My now five-year-old son was born on the outskirts of Berlin, Germany, in a place called Havelhohe, a birth house located inside a hospital positioned on the Havel River. Havelhohe in many ways embodied the ideal environment to have my first child, with its focus on naturopathic medicine and support for individual mothers. Each room had a large bathtub with salts scented with lavender and chamomile. Each midwife had years—if not decades—of experience accompanying women through this transformation into motherhood. After visiting Havelhohe, I looked forward to an empowering birth surrounded by women who would actively guide me and support my decisions. Then again, perhaps I had romanticized both birth itself and my birth team, because my experience was more lonely, stressful, and painful than I had imagined—and it took me years to face my fears, have a second child, and find the empowering birth team I had been hoping for.
The day I gave birth, the river was wild, a sort of omen of the night to come. The midwife on call thought my water had broken—but she didn’t test the fluid, and this later turned out to be wrong. By the mouth of the river, I frantically ascended and descended the stone staircase in hopes that my labor would begin without intervention and Googled the names of the medicines I would ultimately receive for an induction.
The day I gave birth, the river was wild, a sort of omen of the night to come.
The waves of pain (made more extreme by the induction medications) began in the evening of July 18, 2014, seemingly endless as the sun set, and a darkness—both external and internal—set in. My son was born on July 19, shortly after the break of dawn. On the outside, the birth appeared uneventful. It wasn’t long, perhaps nine hours. And it wasn’t objectively traumatic, both I and my son emerging physically unscathed. Yet my mind could not settle after the birth—scarred by my feelings of unpreparedness, the unnecessary induction, the resulting pain, and a deep sense of loneliness most of all.
Rather than making me feel powerful, birth had exposed a profound vulnerability in me. First, I had asked not to take the induction medicines but was pressured to (unnecessarily) take them by the head midwife on call. And perhaps I had not done enough research, as I didn’t understand the various stages of labor or how intense contractions could be, literally taking my breath away. I had also underestimated the difficulty of being in a somewhat unfamiliar place, far from places and people I knew. Finally, paired with midwives who spent little time with me during birth, stretched thin in their duties, I felt incredibly alone.
I had not been, of course, alone. My husband was with me for the birth, along with two of the birth house’s midwives, who came and went (mostly went) as I labored. They were there, yet not fully present in the way I had expected or hoped, as they cared for me and two other women in labor, shuffling between our rooms, only staying for the final stage of labor. When present, they did their best to speak to me in English, my German capacity quickly fading away as the pain increased; birth brings you back not only to your body but also to your native tongue.
Yet I ultimately decide that fear should not stop me from having a second child.
Fast-forward four years and I am pregnant with my daughter. My previous birth experience is one of the main reasons I have waited so long to have a second child. My body’s memory of the pain, of the unpreparedness, of the loneliness has failed to fade. Yet I ultimately decide that fear should not stop me from having a second child. And it should not stop me from trying to create the birth experience I always hoped for. We live in another city now, in another country (the United States). I reassure myself that this birth will be different.
As time passes and I feel the fluttering of my daughter, I also begin to feel the familiar flutters of fear. Trying to preempt the unpreparedness and loneliness of my last birth, I hired a doula this time, Sara. She is calm and calming, cheerful with a soft voice. She prepares me, reassuring both me and my husband through the various stages of pregnancy and the myriad life transitions that come with a new child. She embraces me as I grieve the end of my son’s only-childness, preparing me not only for the birth but also for opening my heart to the new child.
While the first time I felt that birth happened to me, this time it happens through me.
The beauty of Sara is how she stands by and with me, as I make decisions for myself and my body (for instance, crucially, no medical induction this time, despite being 10 days overdue). I talk to and message her day and night. She is always there, as if waiting to speak to me, on the other line. I see her multiple times before the birth, hours over which we sip tea as she reassures me. She stays on the line with me through early labor. And she arrives at the same time as me at the hospital once active labor has set in. From the dim string lights that she hangs in the hospital bathroom to the way she talks me through each decision, she assures me that this birth is mine. While the first time I felt that birth happened to me, this time it happens through me.
It is not only Sara—who massages the small of my back, who pinches out the fire of my fear—who’s there by my side but an entire team of women: An acupuncturist who specializes in maternal and postpartum care helps start labor naturally, and two midwives, along with two female nurses, accompany me through the birth. That is, a team of women, truly by my side, helps me to bring my daughter into the world, staying with me for the entire labor at the hospital. I am never without my doula, a midwife, and a nurse. And through this experience, I reestablish a trust in myself and my body and a deep appreciation for the role of women in supporting one another through birth.
As the end of birth comes close, I pull Carrie, one of the nurses, by the collar toward me, the pain made more bearable by the certainty in both her voice and her eyes. In this extraordinarily intimate moment, I see that she is with me and will not leave my side. We are somehow in this together, bringing my daughter into this world. This time, surrounded by a circle of women—all mothers themselves—I feel neither alone nor lonely but empowered by birth.