What Other People’s Births Taught Me About My Life

“Claire!” I snapped at her. “You’ve got to pull yourself together. Put your hands behind your knees, hold your breath, push, and this will all be over.”  This was the last birth I attended. I wasn’t there as a midwife or as a nurse. I was there as a sister. My sister, Claire, was giving birth to her second child and her labor took a quick turn; too quick to get the epidural she was expecting. Like many women faced with unimaginable, raw pain of birthing a baby, my sister was disorganized and was using her energy to try to crawl backwards out of her body and back away from the pain. Let’s just say this technique is common, but ineffective. So, I got real with her. I went back to my nursing and midwifery mode, turned my soft voice to a commanding tone, and offered firm and direct instruction. But, I wasn’t in scrubs, so this surprised those who were. There was a pause, the doctor, who I didn’t know me, just looked perplexed and said, “Thank you.” The next push, little Warren was born into the world.

That was nearly four years ago. I have been a maternity nurse for thirteen years and I graduated with my midwifery degree six years ago. I have attended hundreds, if not more than a thousand births. But I stopped attending births at the end of midwifery school, with the exception of Warren’s birth. Instead, I worked as a midwife in community health doing home visits with young first-time moms and babies. This eventually led me to clinical and academic questions that inspired me to pursue my PhD in nursing. Today, I am privileged to be a full-time student. I am not sure if I am on a hiatus from birth or if those days are behind me, but I am immensely grateful for my experience at the bedside of birth. Birth is a unique and raw form of humanity. Being immersed in its environment has taught me much about life.

Here are a few lessons I have learned from working at the bedside of birth.

1. Women are amazing. Most people assume I work in maternity because I love babies. Babies are great (see #3), but what really inspires me is the women. How privileged are we as women to grow new life? We then get to nurture and promote the growth of that child. Weathering the countless and unpredictable storms this involves often requires soul searching and digging deep to delivery what is needed. I’ve drawn what seems like endless inspiration from the women I have been privileged to work beside. Women. Are. Amazing.

2. It’s good to have a plan, but you can expect things not to go accordingly. I encourage the women I work with to create a birth plan, a written document of their desired labor course. Mostly, I see this beneficial as an exercise for her to be thoughtful about what she does and does not want. In addition, it’s a helpful tool to communicate her wishes to her labor support team, both the medical personnel and her personal support team. However, I like to think of labor as a stream or river, with each birth having its own current with unique twists and turns. There are too many unknown variables to be able to successfully craft and predict its course. So, plan for what you would like, and when the contractions start coming, hold on tight. You never know where those currents will take you. So it is with life as well. It’s good to have a plan, but you can expect things not to go accordingly.

3.  Babies are incredible: full of such potential and endless possibilities. They give us such hope. Enough said.

4.  Sometimes the best action is no action at all: just be present. Patience is key to birth. And as a maternity provider, you can expect the laboring women and her support team to grow weary and impatient with this grueling and overwhelming process. It’s powerful being a steady presence of reassurance and by not taking action indicating to others that all is well.

5.   Sometimes the best action is to take action and take action now: know when to step in. Birth is wild and can sometimes get out of control. If and when this happens, it is not time for steady patience. It is time for action, whether that be offering directive instructions or an invasive, life-saving procedures. As a midwife, you need all kinds of tools in your toolbox. Know when to use them and use them wisely.

6.  There is no such thing as an easy birth. Slow or fast. Vaginal or C-section. It’s true that some births are tougher than others, but we all have to pay the price for such radical growth and transition. Similarly, there is no such thing as an easy life. There are various seasons and stages, and some are smoother than others, but life requires growth and growth requires letting go and struggle in some form. We often spend too much time comparing our difficulties to others’ strengths and end up asking “Why me?”.  This is not fair to ourselves or anyone else. There is no such thing as an easy birth and no such thing as an easy life.

7.   Relationships are everything. Research shows that the best indicator of having positive birth outcomes is the presence of consistent support team. I like to think this is true of life. So take time to gather good people around you and nurture those relationships. You reap what you sow in relationships and in life.

8.    Trust the process. You never know what you are going to get out of life or out of birth, but we are granted the experiences we need at the times that we need them. Birth is unpredictable, just as life is unpredictable. Trust in the process.

9.    There are different stages of birth and they are all temporary, just like there are different seasons to life; again, all temporary.  Contractions come and they go.  There are rest periods amidst the trials. One stage leads to another until we have arrived at our destination, at least our destination for now, until the next journey begins. The good stuff and the tough stuff: it’s all temporary.

10.   Birth, like life, is a mixed bag, but overall net positive: and certainly, stunningly beautiful. Amidst the pain and the suffering, the blood and the sweat, there is beauty all around.  There is beauty in the way nurses, midwives, and doctors care for patients, people that are otherwise strangers, with tenderness and compassion.  There is beauty in the technologies that support women and families through the process. There is beauty in the relationships that surround birth, the nine months or longer, that have led to this moment of new life. 

And there is immense beauty when that child is born.  In Spanish, they use the phrase “dar a la luz” to describe birth, which translated literally means “to give to the light.” 

After all the waiting, the tireless hours of hard work, pain, and sweat and suffering, there is a moment when the child is born and takes a first breath. 

And it is as if time stand stills. 

In that moment, there seems to be poetic clarity, that somehow, amidst all the taxes and violence and celebrations and highs and lows of this life swirling around us, it all seems to make sense in the hope of newborn child.  Birth is beautiful.  Life is beautiful.

Being at the bedside of birth taught me some hard realities about myself.  What are my gifts and talents?  What are my challenges?  How can I best put my skills and ability to work?  During midwifery school, I had two severe episodes of bipolar depression. One of the triggers for these episodes was erratic sleep. Unfortunately, birthing babies is not a nine to five gig and sleepless nights are essential to the job description. After being hospitalized three times, I reached a point where I realized that for the sake of my health and well being, I literally could not continue to with the hours required to assist women in labor and birth. So, I retired my baby catching mitt and reconfigured how I could still use my passion, knowledge, and skills to support moms and babies. That was six years ago and the only birth I have attended during that time was my sister’s birth of her son Warren. At times I miss it, kind of like missing the good times of an old relationship that has run its course. I still consider myself a midwife as this remains foundational to my research as an academic. And although it is a thing of my past for now, working at the bedside of birth has been foundational to my career and shaped me as a person.

“Claire!” I snapped at her. “You’ve got to pull yourself together. Put your hands behind your knees, hold your breath, push, and this will all be over.”  I actually cringed at those words.  See, I am a midwife, and I don’t believe that this is the best position for a woman to give birth.  But, when push comes to shove, you do what you’ve gotta do to finish the job.

As I write this, I am 35 weeks and 6 days pregnant, expecting my first child. It is Thanksgiving morning and there is so much gratitude brewing in my heart: my past, my present, and my future. Just as I have learned much from attending to other women’s pregnancies, births, and experiences of motherhood, being personally pregnant has also taught me so much. Despite having a healthy obsession with pregnancy and childbirth for nearly 20 years, I am surprised at how much I still had to learn by moving through the experience myself.  Over the next posts, I will be writing about what surprised this midwife about being pregnant. But for now, I am grateful for all my experiences with other women’s birth, from the very first child I witness enter the world all the way up until Claire and Warren. The next birth I attend will be the birth of my own child. I am grateful for this child still safely growing in my own body. And I am grateful for all these things have taught me about this one wild and wonderful life.

May your life be ripe with blessings. Happy Thanksgiving 2017.