When I was giving birth to my daughter, I yelled loudly. On hands and knees in the birthing tub, vocalizing the way I’d read to do. Shamelessly, like an animal. I think it sounded like mooing. The midwives were in the other room for most of it, knitting and drinking tea. Even though I’d been prepared for a relaxed atmosphere, desired and anticipated it, their calmness unnerved me. Didn’t they realize I was actually having a baby?
“Um…what should I be doing right now?” I asked between contractions.
My midwife Pamela answered, “Dear, your body knows what it’s doing,” and went right back to chatting with my sister. It didn’t feel like I was doing anything. Just floating at the edge of the plastic wrapped foam pool, between moments of intense, wracking cramps. Demanding that the boy rub my back. Floating. Bellowing like a cow. Closing my eyes and enjoying the calm of not-contractions. Then yelling some more. The book I had read told stories of other women opening their mouths and hollering to let the baby out. So I hollered and hollered, in a little garage, in a little neighborhood, in the glow of a hundred tea lights.
At some point Pamela sat in front of me, rocking slightly on the exercise ball we’d bought with one of our Target gift cards, and became suddenly frank. “Okay. You’ve been releasing a lot of noise and energy with your mouth, which is excellent. That was the first part of labor, the passive stage, where you let your body do the work. Now it is time for you to take over, this is the active stage of labor, and I need you to send all that power down to your baby, to push her out. Okay?”
I nodded, and closed my mouth. Next time the wave crashed inside me, I sent it to her and breathed through my nose. It might have sounded like humming. In thirteen minutes she came crashing out of me and there was a tiny purple-headed creature where before there had been space. She opened her mouth and took her first draught of life.
So there have been a lot of thoughts buzzing around my head lately. Scraps and remnants and talk. There’s been a lot of talk. Mostly I talk about the things I want to do and the things I perceive as keeping me from the things I want to do and the things I fear will happen if I do the things I want to do and it’s time to close my mouth and send the energy down. I’ve spent a lot of effort trying to decide what to do with my life, and which of my passions will get the attention they deserve, and I haven’t spent a whole lot of time doing some of the things that I think about doing. It is time to do what I’m thinking and not think so hard about doing. I will not allow my brain to tell me what it thinks I should do unless it’s taken the rest of me for a long walk first. And then I will give birth to triplets (Spinning, Story, and Song) and make time for them all, while cherishing Edie the most. Because Edie came, I rooted myself to the ground, where everything grows.
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