by Jenny Vester
In the way it was supposed to go—in the vision I was encouraged to construct by my midwives, friends, sisters, and my mother—it went like this:
My child entered this world at home. I was brave, my partner worshipped me, my girlfriends surrounded me, and I had all the tools to manage the pain of birthing. I was prepared, I breathed and walked and squatted and bathed and cried and it was all OK. There were candles and food and laughter and celebration. I was strong, beautiful, and emerged a mother empowered by the experience.
Now, nine years later, in the way a selective memory can recall, the story reveals my initial vision was idealistic. It left no room for the unexpected, for fear, for plan B.
I tricked myself into thinking I had done right—covered all the bases. I visited the doctor regularly, hired midwives, read the right books, talked to other new mothers. I tried to be ready. I attended a weekly class facilitated by one of my midwives, where she informally passed on her knowledge to women, most of whom she had attended in childbirth and who wanted to be midwives or doulas—women who loved the experience of birthing. It seemed a healthy environment. They treated me, and my growing belly, as special. I learned how the birthing experience could go. Those women inspired me.
However, I had no desire to be a midwife. I considered that I didn’t even want to be pregnant. I styled myself as a writer, an athlete, a working girl—a socialite with a penchant for parties and drugs and drink and late nights. The more my body grew—my breasts expanding into alien life forms aching on my chest—the more I lost the person I thought I was. I stopped writing. I regret it now. Deeply. I’d like to have a record of my emotions during pregnancy, a written map of my dreams that were in Technicolor—nightmarish and brilliant. I remember crying often. Often from fighting with my boyfriend, who chose to stay and be responsible even though he was only twenty and supported himself as a small-time dope dealer. I cried because it felt like I was losing my freedom and I couldn’t express it to my friends. My friends who continued to smoke and drink and dance and date and who did not want to believe that a pregnant woman could be in mourning. I was supposed to be happy. I chose it, didn’t I?
Yes.
I would not send another spirit from my body. The choice to bring a creature into the world to nurture and guide proved to be the right one. My son is a lovely, healthy, bright boy who continues to be my greatest teacher. Still, I carry longing for a different birthing experience than the one I ultimately had. Just the other day, I found myself responding to questions about his entry into the world, and felt thick emotion—potential tears lingering in my body. The resistance in my throat and the gut, tight and hot. My girlfriend was shocked when I confessed I had failed. She could not imagine where that came from. How can it be failure when at the end you have an innocent, pure being lying on your breast?
What failed was my vision. What failed me was the expectations of empowerment. What failed me was my fear.
I did not have my son at home, despite all the preparations I engaged in.
I awoke on the morning of March 9 with the uncontrollable urge to purge. I shit and shit and shit. Later, my mother told me that the homeopathic dose of Cohosh I ingested on the midwife’s advice was too strong—it brought on premature labor. I thought it was the right thing. Contractions were timed and I called the midwives. They arrived and sat with me, waiting for the work to begin. I walked around, I ate, I talked to my partner and housemates. I cleaned the windows on the French doors.
But the labor went nowhere. I remember the regular contractions. I remember feeling tired. I remember the midwives questioning, wondering if maybe the baby wasn’t ready to come into the household we provided. For two days this continued—the midwives in and out of the home I shared with my partner and my two best girlfriends. On the third night, the intensity set in. The contractions began to feel like they would crack me. They checked my cervix, I was dilated only one centimeter. I slept a broken sort of sleep, hunched over a mound of pillows and blankets on my bed. I tried to visualize my cervix opening like the daffodil flowers in a blowsy bouquet of yellow on the kitchen table. In the morning, I climbed into the bath, a six-foot cast iron tub that had nurtured me throughout the pregnancy. My water broke. I felt its force, the whoosh out of me.
The midwives conferred. They decided to go to the hospital. I cried but gathered my things for a journey different from what I had expected.
My mother had eight babies. The last two at home. The last with the help of my oldest sister who stayed at home from school to follow Ma’s instructions. My mother is a naturalist and a certified practitioner of herbology, homeopathy, massage, and reflexology, among other things. She treated all my childhood ailments. I went to the hospital twice in the first twenty-three years of my life, both times for sports-related injuries. Until I was pregnant and had my first bladder infection, I never took antibiotics. Hospitals were unfriendly places to me. I trusted no doctor, not even my own who discouraged me from planning a homebirth. In fact, she wanted me to go into the hospital on the weekend for an induction, worrying my babe was too long in coming. That Sunday morning, March 12, I did not want to go to the hospital but went, weeping with disappointment and pain the entire way. I wanted my mom, and she was one thousand kilometers away.
