RutlandHerald.com - We Are Vermont

New life, new lessons

Editor's note: Excerpt reprinted by permission from "Birth," part of the anthology "Ask Me About My Divorce: Women Open Up About Moving On" (Seal Press, 2009).

BIRTH

I attended my first birth in New Mexico when I was twenty-five years old. My sister-in-law Karen was eight months pregnant, and I traveled from Oregon to help her.

Her deadbeat partner, my husband's brother, had taken a job as a river raft guide up in Montana that summer, rather than stick around Santa Fe and pretend to be interested in her growing belly. My husband had been sleeping with other women and lying to me, and I'd finally reached my breaking point and left him.

In Santa Fe, she and I were both somewhat homeless, and so we stayed with our mother-in-law. Neither of us had any money, and neither of our men offered to pay our rent. The night Karen went into labor, I was sleeping beside her. She woke me in the middle of the night, whispering, "It's time." It was autumn, and my first thought was that it was time for me to drive out to my mom's farm to help harvest her cornfield, as I'd promised that week. Slowly it dawned on me that even though Karen was a month early, it was her birthing time. That October night, I watched as she let her body do its hard work of bringing a beautiful little boy into the world. The midwives placed him on her chest. It all seemed perfectly normal and matter-of-fact that she would have him right there in that bedroom. He was tiny, and perfect. This birth was the most beautiful thing I had ever witnessed.

The next day, sleep-deprived and high on the energy of the birth, I called my friend Sue in California to share the story. During our conversation, I realized that something was going on in me - something pivotal, life-altering, and essential to my life's path. Within a year, Sue called and asked me to attend her own baby's birth. ...

Eventually I ended up in the San Francisco Bay Area to study midwifery with one of the leading midwives in the country, Elizabeth Davis. She had written Heart and Hands, a training manual for home birth midwives. In her weekly class, I and the other aspiring midwives studied the basics of labor, birth, anatomy, and postpartum. There was something about being called to my friends' births that was compelling like nothing before in my life. Serving women, encouraging that sacred bonding between mother and baby, and empowering women in their choice to have their baby on their own terms felt profoundly meaningful.

In contrast, my relationship with my ex-husband had been humiliating, disempowering, and devastating. I'd trusted him to stand in my corner, and we'd started to build a life together before he pulled the rug out from under my feet. I wondered, "How could I have been so stupid to end up with such a man, how I could ever trust my own judgment to make good choices, and how I could trust another partner again?" I felt defeated. Yet through the work with women and birth, I was finding my strength again, and by witnessing their pain and triumph, I was able to find my own way through the darkness that seemed to surround me.

Suddenly I found analogies to the birthing process everywhere I looked. When I considered how hard it was for me to accept abrupt change in my life - specifically now as the single, divorced person I hadn't intended to be - I thought of pregnancy. It takes nine months of gestation to grow a human baby, a period of time that compels women toward introspection, discovery, and personal growth - it's as if the psyche is getting us ready for the next chapter.

I noticed how women were stunned by how drastically different the world looked when they were pregnant: how it changed the entire landscape of their lives. It was as if they were starting life anew. I took that element and tried to apply it to my predicament, so that when I had no idea what to do next, I made an effort to comfort myself in the open range of possibilities. In the laboring mother, I witnessed how her pain was inescapable and raw and overtook her entire being. I saw her writhe in agony, breathe through tremendous difficulty, somehow make peace with her situation, surrender to the process, and face her deepest truth as she brought forth new life. Most remarkably, I saw women reach deep inside and access a warrior-like internal strength beyond compare. Every birth inspired me to reflect on the power and wisdom women possess, and to have faith in my own inner fortitude. I marveled at the natural process unfolding for women as they let go without self-judgment. I observed how they hurt more if they became scared, and seemed more at peace with their pain when they accepted it. I learned from them that there was pain with purpose, and that we can make it through the most horrific, mind-numbing, excruciating pain, even though we sometimes think we can't. In the end there is triumph, joy, and empowerment beyond imagination.

After the divorce was finalized, I went back to Santa Fe and found an apprenticeship with a couple of midwives. I allowed the gifts each birth gave me to teach me about pain, suffering, and growth. I listened to mothers' moans and primal screams and whispered "You can do it," and I fully believed it. I said it to myself, too, and eventually the pain lessened, and the joy increased. ...