Pitter’s Birth: Part I

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I think of modern day memoir writing as more than an account of what happened. It’s about more than revealing memory, even while using fictional devices like dialogue, vivid description, or a story arc. It’s about digging to find meaning in the silt and bedrock of the time that has passed, time that only you have experienced.

 

I think this is why it’s been so difficult for me to write about Pitter’s birth: I’ve wanted to write more than a story about it, or a bullet list of facts. I’ve wanted to find meaning in it, to tell something beyond a story of major physical exertion that lead to the birth of a healthy child. I’ve wanted writing it to reveal things to myself about my spirit and my relationship with God and the earth and the entire solar system. Or something like that.

I’ve wanted it to bring clarity and purpose, but when I go over the facts I jotted down in the weeks afterwards in the summer of 2006, mostly I recall and recoil in the memory of the pain. And so all that I’m left to offer to myself and to you in the story of Pitter’s natural birth is that I gleaned something amazing about physical pain: when it is great enough, and lasts long enough, and when there is release from it, I think it may be a little bit like dying. My 30 hour labor–without a drop of any drug–to bring a new life to the world outside, was a lesson to me about my own death. I’m less afraid of it now than I was before I had Pitter, because I’m now curious to find out if I’m right. So there’s that.

I’ve also been hesitant to make the story public because I don’t want criticism or pity or anything besides witness to the choices I made and the experience I had. A handful of the reasons I had for choosing to have a child in the first place was to see what my body could do. What are these hips for? What are these breasts going to do? What is the biological purpose of these strong thighs? How does my physicality fit into my biological fate?

After a certain age of using my body as a punching bag and playground, these were my questions. And going through childbirth naturally was part and parcel of this almost scientific inquiry. I wasn’t looking to be on any particular side of an argument about the “right way” to give birth. And I wasn’t looking to be called a birth warrior or a martyr. I don’t think of myself as either, although I am proud of myself for making a plan and having the fortitude to stick with it. That said, without my support system, physical predisposition to birth without complications, and a great deal of luck, I may not have made it all the way through without medical assistance. And there would have been no “failure” in that. I would never suggest to anyone that this is about willpower alone.

In preparation for natural childbirth, I conditioned my body as if for a race: I strength-trained, jogged, walked, swam, biked, and practiced regular yoga. (Ah, if only I could say the same thing about this current pregnancy.) I thought of my body as a kind of machine in need of top-notch maintenance to perform during its most challenging race. I ate well and gained 30 pounds in total. I read a Hypnobirthing book and did regular meditation and self-hypnosis techniques. Sweet Cheeks and I attended a four-week natural-birthing course lead by a doula. I saw both a midwife and an OB during my pregnancy and felt extremely informed.

None of this prepared me for the reality of labor. There is nothing you can do to prepare yourself. It’s not that all of the planning and learning and time spent thinking of your body as a lotus flower opening to birth is useless or nonsense. It isn’t. But perhaps, only because it’s the only thing you can do. If I had any inkling of how completely out of control I would be of my body during labor, I would have been in a nine-month anxiety attack. And that doesn’t get a person anywhere.

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