My mother once told me in a vulnerable moment how scared she was when the time came for each of her four babies to be born. I had seen my mother angry (often), tired, frustrated, sad, funny, silly. But she hardly ever showed fear. During the war, the German soldiers raided their cellars, quaffing down raw eggs as they searched for "onderduikers" (the Dutch nationalised Jews who where hidden by local families). Their family crossed the ocean to set down new roots in the "dark" continent, far from all that was familiar and dear. She squared her shoulders against the prejudice, during a time when xenophobia was alive and well in South Africa, and people looked upon immigrants as "nie ons mense" (not our people). She knotted her tongue around the staccato sounds of the Afrikaans language. She arranged flowers, attended tea parties, joined an exercise circle for housewives. She even consented to driving lessons from my antsy father. That was up to the day she started the two-tone Audi with the engine in first gear and her foot free of the clutch. Parked outside the glass-fronted green-grocer shop, the dear old family car lunged forward and landed with it's nose in the carrots...
Yet when the time came for her children to be born, she withdrew and became fearful.
All four of us were born via Cesarean section. Since I have often wondered why this was so, I decided to read up about the tendency towards these operations as opposed to natural birth during this time. It appears at a glance that doctors were eager to offer reassurance to women who had become timid and ignorant about childbirth. One obstetrician was quoted saying, “If all wives and husbands knew the facts about the safety of present-day cesareans, instead of worrying over the legends handed down from preceding generations, they would feel greatly relieved...” But ignorance regarding the harm, risks and after-effects prevailed. Casual attitudes about surgery and variation in professional practice style were adopted. Professional expectations for work-life balance were increasing. Doctors were no longer eager to attend lengthy and "untimely" births. A Cesarean operation could be scheduled during week-days, to fit in with the practitioner's schedule. Enhancing women's own abilities to give birth became a low priority. There was growing fear of common labour interventions, like forceps delivery and episiotomy (vaginal cutting). Partially as a result of the large infant and mother mortality rate in earlier years, mothers were more than willing to place their entire trust in the hands of doctors, who injected safe, sterile and pain-free solutions into an area which had sadly become veiled in mystery and the sickly odour of blood and death.*
But if it was such a safe and liberating option, why still the fear? These personal crucibles are not for me to try and fathom. She loved and nurtured us the best she could, and our family was a safe place, where strife and struggle were commonplace, but love and security remained the solid basis which overcame it all.
~~~~~~~~~
the Lord’s love is with those who fear him,
and his righteousness with their children’s children. ~ Psalm 103:17
It was the month of March. Early splashes of Autumn softened the height of summer's abundance. Nature was slowing down. But there was no slowing down the last few weeks before the little person in my womb was due to arrive... I woke up one morning, from a fretful half-sitting-up night of strange dreams. A decision had to be made - soon. A few hours later, I had received two different messages on my cell-phone, of independent origin. Both referring to the same person - a midwife living in Hamburg. (Not the eighth largest city in the European Union, but a little hamlet with about 100 inhabitants in the Eastern Cape province, about 150 km from Hogsback.)
But this midwife meant something that I had not contemplated at all: home-birth. It seemed wonderful and natural and gutsy, but it was just not for me. I had conceived, carried and delivered one strong, perfect, healthy child. Beyond my wildest expectations (and all too soon), conceived again, and was speeding toward the end of another problem-free pregnancy. I felt that I was probably running out of miracles in this arena.
But we were at the end of a fraying line and this seemed the last, though still least likely option. I dialled the number and found myself listening intently to a "voice with a smile", gently telling me about how "birth works". BirthWorks also happened to be the ambiguous name of her practice. Even over the phone, she spoke with an unassuming conviction and passion, and something of that quiet confidence spilled over into my uncertainty. I agreed to meet her, walked to the door of our second bedroom and took a very deep breath. "It is going to happen right here" I thought, "and it will be good". The same God who joined those cells and grew them into the little person we were soon to meet, was joining the scattered puzzle pieces of our lives together again, one by one.
During the 15th and 16th Century Inquisition, midwives were burned at the stake for being “the early companions of The Devil” and for not complying with the Frankfurt Midwifery Code established by the Catholic church, which was in effect for 130 years. These unsanctioned practices seemed like witchcraft to the zealot priests.
In the competitive and rushed times we live in, midwives carry on this tradition, but it has nothing to do with witchcraft or herbal lore. Becoming a midwife means undertaking professional education at degree level. The woman I was about to meet, had assisted at more than a thousand births, with not one life lost. She had a small clinic, housed in a rondawel, where any woman needing help with pre- and post natal care was welcome. Regardless of income (or lack of), race, background or previous birthing history. More than a thousand slippery little people had passed from the rosy safety of their mother's wombs, into her knowing hands. She knew all about care, compassion, competence, communication, courage and commitment.
She arrived at our home, wearing one of those wonderful smiles that clears the air in a room. Before we had gone beyond the usual greetings and pleasantries, I knew that she would be with me through many hours of intimate toil. When she passed her hands over my stomach and declared it to be a "sweet tummy", another piece fell into place. Right there, was the promise of a masterpiece in the making.
The preparations for the "labour room" seemed beautifully simple. A space was cleared for a "birth-bath" (not bird-bath, which I often referred to when the pistons in my brain where not firing. Then I would picture myself perching atop a little arbour, with a bulging stomach and fluttering canaries around my feet...)
The wait began. 31 March (the ETD) came and went. There was a tangible hush in our home. Nine long days and nights passed. Family members sent panicky messages. We had spared them the additional panic by not letting them into the decision to home-birth. I was apprehensive but peaceful. Finally, during the early hours of the tenth day, I awoke from a tightening in my lower abdomen, followed by a sharp pain. It was time.
