Birth Gates: Opening to Wisdom and Transformation

The phrase "having children will change your life" is an overworked cliché. Comedians, sit-coms, and greeting cards focus on the challenging aspects of life with newborns and teenagers: the fatigue, the sudden intimacy with another person's bodily functions, the stress of decoding mysterious behaviors, the loss of sleep and social life, and later, disputes over access to the phone, the computer and the car. Some of these aspects are real and significant. But they are rendered into tired stereotypes, returning to haunt new parents in the form of unsolicited advice from veteran parents. In this model, childbearing opens the door to a certain kind of club, one where the members mostly talk about the difficulty of paying the dues.

Other than the opposite clichés (about "bundles of joy," "little angels," and "gifts from heaven"), how often do we hear about the rewarding emotional and spiritual elements of pregnancy, birth and parenthood? Virtually absent is any public celebration of the wisdom, personal growth and empowerment these experiences can bring. Sure, some parents do remark, in a general way, on how much they have learned from their children. But just how often are phrases like consciousness-altering or soul-expanding associated with childbearing and rearing? How often is this the language spoken to expectant women and their partners? How often is childbearing regarded as a gateway into a certain kind of learning circle, within which great realizations and transformations are possible?

Yet that was precisely my experience. I am a college professor, used to being "in charge" of the situation and thoroughly researching any project I take on. Yet it was not my intellect that led me to the most fulfilling and liberating experiences of my life, but rather my body and the example and guidance of others. First, however, I had to let go of a lot of cultural assumptions that I had accepted subconsciously.

The purely physical aspects of pregnancy and birth are usually our focus. Prenatal care subjects women to a relentless regime of monitoring and measurement-their weight, their girth, their urine and their blood are all scrutinized. Hospital tours tout the latest technology and amenities. Too often, the highlight of hospital-based childbirth instruction is the anesthesiologist's presentation of the latest "magic bullet" to ease labor.

Childbirth itself may be treated in the most mechanistic way of all. I've seen televised births in which the hours passing and the dilation measurements are announced like ball game scores. Hospital staff and family avidly watch a monitor that measures the contractions rather than interacting with the laboring woman. At transition, everyone crowds around the anesthetized mother screaming, "Push! Push!" as if birth depended on their frenzied commands. In many cases, if the result is an apparently healthy baby in arms (or in the plastic hospital cribs so aptly called "isolettes"), it doesn't seem to matter what else might have happened.

Women who have had a medicalized birth know they have missed, even been cheated of, something very profound. Often, they know this only as a vague feeling of dissatisfaction or regret. If nothing has gone particularly wrong (by medical standards) with the delivery, they may even feel guilty for harboring any discontent. Even if they can identify the source of their feelings, they may not find a language available to express them. I believe this is because the medical model for birth in our culture is fundamentally sacrilegious.

Here it is important to look at the Latin root-sacrilegus-meaning "one who steals sacred things."

When pregnancy "care" is reduced to testing and weighing, something sacred has been stolen. When birth is treated as a technical feat on the order of an appendectomy, something sacred has been stolen. The modern desecration of birth is not due solely to the use of technology. I know of cesareans conducted in a manner that allowed and recognized the unfolding of the sacred. It has more to do with a reductive view of women-their bodies, their capacities, their wisdom-and a corresponding elevation of medical authority.

This theft of the sacred reverberates, shaking the mother-child relationship, the family, the community, the society, and the larger whole in ways too complex and mysterious to trace. Because I narrowly escaped such a desecrated birth experience, I have become especially aware of the ways my positive pregnancies and births have shaped my life, work, and relationships. It is no exaggeration to say that my experiences have marvelously and totally altered the contours of my present life. And, no doubt, my future. Other writers in this issue insightfully address many of the factors that conspire to steal the sacred. Instead of dwelling on these here, I would like to share some personal experiences that helped me find gateways out of the medical model - gates that led back to the sacred possibilities inherent in bringing forth new life. Because women's birth stories were an important gateway for me, I offer mine in the hope that it can help others.

My practice of yoga, because it acted as both a cause and an effect, was the first and most important gate of all. Besides the impact it had on the mind/body experience of childbearing, yoga led me to the other gates: a doula, midwifery care, a bodyworker, a support group, a reading list, a homebirth and a parenting community.

