Birth

In the ninth month of my pregnancy with my son, I was carrying 60 extra pounds and sweating in places I barely knew existed. Being on the petite side, I often startled people when I turned around to face them because from the back I looked perfectly normal. From the front I looked like I had swallowed the state of Rhode Island. The midwives told me that I had an extraordinary amount of amniotic fluid. The baby had not dropped. He was, they said, quite content and not going anywhere soon. From their palpitations, they determined his weight to be 8 pounds or more…and counting. Since I was overdue, they suggested I be induced.

I recalled that through my pregnancy I was often awed at the ways in which my body and my mind worked as a team: informing each other of my cravings, when I needed to rest, and when I needed to nest. They were a good team, so I asked them if they wanted to induce, and they said, “Yes.”

I have never experienced Da Bombe of “normal” labor (if there is such a thing), and if you have, I in no way mean to minimize your experience or your pain. On the other hand, I will say one word…

Pitocin.

All those breathing techniques that my son’s father and I practiced for weeks went out the window in a New York minute. Like a big bully on the playground, my body picked up my mind as it was reminding me how to count, and kicked it across the birthing room. My body was making the rules this time, and I could not get on top of the pain that it produced. I couldn’t get under it or around it either. In order to stop the physical pain, I, like all birthing women, had to go through it. I had to surrender to and trust the knowing of a primitive force much more powerful than I.

Since I left my son at his father’s place a week ago, I have been revisiting the tidal waves of pain I experienced while in labor. At first, they came and left with the irregularity of the first stages of labor. But, as the week progressed, their timing escalated and their pain magnified until I was in a full blown Pitocin induced labor. Six days after feeling the release of a dynamic in my relationship with my son, I found myself in a constant state of rolling pain the depth of which literally brought me to my knees. Agony and anguish welled up in my body in tidal wave proportions crashing me into the rocks over and over again.

My body was making the rules. I could not get on top of the pain. I couldn’t get under it or around it either. Finally, with the help of a deeply trusted Mastery sister, I was midwived through my pain. I surrendered to it.

The only thing that kept me going was the thought that after all this pain, I would birth something new.

(Thank you my dear sister, Elizabeth Claire)