Birthing the Mama

On TV today, a (male) doctor was talking about why it wasn’t right to force men into the delivery room if they were uncomfortable with the idea. Maybe there was a reason that birth was only women’s domain for so long, he surmised, and then he referred to birth as a traumatic experience.


I guess it was the terminology that irritated me. Birth is not a trauma, it’s amazing, surreal, painful, indescribably intense—but trauma? Then I thought about the definition, in the DSM-IV, of post-traumatic stress; in order to be diagnosed with PTSD, a person has to have experienced an event that involves “actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of self or others” and responded to that experience with feelings of intense fear, helplessness, or horror.


I suppose if that is how you define a trauma, it is possible that some men, and women too, feel that birth is a trauma. Still, as a counsellor, I’ve worked with survivors of trauma, and I can’t equate birth with the unspeakable violations and losses they’ve been exposed to.


Still, giving birth (vaginally or by caesarean) does bring us up next to death. Not to suggest that birthing is inherently dangerous—I’d never want any woman to feel anything but empowered and confident in her body’s ability to complete such a natural process. But it’s a bloody affair, (I was surprised how bloody!) and it is powerful, and I can see, especially for the partner watching, how it may be traumatic to see your beloved become an animal version of herself, to know your child is struggling towards this world, and to be helpless to do anything.


I remember my aunt Libby, after my first nephew was born, saying that she believes every woman, at some point during pregnancy or labour, must acknowledge the (remote) possibility of her own death. Most of us, I think, are more concerned about the possible death of our baby. Dear friends and family have had births in which the baby was stuck and had to have his collarbone broken, or have an emergency cesarean birth.


My son’s delivery, no doubt, was traumatic for everyone that was at our home birth, including myself. He had had “wet lung”—when he hit the bed, the midwives started arguing about why he wasn’t breathing. He needed oxygen, and luckily, they had some there, but we had to go to the hospital immediately.


It wasn’t a dire emergency—they delivered the placenta while I held him, the oxygen tube under his nose while he cried rapidly, sucking in air. But then I was on my feet, directing people where to find the things I needed to take to the hospital, getting dressed. “Sit down,” my midwife said, “You could faint. You’ve just had a baby.”


I needed reminding—because that was the last thing on my mind. My baby needed to go to the hospital, the ambulance was on its way, and I was not going to be the one to hold it up. Later, my cousin Natasha told me she had said to Debbie, my doula (also dear sister-friend) “Did you see that, how she just got up and started going, just after giving BIRTH.” And Debbie replied “That’s her Mama kicking in.”


Traumatic, I suppose. I did feel, as I locked eyes with my silent, wet, naked son, still attached at to the placenta inside me, Death standing just off to the side, watching. But I prefer to think of the experience as transformative, not traumatic. My Mama kicked in.


When I rose up from that bed it was with that new part of me that grew along with my son during the pregnancy, and was birthed along with him that day. That person can survive on less sleep than I ever imagined, can find new stores of patience when she thought she was at her end, can carry and rock a feverish baby all day and barely notice the aches of her body. And every mother goes through that transformation, whether through birth or through the sleep deprived, overwhelmed days of first looking after a baby.


Trauma, like birthing, does often show the survivor just how strong she is, and help her ultimately find deeper compassion and wisdom. In birthing, those gifts come in abundance, along with a new being that brings more love and joy than you knew were possible. It transforms the maiden into the mother, marks her body and her spirit forever, not to harm, but to forge.


Maybe this is why we want our partners to be in the room with us, because we know that we will come out of that room changed, and we want them to be changed too. I saw my husband at the hospital, holding the oxygen mask over our baby’s face, making sure he was with him in everything that happened to him next, arguing and advocating with all the staff, his face tense with worry, his mouth set in determination. His Papa had kicked in. I’m glad we crossed that threshold together.