My role as a midwife is to help a woman and her partner celebrate her newness and embrace her sensuality. The Western culture has taken birth from our view and put it in a place that is hard to find. On television, we see birthing women often in hysteria, sweating profusely, out of control and not looking pretty. Pregnancy has been mystified as nasty and not a nice thing; it is thought of as a shameful and an unclean act.
I have heard many stories of hospital births from friends and family members. Each woman described their experience with some margin of disappointment; something still left to be desired. Yet the majority of them fear the thought of having a natural childbirth, let alone a homebirth. Why? Because we live in a nation of fear. Women have been told for far too long that hospital births are the only safe births. That doctors should control and decide every factor of pregnancy and labor. Women have effectively been silenced.
The reality is that hospitals have never been proven to be a safe place for delivery. The 2002 statistics, from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, ranks the U.S. as 28th among industrialized nations for healthy births at 7 infant deaths per 1000 births. Furthermore, a study reported in the BMJ Medical Journal in 2005, stated that homebirths have been proven "very safe and successful for women who have been helped to stay low-risk through nutrition and good prenatal care."
I feel incredibly fortunate that my first birthing experience went well. I owe it all to the loving guidance, support, and expertise of my midwife. She inspired me to trust in my own body, forgo drugs, and to feel my birth. She told me that I did not have to wait until I was 10 cm dilated to start bearing down. I was only 5 cm dilated when I began to have strong urges to push. Initially I was frightened to let go and the pain became intense. When I finally relaxed and let my body respond with each contraction, I became fully dilated quickly. 20 minutes later, my first son was born: healthy and beautiful.
My dream is that women everywhere begin reclaiming their womanhood. I want them to let their voices be heard. I wish that their fear would dissipate and be replaced with confidence of self and of faith in the miracle of birth so that birth customs will once again become a family affair, rather than one of solidarity and segregation. Husbands, fathers and mothers, and other siblings will be full participants and be filled with feelings of compassion and togetherness. After all, the delivery of a child should always be special and the experience, one to look back on and smile.
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