Though I felt a degree of liberation in my decision, I felt more trepidation. For when one musters the gumption to refuse the current trends of America, one tends to feel alone. I was hard pressed to find a doctor, a nurse or a fellow expecting mother who wholeheartedly supported my inclination to birth my way. So, then came more prayer. Spirit spoke again, this time by bringing me to the door of Shelly Girard and Seannie Gibson, a.k.a. Childbirth at Home: A Labor of Love. I was overjoyed with the possibilities of not only a natural birth, but one free and clear of an impatient industry too gun shy to allow me to govern my own body.
In that initial meeting with my midwives, they asked me why I wanted to give birth at home. I expressed a deep belief that one’s passage through the birth canal, that passage from spiritual to human, is the most traumatic of life passages – and that I did not want to abandon my child in that transition, leaving her to go it alone. This became the spell by which we began to forge the most beautiful of relationships I have had with three women of no blood relation. They became my mothers, my friends, my sister warriors and fellow cowgirls in a world relatively hostile to natural, home birth.
Although my mother and a handful of my closest confidants were very supportive of my decision, they had to buffer the panic and doubt from the rest of my family and friends. As far as colleges and my very own doctors were concerned, they told us, and boldly so, that we were crazy and that we would miserably fail in our mission. They believed our choice reckless. Neither did our community give us cheers of encouragement. We were met with horrible stories of birth gone wrong. We were met with incredulous stares and dismissive chortles. We were met with such disapproval that even I began to doubt my choice.
Yet, we persisted in the face of a world wherein more and more women are choosing major surgery over pushing and deep cutting episiotomies over minor surface tearing. Somewhere pregnancy has become a condition and birthing has become a Brave-New-World archaic rite of passage better circumnavigated all together. For mainstream America, the act of birthing has become a thing devoid of the deep spiritual significance inherent to creation itself.