The maternity ward was empty most of the day. I had the birthing room to myself. Into the backless gown I went. The nurses were nothing but kind—I did move them in the hours that followed. My doctor was contacted. She dropped in to tell me she was on her way to Victoria, and the doctor on call would assist me. I walked, I showered, I breathed deeply. I felt out of control in an obedient zombie-like way. They laid me down. Hooked me up. A monitor of some sort was apparently attached to the babe’s head to make sure he was OK. All round me there was beeping and movement and it is no wonder I remember little with clarity. They put a little balloon in my cervix to open me. It hurt. I signed some papers. They offered me oxygen, plugged an epidural into my back. I remember my partner’s face, his horror, at the size of the needle. I just tried to do what they told me. So did he. He told me I was a goddess. Foolishly, I held onto that for years as proof he knew it to be true. Truth actually was, I learned long after, the midwives told him to tell me. No wonder it seemed so out of character.
With all the intervention, my cervix finally dilated. When it came time to push, I was told not to vocalize, though I wanted to grunt and groan with the effort. I was told it was taking too long. I was told the doctor had to leave soon. I was told forceps would have to be used to turn the babe because he was presenting the wrong way. I watched the doctor—an impatient old white bastard—pull the forceps from the sterilized package, and I pushed harder, trying to make that babe come without the aid of those huge metal salad tongs. It didn’t help. At 6-something p.m., on March 12, in went the forceps, out came the babe. I was told it was a boy, though in my guts I already knew.
They didn’t let me hold him right away. I was weeping still, on and on, watching while they whisked him around, weighed him, and suctioned his lungs. I wanted to know if something was wrong with him. Then he was on me, on my breast, a big-headed 9lbs 13oz boy, dopey from the drugs in my system passed on to him.
My partner said: “That came out of you,” with an unforgettable look of wonder and disbelief in his huge blue eyes. He was wired. I was exhausted. They cleaned me up. Cleaned up the baby. Took me out of the birthing room into a bed, and I slept. Woke to the sound of babies crying and wondered which was mine. Wanted him with me in bed and they brought him. I fumbled learning to breastfeed. My breasts were monstrous, capable of smothering him. Somehow we slept.
Once at home, two days later, the midwives came for a follow-up. They had been treated disrespectfully in the hospital. I remembered how far away they seemed in the birthing room. Their power had been robbed as much as mine. They wanted to get that doctor. They told me about the episiotomy he’d given me despite my request not to be cut. Said it was huge. They said if he’d let me labor I could have done it without forceps. This only increased my sorrow. I did not want to go after anyone. I just wanted to forget, move on, love my baby.
I went to one more meeting with the future midwives, to show the girlfriends my baby. I could tell they all pitied me, for they had heard of my experience already. I felt it didn’t matter. My baby was healthy and beyond beautiful, with a rosebud mouth, furred ears, and the softest olive skin. I couldn’t discuss my birth the way they did theirs. I’d failed. I was not empowered. I was weakened. Afraid of processing what had just happened—afraid of ever facing the act again. The midwives wanted to debrief with me, asked me to call them, but I couldn’t. Wouldn’t.
No more babies have grown in me. The thought of being pregnant terrifies me. I can only imagine it along with a stable relationship, a mate to match me, and the unqualified intention of having a baby. Then it could be different. But I don’t seek those things. Being a mom, being single, supporting myself, being involved in my community—life is full and I earn this life in part because of my child. I give thanks.
I like to think I’ll try anything once. I had my baby. I don’t relish the memories; instead I continue to wonder if I missed out on the mystical, mythical experience of childbirth.
Oh, well. Although it’s a strange comfort, I remind myself: it could have been worse.
Jenny is a published fiction writer, an accomplished gardener, and a community-event organizer. She is the creator of the Gulf Islands touring burlesque show The Tsk Tsk Revue.
by Bronwyn Preece
There is no double meaning to the word.
They fill cups with milk.
And so too it is with breastfeeding.
The meaning stays the same.
The cups just get bigger.