, produced by Karil Daniels of Point of View Productions. In this video, three couples gave birth to their babies in water. It was amazing, like the answer to a prayer, to see this video.

Laboring and delivering in water was supposed to be less painful. The women in the video looked strong and confident. It was supposed to be gentler for the baby.

The babies looked serene and otherworldly, floating to the surface to draw their first breaths as their faces came into contact with the air, and then quietly awakening to the world. Seeing them, I decided that I wanted to birth my babies in the same way.

That same week Nilakantan, my husband, and I went to our local feed store and purchased an eightygallon, fiberglass horse and cattle trough that was to be our birthing tub. As I looked down into the threefoot deep black tub, knowing I would soon be giving birth in it, I was finally able to complete the visualization of my birth.