Even before I conceived, I realized that my world had been shrinking due to the demands of my professional life. Whether at home, on vacation, with friends and family, or outdoors in the natural world, my ability to be fully present was compromised. A significant part of my consciousness was always tipped toward work. Looking ahead to how I would integrate motherhood into my life, I finally recognized how flattened my emotional and spiritual life had become. I resolved to address this through yoga and therapy, so that I could begin this new phase in a more intact state. I initially thought in terms of yoga for the body and therapy for the mind; only later did I understand the deep mind/body connection at the heart of hatha yoga. Yoga appealed to me, at first, primarily for the relaxation and release from mental chatter it offered, but it opened me to more than I could ever have expected.

Feeling that I had found a beneficial path, I became pregnant. I began the process of finding a health practitioner, armed with only superficial, conventional information. I did know a little about midwives and asked my gynecologist for a reference. She mistakenly told me there were none working at the hospital I wished to use; I trusted her expertise and asked no one else. I did not cast my net widely in my search or dig deeply in my interviews. I made a poor choice of an obstetrician about whom I felt only lukewarm. Then, at 14 weeks, I suddenly and quietly miscarried. This experience could have driven me to greater dependence on the medical model: my shock and disappointment set me up for an insecure first trimester of my next pregnancy, and I had not become any more informed about my birthing options.

I had, however, been attending a yoga class specifically designed for pregnant women. In this class I learned to find a space in which movement, breath, and concentration opened into a new, inner territory. A territory in which I was, at least temporarily, calm, fully present and liberated from anxiety, judgment, incessant thought and negative expectation. The knowledge that this space existed, even if I could not always find my way in at will, supported me greatly in both my subsequent pregnancies and labors. In addition to the growing awareness of my body's capacities that yoga offered, it helped me connect with the support network I so desperately needed. Most importantly, through the prenatal yoga class I found a doula, a specially trained advocate who would be with me at the birth, as well as pre- and post-natally.

My experience with my doula became the foremost gateway out of the medical model and away from the deference I had developed toward "experts." In her quiet, unassuming way, my doula helped me get away, at  thirty-six weeks, from an obstetrician who proved hostile and interventionist. There were, she told me, two very good midwives practicing at the hospital of my choice. My initial reluctance to "rock the boat" by leaving alerted me to just how my social conditioning might be limiting my life choices, and suddenly another gate flew open. An experienced advocate, my doula provided a model of how to question the necessity of treatments that are often presented as standard rather than optional, as did my midwives. Further, by her personal example, rather than by preaching, my doula introduced me to many other styles of parenting, including family bed and homeschooling. Both of these I greeted with skepticism, then considered deeply, and ultimately embraced.

When it came time to give birth, my doula was an essential presence. First, her comments about labor helped me reframe the physical experience as a proving ground for parenthood. I am still struck by her wisdom when I think of her view of the pains of birthing. She told me that in our lives as parents, we will all be faced with stressful situations and difficult or frightening events. She believed that going through birth fully present to all its pain and pleasure strengthened women and their partners, helping them realize they could face any future challenges. This idea of "pain with a purpose" supported me in labor and beyond.

She also helped me understand the actual process of labor. She assured me that my long early phase was not unusual, and calmed me with herbal teas when sleep seemed impossible. When I arrived at the hospital fully dilated only to have labor stall for hours, she offered comfort, encouragement and wisdom. She encouraged me to make any sounds I felt moved to utter, and suggested nipple stimulation when my exhaustion, frustration and concern moved me to look for noninvasive ways to augment my labor. The baby finally began to emerge when she taught me how to tune in to the peaks and valleys of my contractions, advising me to push against her application of a warm washcloth when I reached the top of my contractions.

The twinned lessons of my experience with my doula were that I could trust my own abilities to create and welcome a child into the world, and that I could accept guidance toward such a realization without simply giving over my individual responsibility and will to an expert. This led more generally to the understanding that I could learn a great deal from other women. When I became pregnant with my second child, that knowledge became very important to me and led me to ask myself just how I wanted to experience this pregnancy and birth.

Perhaps because I was more convinced than ever of the sacred nature of this event, I felt increasingly dissatisfied with the place the culture affords pregnancy and birth. Perhaps it also had to do with a certain social attitude I detected. The mystique of the first-time expectant mother appeals to others, but after that, well, the woman had "been there, done that," and should just get on with it. To me, it felt just as miraculous, as exhilarating, as before. The fact that this would be my last pregnancy gave it an even stronger charge. I needed a context in which I could dive deep, explore and luxuriate in this process. I sought out and made time regularly for pregnancy massage, prenatal yoga and a childbirth class that was really a pregnancy support group rather than a "how-to" course.

