The first question was always the same: “But what will you do about the pain?” Every conversation I had with women who had given birth produced the same look on their face, somewhere between hope and panic. “I just want to be present to my body, you know?” I’d say, awaiting their knowing nod intended to suggest they knew better, knew that I would change my mind about an unmedicated, unhospitalized birth.
Eight years earlier, as a closeted lesbian in the evangelical church, distrusting my body was a daily practice.
The hospital doctors I saw occasionally were less concerned with my pain. The doctors were more concerned with my age. At 40 years old, mine was considered a geriatric pregnancy, and so my baby, who had been conceived by in vitro fertilization, should be induced early and born in a hospital. Despite a remarkably unremarkable pregnancy, the doctors recommended I give up my birth plan. When I pressed for reasons they simply said: “Just in case.” The midwives, on the other hand, accepted mine as a low-risk case to their birth center based on my health and the baby’s tests and scans. They weren’t worried about pain but seemed prepared for it. Yet I wondered whether to trust their calm reassurance or the doctors’ all too familiar distrust of my body.
Eight years earlier, as a closeted lesbian in the evangelical church, distrusting my body was a daily practice. I engaged in “just in case” thinking all the time. I made sure I was never praying alone with a woman, just in case the emotional intimacy led to physical desire. I regularly confessed and repented the slightest urges toward women, just in case an untended spark became an uncontrollable internal fire. I regularly attended marriage-building retreats with my husband, just in case my lesbian body needed reminding of its marital roles and obligations. In his biblical writings Paul says, “The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak,” and so I treated my body—what it felt, what it wanted —as a weakness to be overcome. My body was not to be trusted and listened to but rather controlled and silenced by my spirit. My eternal soul depended on it.
So much has happened in the intervening years—coming out, getting divorced, leaving the church, meeting and marrying my now wife, and undergoing two years of IUI and IVF—but unlearning that deep distrust of my body is a continuous process. I had spent years in the evangelical church working through programs meant to “cure” me of my body’s desires. Even after coming out and leaving the church I would find ways, completely unrelated to sex, that this belief persisted in how I treated my body. Focusing on the smooth, cool feeling of the ultrasound tech’s wand moving across the stretched skin of my eight-months-pregnant belly, I still had to remind myself to both feel and inhabit the sensation. This was my first pregnancy and I wanted to experience everything, even labor. Still I worried I was being naive, and foolhardy. My eternal soul wasn’t in danger, but lives were: mine and the baby’s.
Two days before my due date, a warm fluid gushed from between my legs. The gush was more than the usual discharge, but less than I expected from a water break. I lay down to see if the leaking would start again. Nothing. I got up and quickly waddled down the hall to the parking lot where the car waited. I wedged myself into the passenger seat grumbling to my wife: “I don’t know what my body is doing!” My wife drove me to the hospital where the midwives had sent me to confirm normal amniotic fluid levels and birth-conducive baby position. A quick scan affirmed both, but my doula insisted I see the midwives in case my water had broken high. The next morning the midwives confirmed the amniotic fluid with a test strip and sent me home with tincture meant to begin the slow process of ripening and opening. On the ride home I silently apologized to my body for accusing it of not knowing what to do. I trust you I said to my belly, as much a penance as a reminder.
Three times that day I thought labor had begun and returned to the birthing center; three times they sent me home. After being sent home again a third time, I joked with people about my “stubborn cervix” resolutely holding the baby inside. My impatience turned early labor into a battle of wills pitting my body’s timeline against my plans. I wanted to be fully present to my body—to everything it wanted and needed—in labor. I wanted to trust my body and to work with it—my body and my baby working together to bring new life into the world. Yet the frustratingly slow pace seemed to put me at odds with my body once more. Aware that the water break had started a timer that could force me into a hospital birth, I paced the floors of my kitchen and living room. The movement alleviated my pain and my frustration with the slow pace of dilation. As I repeated my mantra which was meant to help me yield—I’m opening to make a way for my baby—it edged closer and closer to a command. I worried my body was failing me exactly as the doctor had warned, and I simultaneously worried that my anxiety was preventing it from letting go.
Nothing needed to be controlled or cured. I stopped talking to my body as a partner; instead, I was becoming my body.
I was still pacing at 2 a.m. The house was quiet and dark except for the lights on the Christmas tree. My wife, doula, and mother had all fallen asleep. The midwives had told me to come back when I could no longer talk through contractions, but there was no one to talk to. Instead, I moaned, but my voice sounded like someone else’s. I reminded myself not to dissociate, to be present to my body. I’m here. I’m listening. I trust you, I told my body.
Then, between contractions, I woke my doula. “It’s time. We need to go.”
My wife bundled me in her extra-warm bathrobe and laid me across the back seat of the doula’s car. It was foggy and the streetlights were as fuzzy as my thoughts. My doula tried to engage me in conversation from the driver’s seat, but I couldn’t keep up, language melting into puddles of familiar sound. With each passing hour I went deeper and deeper into sensation. Nothing needed to be controlled or cured. I stopped talking to my body as a partner; instead, I was becoming my body.
I closed my eyes. I trusted the arms that held me, the voices that guided me, the other bodies that kept me safe. I moaned again, and again, the moans vibrating bone and tissue. Laboring in the tub, my head drooped between contractions, my exhales blowing bubbles in the water’s surface. I had been laboring for 11 hours, though I’d lost all sense of time. I was exhausted by pain. I felt defeated by pain. Those other women were right; the doctor was right; I should be in a hospital; this is too much, this is the “just in case,” I thought wearily. Then a contraction unlike any of the others barreled through me. I moved with it, outside of my conscious control; for the first time during labor I was genuinely afraid.
Then I let my body push as it already knew how to push. My spirit and body working together, out of my conscious control. With each push I felt stronger and more whole.
I opened my eyes and saw the excitement in my mother’s face. The midwife checked my cervix and smiled. “You’re wide open. I can feel the baby’s head. It’s time to start pushing.”
I waited. I listened. I trusted. Then I let my body push as it already knew how to push. My spirit and body working together, out of my conscious control. With each push I felt stronger and more whole. Gently guided by the midwife, I was free to find the right position and rhythm for me and my baby. Here in their safe space, I could let go of anyone else’s expectations and lean into the innate knowledge of my own body. At the prompting of the midwife I reached down and felt the small head of my daughter pushing through the opening; felt my body birthing another body. Minutes later her skin pressed against mine, I basked in the warmth traveling between us. Two chests rising and falling, each breath a small prayer.