I timed the contractions and sent a message to the midwife. It was a two hour drive from Hamburg and I had to trust that the little one would not start the show without her. A dear friend at the time had offered to be my "doula" (helper and comforter). She had four home births under her belt..., of which the last one took place during an Eskom blackout with a gale-force wind howling around their home. The baby arrived with the umbilical cord wound tightly around his neck. He was rescued by the brave local doctor, by the flickering light of a candle. They named him after a wild desert wind. She was more than equipped for this role...
It is widely accepted that your second birth is shorter and easier than the first. Without this expectation the 18 hour ordeal which followed would have been less of a shock. Nevertheless, I had a wonderful warm "birth-bath" to ease the initial sharp contractions and it was once again not the contractions that I felt unable to deal with.
Even though the baby was constantly monitored and under no strain, he had become lodged behind the coccyx, and this caused an unrelenting pain, which on top of the contractions, caused me to slip into a place where there was a constant red throbbing behind my closed eyelids. At some point, I remember looking up at my husband, a quiet and constant presence in the room, and saying: "I cannot do this". To which he replied: "You can do all things through Christ who gives you strength". He was right.
The midwife seemed undaunted, calmly monitoring both her patients regularly with a soft, steady hand. In between these checks, she reclined on the bed beside me to work on her "memoir"! It appeared that the little one was facing upwards and to pass through the birth-canal, he needed to make a 180 degree turn. She seemed confident that the baby knew this, and would oblige when he was ready. But his mother was way past ready, and I started whining like a shameless beggar for pain relief. Since I had so confidently asked beforehand for no intervention or drugs unless it was life-threatening, she calmly refused and reassured me of my competence. She had witnessed "birth work" so, so often, even in a woman who had four abdominal deliveries (C-sections) before the fifth was born naturally, and placed into her elated mother's arms.
At some point I accepted the pain, instead of trying to fight it. It made it easier, though no less intense. My doula friend passed in and out of the room, soothing with lavender oil, back-rubs and more quiet reassurance. I could suddenly relate to women in childbirth who lash out at all the regularity and normality around them, but swallowed the impulse to be mean, and dug my fingernails a bit deeper into the mattress.
It is often said to people in the throes of pain or trial - "This too shall pass". And it did. The dawn brought new mercies and a few hours into 11 April 2011, Daniel John Gladwin, turned himself around and with one final lunge, turned the room into a place of jubilant joy.
No other time have I felt nearer to God than in those precious moments of birth. The things of the world become strangely dim, in the light of His glory and grace. Through death into life everlasting, He passed - and we follow Him there. Now with a family who was being restored to Him, and the confidence that among all the brokenness, there was once again: HOPE...
* I do not wish to undermine the value of the medical profession, specialist knowledge of gynaecologists or the need for additional care or procedures in situations where complications in pregnancy and childbirth call for it.
I timed the contractions and sent a message to the midwife. It was a two hour drive from Hamburg and I had to trust that the little one would not start the show without her. A dear friend at the time had offered to be my "doula" (helper and comforter). She had four home births under her belt..., of which the last one took place during an Eskom blackout with a gale-force wind howling around their home. The baby arrived with the umbilical cord wound tightly around his neck. He was rescued by the brave local doctor, by the flickering light of a candle. They named him after a wild desert wind. She was more than equipped for this role...
It is widely accepted that your second birth is shorter and easier than the first. Without this expectation the 18 hour ordeal which followed would have been less of a shock. Nevertheless, I had a wonderful warm "birth-bath" to ease the initial sharp contractions and it was once again not the contractions that I felt unable to deal with.
Even though the baby was constantly monitored and under no strain, he had become lodged behind the coccyx, and this caused an unrelenting pain, which on top of the contractions, caused me to slip into a place where there was a constant red throbbing behind my closed eyelids. At some point, I remember looking up at my husband, a quiet and constant presence in the room, and saying: "I cannot do this". To which he replied: "You can do all things through Christ who gives you strength". He was right.
The midwife seemed undaunted, calmly monitoring both her patients regularly with a soft, steady hand. In between these checks, she reclined on the bed beside me to work on her "memoir"! It appeared that the little one was facing upwards and to pass through the birth-canal, he needed to make a 180 degree turn. She seemed confident that the baby knew this, and would oblige when he was ready. But his mother was way past ready, and I started whining like a shameless beggar for pain relief. Since I had so confidently asked beforehand for no intervention or drugs unless it was life-threatening, she calmly refused and reassured me of my competence. She had witnessed "birth work" so, so often, even in a woman who had four abdominal deliveries (C-sections) before the fifth was born naturally, and placed into her elated mother's arms.
At some point I accepted the pain, instead of trying to fight it. It made it easier, though no less intense. My doula friend passed in and out of the room, soothing with lavender oil, back-rubs and more quiet reassurance. I could suddenly relate to women in childbirth who lash out at all the regularity and normality around them, but swallowed the impulse to be mean, and dug my fingernails a bit deeper into the mattress.
It is often said to people in the throes of pain or trial - "This too shall pass". And it did. The dawn brought new mercies and a few hours into 11 April 2011, Daniel John Gladwin, turned himself around and with one final lunge, turned the room into a place of jubilant joy.
No other time have I felt nearer to God than in those precious moments of birth. The things of the world become strangely dim, in the light of His glory and grace. Through death into life everlasting, He passed - and we follow Him there. Now with a family who was being restored to Him, and the confidence that among all the brokenness, there was once again: HOPE...
* I do not wish to undermine the value of the medical profession, specialist knowledge of gynaecologists or the need for additional care or procedures in situations where complications in pregnancy and childbirth call for it.
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