The support group provided a huge gateway. I met and made friends with a range of women who were experiencing pregnancy and birth in different ways. Together, we were given a place to feel the individual sacredness of childbearing, while still feeling linked to the universal experience of women. We also had access to an excellent library. I found Pam England's book, Birthing From Within, from which I drew tremendous support for my spiritual development. The group discussed other readings, as well, including two articles that raised the possibility that birth could occur without pushing. This is a literal truth and a profound metaphor, as I was to learn later. And at the moment when I was most poised to encounter the next gate, but least aware of what that would be, the group exposed me to the testimony of a woman who had just given birth to her second child-at home.

The stereotypes of homebirth I brought into that room were probably not unusual. I hadn't given it much thought-it had not occurred to me as an option. I had occasionally wondered about women who decided to birth at home: "Are they so attached to their house that they can't leave it even for one of the most unusual and possibly dangerous events in their lives?" The idea conjured up images of 1970s commune life. That was the extent of my ignorance. Yet here in front of me sat a woman whose ideas about birth seemed an echo of my own, whose critique of the medical model seemed to match mine at every turn. The picture that emerged of her birth was beautiful. I longed for it. Old ideas and barriers seemed to shudder to the ground, instant by instant, as I listened. Then the final wall fell: "I did the research," she said, "and I found that for uncomplicated pregnancies, homebirth is as safe if not safer than hospital birth." I went home in an altered state. I spent the next several weeks in turmoil, thinking, researching, seeking information from others.

Making the decision to have a homebirth required me to learn a great deal about the medical model of birth versus the midwifery model. Through extensive reading and conversations with my midwives, I began to understand much more about my earlier experiences with doctors and hospitals, and about my own attitudes. Preparing for the event on all levels-including testing my own urine, outfitting my home with the necessary supplies, and identifying and dealing with my fears and hopes-taught me how to take responsibility for my body and my decisions.

I also learned the power of symbolic forms of preparation. Along with personalized attention, information and nutritional advice, my midwives gave me a set of tasks that promoted psychological readiness. These seemed to be simple, practical activities, such as sterilizing the umbilical cord tape and making comfrey perineal ice packs. But I realized while carrying them out that these were actually intention-filled, meditative rituals, helping me make a bridge between the mysterious and the material elements of birthing. My recognition of ritual's powerful effects led me to others, such as making a belly cast, and creating a ceremony to bless the pregnancy and birth and honor the family's new roles in relation to the new member.

The birth itself could not have been more fulfilling. I was free to make a big pot of soup and walk around my neighborhood once contractions started. Comfortable in my home surroundings when the contractions strengthened and accelerated, I was thrilled to find that labor progressed rapidly. No one had to suggest I make sounds this time; in the privacy of my own living room, I bellowed and moaned freely. In fact, I was amused, in spite of the intensity of my sensations, when the midwives scurried out of the kitchen as they detected from my voice that transition was imminent. My daughter, who had told me she "didn't want to hear me make noises," played happily downstairs with her grandparents, and came up within minutes of my son's birth. It all seemed like just what it was, a perfectly normal, perfectly miraculous event.

Perhaps most powerful of all was my realization that I did not have to consciously push my baby out into the world. My contractions were of a different order of magnitude than in my first labor; their strength awed me. When the baby's head began to crown, I looked in the mirror and thought "Wow-what a head! This is one big guy! How and why should I push this kid? He's already coming out, and my body is already helping him." In the final moments of his emergence, the midwife leaned over and said, "Ruth, you could just give a little push here." And with that, he arrived. What a contrast to the concentrated, effortful pushing of my first birth!

My "no push birth" experience became a touchstone. After all, if a baby could come into the world with hard work but without forceful straining, what did that mean about other creative projects? When faced with various personal or professional goals, I found myself guided by the question, "Am I unnecessarily pushing to bring this about? If I ease up and let this unfold, will it happen, and perhaps happen even more beautifully?" At times I decided against taking on certain projects, because they didn't pass this "no push test." Either the outcome wouldn't be commensurate with the labor involved, or would require that I push against my will.

Such realizations freed me from confining ideas about myself and the world, and liberated me from excessive reliance on expert advice. Clearly, if all those authority figures were wrong in screaming "push" at all those birthing women, they were bound to be wrong about many other things. I had learned what so many did not seem to understand: that we are all in a state of emergence, but it does not have to be a state of emergency. The experience gave me access to a thrilling knowledge of what I might be capable of doing and feeling. Finding this previously unknown part of myself, I believe, helped to authenticate my relationship with my children, as I learned to trust in myself, our bodies and natural processes.

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For more on the role of yoga in birth, see the full version of Ruth’s article in this issue of JFL.